Golden Dawn Exposed: Inside the Branham Inspired Cult in Tucson

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 very special guest, John Calvo, born remember of Golden Dawn.

John, I feel like I've known you for years. I guess I have known you for years working on helping people escape Branhamism and in your case a splinter group of Branhamism called Golden Dawn and so much has happened. We've we've tried to do this for a while and connect but you've been so busy helping to bring the cult down that we're really just took a while to get all of this going and connected. So glad we finally did. Maybe if you could tell everybody a little bit about yourself and briefly describe what is Golden Dawn. Yeah thanks John. Really

glad to be on your podcast. Like you said it's it's a long overdue. I'm glad we finally able to make it happen. Back around on me I grew up in Golden Dawn Tabernacle also known as Tabernacle in Manuel. I was born in that message church in Tucson, Arizona and grew up and was raising it up until 2006 when my family left. So I was there for 20 years. And it was a very destructive cult from what I can tell. There are levels of destructiveness in the Branham religion. I don't know what you call it. Branham done nomination. They're so

offended at the word denomination however they have created one. But there are levels of destructiveness. I have been to some that were so benign that if you were to just go to average Pentecostal church and the minister would preach from the Bible and every once in a while mention Branham's name. That's how it would be. Then there are others that just completely rule your lives. And by rule I mean completely destroy your lives. So it's it's somewhere in between that range is what Branhamism is. Where would you place Golden Dawn in that scale? So even

within the own message denomination or sex if you want to call them they all consider Golden Dawn Tabernacle to be an extreme case. And I've heard they in them call Golden Dawn Tabernacle a cult itself which is pretty ironic. But that's how extreme it is that people in the message call Golden Dawn I'm not going to go a legalistic extremist controlling church with a fascist authoritarian pastor.

Whenever I was small, I lived in Arizona, lived in Tucson for a while, actually two periods of my life. Never been to that specific church, but I have been to some of the Spanish churches that existed way back then.

And it was a little bit different. It wasn't the same as what we had, but I've never been to one that the message community branded a cult. So it is interesting. And you're correct.

I've actually had message cult pastors contact me after Golden Dawn went nuclear. And I guess trying to put a separation, put a distance between them and Golden Dawn so that it was clear we are not them, which I'll give them that.

They're, like I said, their levels of destructiveness. The problem for me is if you understand the root core theology of randomism that enables this type of thing, it really becomes a, it's, you can't even say that they're different.

You can just say that some have not yet progressed to the level of destructiveness that Golden Dawn did, while others progress very quickly. And in your case, you've studied Golden Dawn to no end.

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on why it progressed to be that destructive that fast? Yeah, in researching the history of Golden Dawn Tabernacle, it was a church that started off very small, but did start to go rapidly in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

And there's a couple of things that enabled it. First off, the teachings of William Brannum really enable churches as sovereign churches to have full control over how they run things. And what we observed over time was the pastor, as he got older and older, he became more rigid, more rigid, and implemented stricter and stricter rules.

And he did this under the guise of progressive revelations, saying, well, we, you know, just because my kids went to college, well, we know better now. So your kids can't go to college. They shouldn't go to college.

And so just because my kids played sports back then, well, we know better now. So your kids can't play sports because we know that that's a spirit and that's of the world and we don't do worldly things.

So over time, progressively the church became stricter and stricter and as new children, the new generations are born into the church, they don't know any better. And the older generation are governed by so much fear of the pastor that they don't dare question him publicly because it will get them ostracized and they will get publicly humiliated.

So. Well, yeah, there's a culture of fear, not questioning the higher authorities and the church, which is the pastor and his ministry leadership team. And just, if you start making the rules stricter over time slowly, it makes it gradual enough that the people get used to it and don't have time to speak up about it and challenge it.

Absolutely, I've had people ask me, why don't people just leave? If you're in something that is that awful, that terrible to be under and submit yourself to that level of authority, when you decide that you don't want to submit to that level of authority, why don't you just leave?

And it's not really as simple as leaving because once you're indoctrinated with that fear, when you leave the group, you fear instant and final death. It's a spiritual death. So it's worse to a Christian than an actual death.

You're done forever, basically. And that fear is instilled inside of you, so it's really hard to leave. But more than that, the way that the groups create these strange communities, it's difficult for me to put this into words because the brand-um tabernacle for existence, for its existence, has not had a community that was destructive as what you describe.

However, within the people themselves, they create an internal community where if you need plumbing done, you go to this guy, if you need heating and air, you go to... And so there's this weird community where even though they don't have walls around them, the people are so tightly coupled and tightly integrated that it becomes like a city within a city.

And then when you leave this, you're leaving everything. You're leaving your friends, your family, all of the people who have helped you with whatever it is in life, you're leaving everything. And then to think about the levels of destructiveness that some of the brand-umites have, it goes beyond this to they will actually make it difficult for your family if you were to question or leave.

