Cult vs. Religion: When Allegiance Replaces Orthodoxy

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a false prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed it's good to be back and to talk about this strange thing that I don't know how to label it.

I'm just going to call it the other Christian identity because I've traced the roots of all of this nonsense. You can trace it all directly back to Christian identity. Every single trail, every single path that all goes back there and then beyond that it goes into British's realism and it was the idea, the notion that to become a Christian and to have Christian values you had to accept this identity and this identity surrounded your ideology, your belief system, all of these different things and you pitched the idea and it was a good one. Well what about the groups that mold themselves after their

central figure is not that the same thing. So it is like a Christian identity but it's the other Christian identity. Yeah and I think that this is we've talked about some of this in the past but I think specifically Mike Pickle is a really good example of this of the International House of Prayer. If you were in the International House of Prayer 10, 20 years ago I think it would be harder to identify this if you were not as critical of him and you're just kind of like oh well the identity of the International House

Prayer and the identity of Mike Pickle are separate. In fact I remember being probably in my mid-early 20s when I started realizing hey the community that I was raised in and the International House Prayer community is got some suspect things going on and I remember talking with other like more mainline Christians about IHOP and I was like well it's not a cult because we're not worshiping one central figure like there isn't one figure that everything revolves around because in my mind I was like well Alan Hood preaches well now I'm even blanking what other big I don't even know who I thought was in

important fact then. But you know, it felt like, it felt like there was other important speakers, not just Mike, and it felt like the people who were forming the sort of doctrine around the international house prayer. Well, one, I thought it was more conventional. I didn't realize how fringe it was from other just sort of regular, even penicostal dominations.

But too, I also just like, I didn't see how much Mike Bickle was at the center of the international house prayer. Now, taking a step back, and especially now that Mike Bickle has been exposed and threatened, you can see that he has woven his sort of tentacles through the entire identity of the End Times prayer movement. And he made this explicit.

So there's a couple of different instances that Mike Bickle has spoken up since

these scandals kind of hit the fan. The first was in his email. So Jane Doe, number one, who's now coming forward with her name, Deborah. When Deborah confronted Mike and confronted IHOP, she did this before any of the sort of scandal had come out. And I mean, this was the beginning of it, where she was sort of remembering and realizing that the way that she was groomed by Mike was really terrible. And so she started talking about the different things that happened. She has since been married and her husband and her kind of confronted IHOP leadership

about the way that she was abused when she was a teenager. And in the email that Deborah's husband, so Deborah's husband sent an email to Mike, Mike sends an email back to Deborah's husband. And in it, he basically lays out exactly what I'm talking about, where he says, if I'm attacked, like if I go down, so does the End Times Prayer Movement. He doesn't say it quite in those terms, but he does say it as explicitly as that. He says, this is if people, if I'm attacked, people will see the End Times Prayer Movement, that they will question

End Times Prayer Movement. And the End Times Prayer Movement was just kind of his sort of, that's the sort of central doctrine, uniting doctrine of the International House Prayer, that we are in the End Times and that we're raising up four runners to bring about the End Times and that God is bringing about a movement that's centralized in Kansas City that is going to build up all of these inner intercessor and prayer warriors and spiritual warfare individuals who are going to Joel's army, you know, generation who's going to usher in, uh, the end times.

And anyway, with, with Mike, it became, and now looking back, I realized that he really put a sort of failsafe system in, uh, the doctrine of the international house prayer, because it was his prophecies. He always emphasized his prophecies and the prophetic history. Every, um, student, every night wash student, every, you know, I hop you student who came into, um, the international house prayer, every staff member had to learn the prophetic history of Kansas City.

And the pedicam history of Kansas City is basically just Mike's own sort of narrative about his own story and how everything originated. And he very accurately, um, and sinisterly, um, developed a system where if, if people question him and question his prophecies, then all of the fabric of this sort of identity starts being questioned and falling apart. And we're seeing that right now with like, I hop is still going, but it is not nearly as much of a thing as it was. And a lot of it, I think probably, no, I think like absolutely has to do with Mike Bickle. And when Mike Bickle sort of,

was Chris, I think that this is a good thing that the whole fabric of it is being questioned now. But it makes it clear how people really lose their community identity. They lose their religious identity when they have to question these sort of cult leaders that they are a part of.

The reason I'm so glad that you brought this up is because when I was only focusing on William Branham, I bet I had this conversation a hundred times. And then once I realized that Branham was just one part of a bigger system and that that system was a generator of cults, of destructive cults, I bet I've had it, I don't know, I've lost track of it. It's in the thousands. Thousands of times have had the same exact conversation. And the way that conversation goes is we're not a cult.

We're followers of Jesus. And you have to have this exchange back and forth. So you ask them, will that mean you're Christian? Yes, absolutely. We're Christian. Well, why don't you go to one of the Christian churches, one of the mainstream denominational Christian churches? What's the difference? Oh, they're not a follower of our prophet, our set of prophets, our organization, whatever it is. I think people miss the point that a central figure doesn't have to be a human being.

