The Hidden History of Jock Troup and the Fisherman's Revival

Hello and welcome to another episode. I'm your host John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with him I have my very special guest, Kora Epinga, granddaughter of Jack Troop from Scotland.

Kora it's good to have you and I'm very excited to get into this because I'm fascinated with history and this is a history that is little known history to a lot of people. So that's where my favorite history lies, the things that nobody really knows about.

So I'm excited to get into this but before we do maybe you could just tell everybody a little bit about yourself and how you are related to this history. Well John first of all it's great to do this podcast with you and honored because I really love the work you do and your friend and colleague Charles and I've learned so much from you guys and yeah I'm the granddaughter, one of the granddaughters of Jock.

It's not Jack, it's Jock Troop from Scotland and it's called The Fisherman's Revival in YouTube. There are videos about it, The Fisherman's Revival. My grandfather was a barrel maker and he ended up in Ireland in a meeting from youth YMCA and I still don't know what it stands for, YMCA, do you know that, what it stands for?

YMCA, we have this here in the United States, it's the Youth Men's Christian Association that's probably the same thing there. It was, he went for military service or something, he ended up in Dublin, my grandfather at the YMCA there and there he heard the gospel being preached and it lingered with him.

Then he went back on the ship, he was on the ship and then he, yeah I bought it him so much and he went into prayer and he was converted right there and he rushed out and he told everybody on the ship and from that moment on he started preaching and he intended Bible in Glasgow after that in 1922 and then in 1932 he became the assistant of the superintendant at the Tantall in Glasgow and the Tantall was built after Moody and Sankey held their campaigns in the city and became a center of eventualism. It was one of the largest independent missions

in the lands and my grandfather was superintendant till 1945 and he invited many powerful ministries and evangelists to Glasgow and some names I don't know these names Donald Barnhouse, evangelist W.P. Nicholson James or James Danny Alexander White I don't know I don't know these people that's what I found on on YouTube and Moody was the president of the YMCA.

Yeah it's interesting I came across some of those names I did not they weren't in my area of interest so I didn't fully document them but I did come across those because William Brannum traced his spiritual lineage through Moody always he would mention Wesley and Moody and Finney and Sankey I can't remember the order that he mentioned but if you think of his revival style while the two are completely different religions it's not the same at all but the emotionalism it appears that Brannum borrowed that emotional persona that he got from these guys so this movement

indirectly influenced what became the latter reign movement in the United States. Yeah well like I say my mother was only five and when her father and her mother were always telling her that one day they would be wretched out of here because there was a like a blink of world who are too breaking out when she was five she was born in 34 of my mother and they made her so so scared with that that she would be left behind one of those days since she did not give her heart to Jesus yet so yeah don't you want to give your heart to Jesus yeah yeah yeah yeah

you know so she didn't know what she was doing and this she told me later in life and then her father took her on stage and he had big big big meetings in 10th hall and he held campaigns all over Scotland and later a lot also in the USA and so he took her on stage young as he was and he told thousands of people that his youngest daughter even already gave her heart to Christ and she would serve them and she was just scared. That was, she told me. And then she was a very gifted, my mother

very talented woman, and she could go to, how do you say that in English, where you learn to play the piano as a professional. Yeah, basically a music school, a school of music in theatre.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she was allowed to do that, but only for the purpose that she could play Christian music. And that's what she did. And when she, after that, she always went accompanying her father at his crusades and she would play the piano and he would sing.

And he would sing all those hymns, you know, back then, like salvation army hymns and I don't know what hymns. And, but she was not allowed to play Chopin, she was not allowed to play any type of music, except for Christian music. So the only reason she was given permission to go to, to be a piano player was to serve the Lord. And so she could only play Chopin and, and that kind of things for study purposes, not for entertainment. That was from the battle. But she told me, one day she came home and her father had important visitors.

And he was sitting with them and he invited her in the room and he asked her to play Chopin for them. Wow. And that for her was like betrayal. And it mixed, it mixed her up badly.

