When Revival Loses Focus: Lessons from Glad Tidings Temple

Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my very special guest, John Ryan, former member of Glad Tidings. John, it's good to have you on here and to tell your story about Glad Tidings and Beyond and maybe before. We've not talked too much before we got into the episode but you reached out to me after we did an episode on Glad Tidings and wanted to share your story some very happy to have you. Maybe if you

could just take a moment and tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Hi, John, thanks for having it. It's great to be here. I think there are some lessons that I've learned over the years and some things that we can glean from my experience at Glad Tidings so I hope it's helpful to your listeners and viewers. I was raised in the Catholic Church in Ontario, small town in Ontario and Christianity did not mean much to me. In other time I was 15 years old. I decided that Christianity was not the way.

The only Christianity I knew was what I'd seen in the Catholic Church and from there I got a quite a dissipated downward spiral of drugs and alcohol. I ended up kind of stumbling my way out to Vancouver on the west coast of Canada, Canada's California and stumbled into a salvation army rescue mission meeting one evening and I heard the gospel for the first time and I became a believer that night. I called upon the name of the Lord, turned my heart and life over to the Lord and things began to change. I became a new man

in Christ and I attended those mission meetings for about six months. I was living downtown and I enjoyed them but the Lord wanted to lead me on and help me to grow in my faith. So an acquaintance had told me about Glad Tidings and invited me to go with him one evening. He wasn't attending. In fact, he wasn't serving the Lord but he said, you'll really enjoy this. This is a very different experience. So I went to that service. It was a Sunday evening service which in those days was explicitly evangelistic service. It was intended as I'll reach to visitors and

newcomers. I've never seen anything like it in my life. They had a hundred boys choir a huge orchestra ensemble, and really beautiful, beautiful music, and when I arrived, they marched me right down to the front and put me in, I think, in a second row from the front, and I was in the middle of this cauldron of very, very zealous, especially young believers lifting their hands and worshipping the Lord, and I experienced something I'd never seen before in my life, and it really kind of scared me, and after the service, I determined in my heart, I would never go back there again, that's not the church for me.

But it's interesting, and it's always been a puzzle to me, and I've pondered about this over the years, the Lord had other ideas. In fact, the Lord wanted me to attend glad tidings to join myself to the church, and I wrestled with God about it for quite some time. As a young believer, I had laid down my ambition, my money, my family, various lusts and desires that I had that were not pleasing to the Lord, I was going through this process of yielding to the Lord and getting sanctified. And the last thing that the Lord began to deal with

me about was joining this church, and I really didn't want to. And I finally realized, this is something God wants me to do, this be it over a process of two or three months, I finally yielded, I said, okay, you sit up loud to the Lord, okay, I'll go, I'll go. And I decided to go the next Sunday. And having made that decision, I got home from working night shift, I was working at a hospital, I got home in the morning and went to bed, and I laid down in bed, and I read a little bit of the word

before I went to sleep. And I had a tremendous blessing from God. It was, it was, God was there. He was really revealing himself to me in a special way. And after that happened, I couldn't wait to get to church. I kind of understood why these people were so effusive in their priests and worshiped to God. I wanted to join them, I wanted to praise the Lord in the same way. So that began the process. I kind of knew very definitely that the Lord wanted me to be imparting glad tidings. And as I said, it's, you know, it's been a puzzle

because of the things that happened afterward. And my view of this situation is that there were very serious mistakes made. And I think the church in general needs to learn from those kinds of mistakes and problems. But there was also something that was very good there. Then I hope we had a chance to kind of discuss what was it about glad tidings that was pleasing to the Lord. And how did it go straight? How did you get off the rails?

So that's basically going to nutshell how I ended up there. I'm a little bit different from my peers in that everybody has a journey. And sometimes that journey takes you into places that people on the outside looking in might say this is heresy and this wasn't.

This couldn't have been a God divine, inspired move of your journey. But everybody has a journey and everybody who starts in that journey doesn't always end up in the same place. So when you tell your story and you talk about the excitement, it brings back the memories that I have of the excitement in a very extremely excessively destructive cult.

But I was on fire for God, I thought, and I look back, I have probably many of the same questions you have about, well, what was that? Was that really God? It was a destructive cult, but I was one of the few people that actually read my Bible, and I thought I was going to see God.

And this was the way in which I could go find God was to go to these services. And I went to the evangelical services that they had. I went to the prayer meetings. We had Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night, and most of the churches that we attended.

And I have to admit, I had some good experiences in those. Now were there bad things there, yes, and did it get worse over time, absolutely. But it's my journey, right? And others who might say that this was all bad, I have to disagree.