It can be an organization and entity. It's a central institution that you go to get your ideas and belief sets, but you have to continue that exchange and say, well, does that mean that the other people and the denominations, they're not Christian? Oh no, by no means. They're Christian too. Well, what's the difference? Are they going to heaven too? And that's where you get into this weird exchange and there are levels of destructiveness.

Some of them will say, yes, they're going to. However, we get all of the benefits of our central figure, our institution, or they may just outright say, yes, they're going to hell because they don't accept the doctrine of our central figure. That's the way most of the Brannamites are not all, but most.

And so you have to go through that exchange instead of outright saying, well, what's the difference between you and Christianity? And nobody will answer that question if they're in a cult. And what it becomes like, if you're a traveler and you want to go, say you want to go take your family to Orlando for the weekend, be a Disney World, well, you want to get a direct flight. You want to go straight there. But what these cults and these institutions have done is they'll tell you that they're Christian, they'll tell you they're going to Orlando or Jesus Christ in this weird observation,

but they'll say no, but you have to have this layover first with our central figure before you can get to Orlando. And I don't know if you have ever flown into Mexico, it's really weird.

When you land in Mexico, you want to get to your resort. And as you're walking out of the airport in, we landed, I think it was in Cancun, you've got all these people that are just snagging you, grabbing you, come right with us. And they're trying to pretend like they're taking you where you going. And they're just a distraction. That's all it is is a distraction. Well, all of these cult leaders, all of these central figures, what they're doing is, yes, you can be a Christian, you can follow Jesus Christ, but don't tug on your pants leg as you're walking out of the airport. But first

come with me, come with me. And you can join our group and you can have so much more blessings than the other Christians. Yeah, it's, it's like earmarks in bills or something like, you know, where you are past legislation is passing a bill and then all of a sudden they're sneaking in little bits into it to where you think it's one thing. Well, we've talked so many different times about sort of invisible doctrines and how you can be a part of an organization and a part of a church and not really even realize what the sort of central doctrines of that group, especially in

the non-denominational Christian world, because they don't, they don't present it out front of this is, this is what we believe and this is what you have to believe to be sort of respected in our community. It's sort of suck you in, get you a part of it, establish this is sort of your home community and then later you realize, like, oh, there's all of these.

Very interesting doctrines about the end times or something like that where you're like, oh, this is, this had I looked at this to be in with, I probably would have thought that this was kind of culty, but because I didn't look at this, because I got involved with prophecy or healing or whatever it was, you know, you get attached to all of these different allegiances that you aren't aware of. But so I've been thinking about this. I have this idea and I, and let me pitch it to you, John, get your thoughts on it, because I've always struggled with,

I don't know if, I don't know if you have had this question posed to you, but people have asked me, like, well, okay, well, what's the difference between a cult and a religion? And there's some famous, I can't remember who said it, but someone, it was some musician, but made a statement that the only difference between cults and religion are real estate, because the idea being that, like, religions are just big cults that have become large and that I know that they're sort of, especially when I'm talking to secular audiences, it's hard for me to always distinguish

okay, well, like, there's this cult belief versus, no, this is different than, like, mainline religious Christianity, even like evangelicalism, you know, or charismatic Christianity. How do you separate IHOP from, you know, the charismatic community at large and say, okay, the charismatic community is not a cult, but like, IHOP is, and it is a difficult, like, it's a difficult way to sort of, where do you, where do you cut the line? So, but I had this thought over the last couple of days, I've been thinking about this a lot, and you tell me what you think of

this, but doctrines themselves, and doctrines within a religious sort of system, largely are about allegiances, and this is both religion and cults and general. I mean, we have so many denominations in Christianity. I mean, this is one of those hard things to explain to people who are not Christians, but being like, okay, well, this sect is separate from this, and this is, you know, this was a Trinitarianism, and then this is anti-trinit, and then we have oneness, Pentecostal, you know, jumped up, that was anti-trinitarian, and then there's a Baptist, an anti-baptist, and you know, They're like all of these different dividing lines

of communities, basically that all sort of divided on the likes of doctrine. And if you look at it, like there's a quest for finding truth in these doctrines. Like you wanna be a part of the community that has the doctrines that most correspond with the reality what actually is.

But, you know, not everyone can be right. And in fact, you know, math-flatic, math-matically,

some of the doctrines that you believe, regardless, and I'm saying you and the universal you, just any Christian out there, you probably have doctrines that are not true. It's just math-matically because, you know, you can't, if someone is saying A, and someone is saying not A, but B, only one can be right, and both could probably be wrong.

And, you know, there's this sort of difficulty with all of these different, hey, the Sith Lord doctrines, where like, they're probably, a lot of people probably believe stuff that just isn't true. Like math-matically, that just has to be the case.

So why do we have all of these different doctrines? Why is it all of these different doctrinal shifts? Now, again, I think that part of this is about trying to find the truth. I also think a large part of this is, you have doctrinal splits because it's about allegiance.

It's about we are uniting under this banner versus this banner, when you're going and you're, you know, doing the different, let's take like a Roman Orthodox, or Roman Catholic sort of tradition that it's like heavily liturgical, has all of these different systems and processes.