She could not go to be a sculpt. She could not wear trousers. She could not, it was very strictly. And I think that that's the influence from this, because wikianism, there's a lot of interlap. So I grew up in the same way. I could only play the gospel music. But while being taught, I could play Chopin. It wasn't Chopin, but you know, some classical music styles that we played. Same with other people that I knew who were musicians they could, but not for entertainment. And it, it goes back to the holiness style. They, it's really weird

when you think about it. Bob Scott and I, we do another podcast series, but we were talking about this just recently. I think it'll come out before this one. But there came a point in time in which the culture around the church started to influence the church. And it came from many different angles, especially during World War II. As World War II was breaking out and there was fears of, this is the war to end all wars. This is the biblical destruction that's coming. People started to say.

negotiating this with Armageddon, and then during the war obviously, that hype caught on. And after the war, there was a period of time where everybody just kind of said at ease, but then very, very soon afterwards, the fears of World War III started to creep in.

And if you read the history, it's almost as though the ministers who got so much mileage out of World War II fears. It's like they brought this fear further on because they had already sold their entire platform to the notion that World War II was going to be the end of days.

Well, what do you do? You can't take that back, so there must be a World War III. So through the religious arena, even though the cultures had influenced the movement, now the movement was starting to influence the culture.

And it goes in this vicious, vicious cycle. But the holiness movement you're describing is very similar to what we had. And the little that I have read about troop, his meetings were filled with this weepings and confessions and mask and versions.

And you're using this fear, he was using this fear to basically do this. People weren't joining the movement and confessing to God because of their heart, because they're scared to death that they were going to die in World War III.

That's right. World War II, you know, in the years before, that's the same way it was with Latter-Rain. There are these mask conventions, mask conversions, and everybody's scared to death they're going to die.

Well, then what happens is after that subsides, what happens, the movement just kind of implodes. Yeah. My mother went to, this is a very weird story during World War II. He already had friends in the United States.

My grandfather, I may be already traveled there back then. Anyway, he sent his wife and the children in a convoy, had intentions to convoy to America when the bombings were about to hit Glasgow when he had to war guard so he stayed behind.

And he sent them to France of his in the United States and they lived like upstate New York or somewhere. And they were very rich. He had like, um, fabrics of panties, nylons, and they drove to church in like a Rolls-Royce or the Bentley and they had the front seat in church and they had this big, big, big mention and my mother and her mother and the brother and other sisters stayed there.

And she told me some weird things about that family. She said, um, the, the world is too bored, they had two sons and they were like more to the 20s or something and they were bites and it...

it was not nice and then she mentioned that there were parties at least one she told me all and everybody was masked and she was she was very small she was maybe seven eight nine something like that not so small anymore but and everybody was wearing masks and she said I was so afraid because even my mother was wearing a mask and then I think what I don't know what party is that for Christians you mean I guess it was a typical social light party of the year they used to do this kind of thing but and some of the social social circles that got weirder because everybody's

having a mask and the husbands and wives are mingling with each other in ways that they couldn't do if they did not have the mask so there's there's some question as to what was actually going on there one thing you said that is curious though John Alexander Dowey who was also from Scotland who came to United States the biggest con artist in United States history in religion

there there was a point in time in which he made a lot of money by bringing in English lace English I think it was English lace into United States it wasn't here before and I know that he set up some establishments in New York I'm wondering was that connected if they if they had some sort of a connection to this movement I hope to find out one day more about it I found and I sent it to you

I found quite extensive document on my grandfather and then there is many travel schedules in there but they're so small and it's it's very old-fashioned but it's all these travel schedules to the to the United States I have another story from my mother concerning that my mother told and this he told her her own father when he was still alive that one day he was invited to some Baptist something I think it was a Baptist church or something and then they took him around a building and then they took him down in the basements and somehow they invited him

to the cook cooks clan wow that's amazing you know you do you know what you're that would have been no I don't know I mean he died in when he died do I have it here my grandfather died when he was like fifty four five six and he died in the United States preaching my mother also went to Moody Moody's Bible College in Chicago yeah see there was this weird period of time and I don't know yet to unpack it in a way that people understand it, because there was a point in time in which

it was popular to join the clan. And many people who joined it had no idea that it was a domestic terrorist organization. That popularity was suddenly exposed in, I think it was the year 1923 or 1924, New York world published this big expose how they were invading governments and they were basically replacing government officials and they own towns, the clan owned towns.

And there came a point in time in which they were exposed and then all heck broke loose because they started investigating all of the financial dealings and the pyramid schemes and the corruption that was in the movement and it flowed all the way to the top.

