When Charismania Replaces Compassion: The Cost to the Hurting

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Blue William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Branum.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Christian Thomason, the host of Sanctum Artifact. Christian it's good to be back and just to let you know and to make your head swell just a little bit we got so many people asking for more and more of Christian. I don't know if you watched it in the comment feeds but people keep saying bring him back bring him back and maybe because for my strange

German accent maybe I don't know like I too I am just mesmerized by the accent and I'm thinking the same thing I won't I want more bring him back but more than that the subject matter like the perspective you're giving it's talking about the subjects that we have here in the United States but it's from another viewpoint into it and I think really that's what is attracting people because they have they've looked at this box and they've looked at the front side of it and they can see and feel something's just not right here but all they see is

this one side of it and then you're looking in from the right side and I have other friends from the UK they're looking in from the left side and some people from the back each way you look into it if you only look from your own perspective you look at it and you think something's just not right here but now combine all of those perspectives and something surely is not right here Christianity is it's a I don't know if you have this phrase in Germany been here in the United States we say this is a dumpster fire it means basically

this is where you put your trash and somebody said it on fire and it's it's a stinky mess that's you know that's what it has turned into and you and I were talking about music before this and just to clear the air I'm going to say it and I'll make everybody offended whenever I left when I left the brand I'm called which played mostly the old hymns because they were stuck forever in the 1950s mindset so they're wearing them 50s clothes the 50s music is being played and I remember somebody coming into church playing the new

music and we were all like what is that we don't like that's not holy that's that's not good music man and we couldn't put a finger on what was wrong but you and I were just discussing Christian music today if you are a musician it's terrible it is absolutely terrible and to tie this to what we're going to be talking about today.

I'm a musician, I'm a songwriter. I actually have not toyed with songwriting in several years now, but as I was leaving the random cult, there was this constant theme. I've mentioned this before on the podcast.

I kept in my songs that would come out and they were coming one per day to per day, so many I did not even write them all down. The themes were such as things like this.

Why are we preaching to the saved? Should we not be preaching to the lost? Meaning we're preaching sermons that are designed for people who are already Christian and nobody is appealing to the people who aren't Christian.

That was one of the themes that kept going through my head constantly. In fact, as I was transitioning out of the cult and into mainstream churches, it was something that I was greatly offended by because one of the churches we first attended after leaving, the sermons were offensive if you were not a Christian.

I say that not as a person who wasn't. When I was going through this, I was putting myself into the position of somebody who was new to Christianity so I could learn more. I was listening to just derogatory statements about somebody who did not believe in the same way that the church did.

I realized that this is not a good thing. This is not the way that Christians should behave. I think there is a biblical standpoint from which you can develop a view to say that there are different target groups or different levels of education.

I think Paul would say quite briefly different levels of maturity, like the example with Brad and milk. If you do that, you have to be careful to drive it to a point where it becomes a stupid marketing driven church.

You see a sensitive, that's an American term. You see a sensitive church. That's the problem that can develop from there. I have a very personal view on this because after I disconnected from my charismatic environment, I was sad about the things that happened, the relationships, the mistakes I made in those relationships.

I asked myself, why is there no program for Christians that just start? Just at the start. of the journey, that you don't need to tell those persons start to memorize verses, start to memorize scripture, read the Bible. No, these people need more like conceptual education.

The concept of a world view, what is a world view? Your entire thinking about yourself, your identity, your personality in the world, in a worldly environment, is mixed up of many different concepts. You go to a yoga class, you enjoy ballet, you enjoy classic, let's say rock music and rap music and all of those, all of those are mediums and all of those mediums, translate, transport, world views and concepts of thinking in them about life, death, worth of life, love, truth, yeah, those are concepts if they are not filled with a biblical kind of view. So the first thing I thought that a new Christian has to learn is to develop a

biblical world view, to measure everything around you and everything you think for yourself, your old thinking, your old self, by a biblical world view. And that's the hardest part, it's not hard to memorize verses and quote scripture, but to develop a biblical world view that's quite more complex than that. Absolutely. And I'm going to make another offensive statement as a person who has experienced this, becoming, I consider my past as I was a brand-amidic, I consider this not a Christian. And yes, we did preach about Jesus Christ, we talked about Jesus Christ, but just simply using the name Jesus Christ doesn't mean your Christian. There are

like you said, world view, but there's a set of behaviors. So in brand-amism, it was much like the religions that we, the denominations of faith that we attended afterwards that were mainstream in that I mentioned they were preaching against people who were unsaved.