Those processes are about allegiance to a long-standing tradition. Whether it's about it being true, do you have to take the Eucharist to be saved? Maybe yes, maybe no. Do you have to believe in trinitarianism?

I don't know why I'm picking trinitarianism. But that's like, I think that was a good one for me because when I was a kid, I was like, what? It doesn't make sense to me.

And why does everyone have to believe it? And it's like, I kind of, the Oneness Pentecostal but tradition, I was like, oh, this is interesting. I have realized now that I don't have you know, allegiance to this anymore.

But I remember just being like, the trinity itself is just a very weird doctrine. to me. Why do I have to believe this to be a Christian or like if I don't believe this, I'll be excommunicated from my entire community. And I think it is this sort of like allegiance thing is like we, you don't have to, if there's all of these sort of fracturing, you can't hold a community if everybody is believing all of these separate, disparate things.

And so I don't think that it's necessarily bad that a lot of these doctrines are a measure of legions because if the legions is unto a tradition that is larger than the church or the pastor who's creating it, then it can be a sort of safe space where you're like, okay, this, let's say we're doing this very specific liturgy at this Catholic church that I'm a part of that we're doing this mass and these procedures. If I find out that the priest or whoever the leader of the sort of congregation is ethically and morally compromised,

that individual can be removed from the system without pulling out the entire structure of the sort of tradition that we're a part of. Someone else has been trained in the liturgy and someone else can perform the ceremonies like that and you can sort of separate the individual from that which is being, that has been already structured and created and it provides some security. Also like if you go to a Catholic church and you're like, okay, I really do not like the leadership of this. Well, you can just go down the road and there's a different one,

same as like a Methodist church. You can believe all of these things. You're like, well, there's going to be another Methodist church down the road. It's not this sort of like unique, very specific thing that is happening and your legions is unto something that's bigger than just the movement or the individual. But then let's say, now let's flip it when you go to the International Hospital. You're a legion. There's all of these different doctrines that are pop up, the invisible doctrines and explicit doctrines that pop up. The goal of those doctrines are to test the legions of the group and what is the legions but a legions back to Michael.

This is the whole thing is like this is why he built it this way where when he falls or if he falls or if he can kind of use this to intimidate and threaten people who are going to speak up against where he sort of holds the whole community and the whole movement has to be done.

stage where he says, if I go, so goes all of these different things because the doctrinal allegiances were all back onto my pickle and my prophecies. This is the sort of problem when you have profits and apostles. It's not what this 11th century scholar interpreted about what Paul said, where it's so distant from us. It's what did William Brannum say, and what was his prophecies? What did Michael say? What were his prophecies? What did Bob Hartley, what did Bob Jones say? It's very specific to the words of these men and the prophecies of these men that started these movements. This is the first time I've expressed this and you tell me

what you think of this, but I think this idea of talking about allegiances of doctrines. Who is your allegiance to? Is it to the larger Roman Catholic Church? Is it to the larger Methodist Church or Denomination? Or is it to Mike Bickel and Friends? The more finite and the more specific and the more like one line away that those allegiances run, the more dangerous it is because then you are subject to the whims and to the control of those typically narcissistic individuals.

There's so much to unpack there. I think we could take all of the many, I've been taking notes as you've been talking of what should I expand on, and I think we could actually do 10 podcasts for each one of those topics. Okay, but let's do a broad overview and let's just start with a handful of topics. So to preface the conversation, whenever I left the cult, I was indoctrinated like all cult members to have a very us versus them, insiders versus outsiders, that type of view.

And so when you leave, everything that you just said went through my head and it's the early stages of forming the understanding of the opposite of the us versus them mentality because the picture is so much bigger than this. It has more to do with culture, culture aspects, historical aspects, balance of power, et cetera. So let's attack the first one. What is a cult versus what is a religion? Because when you're taught in us versus them mentality, unfortunately, when you leave the cult, every view of a cult is based off of what you came from. And that kind of skews things

just a bit, but you can't help it. Whenever I left the cult, that's how I felt. Everything, and I get accused of this often, everything that I do. who points back to Brannum, it isn't so much about that as it is comparisons on the structure.

So the definition of a cult ironically starts out the same, whether it's religion, whether it's a destructive cult, it's all about the adjective that you use. If I say the cult falling of William Brannum, it's just a cult following.

If I say the cult following of, I don't know, Justin Bieber, it's the Justin Bieber cult, are they destructive? That's the question, is it a destructive cult? But the difference between a cult and religion has more to do with the maturity of the group.

The cult following of Jesus Christ was a cult from its inception. And that's not saying that it's bad, by no means, that's just what the word means. It was the cult following of Jesus Christ.

Over time, and after Jesus's death, it began to grow, it began to mature, and there began to be a shift in balance of authority. So you had the apostles rise up, and now you had men who were trying to understand what is this cult, how do we spread it, how do we teach it?

And with the division of authority came a balance of power. Now you've got certain individuals, all of which were accountable to each other, who are trying to benefit the rest of the rank and fall members.