So there's a point in time in which it got exposed as being very dirty. And then, once it did, all of the vigilante justice was also exposed with it and all of the people of ill intent decided that they liked this.

So then it became excessively worse and it grew into the Indiana clan which is here. So there's a point in time in which people may have joined in with this, not knowing how bad it was.

Then there's a point in time in which people joined in knowing how bad it was. So depending on the timeline, it could be good or bad. But then I'm starting to understand that there were key figures in the religious, especially the fundamentalist and holiness movements that were joining in because the Christian identity doctrine was all throughout the United States and they were starting to believe that it was also tied to this Doomsday theory that was coming out.

We're starting to believe that the identity of the British Israelism, the lost ten tribes of Israel, the identity of that version of Christianity was rising to an end of days war with people who weren't of that tribe.

And through the clan and various other institutions, they started pointing this at people who had black skin. That's part of the history. But there were some very, very infamous people in the United States who were very popular and religion that were joining into this.

Charles Fox Parham had KKK posters in some of his meetings. That kind of thing is going on. And as the Azusa street revivals breaking out, he's in direct communication with William Joseph Seymour, who is black.

But the way that it is structured, the people who were in white supremacy could associate with people who were black as long as they were a subordinate. So even that, you know, there's a lot of explanation there.

But depending on the timeline, it gets really interesting because did he come? during the years in which it was infamous or did he come during the years that it was just popular. Yeah. I only, you know, he didn't, he didn't like it. He refused. He didn't want nothing to do with it. So that's I know from my mother. Yeah. But yeah, I, I, that's since he was big in that day, especially in Scotland, but also in the United States, he was a lot preaching in the United States. So he must have been in contact with all these guys. He must have known about

Brannum and all these guys. I mean, they were all around that years, you know. So yeah, but it struck me lately that the Doomsday part of it that he was a Doomsday preacher, you know, a rapture Doomsday rapture priest. That's that's who he was. And that's what it devastated my mother, you know.

Yeah. But yeah, she looked up to him. She loved him very dearly. She spent them years with him playing the piano. And after he died, what year I think around 58 or something my dad's. She went to Holland. No, she went to Belgium with a sister for that was symposium on some Christian symposium. And there she meets this Dutch man. And he portrayed himself as an evangelist. And his father was an evangelist too. And he was a musician. And he asked my mother if she could help him with some things regarding music or whatever he was doing some projects. And

she decided to help him with that. And then he tricked her into giving her money to return to Scotland to him. He had this story that he was going to lose his house. He was, I don't know what happened, but she gave him the money. Then she was stuck. He tricked her into sleeping with him. She got pregnant. And here she was stuck in the Netherlands, all of a sudden.

Well, that's a, that's a crazy story. Yeah. I, so like I said, I've been studying briefly troop and trying to understand how all of this fits in because I've also been studying Fanny and Knox in that movement. And at first glance, when you first contacted me, I reached out to just different various sources trying to understand despite a web of connections because there are many. And at first glance, I thought, well, this isn't, connected at all. This is a complete separate thing. But then I came across some research that sort of may answer the question, does this all connect? And it appears troop was

involved with the, like you said, the brethren sects, but also when he came into the United States as I understand it, and you can correct me if this is wrong. But it seems as though he got very tied into the evangelical move for non-denominational evangelical groups, which would have been everything that Laterane was built upon. When William Brannum started his Laterane tours, it was called an inter-evangelical movement, because it, like troop, Brannum was saying, everybody's welcome unless you're in a denomination. And inter-denominational also means if you're in these denominations and you're willing to lay down your denominational

ties and come join with us, you can do that too, which troop also did. But the clan thing that you mentioned, the brethren thing that you mentioned, all of that raises a bigger question because in the, when the clan moved to Indiana and the Indiana clan established its headquarters, it established it in a church, and the church was created by the brethren, by a significant figure in the brethren movement. So the brethren was associated to this big movement. William Brannum was also tied into this, and at that time, if I remember correctly, and I'd have

to go back and look at my notes, but I think even his second wife, I think, was, the marriage was performed by a brethren minister. So depending on the timeline, some of the dates that you're mentioning here could have actually put them in connection with each other. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they heard about each other, they were moving in the same kind of circles. Yeah, I think so.