Okay, that's that's quite contrary to Christianity. Why would I, this is my number one target group, people are not saved. Absolutely. Absolutely. I just had this conversation with Lord Lynn, but what happened in Americanized Christianity? It merged with politics. And if you watch how politics work, politicians, they don't want people to vote for the other side. So they start talking heavily about the other party.

In some cases, in fact, the local, I shut it off when I see the local news and they bring up politicians. It's actually more negative about the other person than it is positive about the person promoting themselves.

And so I attended services where, for example, one of the themes was the Pentecostal dress style. I got to thinking towards the end of my time in the cult, this man is preaching against women who are not wearing the Pentecostal dress attire.

Like a scarf, headscarf? Not really the scarf, but so in Pentecostalism in America, I don't know if it's the same way in Germany, they have trained the people to believe that the flesh that God gave them, the skin is evil.

And that if men look at the skin, the skin is evil. So, and especially if you're female, you can't look at female skin. So they have the long flowing dresses, the long, some groups, even you can't show the arms.

You have the long sleeves. Other groups are more progressive. You can show a part of the arm in the Brannum cults. It had progressed to where you could not show even your ankles or your shoulders.

So the women had to have all of this fabric. So we were hearing these sermons where the women, they hear this thing and they go, oh my gosh, I'm naked in front of the men.

So they start changing their clothing styles. Well, you look around the congregation. There's not a single female who is violating this rule, but the minister is just preaching against it Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

And it becomes so repetitive, much like the music discussion we had where you're hearing the same thing and you're not actually preaching to the people who are in your group, you're preaching at the people who aren't dressed in the way that you believe is the correct godly way.

And in fact, you're preaching in a very offensive way. If a new convert were to come into the building who is showing part of their ankles and you hear my grandfather would say, they're wearing scandalous skirts.

They're showing their ankles. Basically, it was a hint that they were prostituting themselves is what my grandfather was doing. Yeah, sure. So you have somebody who's new Christian come out on the streets. Well, they've never heard that their ankles are prostitution.

This is just not the way people think. So you're preaching at somebody else. I left the Brannum cult and it was much the same way in modern Christianity in America, not every sermon. Some of them were grace-filled good sermons.

I'm not going to lie. But then they would mix this with the theme that if you don't do as we do, speak as we speak, sometimes dress as we dress, you are offensive to me and I will condemn you from the pulpit.

That was a theme that is common among many of the churches. So, as I'm trying to balance what is Christianity, what is the world view of Christian should have, and I'm reading things where Jesus is sitting with the prostitutes and the tax collectors, which this was very offensive in that day if you understand the culture. He's sitting with the people, the outcast, that nobody... Yeah, the most lowly.

The ones nobody else wants. He's sitting with the people nobody wants, and he's not offending them, or they would all leave, because why would they sit there? So, I'm learning that Americanized Christianity has mixed with this political aspect of denounce your enemy, because if you do, it makes the ones who are with you stick with you all the more.

Yeah, let's take the example with the Pharisees. Jesus wasn't attacking the person in particular, but their wrong view of God. So, he's attacking their wrong concept of God, their wrong worldview. And when you were talking about symptoms of bad Christianity, like the wrong closing, too much skin is shown, etc. P.P. Then a guy like me who's a bit more major in his Christianity is a medium to think, okay, that's a concept of dualism, like good and bad, like and white.