And so then it becomes almost like the mafia. If you leave, if you do this thing, we will retaliate against not just you, but everyone who you knew and loved, they're going to suffer as well.

Would you say that's the case with Golden Dawn? Absolutely. It is a very retaliatory and punitive environment. A lot of the folks that are in the church today have grown up in the church and don't know anything outside of the church.

They are employed by church members who run their own businesses. They were educated in the church school. They don't really know anyone outside of the church. And so their entire family is in the church.

And so for them to leave the church means they leave all their friends. their family, as well as losing their livelihood because they will most definitely get fired if they leave the church. So it is taking your entire identity, your entire well-being, your livelihood, and completely walking away from it. And for someone to be able to do that, it takes a lot of guts, a lot of courage, and a lot of folks that are still in the church would love to do that, but they just don't, they cannot afford to leave their families, some of them are married into it, and to leave would destroy

their families, would destroy their partners, it would destroy everything. So a lot of folks just suck it up, and they're silently, you know, dealing with it and living in misery, which is really, really sad. One of the things that William Brandham taught was this manifested sons of God theology, which has become very important to the movements that have splintered off of him and formed what we call the New Apostolic Reformation today, all of these weird churches that are mixed with religion and politics. And there's this idea embedded in that doctrine that the Elijah of Malachi 4 was going to return. It actually takes a step back older than William Brandham, you can

date this back to British Israelism, and then through Christian identity, this doctrine was still popular, but it was the idea that Malachi 4, when it's talking about Elijah, it wasn't talking about John the Baptist, as you find from the book of Luke, instead Elijah's coming in the last days.

In Brandhamism, everybody believed that William Brandham was this Elijah, and in the broader movement that was emerging, the Elijah was to be manifested among the leaders of the movement in the five-fold ministry, and there's different variations of how this plays out, but is almost every time had led to a destructive cult of some kind. In many cases, it's actually led to deaths. So this is a very destructive doctrine, but what's really weird about it, in Brandhamism, when it splinteres off of core Brandhamism, there's this idea that Brandham was still the Elijah that was sent, but

I'm the new guy. I'm basically, they'll say something like, I'm the Elisha to Brandham's Elijah, was that the case with the movement you're in? The Gold Thoughts Appenicle Church doesn't explicitly state that Pastor Isaac Nariga is the Elisha to Elijah, which would be William Brandham, but they certainly hold him to that status. The Church, they call their group the called out of the called out, because they are the elite, bright elect, and they are on a higher plane than everyone else, and Pastor Isaac Nariga is likened to biblical figures, both in the two pioneers book, that the Church published, which is a biographer.

the pastor I was going to read that and his wife Lucy they they revere him as a founding pioneer comparing him to Abraham and they compare so they compare him and his wife to Abraham and Sarah and claim that Isaac represents God to the people and that he was supernaturally called to lead the congregation and that when he was dedicated he was dedicated as a child as a lysha by the pastor so you know he he certainly has alludes to to that level of stature and also he he also claimed to have multiple correspondences with William Brannum and had a special

connection with him and claimed special insights that he received from Brannum that he uses those in his teachings and the rules that he implements in the church although he's communists he lost all traces of those letters so you know who knows who he was selling the truth or not one other interesting thing about Isaac Narega is he would occasionally wear a gifted suit coat that was gifted to him that used to belong to William Brannum he would occasionally wear that when he preached church service at Golden Dawn Tabernacle so lots of types lots of types

um they're you know the church is very much in the third pool of ministries so they have you know if you read the book they talk about the first church and the second church now they've built the third church so the third church types the third pool so they're in the final you know final stages before the reactor comes and Isaac is revered so much by the church that to question him is blasphemy if you question him you are uh you have a it's that's a it's a demon it's a evil spirit in you you can't be questioning him and the anointing that he has granted his anointing

at this point in time is essentially just reading William Brannum quotes and Bible verses nonstop he doesn't really preach anymore he just reads quotes nonstop in the church so I don't know how much anointing you can really get from that but that's the how how highly the church reveres and fears him the other interesting part about this doctrine you can go all the way back through history and you can find people that have used this Elijah claim and almost all of them seem to be doing it for money if you look at their entire history in their ministry John Alexander Dowey was definitely

the biggest one I think he's made I think it was ten million dollars in ten years which is like half a million dollars in today's money he made several others they claim to be Elijah people just give them willingly their money did you notice anything odd with the finances um it definitely was a lack of transparency in their finances um the church um help tell the finances very close to their chest, the church treasurer and the pastor, and maybe the trustees had access to the finances.

But the pastor essentially micromanaged who is paying tides or not. And by the way, for those that don't know, 10% tiding is required on your income, and they encourage it to be pre-tax income, not post-tax.

And in some cases, they also require the businesses to tie on their revenue as well. So they get double tiding from some of their church members. And they certainly make a lot of money from those tides.