It's still a cult, but over time, as this grows and matures, and it becomes socially accepted as a religion, then it transitions from cult into a religion. Ironically, it's still a cult, it's still the cult following of Jesus Christ, but at this point, it's mature, and you can no longer say that this is, the word cult doesn't fit, religion fits instead.

So what happens whenever somebody asks me is our group of whatever it is, you could say, I hoppers, Brannemites, you could say any one of these groups, is it a cult? Well, all of the groups that they mentioned haven't matured for hundreds and thousands of years.

So it literally, by definition, is a cult, but the adjective is important. Is it a destructive cult, or is it not? Usually, the groups that are asking those types of questions, usually they know within their hearts that it is an authoritarian cult, and it is destructive, or they wouldn't be asking in the first place.

And so then what happens is, like I said, when I have these conversations, it always shifts to the doctrine. You mentioned the Trinity, but let's just examine doctrine a bit, and I think the term that you use was mathematics or through calculations, but think instead like scientific theories.

Yeah. So what is a scientific theory? We believe that something is true. Now we need to prove that it's true. And we all work together. There's a balance of power, there is no central authority.

We test and we prove out the theory. And we may prove that in all likelihood, the scientific theory is true. And a hundred years later, some guy may find some scenario that you didn't test and overturn it, then our theory's faults.

Well, that's standing the test of time, after so long, if you cannot prove it faults, the scientific theory stands. In religion, you have proto-orthodoxy. So you have a belief that is a standard belief that you're wanting to prove is true, and it has to stand the test of time.

There are examples of this belief that are not in the Bible. There was a debate on what's a good example. There's a debate on circumcision between the apostles and the Bible. So one apostle proposed, we need to keep and uphold the circumcision.

Another apostle says, no, we don't. Well, that balance of power, they had a proto-orthodoxy claim, like a scientific theory, and it was overturned. And you don't see largely, I mean, they do, a lot of Christians still do circumcise, but they don't do it because it's a Christian belief because that was overturned with the apostles.

So you have this proto-orthodoxy belief over time, as it matures into a religion, the proto-orthodoxy becomes orthodox. So topic number two is, when you're examining a doctrine, has that doctrine withstood the test of time, because you'll find people who will identify passages of scripture or history that overturned the proto-orthodox belief, and then like the scientific theory, when it's overturned, we no longer accept this.

However, just like with science, you get people who say, I oppose everybody who has overturned this. And they're going to rise up and say, no, this is not, and this is the anti-orthodoxy movement.

So you have some guy who says, the Trinitarian belief, we no longer accept that this test of time is true. We're going to break off and create a cult because it is a cult, a break off of this, and we say, we're an anti-orthodoxy cult on this specific doctrine, and that's how one is Pentecostalist largely started.

Is one is Pentecostalism a cult now? I don't know, has it stood the test of time? It's only been, you know, 1907's when the group officially formed. It's hard to say, but from that you birth extremism because some people will say I'm anti-orthodoxy solely for the purpose of being anti-orthodoxy.

So then that becomes an extremist and the extremist forms a cult, and that cult can become quickly destructive if their anti-orthodoxy just for the sake of it. However, with regards to the Trinity and the anti-orthodoxy versions and views of this, This is where it's fascinating for me, and I could probably do 10, 15 podcasts on just the psychology of it.

Because if you examine the original Orthodox views of the Apostles, which are written in the New Testament, we have all of these letters, all of these books, you can find that the Trinity is mentioned.

You'll find in one of the gospels that says baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You can also find the Oneness doctrine. I grew up on this Pentecostal, I know the doctrine.

You can go directly to where it says baptize it. They were re-baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. So you can find both examples. What you don't find is a clear declaration that says you must do one or the other.

You don't find that in the Bible. So you get both groups fighting because there isn't a set orthodoxy on that subject in the Bible. There's just opposing views. So what has happened over time is people have accepted the Trinity as proto-orthodoxy.

Over time, it stood the test of time. It became orthodoxy. Then you had people who broke away and said we're anti-orthodox on that subject. That's how the history has worked. So when somebody says we're not a cult and then you look at what is the reason why they separated?

Usually it's over some specific doctrine or a new doctrine they're introducing. Right. All of which is new. And it can only be labeled as a cult. When you separate what they believe and what is mainstream Christianity something that has stood the test of time, if it is different, it has to be a cult.

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 Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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I should have been taking notes when you were talking there, but I was taking mental notes because you put the language a lot of the things that I've been wrestling with and haven't had good language for.