A concept of dualism stems from a gnostic worldview. So, there's a gnosticism in it already, but to develop those kind of cascades and thinking you have to have a mature worldview, and you must be able to make a difference between a strict biblical worldview and a gnostic worldview, atheistic worldviews, you name it, the accountous worldviews out there. That's a huge problem.

Very interesting for me is that this energy of scandalism that drives many people when they're watching TV or when they're gossiping in their everyday chat with their friends. I can make a good example because there's a huge outrage here in Germany right now because Trump wasn't allowing Israel to take the Gaza Strip. I don't know if you saw it. So, he wasn't allowing Israel to take so all the Germans that were former pro-Trumpers were like, oh, he's evil. He never did what he saw.

So, I'm always like, guys, he is not a Christian. Why are you thinking he must show Christian behavior? He's not a Christian. We can't expect, yeah, expect us to ride well. Why are you expecting Christian behavior from non-Christian persons? Yes, okay, he believes in the concept of God and he shows himself with some evangelistic person.

But that doesn't mean he's Christian, and in first and foremost, he's a politician, and that's what he does. So he brings everyone to a table, he makes an offer to the, let's say, Islamic groups, and now he wants to make another offer to him.

So that's how politics work, and people are demonizing him for his standpoints, but he's a politician, he's not a Christian. He doesn't owe you any Christian values, so people are, yeah, I have this illusion of moral behavior from persons that are not Christian.

And even in a, let's say Christian society as a whole, there are a lot of people who show good behavior, but not because they want to show this behavior, but because they are restrained by the society, if they don't show this kind of behavior, they can't take part in society.

So society itself is restraining those evil persons, not because they are not evil, they are evil, and they are just pretending to be morally good to reach their goals. So another kind of thinking concept, you have to apply when you are thinking about why people behave the way they are.

You said so much there that really wants me to, makes me want to open up, because this is a feeling that I've had. The world view of Christianity today, especially in America, is such that it is become so offensive if you're non-Christian, that you start despising the world view of the Christians.

And what I mean by this is, it has developed into a way where the Christians have taught, they've been taught basically to hate anything that is not of them, anything that is not Christian.

But they've been taught subtly, they use the words, love your enemies, love, you know, don't hate the center, hate the sin, they've used these terms. But whenever it is applied, they're not applying it in the way that they're using those correct terms.

They often will despise somebody who has rejected or does not believe what they believe, and in fact in some cases they just outright scorn very publicly. That mindset, that world view, that it's us versus them, has embedded itself deep into American Christianity.

In so much that whenever people ask me, are you a Christian, the very first thought that comes into my head is, oh my gosh, now they've asked me the question, I have to quickly determine, are they a Christian?

And then I have to determine, okay, what breed of Christian are these people? Are they the breed who despises the people who are not of them? Because if they're using the word Christian like this, I want to say no, I'm not like you.

If there's the ones who loves, basically it comes down to this. You are a Christian if you are a follower of the words of Jesus. If you are a follower of the political mindset that has entered in Christianity, in my opinion, you're not a Christian, but, sadly, it has the Christian label.

So now you're thinking, well, there are two types of Christians. There are those who are the followers of the words of Jesus who would love the sinners that down with the prostitute. Then there are those who would never let somebody like this, who they despise, come into the church.

I've been in churches where people were just ejected from the church because of the way that they dressed or behaved or even who they were. So the question comes, are you a Christian? And I have to second guess what type of Christian are they?

And it comes down to exactly what you said. It is dualism. They see themselves in like the universal fight between good and bad, between the light and the dark. Right? Absolutely. I was fascinated with the ancient mythologies when I left the religion we came from because I was still in that mindset that it can only be good or evil.

There is no in between. And if it was not Christian, it must be this demonic thing that's developing. And so I was in this world of angels or demons, dualism, exactly like you're saying.

And as I'm starting to study what is the pagan religions, how they believe, how they thought, you have Thor and Loki and you have the good versus in its primary, good, primary evil, right?

There is not in many of the ancient cultures. There was not a consideration for the areas in between. And then I entered into new Christian modern Christianity and I'm seeing the same thing. It's literally an us versus them mentality.