And it's enforced to the point that Isaac will call people out if they're not paying their tides. And in one instance that I know of, a young man was not paying his tides. And Isaac called his employer, who was also a church member, and asked him why he wasn't paying his tides, or told him he wasn't paying his tides.

So then that church member went and fired that employee because he wasn't paying his tides, because Isaac told him he wasn't paying them. So that's the level of control the church has over finances.

They really want their 10% cut, man, or else you're going to get fired from your job. And as much as Isaac claims he doesn't care about the money, he absolutely cares about the money based on how much he micromanages it and calls people out for not paying tides.

We actually have recordings of Isaac calling other people out because they didn't pay their tides. For many years, you were like a Robin Hood in the midst of this, helping the people under the oppression of the evil Prince John, which was the minister.

And then suddenly after doing all of your research, you became more like a wrecking ball than Robin Hood. Tell us a little bit about how all of that came to be. What made you decide that you were going to dig up all of this research, create the website, blog, and bring the whole thing down?

Yeah, so for your listeners that haven't heard of this, we started a research blog back in November of 2022. I started the blog and I'm the lead researcher. It's called golden don tower knackle dot org.

We call ourselves the GDT research team. And so leading up to that for years, I had walked away from that church thanks to my family leaving. I was still in the message at that time for a few years after leaving eventually, while I was going to college, my eyes were open and I was like, the people, the people in the college ministry, ministry campus teams are actually are more Christian than the people I've known my entire life in the message.

And that's, that was a big eye opening moment for me where I'm like, I don't need to be in the message to be a Christian, to be a good Christian. So that, you know, that was the year's leading, or the year's after leaving Golden Nance Avenue, I go.

But, you know, since that time, I've always had a vested interest in the people in the church, the dealings and going on in the church, always interested in how the church got stricter and stricter over time and listening and hearing about the abuse, control and manipulation that was taking place in the church.

I always kept tabs on things, you know, looked at their public records. Just, you know, I wanted to see what was going on. And in the, around the 2020, 2021, 2022,

there was a large group of folks that left Golden Nance Avenue. And some of those were former friends that I knew very well when I was growing up that I grew up with, that were really good friends.

Some of them were kids that I, you know, my parents and our families were friends. So, you know, I knew a lot of those folks. And I reconnected with a lot of them. And it was really good to reconnect.

And in reconnecting, you know, they started giving me all this new information that I hadn't heard, right? Because they'd come and straight from them. And some of them had been recording sermons and had all additional records and documents.

And I was like, oh my gosh, this is so much good information that the people outside of the church could really benefit from learning about, especially the ex-members of the church. And so I'm like, we should start a blog on this.

So I just started a blog and, you know, started putting some blog posts out there and sharing them with some of the former members. And then they started reading in and they're like, hey, you should write a topic, a story on this, a blog post on this.

And here's some additional information. And it just basically over time turned into this giant grassroots crowdsource movement where folks were coming to me asking to write blog posts. Or they wouldn't even ask. They would like, here's the blog post I wrote about my experience or this thing that happened if you want to use it, that'd be great.

So it started in November of 2022. You know, it was something very casual to, we just wanted to start to just start documenting and putting it out in the public just so we had a place to look it up.

The look of the history of the church and just start investigating and documenting the hidden abuse control and manipulation that took place at that church, along with it's underneath it's the leadership of its pastor Isaac Nariega.

And so that way... It was essentially a passion project of mine, but the intent was an independent journalistic research project and not affiliated with the church, but just something to shine light on the alleged abuses.

I can fully relate to a passion project. It is something you cannot walk away from. And when it's deep inside of you, you have to get it out. And that's much like what you described.

That's similar to the journey I had. And I was having people send me information. I still, some of it I don't yet know what to do with it. I can't document everything. There are some shocking things if you understand what is behind this movement.

It's just a little shocking. What would you say of what people have told you? What was the most shocking thing about Golden Dawn? Well, I'm in a similar boat as you. There have been some shocking revelations and personal experiences and stories that former members have written to me that I can't publish.

It is some dark stuff. As part of this whole research effort, we've been very careful to document what is available publicly and then using testimonies corroborated testimonies for multiple members and fact checking with multiple sources to ensure accuracy as we publish our blog posts.

But there are some stuff that is just on another level that is serious enough that we have and published it because it warrants a professional investigative team to look at. And that's actually, as we'll talk about a bit further in the podcast, that's where we partnered with the different media outlets out there like Arizona Daily Star.

They are professional investigative journalists. And that's where they took things to another level where they actually started investigating things like child sex abuse and sex crimes. Yeah, I didn't mean to push you too far.

I know that there are some things that you obviously can't say but whenever I left Brannemism, honestly, I didn't leave with the intentions of doing any of this. I left basically with the idea that something's not right.

I can't put my finger on it. I called my family up and I told my maternal grandfather who just died two weeks ago. I told him that I was leaving this and that I was still gonna remain a Christian.