There are some good things, and I think good people can produce good things into even the wrong environments. Yes, I would agree. So I thought about, well, maybe I'll talk about some of the good things that I believe were there, were present when I began getting involved with the church.

And then maybe go through some of the, what I think are the errors and failures that the church, that emerged over time, and eventually kind of blew up the church completely and I think shook a lot of people in their faith and in their lives.

So I think probably the most important good thing about glad tidings was simply the fact that there were people there who were hungry for God. They had a desire for God, and they would seek the Lord.

There was quite an emphasis on prayer. In fact, I just came across, I don't know if you've seen it, I just came across on YouTube an old, it's a YouTube reproduction of an old cassette recording of Regely Zel, who was the pastor of glad tidings until I think it was 1970.

Speaking about prayer and how important prayer is to a congregation, I never sat under his ministry, he had left by the time that I got there, but it was interesting listening to this old cassette.

Now, he didn't record it back in the 60s, he had left glad tidings and got involved with another church in the States, and so I think he recorded this message in retirement as an older man.

You know, a lot of listening to, at least half of that has said I was thinking, you know, that was pretty good, that was pretty sound. So there were people who really had a hunger for God, a desire for God, and in a sense God met them.

There was an emphasis on missions that I think was good. It wasn't a hundred percent sound, but there's a desire to take the gospel to the nations and people really were sacrificial in their giving and their sending.

I ended up, one of the reasons perhaps that the Lord led me to glad tidings was so that I could meet my future wife. She was the daughter of a man who had been a missionary in Taiwan.

And eventually my wife and I ended up going to Taiwan as missionaries sent out by glad tidings. We weren't working with glad tidings, church plants in Taiwan. We worked with a parish church ministry there, but we were sent out as missionaries from Taiwan.

And that was a wonderful experience. We spent about 12 years there, really enjoyed it for the most part. And it was a blessing. And so I met her and the whole connection with Taiwan came about through being involved with glad tidings.

Another thing that was good was there was a real community there and I found that there was quite an intake of people, my age, young people at the time that I came into the church.

And we really had good fellowship. There were a lot of like-minded young people. And I was more or less all alone out here on the coast. And it was great to have that supportive community.

And then another thing that I say it would say was wonderful was that they made the worship in the praise of God, glorious. The experience of being in an auditorium full of people who are really worshiping the Lord and praising the Lord with all of their heart and skillful musicians playing and really competent singers leading.

Really was tremendous. It made an impression on visitors. When the Lord has lifted up, when his praise is made glorious, it speaks to people's hearts. I had family members and friends come and visit.

And I knew that they were being touched. They were being put under conviction by Jesus being lifted up. Now that said, it got to the point where the message became praise, you know, we're preaching praise rather than preaching Christ.

I mean, it wasn't that stark or blunt, but it seemed as if the emphasis became more and more on our message of praise. You know, we really got something here. And obviously you can't do that.

You can't get away from lifting up the Lord and lifting up Christ. But there was there was something there that was quite special and in fact it it has affected many many churches around the world They you know unfortunately this is one of the The drawbacks or failures was there there became a bolstbleness about this Like we're being talked about all over the world people are coming from all over the world to see what we're doing Isn't that wonderful like we're the people So pride began to creep in and And that was not a good thing. That was quite unhealthy

There was there was a real I think an understanding a comprehension of the unity of the body of Christ There wasn't this kind of denominational affiliation and Identity There are pros and cons I guess to to denominations, but the glad tidings Viewpoint was we're part of the body of Christ. We see ourselves connected to the whole body Which I think was a good thing that got into my heart and then Things that I had never heard up before as it raises a Catholic never having wear to the Bible actually Things about eschatology and Israel and the promises of God the faithfulness of God these things

But he began to learn about and Not all of the teaching was sound some of it was pretty flaky actually, but I think the the

The belief and the teaching that God has given us information about what's to come in the last days We shouldn't ignore those things are there for our profit and so my eyes began to open to those things Which was good also So those are those are some of the positive things that have stayed with me and I believe the Lord did good things in my heart and my life however as you know Things went off the rails badly and I

Would say the most significant issue the the root problem of all the problems that came along Was departure from the word in subtle ways and not so subtle ways. So for example Church government we we just for some reason

Didn't really pay attention to what the scriptures says about for example qualifications of elders So we had a board of Businessmen successful people Who as it turned out were more or less yes men for the lead pastor who was the kind of the Moses of the church I think when a church goes in that direction in terms of government and leadership It's it's setting itself up for inevitable absolutely inevitable failure and problems and people getting hurt and so on so And then there were other kind of similar issues arising from the same root, which is, well,

we know what the word of God says, but we're going to kind of disregard it or supplement it or choose our own path anyway. So I think this is common to many churches and religious systems that go off the rails, right?