But specifically, like too, I think that this idea of orthodoxy and sustaining the test. time is, in some ways, I was trying to get to something in that conceptual region because we've, I mean, we've had previous episodes where we talk about the cult franchise and how the latter-ranked movement, you just have these like cults on cults on cults and cults because they're all popping up and it kind of, it sets a platform or a structure in which people can create their own doctrines each, each like 10 years, you know, there's, they're even within, I mean, there's a very specific lineage of Pentecostalism to later reign, to

New Apostolic Reformation and Mike Bickel and the International House prayer. But when we were learning the prophetic history of the International House prayer, it wasn't about Pentecostalism. Like we talked about it a little bit, but it wasn't something new had happened in 1980, right? Something that was unique and it was like in a lot of, a lot of language in this sort of, these non-denominational cares, cares about church uses this very immediate language of, of revivals and of ways and how to make it seem like everything is happening immediately. It's like within just this last generation that there's this new revelation

and new revival and so you're a part of something fresh and new and so if the question is like how are you breaking free from the sort of orthodoxy of whatever denominational historical structure that you have, they kind of give excuses of like, this is why we're creating new things and new stuff and every, you know, the question of like, will IHOP doctrine ever become orthodoxy? No, because it's only built to last five years and then it's replaced with something new. Like the fundamentally, the International House prayer doctrine cannot be ever matured because it changes and it shifts and I've seen it happen through my day. No one who is still at the

International House prayer now believes half of the things that maybe even a fourth of the things that we believed in 1990, you know, and through the 90s and into the early arts, when the international hospital prayer was created.

So it's built not to mature. It's built to cycle where you get just to the height of it

enough to bring people into your new cult and then you form another cult after that. And that's where it's really interesting. I think that this is helping me give language and identify some of the problem because you look at the new apostolic reformation.

And you're like, man, this is pretty big. And this is pretty expansive. Like at what point does this just become a religion? At what point can you not say this is a cult? But if it's built off of this sort of cyclical thing in which no doctrine is ever maturing and no, these doctrines are constantly shifting in order to maintain allegiance to whatever individuals or empower at that time, then you can see it just sort of operating in this destructive, dangerous cult territory where it isn't given the chance to sort of mature and have the test of time where it becomes bigger

and larger than just like the doctrine of a few individuals. So that's where it gets interesting and fascinating. So within anti-orthodoxy, there are countless subcategories. Right. At its simplest form, anti-orthodoxy could be simply, I'm a Christian, I'm a believer in Jesus Christ.

I believe 100% everything that the other Christians believe. However, there's this one point that I simply don't understand. And in my opinion, reading the Bible, I see it vastly differently than mainstream Christianity. And I go form a group and we believe Christianity and my doctrine that I see differently.

That's its simplest form of anti-orthodoxy. However, in one of the major subcategories as it relates to IHOP, KC, Branemism, there is also a subcategory of anti-orthodoxy that is clearly labeled deception and can be nothing else.

It is people who are aware that their anti-orthodox just for the sake of being anti-orthodox and through deception, they're going to create a new doctrine with false facts to support that new doctrine. And so what happens is people get into this movement, they get excited, they're sucked out of mainstream Christianity and the deception serves its purpose to suck people away from orthodoxy.

So they come into the group well, because it's deception, eventually somebody's gonna figure it out. And what happens is as people start to understand and think and sometimes critically think, although that's difficult in a class.

group. They begin to edge closer towards understanding that they were deceived. At which point the leader can sense and understand by the conversations, wait a minute, these people are on to me. And they begin to shift it. And so instead of just being widely aware they were deceived, now they have a different, it's a moving target. Now they have a different target to focus on. And what happens is over time, it's not standing the test of time because it has shifted. Over time, the focus is on the new thing and the old thing is forgotten. Well, that cycle repeats and repeats

and repeats. And so like I said, mainstream religion, orthodoxy, it stands the test of time. You don't have these shifts whenever there is deception. But where it gets really fascinating and interesting, there are some people who finally catch on. And when they catch on, they realize that something's not right. They may not understand that they've been deceived. What happens is they break away in the creative splinter group. And the splinter group still is built on this false foundation that was probably deception. So they accept much of the deception. But whatever is the one thing that they figured out, they'll correct it with all the other deception. And they create

a completely new religion, which is, and I use the word religion loosely there, religion stands the test of time. This hasn't. They've created a new splinter group of the cult trying in an attempt to form a new religion. Yeah. Yeah. The tree metaphor always is because it really is like the farther away you get from the sort of orthodoxy, the more like fringe it becomes and all of these little small offshoots and offshoots of offshoots of offshoots, you know, sort of thing where it becomes thinner and thinner. And I've seen this happen. And it's it's kind of heartbreaking to

to see people who get deceived in one group. Like so, for example, we were talking about the Bethany Deaton situation last episode. And talking about how there was this sort of Deaton cult, there was this mini cult that was affiliated with IHOP, but where instead of Michael Bickle being the prophet of the community, Tyler Deaton was the prophet of the community and it kind of was on the fringe of international house prayer. But anyway, when that cult kind of was exposed for a lot of the sort of abusive practices that were going on and when Bethany Deaton died, which if

people haven't watched that episode, I'm not going to get into all the details of that one here, but it's, you know, it's an obviously interesting heartbreaking story. But when it sort of, everything hit the fan and members of that community suddenly realized like, oh, we were a part of something that was really dangerous and here's all these different doctrines and all these different beliefs that we had that were really just made up by Tyler Deaton, you know, there was this sort of opportunity to break away.

But this testimony of this woman who is the only testimony that I've heard of someone who came out of that group, she talks about how IHOP was there for her right afterwards. And to tell a long story very shortly, you know, a woman dies.