I wanted you to know that I'm leaving Brannemism. And I thought it would be like an open door to a conversation. My grandfather, my maternal grandfather was in what I would say would be a very benign church.

And he had a very good outlook. He did not cut off people who weren't part of the group. He had, in fact, some of his best friends were Christians from other denominations. But the moment I said this back in 2000 and I guess it's 2000.

and then twelve. That was the last point at which we ever had a healthy conversation. Usually, he would just avoid the conversations entirely, but fully cut me off. And when it happened, I was shocked because he was my favorite person in the world. He had always been my favorite person in the world. I had no idea he would cut me off. And it was shocking. It took a long time for me to understand that it wasn't really him that was doing that. It was the indoctrination in his head that was causing that. And so I lost, not just him, but I lost pretty well, everyone I

knew and loved overnight. I had no idea that I was going to do that. And so that told me something was bad wrong. What was it like for you? Were there people who left with you or when you left were you isolated and alone and people cut you off? So when my family left, we were fortunate enough to leave with a group of other families that left. So we left together. So I think it was

four or five families, three or four five families that left all at the same time. Just we decided we had had enough of Isaac's authoritarianism. And I'll just once on day didn't show up. And so when you have three to five families not showing up to church and with empty pews where they normally sit, that's a big, big scandal. And so I had several, several current members of the church that were calling me all that Sunday, hey, why aren't you a church? Where are you? Where are you? What happened? And so when we told them, well, we're not going back. We're leaving. We're going to

go to a different church. And they're like, well, can't believe you're doing that. You're such a cop out. You know, you should have just stuck it out. Because you know, the the anointing is real here. And you know, you really shouldn't have left. You should have stayed. Funny enough, some of those folks who told me that years later, like, you know, 15 years later also left the church, which is funny. But yeah, pretty much everyone who actually called that cared, they after that call, they never called me again, never talked to them again, unless other than those folks that

actually ended up leaving eventually. So yeah, if you get completely cut off, they won't even wave to you or acknowledge you when they see you driving by or, you know, walking down the aisle in the grocery store. Most of them won't even acknowledge you. You're completely cut off. And at that point, we hadn't even been excommunicated because we just told the pastor that we were we were going to go to another church. And so he he he he struggled to find cause to excommunicate us.

And so he didn't do it for several years. He eventually found cause to excommunicate us, because it bothered him enough that we had left that several years later. He excommunicated us and took us off of another blood. And we can talk about that a little further out in the podcast.

Excommunication is a really really big deal and is a weaponized control tactic that the church uses to keep its current members in line. One other positive about leading the church with a group of other families is we had each other as a support system, so we're all going through the same thing at the same time. So that was really helpful, so I will say our family was blessed and that we did not have a, you know, completely lose our community overnight. It was more gradual and we had time to rebuild it. So we were very fortunate in that that happened

to us. I know for a lot of folks it's very isolated. The vast majority of folks it's isolated, you're on your own, you feel alone, it is terrifying and I feel for those folks.

And you said one phrase there that I want to highlight because people who aren't familiar with this movement or never in it might miss it, but you said taken out from under the blood. So what this means, if you are a Christian you believe that what Jesus did on the cross was sufficient for all. And he said basically it is finished, for God so loved the whole world that he sent his only begotten son, he died on the cross for our sins and through his blood, through his sacrifice were saved. If you're in one of these movements that

is based off of branemism, there is the idea that the minister has the authority to remove that salvation from you. And what they call it is they take you out from under the blood covering of Jesus Christ. In other words, Jesus had the power to save your soul, but the minister or the evangelist or whoever is the elite in your group has the ability to undo what Christ did for you on the cross 2000 years ago. That is a actual belief. I too, in one of the more benign, I would say the branem tabernacle is a little bit more benign than a lot

more than what you had. Even in that church, even with my own grandfather, he took me out from under the blood. And what's interesting about this is I only had asked a question. I still at the time that I had the question. I still believe that William Brannem was a prophet and I told him this, but because I questioned he did this thing to me, which really interesting is my wife and children had never even spoken to him. He didn't know if they believed or they didn't believe. They were also taken out from under the blood. So I'm going to come down against

you. I'm going to come down against your family. It literally is the mob, but in religion. It really is. And taking someone out from under the blood, I go to the tabernacle is both deeply, deeply punitive to the member that's been taken out from under the blood and to the family of that member. Once you're taken out from under the blood, your family in the church is no longer allowed to talk to you.