Especially the moodie, the influence of moody was was heavily on my grandfather, and on my mother too, she went to Bible college there. So yeah, but yeah, she ended up in Holland and pregnant with my elder sister, older sister, and the man she married to, he was also very strict. I grew up like, there were so many words, I could not say random words, you know, I could not say, because that was the right form, from a curse one, whatever was it, and we could not wear pants, we could not see television, we could not listen to classical music, that was

allowed, he was not strict in that, classical music was allowed, my mother had a big, big uh what do you call it um piano with with this a big piano with uh how do you call it nothing more yeah we call it a grand piano a grand piano she had a grand piano she had a uh normal piano she gave lessons uh to make some money and he yeah he was he preached everywhere um at the point he he had his own uh little church uh he was not from any denomination to

per husband uh i i always have a nowadays a little bit difficult to say my father because i'm quite sure he was not my real father i found out later in life but there was always um there was a lot of fighting and screaming in the house and it was always as i remember since i remember anything in life it was about this man and my mother was having an affair with this man and and um later i found out that he was married twice before and his mother uh every Sunday we went to visit his

mother and his father and his father was uh also an evangelist he was now retired and but his mother hated my mother hated my mother but i guess she hated any woman no woman was good enough for her son she was a terrible woman i remember her as a terrible woman she would uh small as i was she would she would tell me your mother is a hooker and your mother is this and you know and and every Sunday we would sit there and um and then this this this would be the thing she would be be be calling my mother in the beginning my i remember being very small my

mother went even uh with to these visits and and then my grandmother was just you know shouting and my mother was crying and and and my father was upset and so soon enough my mother didn't go there anymore but we went every Sunday and that was just ranting about my mother and then we would drive home and um and he would be ballistic driving piercing and and and and and and punching the stealing wheel and one time he he punched it so hard the the thing broke oh wow and um i remember sitting in the back and i was so small so i just thought i had many times

i had my hand on the door on the door handle and i think i don't know how long this but then i will just step out of the car thought you could do that, you know, because you cannot. And then he would come home and oh boy, I've seen him beating up my mother and yeah it was and he didn't like me because he suspected I was not his child and I think I wasn't. And he would punish us severely when we did something wrong or said a wrong word or whatever. Oh boy, he would take you on his

lap and and and and strike you from your pants and then he would slap you bottom but hard and long, hard and long. It was not just a few no no no no. I remember myself one time crying, begging in front of him on my knees as a little girl. Mercy, please, Papa, mercy, mercy. No, there was no mercy. You could not sit after that. That's how painful it was. Yeah. And then he was an evangelist.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.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-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. Everything that you've been describing so eerily matches the way that we grew up. There were things that we couldn't say, there are things that we couldn't do, but also your proximity to a person who had a public presence.

That reminds me of in many ways of myself because I was around all of these people who worship the floor that many of these guys walked on. But whenever they were offstage, their personalities weren't really Christian in many cases. Some of the things that they did, the way that they acted, the way that they treated people, it was just so wrong. And long after leaving and I'm studying what is real Christianity and understanding that there's a change of the heart that comes with Christianity that seems to be absent in these ministries. I began to Well, I said, there's a big difference between Christianity and the thing that I was raised

up in. But it made me reflect on all of the doctrines that were created, that swayed it in that direction. There were so many things that were just so wrong and so off base and the focus was wrong.

Like you, we were focused on Doomsday and it made people angry because all you're thinking about is doom and destruction. And you're focused on, you know, did I say the right thing? Did I say the wrong word?

Is God going to punish me because I said the wrong word, that kind of thing? So as a child raised in this, it wreaks havoc on your mind. What was it like for you growing up in this, doctrinally trying to wade through and navigate through all of the chaos that was in religion?

What was that like for you? It was like this. And the thing with me is I have a very clear memory about all my life. I have memories of being a baby. It's weird, but it's true.

I remember being very small and I was a very strong believer, you know. And when I would walk the fields, our house was in a very little village and then it was just fields surrounding the house and I loved it.

And when I was walking in the fields and sort of flowers and the beautiful clouds and everything, I would experience such a joy and such a happy joy would come over me and I would be walking there little as I was and I was praising God like, oh, you're so nithous and I experienced such a joy and I knew it was a joy of the Lord and I didn't tell anybody.