Exactly. You know, I'm both a musician, if you can't tell from the instruments behind me, and I'm a businessman. And so I get everything that you're talking about as a musician, whenever you are entertaining people in church or outside of church, whenever you start to learn ways to excite the crowds, it feels good.

As a musician, it feels good. I don't care who you are if you're playing, that's the way it is. And there are certain techniques that you learn over time, you learn by playing them, that there are certain beats and rhythms and ways to introduce those beats and rhythms that excite the crowd.

And as a musician, you really like this. However, if the focus were just to be on that and everybody's coming to hear the music, it's off balance. You have to have, like you said, there has to be a balance.

Now take the business side of me. That balance, whenever you start to see the excited crowds as a businessman, you want more of it, because you can attract bigger crowds. You can get more people excited.

And a businessman in church, with all of the business ideas such as marketing and sales techniques, et cetera, it can be both good and bad, because in the bad sense, you might become hyper focused on, well, let's build a bigger crowd.

Let's get more people. Your intentions may be good, but your methods may be business-minded instead of, you know, minded on the church or the gospel. And we had an organization that was funding a lot of what we see today called the full gospel businessmen.

Not many people make that connection, but this is a bunch of people who are businessmen who know how to market, who know how to do sales, who know the techniques for drawing the bigger crowds, and they, it worked.

They brought masses of people, but you started to watch, as this started to take place, you'd watch, they become very imbalanced. And you mentioned the, I think you used the phrase, the Moses figure.

We had the Elijah figure in our churches, but if you go back to the Latter-Rain churches, you had the Moses's, the Elijah's, the David's, the, you can almost name a biblical figure and some guy saying, I'm he.

And that's the problem. It turns into Corinthian worship. And whenever they want to become these super apostles and they can see that, well, I've got these businessmen. I'm going to leverage these guys because they know how to draw the crowds.

I have these entertainers who can appease the crowds. And that whole combination. and makes the exactly the scenario that you're describing. Yes, this sort of came to a head, you might say, in the late 70s, the pastor at the time, she has now deceased, she had this vision to build a new sanctuary, a new timonacle.

The church was called Glad Tidings Temple at the time, and they wanted a bigger auditorium. So they began this campaign to get the congregation involved and excited and giving. It was a very giving congregation.

They used to encourage people to double-tithe, and then on top of that give formations as well. My father-in-law, who died a couple of years ago at the age of 98, he came from Holland after World War II and almost immediately joined Glad Tidings in his very early days.

He gave and gave and gave. But when he died, there was virtually nothing to leave to his daughter or his grandchildren. He just gave it all away, and I don't think that was wise.

But anyway, so this idea, we're going to have a beautiful new building, and everybody got behind it. And they had a pretty slick campaign for encouraging people to give. We had a couple of very wealthy business people in the church, and they kind of kicked things off by making enormous donations, which made the news.

We had a special fundraising Sunday, and apparently, it was the largest single fundraising day in any church in Canadian history. And we thought, wow, this is really great. We're amazing people here. So at the same time, the economy was becoming very unstable.

And in the early 80s, you may recall, or you may have read that interest rates began to go up, inflation was hitting hard. Interest rates in the US and Canada, borrowing rates went up to close to 20%.

But just before that trend began, the church decided to borrow, I think, to allow borrowing of up to $4 million, which at the time was an enormous amount of money. And I distinctly remember the manipulation of the congregational meeting to encourage people to vote to borrow this amount of money.

And the vast majority voted to approve it. I do remember Laura Lynn's father voting against it. I voted against it. There were a handful of people who voted against this huge borrowing. And Laura Lynn's dad was kind of courageous that way.

He was willing to go against the flow. And I think she's got some of that in her. Now, the interesting thing, John, is that at the same time, there were having a Presbytery meeting.

So these profits were coming from other places. And people would seek the Lord and fast for several days and hope to hear through one of these profits. It's a word directly from God, a call to ministry, an impartation of gifting, some kind of word helping them in life or setting a direction.

And one of these prophets, I remember very clearly a Sunday morning he stood up and he called up my boss. Now, one of these elders in the church, elders I'd say in airports, leaders, board members.

He was a businessman, he had a retail business. He had hired me and he was very good to me. He was like a father to me, but he had opened one store and then he expanded, opened a second store and he wanted to continue opening stores.