that you are cut off. They cast you over to Satan. That's literally what they say in when they take out from the blood. They cast you over to Satan in the hopes that you will come crawling back. That's the goal. And so they cut you off from everything that they can cut you off from. And if you as a current member of the church are caught talking to someone that's taken out from under the blood, you can get punished with additional punitive down punishments like not allowing you to take communion, publicly humiliating you, taking away any privileges you may have within the church. It is a big deal. People

are terrified of talking to someone that's been taken out from under the blood. The words that my grandfather used were taken out from under the blood for the destruction of your flesh. So what it is essentially if you understand the pagan religions or some of the voodoo religions, it is literally I'm going to put a curse on your head and you're going to go suffer and die because I have done this thing. I've taken you out from under the blood of Jesus. Now Satan can come and attack you and you will die. That's literally what's being said. And to the adults, they're kind of like, I remember when you said it

to me, I was like, yeah, it doesn't really do that much. I don't think he can undo what Jesus did on the cross. But to the children, that's where really the psychological damage comes to the children because they hear this kind of thing and they're like, oh my gosh, this guy can do this guy can kill me. He can kill me with his words. He's like the evil sorcerers. And that's essentially what it is. It is a type of sorcery. They're placing a curse or a hex on you. So when I left and I had the hex, I looked at my wife and I

could tell she was upset and I said, you know, it's no different than if he were to stand outside of her house and spray our house with a water hose. Yes, I don't want him to do it, but it doesn't really hurt us. We're protected by the house. And at that time, a lot of thoughts are going through my head. But the thing that I kept going back to is no minister, no human can undo what Jesus did. And if they say that they can, I have a really strong question where they even Christian to begin with. Right. Right. I'll give you a story, a very

tragic story of how hardcore and how seriously they take X communication. There was a young boy in the church, either a teenager or early 20s, I forget. But you know, he was already an adult, but he had left the church, was excommunicated. And he got into drugs and got into with some really bad company. And he ended up overdosing on drugs and ended up...

passing away. He had had runs with a lie. It basically was the classic. This is what happens if you are taking it out from another blood. That's what they want. They want, they usually tell everybody that you're going to go out and become a drug addict and then overdose and die. This is why you know, you need to stay in the church. He actually did all that and he is self-fulfilling prophecy there sadly, but even after his death, his parents in the church refused to go pick up the body and bury it. That is how just tragic. It's

so tragic. I have no words for it. It's so sad. They wouldn't even pick up the body of their own son to bury him. It took some other friends of that young boy who passed away.

Other friends that were also former members of the church. They had to go pick up the body. They had to go identify it and they had to do the burial. Your own flesh and blood. They won't even come and pay their last respects. It's just tragic. They do that because the pastor told them not to. That is the grip of control that that church has. They cause so many heartbreaking moments and it's like, I don't know how those parents can live with themselves to turn away from their own flesh and blood or even when they're dead.

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So recently there was a flurry of news and the investigative reporters, I guess they worked for over a year trying to figure out what is this mess and I spoke to them personally there was a point at which they began their journey and they were trying to understand the cult and suddenly came in contact with all of the research about William-Branham and realized that no, this is not a two week or three week or even two month or three month investigation.

a big mess. And it seems, you know, according to their investigation, they were finding a lot of trails and paths of randomisms connection to destructive colds. And then the climax of this obviously was the bringing down of the pastor who apparently allegedly, I think currently is the status, allegedly was enabling the predators and the trial, the jury will figure out whether that's alleged or not. But going through that process, there was a lot of information coming out, building up to where we are now. Can you talk about any of that, the investigation, your part in it?

Yeah, absolutely. So as the blog started taking off, and as we started to publish more blog articles, which by the way, in November of 2023, we published a blog post every single week, like one a week, non-stop. So as we would publish them, I would send them to like a list of 20 reporters that I had local reporters here in Tucson, Arizona. I would send them the blog articles.

Say, hey, if you're interested, reach out and we can give you more information. And so after sending a few of those for a few weeks, no one would respond, except for Tim Stellar from the arrows on to the star. He finally responded. He's like, I'm really interested in this. Let's meet up. So that was in early 2023. A few of us met up with him and gave him pretty much the lowdown of Golden Non-Tower Nackle, everything that we had experienced there. And we connected it to William Brannum and the overall message movement. And he's like, whoa, he's like, I've heard of the message.

I've heard of William Brannum. I want to look into that further. And so he started digging into it and he had to get his editor on board and get the newspaper on board with doing an investigative series on this. So I kept sending them stuff over time. I'm like, here's more info. I'm just going to continue to provide you information on Golden Don. My goal was expose Golden Don if you want to uncover more stuff. I gave him your information. Here's John Collins. Here's plenty of other folks you can go talk to. It's summer of 2023. Around August, we met up again. I got

to meet with Tim and the daily star editor, David McComber. And they decided to put together a team to in partnership with their parent company, Lee Enterprise's to pursue a formal investigative series on the message and on Golden Don. So in October 2023, that's when I actually got to meet the team. The primary reporters on this were Tim Stellar and Emily Hamer. And that's when they kicked off the investigation. And yeah, they spent over a year. And instigating Golden Dawn Tabernacle and then, you know, on a grander scale, the overall message movement. And that all culminated in November 24 when they published their weeklong series called Twisted Faith, where they covered multiple stories.