Because I knew if I would say to anybody, nobody would understand what I was talking about. So I kept it to myself. I saw the, like for instance, when my father invited people to the house and he loved to invite people to the house.

My mother also did, everybody was welcome. But when there were people in the house, especially crime members from him, I always thought about like, you guys have no idea who he is. You have, I was so, the suffering I saw on my mother's suffering and I just knew nobody else had had any idea.

He was this gravy, oh, then how a lot of them happened, you know, one time I remember he had this thing, then he took us to Pentecostal churches. We went to all kinds of churches with him, very, very old fashioned ones but even he, the time he joined the seventh day at Pentecost, that you have the Sabbath and such and then we had Sabbath in the house and then there was this Pentecostal churches he took us to and I remember being very small and and seeing a lot of black people and they would go into

trancers and screaming and I was like, am I now and my father would say, that's the Holy Spirit, that's the Holy Spirit that I don't know. So my personal belief in God was very strong, has always been.

But I did not see anything of that in the house, it was the opposite of all that and I couldn't figure it out, how come. I remember being poor, something like that and I sat with my mother and she was doing ironing and I was just playing around and I had this very strong something and I thought about it and I said to my mom, yeah, I said, mom, I had a calling on my life.

What? I said, I had a calling on my life, mom and I was very small and my mother got angry with me and even then I understood in a way that but later on you think about it because yeah, her life was, you know, not fun at all and her father was this big evangelist and she thought that she would marry a guy who was like her father, he was the opposite of everything her father was, you know, he was a very decent man, her father and he was good to his wife and his children, you know, he was not a bully or anything, no, no, she spoke with high respect of him.

So yeah, I touched in her hurt saying that and yeah, I remember when it would thunder, they would be heavy thunders, he would get us all out of bed and we had to sit in the living room with colts on and everything and he would be always screaming about the end of the world and misery out of it.

I'm laughing, but I remember not from my father, but I remember other people who just they weren't quite mentally stable, I think, but they would go off into weird things like that, whenever anything normal happen, they would see is this sign that something something that's not normal is happening in any other family from any other religion that we're visiting would say, what is this mass? What's happening here?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we were we went to a school in another village because our village was so small there wasn't a script and we were poor, you know, and and we were that school was a public school, it was the only school in the area, but we were the children of that crazy preacher and you were labeled as such and there was nothing you could do about it.

you know, the epic gauges, the epic gauges, you know, from that, but he would also, he said he could restaurate, uh, antique, um, organs, pipe organs. So the villages, that, this I found out a few years ago, in old newspaper articles, that he would, uh, go to, uh, restaurate, uh, pipe organs from like 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, very old. And he would mess the whole thing up. He would take out pipes and, and, and, and place other pipes. And he would take the pipes to his own house.

I don't remember police ringing the door. And so he would mess up very antique and, and they had to force him legally to stop that activities. And I found it out years later, you know, in old newspapers. And then I, I, I remember back as a little church. Yeah. Yeah. And then we would,

drive past a church and then he would, he's his face to the church. Yeah. You know, it's funny what you can find in the newspapers. I, when I was doing all my research on the clan, and I was studying Brandon's mentor, there was this one article that, um, somebody tipped me off that it was there. So I go to the library and look. And the, the guy had stole, he had, like your father, he, he was holding all these revival meetings, right? Well, he goes into this one church and it was this revival meeting. And after, I guess after the service, he stole

their piano. So effectively, the piano that William Branham would have used in the church would have been a stolen piano. If I'm, if I'm understanding the timeline correctly, it's just, it's amazing what you find in the paper. And these guys, they're, they're just to the people who are worshipping, they don't really think about the characters that they're putting, lifting these guys up into places that are above any other human should be. They don't think about their characters.

But anybody who knew them offstage, they're like, this, this is not right. What's happening here? Right. Well, I saw that and, and I couldn't understand it. Um, and like you say, um, this was my problems for, for most part of my life in the end that I went to all these churches and I was in this Christian world where I grew up and you have Christian friends. I didn't have only Christian friends, but um, they all believe in Jesus and they all go to church and shout hallelujah and they say they have the Holy Spirit and I don't know what. But then in daily life, they're so different.