They think it's maybe murder, I think it's maybe suicide. This group is really in tragedy that it's just, you know, one of their friends has just passed away in a very like intense and graphic way, Anne's, Alan Hood and the International House Prayer bring them in and hold a deliverance session where, and she talks about even now, this woman who was in the deep and cold who then kind of transferred to the IHOP cult talks about how the heavens opened up and how the spiritical, or sorry, Alan Hood prophesied over them and rebuked the spirit to do of witchcraft of them and they were healed and

it's just this very like out of the pan into the fire situation in which like, I don't want to diminish the experiences this woman had, but it just is, you see when you're, when you leave one splinter group, you just find a different splinter group that has a lot of the similar aspects or maybe you create your own that has a lot of the same sort of dangerous doctrines, but just doesn't have those one or two things that caused you to leave the group. Instead of like stepping back and really deconstructing and realizing what were the dangerous beliefs that I had, there's this tendency of people to jump from

one cult to another cult to another cult because they're trying to find the right mixture of all of the doctrines that they appreciated that didn't have the dangerous elements attached to it, but you know, you and I, John have looked at this and seen, got bad news, I will, you know, all I will say all of these laterane community, you're not going to get rid of the dangerous doctrines because they're all inherently dangerous like, and they all splinter and create their own sort of versions of this.

all lead to the worshiping of narcissistic personalities and to the elevation of supernatural experiences that are this quest for the here and now supernatural magic show. You can't separate from it, and people will just try to find whatever mixture of ingredients. It's like you got sick from

you got sick making some food, and rather than realizing that ingredients had just gone bad, you're like, oh, it's just not the right combination. If I didn't add the right spices to this, you know, never mind that your eggs are rotten. You're like just trying to put in different ingredients to make it safe, but it just won't. It just doesn't do it. You have to address the sort of

actual bad ingredients. You have to actually address the rot that is happening at the root of these splinter religions, splinter cults, I should say, not religions. We just talked about that.

You know, I usually try to avoid these conversations except for with Bob. With Bob, I'll talk about the things that give me in trouble. But see, I came from this background where none of this really makes sense to me. I'm still trying to form an opinion and form trying to rebuild a belief set from something that had no foundation. In the Brannum Court, we had no foundation. So the only foundation that I found was, well, if the Bible is how I learned Christianity, I should start there.

But what I find is you go into the mainstream churches and much like you said, the values in the what is important to each group differs from group to group. And by nature, I mean, if you go to one, I'm not going to name the denominations, but go to one denomination, the reason why they have a denomination is because they have this belief set that they feel is important that is different from the other group. That's right. That's why denominations exist. And depending on which church you go to, they'll tell you, well, if you believe the gospel, you will believe and they'll go

into their belief set. So me as a new Christian, I read the Bible over and over and over and over again. And you have the Old Testament, which is basically the books of the law, the books of the prophets, the books that Moses wrote, the et cetera, you've got the New Testament, which starts out with the gospels. And then you've got the letters of Paul and, you know, the Bible, how it is composed.

Well, if you ask a person, what is the gospel? Sadly, In many of the mainstream churches, and oddly, even from some pastors, they will tell you something that isn't even in the books that are called the Gospels, because they're adding to it. And what they're doing is they're reading the Gospels through all of these other books. We know that this is the Gospel because Paul wrote this letter to the Philippians, or we know this is the Gospel because of we read the book of Romans. But these were letters, these weren't the Gospels. So to the early church,

to the proto-Orthodoxy, what is the good news? The good news is that we were bound by the law, we were suffering all of the curses of the law, the final curse is death, and the good news is that God sent a son and delivered us from this curse of the law. In its essence, that is the gospel.

And each one of the Gospels declared this. So me is a new Christian, and I start a new church, I want to re-examine my view of the Gospel, and God sent a prophet, and his name was William Branham. That was the cult gospel. So I'm reading, okay, it says nothing about sending a prophet to the last age. That's nonsense. Take that out. What is the pure simplicity of the Gospels? And I read the four. So then I go to a new church, and they're explaining what is the gospel, and they're saying things that aren't in the book. Any of the four Gospels, and I'm looking at thinking, well,

I understand why you believe that, but according to the Gospels, the ones that I'm reading, the stuff that you're saying isn't in there, is it good? Maybe, you know, I'm not going to say what they believe is wrong, but it wasn't the gospel, and the danger in that is that if you add things to the gospel and say that it is the gospel, you're hijacking the gospel, and then you're shifting the level of importance on whatever is your doctrine. The doctrine may be good. I'm not saying that it's not, and the doctrine may actually come from other books in the Bible, but when you

overload the power of the statement that wasn't in the gospel and say that it was the gospel, how far can you go with this? Can you say that they're going to heaven or hell because they believe this one thing that isn't in the Gospels? Some say they can, some say they can't. For me, I just took it back to its roots. This is what the gospel says. We have four of them, we have four separate accounts of what is the gospel, and we have letters from the different apostles saying we now have the Gospels. We're living a new Christian life, and we want our Christian

life to show and reflect that we are changed people, and we have higher values. In the proto-orthodoxy of Christianity, that's the essence of what happened. Then over time, scholars and historians continue to read these things, and they accept that what are the norms for our religion? If we're going to be called Christian, what do we believe? What are the norms? What are the standards? What do we do to call ourselves Christian?