Well, this prophet came and they called him and his wife forward and this prophet prophesied over my boss. I see your name on stores from coast to coast. So in other words, your business chain is going to expand.

He says the Lord from Atlantic to Pacific. It's going to be everywhere. I think that's what my boss wanted to hear. I think he was very excited to hear this. And so not long after that, he went and borrowed money to open a third store.

And just at that time, interest rates began to move up and up and as interest rates went up, people were being laid off, losing their jobs. They were spending less money, the type of product my boss was selling.

People were not, it was the last thing they were wanting to buy in the economic circumstances and business began to go in the wrong direction for him. And he ended up, he had a beautiful home, beautiful home in the most expensive part of the old part of Vancouver.

He had a nine foot grand piano in there, all kinds of beautiful things in his home. And he loved, he was a very hospitable man. He'd have huge groups of people over to his home having fellowship.

He just loved entertaining and showing hospitality to people. He lost that home, the bank. They saw what was going on. They saw the declining revenue from months to months that were watching and they said, we want our money back, we want our loaner, we want it now.

I think they gave him 30 days or something. And in order to keep his business, he had to sell that house. And because mortgage rates had gone up, I think 15 to 20%. The market was in very dire shape.

And so he had to sell his beautiful home, really a sacrificial price. He essentially gave it away and move into a rented apartment. And he held on to his business. It eventually dwindled to one store.

So instead of three, he ended up with one and he continued working hard in that store for the rest of his working life. And I think he had to work well beyond retirement age simply to maintain himself and his wife.

He should have been able to retire. or in luxury, actually, not that that's necessarily a good thing, but had this event not happened, he would have been in better shape. So the church itself had been manipulated into borrowing a huge amount of money at the very worst possible time because the church then was facing these enormous and growing mortgage payments.

My boss nearly lost his business and lost his home, all because of these sort of prophetic pronouncements that everything was going to be glorious and great, and God was doing a great thing. That has been a very, very deep lesson for me watching that.

Now to my boss's credit, he never complained. He never blamed the Lord for what happened to him, he continued to serve the Lord, but it was very, very hard for him. And I don't know whether, you know, I never talked him about it, I don't know whether he ever said, what was with that guy who came?

He's a big name, he's still active to this day, he's got a big name, ministry, school of the prophets, so called. Did he ever come back and say, you know, I'm really sorry, I steered you in the wrong direction, I nearly ruined your life, I really apologize for that, it's the only thing I can do to compensate.

I don't think that happened, I don't think it happens in general. This is one of the things that really deeply saddens me because I work, for years I worked with support groups of people who were escaping, and I was watching, you know, the young people, it's different because they can go get a job, they can build something for themselves, they can build up a retirement, but some of the old people leaving literally had nothing, and they were robbed of pretty much everything.

I know families who the minister told them that, or persuaded them, I don't know if you outright said it, but convinced them basically to sell their businesses. And so they had, you know, some of them had a good flourishing business and sold their business.

And as you know, these shysters, they want to get all of the money they can. So all this money goes into the church because the end of days is coming, end of days doesn't come.

And like you said, there's no apology, there are families who are destroyed for this. But even down to just the simple people who aren't business-minded or entrepreneurs, even their life savings, their retirement in today's world, it's the 401Ks, many of these are given to the church because they're convinced that the world is soon to be ending and you don't need this, especially in the Doomsday versions of the cult, like the Branamites.

It's really sad to watch it happen. And one of the things that you pointed out that I want to mention is he went to the businessman and said that your business, I expect a flourish, however that conversation went.

Can you imagine reading in the Bible of an Old Testament prophet going to some random guy and saying, I- Respect your cattle, you're going to gain 200 head of cattle in your flock, and in your herd.

You don't find this. What you do find is God will send his blessings to the entire people, and the entire people will be blessed if you follow the statutes of God. And if you fail to follow the statutes of God, the Old Testament described all of the curses that ensued.

If you're living in that mindset, that's the way it is. You get the blessing if you mind God or the curse if you don't. But we're under the new covenant, we're under the gospel.

And so none of that even applies. But these men, they want to get the status of an Old Testament, a prophet, or a New Testament apostle, and then apply the same sort of divination, I guess you would call it.

I have this crystal ball I can look in and see your future, and you're going to be blessed if you give it to the church. Yeah. This happens. That seems to be the word faith paradigm.

So anyway, we got the church built under this cloud of rising interest rates and ballooning mortgage payments, and at the same time, I think it was 82. It was revealed that the pastor had been living in sin, and she, I think, unwillingly left her position.