They gossip, they, they do terrible things and much, much later in life, I understood the gospel. It, it, it took me. so many years to figure it out. Like I came to a point like lately, like, what the heck is this?

What am I into, you know? And then I stopped going to churches and I started reading my Bible and I started praying and just pleading. Like what is the gospel explained to me? I need to know what is the gospel.

I remember that journey because there comes a point when you leave, it's interesting. You're really afraid of leaving because you know that everybody is going to gossip about you because you were in the same movement you did it yourself or you watched your parents, et cetera, doing it.

And so when you leave, there's this weird fear. The people that I've worked with and the support groups that we've managed, that's the number one fear. When they leave, they worry about what everybody's gonna say about them because they know that's the way this works.

And that's not the spirit of Christ. That's not how Christian people should act. And it's interesting because after we left, the random cult, I started attending different churches. Well, the very first church that we were at, we stayed there for quite a while and we stayed there after we realized that we weren't really a fit for it but we were also kind of reluctant to leave because we thought the same thing would happen.

And then when we left and it didn't happen, I'm scratching my head thinking, wait a minute. That whole thing that we had was wrong in the cult. You're not supposed to do this and normal people don't do this.

It goes beyond even is this a religious thing or not? It goes toward just humanity. Good people don't do this to other people. Whether you're a Christian or not, good people don't act like this.

So after you, you said that you discovered that discovered the gospel and you realized that this was different. Let's talk about that a bit. What was that like when you started to understand what the gospel was?

What were the first thoughts that went through your head as you started to compare with what you came from? That I always do it, but I have less.

Many years when I went to all these kind of charismatic churches and it always ended up because then the church would implode. It would turn out the pastor had an affair.

That would be split up over money issues or whatever. And I've been moving a lot so I went to many different churches but it always ended up in, what is this here, why is this?

But when I was in home and when I was reading my Bible, it always painted a fairly different picture and I always experienced God like this loving Father when I read my Bible in private and I always kept Going back somehow to the gospel of Christ and I read it over and over and over and over and over again And I always said to myself, yeah, this is easy. This I understand. It's easy not to lie It's easy if people steal from you like Jesus says, let them have it Don't go after it if you borrow don't ask back

The teachings of Jesus That's the gospel and when I read that I always thought yeah, I know that that's easy for me That was easy to do But in these churches it and I went

When I was it started like this Me even going to these churches because this this father of mine died in a car accident when I was just two weeks I just turned nine years old and

And he died in the car accident he wanted to take me By the way, and I didn't go and My mother was having an affair They were in divorce by then the marriage was was was always been a mess and by then they were in it in a divorce And my mother had had a had a affair with a with his guy and he was not a question and

So the same night The same evening we got word that our father died he came to the house and they made a party Celebrating the death of the other one and

well that's Five years the five following years were like really harder and

It became a house of hoarders and When I was my 14 in the end I kind of escaped and I ended up in What's the parents homes that it was terrible?

SA and and all that kind of Terrible things and I escaped when I was 15 and I went they wanted to lock me up in In a special house for difficult children and I thought if I end up there, no, no, no, so I just fled and I

I just fled. I just went under in in In the city where I thought nobody nobody knows me there and and I was From my 14 on it started in my first was the parent home. I started to smoke weed I started to drink heavily because they were all drunkards and I never drank in my life was not allowed and The first night I came the air day just fed me a bottle of rum and I was so programmed to do anything that I was told old, because of the previous five years with my stepfather that was so horrendous. So I

just did anything they, an adult told me I would do it. And so they were all alcoholics there. And they said, and I was just 14. And I wake up, I drank myself in a coma that the first night. And I didn't know what, what, what, what it was, hang on. I didn't know nothing about all that. And they just said, well, we all have problems. You just drink.

And I became a coma drinker. And so then I, I started smoking weed. And I thought, well, this is a way not to be in this world, you know, because I was very traumatized. Well, by the time I was 17, I was living in the streets, I was hooked on headwind and speed. I shot it up my face. I was, and I would drink anything. I would just, you know, that was me. And then long story short, I contacted my mother. And I went to her. And the first thing she gave was a Bible study from Derek Prince. Well, world of hate. And she arranged for me to go to this

clinic for the, for the addicted people. And it was a Christian clinic. And it was connected to this big charismatic church. And you had to go there. And there was every Sunday, then there was Saturdays, then there was the, I think Thursday nights, then you had prayer meetings. And it would consume a lot of your time. And they were, they still exist in a lot of them. It's a bit church.