Over time, that is what created the religion. And again, these anti-orthodoxy groups, they will take a position against all of this and say, no, orthodoxy, that's the devil getting into our religion. And it's simply that they're rejecting things that have been trained and studied and experiences that people have had for millennia because they want to start something new.

And in the end, I have to question if it's new and it isn't part of the gospel, how important is it to me? Do you think then for people who are sort of desperate for something new?

And because if you go to a church that is very orthodox and liturgical and has these long-standing, these are what we believe, this is what we believed 100 years ago, this is what we believe 200 years ago, I definitely think that there is less chance of some of the dangers that you and I talk about.

But I also understand the people's desire to be like, I want to be a part of something that is exciting, that is new, I want to learn things. So I have a thought to my own question, but I just wanted to see what you think about that.

What do you say to people who have this sort of quest for the new? Well the Bible talks about people who have itching years. There are some people who just are never satisfied. And to those kind of people, sadly the cults are attractive because here's something new, here's fresh and exciting.

But there's another category, like I said, we could expand this out to probably 100 podcasts, but there's another subcategory of this. The views and the understanding of the world we live in by the cultures that were shifting from proto-orthodoxy to orthodoxy aren't necessarily the same views that we have today.

And you can find this study, if you go back and you look at how the Bible canon was accepted. It's odd, it's a study that I still don't know what to make of it because you have men who are standing together, the rising against, I think is the Aryan debate, they're trying to determine, these are the standard books that we will include in our canon and all these other books, we don't deem them to be canon, they may be good books, but they're not Bible canon.

Well, they went through a process that, like normal humans do, a voting of which books made it in. Some of the books that almost made it in, for example, had a 50-foot Jesus that went through stomping the cities, the gospel, what was the gospel of Peter, I think it was.

Now in today's world, if you were to tell... them. I'm a Christian and I'm going to share the gospel with you. Did you know a God sent a son and he died for our sins? And after he rose again, he became 50 foot and started trampling cities.

People just wouldn't listen to it. But the fact that they did back then tells you that as the people were adopting what is canon, what is going to be orthodox, some of their views were still, I don't know what the word is, like pagan doesn't fit. That's the name. Some of their views were just not absurd. I think it's probably absurd to come with. I really like the idea of the ancient years, I think is really like interesting and is a because I think that we have both seen that where you want to hear and satiate these itches by finding something new and what is happening.

Do you think that there's a measure of curiosity that is totally healthy and good with the itching ear stuff that just needs to be given other outlets? For you, a lot of your curiosity was satiated by looking at some of the historical context of studying, looking into a lot of this and discovering that's as much as it's overwhelming some of the stuff that you talk about and you research on, it is interesting to you and it sort of scratches that itch of curiosity where you get to learn and be a part of like a revealing understanding of the world that maybe is happening even just to you

or rediscovering things that have happened. So I don't exactly know what point I'm trying to get at but this idea of curiosity and the inability to explore and satiate curiosity in the world that I grew up was like a big I think that that was a huge through line with my own life of just being able to like like all of our curiosity was and the excitement of the new was all sort of hijacked into this specific expression so it was interesting it was I had those sort of itching ears of like oh tell me what's going on but it easily I easily was able to satiate that when I finally left the

cult by just learning about you know whether it's my own sort of historical religion like in background whether learning some of that history whether like going to um Indio is very important for me and speaking with some of the like Buddhist monks there and learning about non-sailant I didn't like convert Buddhism, but being able to expand my horizon, learn about different experiences, and learn about art.

When I finally removed myself from the kind of cult world that I grew up in, a cult world in which I wasn't allowed to listen to secular music, everything that did not come from our sort of stream was vilified and demonized and being able to then experience art and literature and culture outside of sort of my very specific stream, I think that for me was a very important way to sort of scratch that itch and get away from this sort of meaning of God to speak to me in the moment, meaning to open up my Bible and have it directly

speak to me or believe that like, you know, Mike Bickle, if I could just touch his cloak and then I could get some of his, or touch his garment, you know, to get some of the anointing or because that I think it also is kind of how it manifests and the world is like if you, in the new episodic reformation world is that if you grow up in this, you want to be at the center of power because that's the only interesting thing that's happening in that entire world because all of the rest of the world is close off to you and you have

to, if you're not, you know, dreaming dreams, doing miracles, or you're not helping the miracle workers or helping the prophets, if you're not doing these things, then you're really not doing anything. And so I think when you have those people who are desperate to be a part of something that's fresh and new, I think some of the only ways to satiate that is to get outside of the world and to have this sort of renew curiosity in the world that's larger than the very specific world that the cold world that you got inundated with.

Yes, but there are endless possibilities. Good leadership isn't so much about the leader or the belief set. Good leadership is about the people that you're leading. A good leader will adapt to the needs and desires of the people that he or she is leading and that's why they're good leaders. That's how good leaders work. In the ancient world, there weren't as many people that wanted to know the why or the how things work. The culture has shifted significantly. In today's world, in any audience, you're going to find half the people or, I don't know, 40% of the people that just want to know how things work.