And the church was in quite a state then, because we had all been conditioned to think that she really had the mind of God. She was apostolic. In fact, I remember my boss, who was a prominent figure in the church.

He was on the board, and he was very charismatic, man, but he used to say to me, I'm so glad we have a pastor who knows the mind of God. And even as a young believer, I remember thinking to myself, are we supposed to have the mind of God ourselves?

Are we supposed to put all of our faith in this pastoral figure, just didn't seem right to me? Anyway, so she was found to be living in very serious sin she had to leave.

And it was controversial. There were people who either didn't believe that she ever could do such a thing, and they remained loyal to her. Others were so hurt and upset that they left. So the congregation kind of went through a process of splitting about three different ways.

And one large segment of the population began to go in the word faith direction. There was talk at one point of Benny Hens brother Henry Hinn coming to pastor the church, proving that things can always get worse.

And others just left and went to other places. One of the good things that came out of that, and then I think your own life and ministry are an indicator of this kind of thing, is that even these bad things that happen, God can use them for good.

So there was a whole generation, I would say, of young men, my age. and somewhat older who learned some pretty important lessons through that whole process. They took those lessons with them. You know, in conversation with these guys over the years, one of the things I think many determined in their hearts and I have felt the same way, never again am I going to be involved in a fellowship in which I'm just going to keep quiet if I think something is wrong. If I think something's wrong, I'm going to speak up.

Churches need this. They need men who are willing to stand and stand alone if necessary to speak the truth. So I think in a way there was an inoculation of many people through this experience.

And ultimately, Lord can use it. I believe is using it to strengthen the church, although it was a terrible phase in this particular organization. God has been able to use it for good. So that's another one of the things that's come out of it.

But the church was in turmoil for years. And it's still there. There's still a glad tidings church. I think it's a very diminished compared with what once was at least externally. So I won one of the things that I really took to heart from my experience at glad tidings.

And it stayed with me over the years is I guess an understanding or realization of the importance of spending time with God and seeking his face and praying. Now, if I can, I'd like to just talk a little bit about prayer at the church.

Because there was an emphasis on prayer and it was partly good, partly bad. I think the teaching on prayer was lacking. So prayer was thrown out there. It's just a word. We need to pray and they would have prayer before the services.

They have an hour of prayer, congregational prayer. But it got to the point where it became a legalistic thing. And I've heard of people actually being chewed into the prayer room. Like they're maybe out in the lobby of the church or out on the street talking to friends and ministers are going out saying get in the prayer room.

You belong in the prayer room. And I noticed in the prayer room that people were there. But some would have their daytime or open the daytimeers that they used to use. Kind of a binder with a calendar for the month ahead.

And people would be organizing their daytime or in the prayer room. So they were there. They were seen to be there. But were they there in spirit? I'm not sure. Interestingly, this same pastor who had to leave because of this deep immorality.

She was off in the first one in the prayer room right up to the end. Right up to the last Sunday that she was in the church. She made a show. of being, you know, very spiritual and leading the way, but at the same time she was carrying on.

And so there was really, really deep black hypocrisy going on there. So many people were there in the very room because it was the tradition, it was the thing to do, and how much genuine prayer was going on, I'm not sure.

But I do believe, and it's kind of deep in my soul, that prayer is very important. I've since come to do some study on prayer that I believe has been very beneficial to me and is beneficial for the church.

There's tremendous teaching and example regarding prayer in the epistles of Paul. In nearly every epistle, Paul mentions that he's praying for the people of God, and he tells us what he's praying about what he's asking for.

And if you examine the prayer life of Paul, you'll see a tremendous sound, healthy example, and exhortation there as to what pleases God in prayer and what we ought to be looking for. And I'll just leave it at that, but if ever you want to have a session talking about this, I've written a book about it, and this is my modest mission in life now.

Very much big part of my life is praying for the church, their needs are so great, and these challenges that we're talking about, these deceptions and errors and offences that happen in the house of God.

The Lord sees it all. He knows. And sometimes I believe he's furious with it, he's really, really unhappy. He loves his people. He loves his bride, and he hates to see his bride exploited, made merchandise, deceived, led astray.

God hates this. He hates it. And so he's doing a work. He's continuing to build his church. He will not stop doing that. And we need to come to maturity, don't we? We need to stop being little infants blown around by winds of doctrine and by deceivers to grow up.

And I believe we are, I believe what you're doing is helping people to grow up. Let's not be deceived anymore. Let's believe God for sound doctrine, sound living, holy living, and live in ways and serve the Lord in ways that are pleasing to him and according to his word.