Now they have these battle guys over there. And then they invited people like the hunters.

But you were, and then they had campaigns. And that was seven days a week. And it would go on through in the middle of the night. And they would introduce this holy laughter. And falling in the spirit and all this weird things. But what it did with me was like I never experienced holy laughter. I never had to fall. I never had this. And everybody around me had. So I thought you're not good enough. Jesus passes you by. She touches that one. She touches that one. But you know her. And I got depressed with that. So depressed. Why? Because I was rejected all my life. I was rejected by my

father. I was rejected by my stepfather, by my mother. It was the parents homes. And here again, so it was for me. Yeah, I'm not doing that. There will always be something with what I felt always like I'm the I'm the black sheep. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. I did everything, you know, good, but since Jesus passes you by, made me very depressed. And yeah, in the end, and they were also, I mean, that's just like, if you leave here, you will end up in the gutter. And, you know, oh, it was so cultish. It was so cultish. But yeah, I believed it because a man on stage

said, I have the Holy Spirit and all I see angels in this. And I was like, oh, you know, looking up to, I believed it. What was it that made you eventually leave that and go into a different church? That church was, that was a split up. After I left the clinic, I got married to my first husband. And that was a big split up in that church over the money. And I don't know what.

And also in the center, where I was, there was a split up because of the same things. And so it became very messy. And then I decided, we decided my husband, I need to join some people, friends of us who left that church for another church. And we went with them with them. And that was more a kind of a liberal church. But it was also like, oh, come Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit. And like that. And yeah, they came at points. I had to, I left my husband.

I had a child with him. I had also a miscarriage. And, but he was on drugs, a lot. And then he would beat me up. And there came a point. I picked up my daughter and I left.

And I went back to the part of Holland where I grew up. And then I went back to, I was 15. My story is so big. But when I was 15, I lived together with a guy. And he was the first man that I gave myself voluntarily to as a woman. But before that, I was raped. I was abused.

Even as a small child already. Not by my father, but by an employee of him. And I don't know how long it went on. I did or I don't know. So yeah, that was the bad.

always in my life. And he was the first one I fell in love with him. And I lived with him. I was on the edge of hell. And I went back to the part of Holland where I grew up. And I wanted to know if he was still alive or what became of him. And it was like he was waiting for me.

We hadn't seen each other for like 12 years. He was a heathen. He was not a believer at all. He was a drummer. He was a musician and, you know, kind of a autistic guy.

Yeah. And in no time we were back together, you know. And I had two more children with him. And I did visit churches, but one church I would go to and then it would turn out that the pastor was having an affair. So the church split up. And, you know, it was always things like that. And

I went to, during that years, I came in contact with Benny Hen. I never heard of him. And I had a friend I met in a church. And she gave me, she, she, she had always a God television on. And then I started watching Benny Hen and that good morning Holy Spirit and all. But and that there were big campaigns also in Holland. He is now in America. I don't know if I can say a name or not, but House of Heroes was in Holland, the big church. And his name is Mateus from the Stain. He now works in Florida from Florida. He moved to Florida. And he had this big

meetings, the fire nights and I would go there. Because as the years passed, how can I say that? It's hard to explain, really. They always keep up. There is more and you need more of the spirit and and and you are lacking of something. And we have a phrase here in the United States.

It's the carrot on the stick. You always you always following after trying to get the carrot, but you're holding the stick. And it's always that way. That's how this is the carrot on the stick type of religion. You're always seeking after the thing that never comes. Yeah. And and and you always think it's me. It's I'm doing something wrong. I'm not good enough. I'm not holy enough. I you know and and I was divorced from my first husband. I went back to to to the love of my youth. So I was already you know if I may oh I owe that years I always prayed like God.

I I have to hold on to the fact that you love me and I am saved by the love guys. If I don't believe that, I might as well, I might as well give up. Many years, that was my only, because I never felt good enough. Then I was married to this heathen, then I became a singer in a band, even to make ends meet. I had to work, sorry, I became a singer, but that was of course not so Christian, and I went back to smoking cigarettes at times. Everybody was so holy, but I was not. That's the

impression you get. But there came a point. I picked up a book in the church, I was attending, and I had a library, and I was looking around, and I just picked a book from a shelf, and it was a very thick book, and it was about the history of Catholicism. And I never gave it much thought.