Oh, they had over 50 interviews that they did. With former Golden Dawn Tabernacle members, former message members and current message members and believers and pastors. And so it was, that was crazy. Like, that was, that was, I had never in my wildest dreams at it.

Was I expecting that? I just wanted some simple local coverage of Golden Dawn Tabernacle to, you know, put some publicity out there about them just to get it out into the public. And it went nationwide, which was amazing and is just goes to show if you have some persistence and you're willing to put some time and effort into, you know, doing a blog and partnering with, you know, talking to media to the media, you can actually make a difference.

And that's what I think we're doing is the getting this out there, getting the word out there. It was, it was amazing how many more people decided to come forward because of that. It basically started a, you know, small, me too, movement of folks that are like, oh, I was abused too. Or this happened to me. I want to come forward and share my story.

And it just started, it just built up momentum. And I think having all of those victims that were silenced for years, the abuse they endured, having them come forward, it is finally starting to shed some light and accountability on some of those authority figures within these high control churches that have done so much damage to so many families.

Well, like I said, you started out like a Robin Hood and came in like a wrecking ball. So it's quite a, quite a story when you think through it. What, what were the obstacles you faced? Did you face any legal challenges during all of this?

Yeah. So glad you mentioned that because yes, as we kicked off the blog and as it started to pick up momentum. And it started to pretty much go viral in early 2023. In May of 2023, we actually had a takedown attempt of our website that was done by Golden Dawn Tabernacles leadership team. They actually filed a trademark complaint with WordPress saying that we infringed on their trademark and they requested that this website be taken down.

and they actually hired a lawyer to do it too, which just goes to show how upset they were by the website. I think they were also upset that we took the domain name GoldenDontabranackle.org, because GoldenDontabranackle is the name of the church, but hey, the domain was available, it's free.

They actually don't have a trademark. They have a DBA, affidavit, a doing business as GoldenDontabranackle filing, and they have with the county. And in researching that, we actually discovered that. They filed it as a pasteurizing ryega as a sole proprietor of the church, which was pretty ironic, because it's supposed to be a church that is run by, it's duly elected trustees, and it really is not.

It's run by one man. But basically the WordPress denied their request, and said, no, you have no validity in your claim. We're not taking down the site. There's no trademark infringement at all, which there wasn't.

We're a public research blog that is just documenting the truth, and there's no trademark infringement at all about what we're doing, what we're doing is practicing our First Amendment rights, and practicing free speech, and we're very careful to ensure that we're writing what is true.

If you write what's true, you can't be sued for defamation or libel, because it's true. And so that's what we do on our site. And it definitely affected the church leadership. They were very upset with it, and with lambasted from the pulpit multiple times.

But the irony of that is that it actually caused us to get more traffic, because the church members themselves started looking at the website too. So it's funny when you start talking about something, you say, oh, don't look at that website.

What are people going to do? They're going to go look at that website. And so that's what happened. So the current approach the church uses is now, they don't even bring it up, they don't talk about it, they don't mention it, because it actually backfired them massively.

I remember watching all of that unfold. I had several friends across the nation who started helping whenever I began what I did, and the community started growing. And originally I had it on a different website, a different YouTube channel, all of this.

Like you, the cult attacked it legally, they actually brought down my YouTube channel. And I've had to rebuild all of that in the last, I guess it's been two years of been rebuilding. But they will attack you to try to silence you.

They, rather than, rather than try to do the right thing, they just want to shut off the voices that question the problems. And that's a big deal for me. And anytime somebody wants to silence me, I want to figure out why are they silencing me.

And everybody in the congregation has the same mindset. So whenever the ministers would mention my side or my videos, I would watch somebody would send me. a clip of a sermon where a minister does this. I would watch the analytics on the podcast, the traffic, all of this, just shoot through the roof because everybody's curious. What is John going to say next? And people were starting to escape because of this. They had no idea what it was they were in. And concepts like, I don't know if Noriega really went deep with this, but I know Brannum did, the five-fold ministry doctrine, big on the five-fold

ministry doctrine, yet not a single church in the entire organization or any of the splinter groups that built on top of it have a five-fold ministry. It's a one-fold ministry where you've got a kingpin who's acting like a mob boss to his entire congregation. There are no other four. It's usually one guy and he's going to be your dictator. So whenever all of this started to hit and the information was spreading, you're right, the people wanted to know more. They wanted to be more informed of what it was they were in. And they started to think about what it was that they were in. Sadly, some people stayed, but a lot of

people, one person said, we're seeing the videos at the church and there's like a 40% drop at this church just because they came in contact with the critical information. So I'm assuming the same thing happened to you. Did you get a lot of positive feedback when they were started to watch all of this?