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I'm glad you brought up the prayer. Maybe the first person I've had on here who has actually brought this up. But in my journey out of the cult that we escaped, that was one of the milestones.

I had several milestones of things that just really shook me and woke me up. It wasn't a single thing that caused me to wake up. It was just this overwhelming, this is a mess, everything's wrong, why is it like this?

That kind of feeling was hitting me. One of which, one of the items that hit me was the prayer. Like I said, I read the Bible. I read it over and over as a child, read it over and over, even more after leaving the cult.

And before leaving, I came to this passage and it just really stopped me. There's a passage in, I think it's Matthew where Jesus says, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who pray standing where, basically where you can be seen, praying just to be seen, praying.

And I got to thinking about the prayer in the way that it was structured in the churches. And it was like, it was like a big deal. There were specific people that got called on to pray and you could tell that they had rehearsed and rehearsed that prayer so many times that it was almost scripted.

And some of them may have even been reading from a script because we were manipulated to where you had to close your eyes when you pray and you couldn't look at the person praying.

So I'm standing here watching this happening and I'm thinking this just feels awful. And that thought exploded into several other similar thoughts. We had, often there were people who claimed that they had to give to prophecy or visions or whatnot.

Usually they were ridiculed because we had a central figure that was supposed to be the ultimate prophecy and vision source. But some of them had it and their prophecies when they had them weren't anything towards the development of a Christian.

It might be some random thing like you said, the business man, your business is going to grow. Well, how does that help the other person who's standing there in the church? It doesn't. Many of the prophecies that...

that I was examining from William Branham. None of it really was intended for bettering the church. It was intended to show him as a prophet. In other words, the focus was on the prophet more than it was the prophecy, and both weren't focused on God. All of this thoughts stemmed from me from prayer because we were trained and manipulated that we had to have this outward expression to be shown as a Christian. We need to be seen praying.

We need to be seen in this hype, this excitement, these signs, these wonders, all of this stuff. And my nature isn't like that. I don't like to be boastful. In fact, everything that I'm doing that you see on the podcast, it's a little bit out of my element because I'm usually the guy that in a party I'm going to sit in the corner and sip coffee and watch everybody else make fools of themselves. That's not the one who gets out in the front, right? So my nature's not like this, but even whenever I was going through the start, even as I was

thinking that, I was thinking how whenever I pray, I don't want anybody to see me. I don't want anybody to know. This is me alone with God. This is my personal relationship. And I think that's the biggest part that's missed in the foundation that was laid by Branhamism.

It wasn't about the relationship of the individual with God. It was the relationship between the individual, those in the fivefold ministry and their direct channel to God. So you had this bypassing channel where me, I wanted to go straight to the source, man.

Well, you know, I believe it's not a question of either or I think there's a place for both before Jesus ascended. He told us disciples, don't leave Jerusalem. You wait. Something's coming. It's going to be wonderful. You wait. And so they gathered together and they spent 10 days together in prayer. And in the early church, there were congregational prayer meetings, but there also was personal devotion. And I think the church needs both. I think there's a place for both. And we need to be very careful about motivation and churches need to be very careful as to what sort of motivation they cultivate in people. And so a church culture

can develop so that people understand that appearance is what counts. But it's also possible to teach people that this is really what prayers about. This is what we're doing in prayer. We exhort you and encourage you to cultivate your own personal relationship with the Lord, which by the way, while we're on the topic, they're very much pitched prayer as being kind of the be all and the prayer is so important. I've come to understand that before we even get to prayer and far more important than prayer itself is listening to the Lord through His Word, receiving His Word, receiving His truth.

meditating on his truth. Without that, we can't really even pray or write. We ought to be praying according to the will of God, and if we're not listening to him, if we're not paying attention to what he's saying to us, we're not going to have a very good conception of his will. The other thing I'll say on this subject briefly is that it's looking again at the example of Paul. His praying was almost entirely about edifying the body of Christ. He was praying for people that they would grow up into the Lord, that they would overcome in life, and that he could present them pure and blameless before the Lord.