I knew Catholicism is different, you know, it's not the gospel of Christ, but hey, and then it had all the history of the Catholic church, and through the centuries, like the killings, the whole villages were buried alive, and people were put to stakes, and to burn, and by the Catholic church. And it kept me awake for night, you know, like the suffering for Christ, by the Catholic church, you know, wow. Then I visited this fire night from this house of heroes, Mateus from the state, and there was Angela Greene, and she was on stage, and oh man, she was so full of the Holy Spirit.

That's what they say about themselves, and I believed it back then, and she was having this sword, and she was a demon slayer, and I was impressed. And then she starts telling this story, yeah, I was in this country or what, and I was working with my Catholic brothers and sisters there, and I think, what, what are you, I just read the book, and then she stands there, and she said, I am a proud Catholic, she says, and I'm like, wait a minute, here, you know, and I already discovered before that, I discovered information about Kenneth Copeland stating he is a Freemason,

so that already, I thought, wait a minute, somebody cannot have the Holy Spirit, and be a Freemason, that's not possible, but when this guy is Freemason, I mean, he is like a God's general, so,

and then this, with Angela Greene, on top of that, at. So that made me really think like what? That's something very one year, you know, and I started to, then I started to research my sister, my two-year-old sister. She started her own little mini-coatish thing. She still has it. And of course, I had to come over always and help with this and help with that. And then you know, yeah, she asked me, she wanted to launch her new ministry, B. So she invited this guy to speak and that guy to come and were all word of faith, which is we were in the middle of that. But I didn't, I didn't realize

really, you know, that that was the problem. Then she asked me, could you, could you also in that meeting, maybe give a little study on something quarter? And I took it very seriously, so I started praying and then I got this idea, you know, what I'm going to research this word of faith thing. So I started researching history. And that opened my eyes like, whoa, okay.

And I made this big document about it. I did a few weeks of really research on it and I made a big document and then came the day. So I gave this presentation. I thought everybody will be excited now. We will never welcome anybody because another church hosted her, you know, we were never welcome there anymore. And I started to speak out on Facebook. And I started to mingle in discussions of all these preachers making these stories on Facebook. And then I would say like in a comment, wait a minute, you say this, but the Bible says that. And then you start

to, you know, then the character comes, you know, it was back in, I think 2013, 14, that's what it started. And that's what I started separating myself from everything word of faith, churches. But that was all I knew. Then I tried, I went a little bit to, you know, what is it? Where they have the Sabbath? Seventy Adventists, I think. Or Messianic, I don't know what. But there again, it was like rules like to eat bark. And Shabbat Shalom and all that kind of, I think, you know, it's another, it's again, rules, it's not, it's...

It's not and in the meantime, just studying the Bible and really I took out a notebook and a pen and I would write everything that Jesus said I would write it down like I was attending class and Break father, please. What is the gospel? What is the gospel and as I New for years. Yeah, the gospel of Christ doesn't There's nothing more to it. Yeah I remember the shock that I found whenever I saw I suddenly started reading the gospel and trying to understand What is the gospel and when I've learned that how simple it is believe on Jesus and you can be saved

I was like, why have they added so many complexities to this? Why do they make it so difficult? Why why is it the carrot on the stick religion? Why do they why do they even want this?

Why would you want to be in this but it was such a shift and a change for me if you could go back in time to that little girl That's hanging on to the clinging on to the door of the car and give her some advice and some encouragement What advice and encouragement would you give yourself read the gospel stick to it?

I'm nothing else Absolutely, that's a good advice. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story I'm certain that everybody's gonna be interested to hear this and I've I've been interested and curious to dig deeper on to troop and understand that whole history So this may be inspiring me to dig deeper and maybe some videos will come out on it. So thank you so much Right I'm very very happy To do this and Yeah, I would love to Talk more with you Even even even in another conversation or a private conversation because there is much more

much more And I would really love to talk about it with somebody So anytime Awesome. Well, thank you so much If you've enjoyed a show and you want to share your story you can contact us on the web You can find us at William-Branum.org For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation You can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR Available on Amazon Kindle and Audible

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