That's how the culture has shifted and a good leader will adapt to that. So you'll find some people that they don't care how things work. They simply want to believe what they're told. They want a set of rules and instructions and they live by it.

Then you have this other group of people who will why the rule. If you're going to give me this rule, I want to know why you're doing it. And a good leader will adapt to this.

They will, for the people who don't care, they won't go so far. For the people who want to know why, they'll tell them the why. When you're in a group that is using deception and can't tell you the why, what happens is it's like a coiled spring.

Your spring is so tightly coiled that when you leave the group, you explain it, you're springing away, you have to know why. And you want to see, well, what is the other religions of the world?

How do they live? How do they think? And what's interesting is, even to some extent, not all, but I have experienced in some of the mainstream churches that we've attended, you find leaders that want to control all of this.

Well, you can't let them talk to a Buddhist, because if they go talk to a Buddhist, they might become Buddhists themselves. And they want to control it. So rather than explaining the why and the how things work and training people to be Christians, even if you're talking to a Buddhist, well, they want to suppress and control you much like the cults.

Now, are they a cult? No, they're mainstream. They're in orthodoxy that is withstood the test of time. But this is the other aspect of the infinite level of aspects that we have to talk about.

The anti-orthodoxy then sometimes creeps back into the orthodoxy. And that's where when a person leaves a cult and they go to mainstream Christianity, they start to sense this. And like for me, I'm highly uncomfortable if I'm in a service by a minister, and I can sense that anti-orthodoxy has crept back into this religion.

Now, it may not be into the religion itself. It may just be that specific church, specific leader, but when it happens, I come unglued. I can't, I honestly, I've actually got up and walked out of services because of this.

It's very uncomfortable. So there are infinite levels of possibility, but what you're describing is a person who has been suppressed and oppressed. Once they experience freedom, they want to know more. Had they been given a healthy level of leadership by a healthy leader who wants people to mature and grow, who understands that you can't control the people and keep them away from other opposing viewpoints.

Well, if you're in that environment, you're going to, you'll be like a cold spring when you leave. So there has to be a shift even in mainstream churches, I believe, to make it more healthy.

And I'm gonna give this caveat because to people who are scared away from churches, I have experienced in some churches a healthy leadership that does this. So it's not like they're all like this, you know, when you leave, you may go to one church and it may be in the same denomination that I did not experience this in, but...

that specific leader has the anti orthodoxy views just kind of creeping back in. So, like I said, we could probably talk for hours on the axis. So many infinite possibilities that we're going through.

Yeah, well, and of course, every time I talk about something on here with you that I haven't, I'm just still trying to process through. I learn a lot, but it also fractures where I'm like, okay, well, we need to talk about this, we need to talk about that.

So I'm sure that we have some good future upcoming podcasts, the ideas that we can discuss, because I do think that this is really a fascinating tension, like the metaphor that you gave about the spring, I think is a really, really good and important metaphor right now, because I think that with what we're doing and what is going on larger in just the new apostolic Reformation world and just the latter-range world in general, is a lot of people are starting to become, they've been, you're seeing a lot of springs that are popping it open.

And I know that a lot of people listen to us and some of like I all have people contact me who I feel like are in that sort of process of expanding. And there's this sort of difficult situation of like, okay, well, now what do I do?

How do I react and none of the, in the past, if you, if you felt like IHOP was abusing you and you realized, oh, this is wrong and you left IHOP, you just go to Bethel and then, and then if you left Bethel, you go to IHOP.

Like it was just, that was how, what I saw, then you go to Y-WAM and go off to India, like I did, or something like that. And now I think people, there's a lot of, there's a lot of people who have become untethered by the oppressive world that they were in because they've sort of seen the fall and seen the fruit of the tree.

But now there's this sort of question of like, what do we do? And I think it's very difficult to have, to not just then fall back into the same patterns and find a different sort of cult community or even jump into a different religion and have a cult community and, you know, some cult Buddhist sect.

And like I think there's a lot of like tendency for that. So I think that this discussion of like, we've always, we've talked a lot of these systems that cloister and cause the sort of spring loading.

I think some future discussions of, what do we do once it's been broken? What do we do once we get out of it is an interesting thing. So in which I will defer to your wisdom because I'm still trying to figure out most of that.

Absolutely. And I don't know if I would call it wisdom. I'm just, I'm learning too, you know. Yeah, yeah. When you've been in a group that has told you, this is what you must do. This is how you must believe.

When you leave, there's the sad tendency to, okay, well, who's going to tell me what it is that I believe? Who's going to tell me what it is that I must do? And sadly, that's the case with everybody who leaves. You kind of have to figure it out for yourself.

I've gone through the process. I'm not going to say that I have wisdom. But I've gone through the process and I can tell you from my failures what went wrong. That's probably the best way I could explain it. So thank you so much.

So what not to do? Yes. The what not to do. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.WilliamDespranum.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. www.WilliamDespranum.org

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