Yeah. So we've had over 1,400 comments on our site from our readers. A lot of them are former members. You know, there's some comments in there that are, you know, they're pro, pro Golden Dawn, but the vast majority of them, I would say 99% of them are former members that are like just sharing their stories that are really happy we're doing the site.

They were doing the blog blog posts and just sharing their experience. So over 1,400 comments like that, that is a lot of engagement with folks that actually cared enough to comment and share their story, share their perspective. You know, we're no, our site's nothing crazy. Like I'm sure you probably have millions, but we, we have several hundred thousand page views and over 54,000 unique visitors to the, to the blog site, which for us is pretty crazy because we're just talking about a local church in Tucson, Arizona that has roughly a pop, you know, membership population of about five to 600 people. And you have

that many people, 54,000 unique visitors that are interested enough in this church to visit our site from all over the world that might add. And, and I know a lot of them are folks in the message because a lot of the message people are very familiar with Golden Dawn's tower and I go, and it's extremism. And so there's a lot of vested interest within the message community on the going zones of that church. And the, I think part of it is they're, they're wanting to understand how bad it is. It's, it's gotten because a lot

of them used to fellowship with the church and they don't anymore because they got cut off or they had disagreements with the pastor. So It's definitely been really fascinating to see the level of engagement we've seen in site traffic, given that we're just talking about a very isolated, well, isolated in the sense that it's one, that's all we're focusing on on the blog is there's one church here just on Arizona.

It's incredible. The amount of people who have been contacting me and discussing it is just, it's unbelievable. You're right. It is one small church, but it is a movement within a larger movement. Let's talk about that a bit.

What would you say after you've now left and you've been able to start deprogramming and you're on your journey away from this? What would you say would be the key differences between what this movement had and what Christianity is?

So within, at least I go with a non-tavernacle, even once you were baptized in the church and you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, your salvation was never fully guaranteed. Your self-worth was questioned relentlessly and since it's such a legalistic church, it churched you to very, very ferocetical, so it's basically a bunch of Pharisees and so your salvation would be questioned every week, oh, you didn't get here early enough this week to pray.

I don't see you praying in fasting anymore, so you're not really getting deep with the word anymore. So, challenging how close you were to the word and by being in the word, it's having these acts of piety where you look like you're super into studying the Bible and praying and fasting, a lot of public acts and any time you would question anything that the church did or ask any questions or think for yourself or do anything where you broke a rule.

Your salvation was questioned. It was a constant challenge of your self-worth and the reality is in that church, you had no self-worth if you were not fully immersed and aligned with what the pastor was preaching and if you didn't have those public acts of piety showing you were holier than everyone else.

And essentially is a competition between church members to see who can act the holiest and most pious and look like you are really into the word because that's how you're going to get saved and that's how you're going to go on the rapture.

And the pastor teaches that the bright elect is very small and most message churches don't have it because they're all too busy having summer camps for youth camps for their kids and playing sports and all these worldly things and they're not deep into the word enough.

So they're not getting the revelation and they're not gonna go on the rapture. So that's kind of how the church thinks and acts is they look down on the vast majority of other message churches as, oh, they're just trying to please the flesh.

That's another big phrase they use. Oh, they're pleasing the flesh by having their youth play basketball after church. Can you believe the audacity of playing basketball after church in the church parking lot? Oh my goodness.

You know, they're definitely not in the word because if you were in the word, you would go home after church and pray and read some more messages. I'm laughing because I'm thinking through all of the crazy rules.

And for me, my family, we migrated a lot. So I went from churches from Arizona to South Carolina everywhere in between. And keeping up with the rules, man. It was so difficult because you got a one church and they don't let you play basketball.

You got another church. Boys and girls can't ride together in the same car. I mean, there was just some weird, weird things. Some of them, I've got to compile it on my list. You can type in rules on the website.

And you can see some of the weird things that Brandon spat out as far as what he thought was evil. And it's everything from wearing squid shoes to dishwashers. I don't know what all it is.

It's crazy. And yet at the same time, not every church is the same. And some of them proceed into more destructive legalism than others. But yet, all of them have the same foundation. Branem is their foundation.

They just have different varying levels of extremism. You've talked to many people who were in the core of Branemism at this point. What would you say would be similarities between Golden Dawn, the very destructive cult?

And what is considered main core Branemism? Anything that was a rule by William Branem, the church will follow it. But then they take it to the next level. And there's a simple rule, the church has which does not allow open-toed shoes and sandals for women, because women should not be showing their toes.

Men must shave. We think this is an apostolic teaching that Isaac and Riega brought with him because he came from the apostolic movement. And so you have to be clean shaven. Every Sunday, you cannot have a beard or a mustache yet.

The Isaac and Riega claim that William Branem wrote him several letters during their correspondence period before William Branem died. And he told them that mustaches are for suspicious men. And men should be wearing wedding rings.

Wedding rings are for women only, not for men. So silly things like that, that he pushed onto the congregation. So what do a lot of the ex-members do once they leave the church? They grow a beard.