He had a heart of love for God's people, and this led him to pray, and I think his prayer also helped him to love God's people. Desiring that we would live lives that are pleasing to the Lord. That was the important thing, and I think he sets a tremendous example for it's actually authoritative. It's not just another thing to consider when we're going to prayer. He says, follow me as I follow Christ. He says it about ten different ways in his apostles. What you see in me, you do that, and we ought not to ignore his example in

prayer. He was edifying. He was loving. He was persistent. These are things that are very, very important. Anyway, I want to talk for just a minute if we may about Regile Zell. You probably know no more about him than I do, but I always found him kind of a fascinating person. When I joined the church, he had left. I think he got pushed out by his successor who then blew up the church. That's what I hear. I can't prove it. I don't know it for sure, but he essentially had built the church. Now, he was involved with the latter reign. He went up

to North Battleford. I believe to see what was going on. He had been kind of crying out to the Lord for revival in his own way. I think he had established in his own life and ministry some some healthy habits, like seeking the Lord in prayer. But as I understand it, he was affected by the latter reign movement, but maybe to a lesser degree. I don't think he went as wildly into excess and error as some of the others did. I've even heard, I can't prove this either, but I've heard that some of the other latter reign prophets, so-called,

had actually prophesied that he would die because he was not paying attention to them. He wasn't taking their direction. If the story goes that he just left when he heard this, he wasn't buying that nonsense. He had his issues and I think he would have done better to stay much more closely to the- word. But I don't think my impression is that he didn't go as far beyond the word outside of the word into excess and extremism and error as some of these characters did. The other thing I want to mention is that William Brannum, his name was mentioned from time to time,

the same boss that I had who was my mentor and like a father to me. He spoke very reverentially of William Brannum. He'd been to Brannum meetings and he thought Brannum was the real deal. And I think most people who knew of Brannum had glad tidings had that attitude, but he never, to my knowledge, he never came to the church. And I don't think his teachings were repeated at glad tidings. I don't really know. But Rachel Azale was an interesting figure because he was sort of in a way he was his own man. He was not wanting to go with the crowd. He wanted God as he perceived having God to

be. But if he felt something wasn't right, he wouldn't go out. But he wasn't afraid to say that's not right. That doesn't mean he was perfect either. You know, I've not done a deep dive on Lazio yet. I just know the name from basically from the research into the Laterane. You'd find his church and the glad tidings mentioned. As I understand it, he became at least during the early years of Laterane, his church became a hub on the West Coast. And he was inviting other Laterane leaders, you know, people who were involved in the Laterane Revival. But it wasn't that uncommon, especially

during the early years. It wasn't until the assemblies of God and other denominations started to sanction the Laterane that many people kind of pulled back from some of the some of the real heresies that were being taught with Laterane. But if I understand it correctly, and I'm no expert on Regile Azale by no means, but if I understand it correctly, he did adopt some of the key structural foundations that Laterane introduced, which in some ways, I think, led to part of the problem we see today. I think in the early years, the five-fold ministry was big with Regile Azale. And I can't

confirm it yet, but I have hints that he was also involved with at least some of the manifested sons of God doctrines, which ultimately became the source of Brannum's destruction. This notion is largely what enabled people like Jim Jones, a people's temple to take full control on authority over their people. So it's really sad when you think of that. Now, he may have reformed after this, I don't know, but the limit to my knowledge is basically from reading thousands of newspaper articles and magazines, and I'd see the name and glad tidings church pop up. So

There's definitely a connection, and it's worth me digging deeper, but I still have, he's one of, I don't know, probably 2,000 people I need to dig deeper into. So I'm thinking, you know, really my desire and my modest mission is to help to edify the body of Christ.

The Lord has a plan and a purpose for His people, and of course there are red herrings in diversions and deceptions and all sorts of things that, and personalities and spirits that are seeking to interfere with what God's doing, and I don't have all the answers by any means.

You know, I would hesitate to stand in front of a group of people and say, okay, this is the way it ought to be. This is the right way, you know. But one thing I can do, and I would absorb, God's people to do, if they care for the church, and they don't want to see error, they want to see soundness, they want to see God really, truly glorify in the church, to see people truly edified and to fulfill, each member to fulfill God's will for their life and to please God.

One thing we can do is we can ask God and say, Lord, help us, help us to grow, help your body to come to true unity, help your body to come to true maturity in Christ, to grow up into Christ in all things.

And I believe that kind of prayer, calling upon the Lord persistently, because this is his will, when Jesus said, pray like this, I kingdom come, I will be done. I think this is much of what he's talking about, is the actual coming together and building up an preparation of his bride, whom he loves, he gave himself for his bride, the church.

And so we can't go wrong if we apply ourselves to biblical edifying, loving, persistent prayer and seeking the Lord for the good of his people, because that will, in the wisdom of God, it makes a difference, it will help, it will help God's people, it will bring forth in the church what the Lord wants to see.

And I believe we, it's a necessity actually, you know, the Lord, he's able to do everything he wants to do without us, but he's chosen to work through us. And so we, I think we need to learn to be willing to do our part, you know, build up the body of Christ.