Because they never were able to have one, their entire lives growing up, it's silly, you know, harmless thing, things like that, it's like, what's wrong with growing a beard? Like, there's nothing, I mean, bivouly, there's even nothing wrong with it, but just, you know, silly, legalistic rules like that, that the church brings with them, everything is all about outward appearance and appearing holy, so, you know, the men come with their best suits and ties, every single service, you're not, you probably won't be letting the church of you were jeans or a short sleeve shirt. Women are, try to appear as pious as possible

with very, very long skirts down to the floor, wearing flats and loose fitting clothes so that, you know, they don't, they're not top showing any, any, any part of their body. So it's, it's, it's pretty, I would say the similarities are probably closer to other religions out there that, you know, we're like in Islam where they make you cover your, your face and your hair. It's, it's pretty close to that extreme given the, how strict they are. I'll never forget my surprise when I saw a photograph of William Brannum, one with a beard and one with a mustache and the mustache wasn't just any mustache. He looked

like a, you know, two-bit swindler. It was that kind of mustache. It was just shocking to me because that was, that was one that was different between the different churches. There were people at Brannum Tabernacle who had beards, but there were other churches that we attended you could not because it was one of his rants. He would rant about the beards and you're right.

It isn't in the Bible. How, how can they even push that as an agenda? But then I started going through that list of rules. Well, almost all of them aren't in the Bible. The earrings, for example, women are not allowed to wear earrings in the movement. And yet an Ezekiel, I think it's 16. God adorns his bride with earring and a nose ring. And I was thinking at the time I saw that what would happen if a woman were to walk in the church with a nose ring? They'd probably rip it out of her nose. That's how these people are.

Yeah. One other dissimilarity between Golden Non-Tabernacle and most message churches is women are not allowed to wear jewelry at all. So in, you know, most message churches, you'll see folks, you'll see women wearing a necklace, you know, that was permitted to for her to wear it by her husband or, you know, by her father. That's completely forbidden at Golden Non-Tabernacle. Yeah. There's just so much wrong with it. It basically becomes a religion. As we said earlier, it's a religion that diminishes the work that Jesus did on the cross. The minister has more powerful than Jesus blood.

He can pull it off of you. The people have more power than Jesus blood. If they wear the right clothes, do the right things, there's one even weird doctrine where you can say the right thing, then you can, and you can earn your salvation by just being in a family.

My family was given the blessing by William Brannum. He told my grandfather, all your children and your grandchildren will be saved. Well, what does this do to a person, man? Because now you got, it's like to get out of jail free card in Monopoly.

You've got a free pass to heaven. And it's just so opposite from Christianity. I think people who are on the outside looking in have no idea what this is. They see people who are living very, what they consider to be holy lifestyles and have no idea the indoctrination that is so far anti-Christian in their heads.

Yeah, it's definitely tragic. And unfortunately, a lot of these folks are just, like you said, are brainwashed and don't know any better. And they sincerely believe what they believe. And there are some really good people that I know they're strapped in it and they're trapped in it by choice because they don't realize that they're being controlled and they're brainwashed.

But there is, I feel for them because it's one thing if you're an adult and you've been in it for decades and that's all you only want to say in it. But the children, the kids, the youth have, they have no way to decide for themselves.

They are, it's being pushed on them and that's all they know. And it's intentional by the church ministry because they don't want the youth questioning and asking questions and thinking for themselves. They want them to just swallow the word that the pastor breaches because it's anointed and that's all they need to know.

Absolutely. Well, tell us where we can find you on the internet, on the web, do you have videos? People are listening, I'm sure they're gonna be curious. Yeah, you can find us at goldendontavernacle.org and within that site, we have a whole bunch of resources.

We even published some of the church literature as well. There's an interesting book that was released in 2023. By the church, it's a biography of Pastor Isaac Noriega and his wife, Lucy. It's a very interesting book in that it gives you the story of the life story of Isaac and how he came to be a pastor and the history of the church from his perspective.

And there's a lot of really interesting tidbits in that book. So I highly recommend folks go check it out on the website. If they want to read it, it's on one of the links on the site.

We also have a section in there for how to escape golden nottavernacle and that could really apply to any high control cult group. and our goal with the site is to not only inform folks, but also do what we can to help folks escape if they site to leave these types of environments.

It's very good and very good work that you're doing. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on, John. It's been a pleasure to share our journey and, you know, in closing the, if I want folks to come away with it, I mean, it's that, you know, shining a light and dark places can make a positive impact.

And for the folks on the other side, if they really have nothing to hide, then they shouldn't need to fight it, right? There's no reason to push back on it. So I'm really honored to be on your podcast today, John.

And I want to thank all of the viewers and readers that have followed the blog site, all the blog post team who's helped write so many of the blog articles and the overall community that's just been really supportive and helping us document all of our findings.

Well, thank you so much. 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-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weapon Eyes Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.