And as we do, I believe we will see growth, true growth that pleases the Lord and coming to maturity, no longer infants. But what, you know, it amazes me is to see the same pattern.

I saw the glad tidings. It just repeats again and again and again, you know, nearly every week now, you hear of some congregation, especially in North America, because that's where we get most of the news from. Going through similar things.

Oh, our pastor turns out he was playing around on the side all these years. It's becoming epidemic. Maybe we're just, with social media, we're becoming more conscious of these things, but it seems to me as if more and more of this kind of stuff is coming to light, which is a good thing. We don't want it to continue.

But it's like, can we not learn from history? Can we not, can you perhaps say, you know, we see what happened at that place, at that congregation 20, 30, 50 years ago. Let's avoid that. Let's, you know, let's have a, let's do things differently. There don't seem to be a lot of congregations willing to learn those lessons. But thank you for, for teaching them, you know, for putting the information out there. I think it's, it's very, very helpful and important.

The most fascinating part of history for me is that it repeats itself. I have people who often, they'll say that things like, it was so much better back then. We used to let our children's play around in the streets, on the neighborhoods, and we didn't have to worry about them. We could just let them roam free. Well, I'm reading through all these newspapers and right here in my city, back in the 1900s, brutal, brutal things were happening to children on the streets in the city. And it's just the difference between now and then, like you said, we have access to information that we didn't have back then. What I have

learned in all of my research of history is that people are people and people have people problems. It doesn't matter who you are. The problem with this type of religion is that it takes humans who have people problems and it elevates them into such a status where we, we give them undue reverence. And they're humans, just like I'm a human. But we have given so many people this undue reverence. And what happens is they, once they get put up on that pedestal, now they, by design, have to remain on the pedestal. And so they have

to create this perfect image. And they have, like you said, the people who are coming to every prayer meeting, even though the bad things are going on behind the scenes, well, they have to put on sort of a stage act themselves to try to maintain this elite status that they've been given. And the whole system is just flawed, in my opinion, humans are humans and should never have been given the amount of reverence that we had. But it's sad to watch. And yes, the history repeats itself. But I think if enough people look at the mistakes

of history, they can correct the mistakes before they happen in the future. So very glad to have you on the show to talk through all of this. But right before we got on, you mentioned that there was a community of people who, you know, you know, you know, you know, you who were former members of glad tidings, and I wanted to ask you if you had some advice for those people, what would your advice be?

Well, they're all well-advanced in years now. I'm one of the younger ones in the group. Almost all of them have very fond recollections. Those were the good old days, and for most people who have left glad tidings, in all of their travels over the last 45 years or so, they haven't really come across anything to compare with those glorious worship services.

So there's a hole in their heart, I would say. But my advice to them would be honest about the facts, learn the lessons that we can learn from our experience at glad tidings. It wasn't all that.

There were some very good things there, and don't live in the past. You can't go back. It's impossible to go back. And it wasn't as great as we may think it was in our recollection.

But think about, apply yourself to what God is doing now. This is another part of my modest mission, is really exhorting, encouraging, teaching older people, retired people, who have a very precious commodity, which is time.

So they're no longer driven by the necessities of raising a family and earning income and so on. And those are all legitimate things that we need to do. But in retirement, believers have time and the headspace.

And you don't have to go anywhere. You can do this in your own living room. But to be mindful of the work that God is doing today, he is building his church and the effectual, fervent prayer of his people, righteous people, evails much.

And each one of us can make a contribution to the building up at the body of Christ in love. Each part should be doing its work. And so older people aren't off the hook.

We have a responsibility. We have a calling. And I believe we can be very, very effectual. I believe God is very, very pleased to hear prayers that seek the good of his people, the building up of his body.

According to his word, according to the example that Jesus himself gave in his prayer before he went to the cross, what a wonderful prayer that shows us the desire of God toward his people, what he wants to do.

Then the example of Paul, the Apostle Paul, those prayers are so revealing of God's kind intentions toward his people, what God has in mind. And we can ask, we say, the Lord, this is your will, you want to do this, help.

And so none of us has a magic wand that we can wave over the church and make it all happen. But God is pleased when we... ask him when we call upon him and I would say to my friends from glad tidings let's be living in the present with God what he's doing now and he is wanting to hear our loving edifying biblical sound prayer. Well that's very good advice thank you so much for sharing your story.

Thank you John it's been a pleasure. Well if you've enjoyed our show and you want to share your story you can check us out on the web you can find us at William-Branham.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.