And that's basically basically all of them are interchangeable because there are false dilemmas in their ascents, there are false dilemmas. So it's not the question, is it good or bad? Is it light or dark or is it left or right?

Yeah, Democrat or Republican. The question is, is it biblical or not? And even then, even then, if you apply biblical standards to your life, you will always be shaytan. You can't reach the glory of God.

That's because you need Christ. So the real Christian is like some kind of idealist who wakes up in the morning, let's say, I want to follow Christ. And it's certain in the evening because he couldn't hold up to those standards.

He is aware of that. But despite the consciousness of I can't meet God's standard, he's trying every day. And has a conscious for those person's outside of Christianity for them, it's even and harder to reach those standards.

So being a Christian is not only about knowing what is in those terms right or wrong, but knowing you can't be a perfect person, so don't expect other persons to be perfect when even you as a Christian can't reach those standards.

What I am seeing, the people have been manipulated to even view the Bible and their religion in this very black or white way. You said, you said, go to the Bible. Well, that's really good if you understand what that means.

And sadly, a lot of people don't. They go to the Bible as though it is an on or off switch. And what I mean by this is, and you can see actually this in the comment feeds, they will say things like, I'll have a guest, for example, and they'll talk about their church.

And they say in our church, we do this ceremony thing as our tradition. And it's something simplistic. Maybe it's a candle, I don't know what it is, but you watch the people in the feed say, where is that in the Bible?

That's not in the Bible. And they have no idea that most of the things that they do in their church also isn't in the Bible, but they've been taught to denounce anything that does not match what they believe.

And so they will say things like this. At a high level, you will find the onus Pentecostals will say this about the Trinity. Show us the word Trinity in the Bible. And they don't take the reverse of that.

We'll show us the word onus in the Bible. The words aren't there. You have to understand concepts, but they've been programmed one or the other. It can't be a situation where you realize that if I understand the basic concepts of love one another, reach out a hand to those who are fallen, pick them up, and by that I don't mean restore these apostles who were sexual predators.

That's not what I mean at all. But there are people who struggle with sins that they need lifted up. And maybe they don't get put into a position of authority, but they're a sinner and Jesus came to love the sinner.

You help those who are in need of help. But they've been taught with this very political mindset where you can't even do this because if you do, the people in your church who have been trained to denounce anybody who's not of their ideology will actually denounce the member who reaches out to helping hand.

Yeah, because he's the one with the sinners, right? He's in a wrong environment. Yeah.

When Jesus said, I don't know how to say it in English, Libre d'Annext and Vidi Saves, love your neighbor as yourself. Is that right? That's right. There's a premise in that you have to become of yourself and how you want to be loved. That's the reality of love for you. So God will not judge you for a love or a way of love, you don't know or a way to behave, you don't know. So there is like Paul makes distinctions between maturity. It's built within those saying from Jesus.

So, but if you are upholding a standard of love that you want to receive, you have to be the one that's giving this kind of love to other persons. And you have to be able to understand, oh, interesting. That's how I want to be loved. Maybe other people do want to be loved like this as well.

So there's again a kind of maturity. Just stop for a second. Think about what you're doing here or if you are judging. I'm not talking about discernment. That's another category. But think about yourself before you judge other persons, because they don't meet your highest standard of Christianity, whatever that means. There's a saying in America, I don't know if you have the same, but basically it says you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar. And it means that you attract people with something that is sweet and enticing rather than something that is

bitter to the taste. And sadly, the Christianity as some of the churches that I have experienced in modern mainstream Christianity have projected is this idea that if you are with us, you get all of the honey. But if you're not with us, we're going to give you nothing but vinegar.

So again, that's tribalism in its purest form. Absolutely. And again, as I was leaving the call mindset, and I'm reading the Bible over and over trying to wash all of this out of my head, I'm entering into new churches. And I'm watching very closely paying attention to when I'm reading the things that specifically Jesus said, because you can take all of the rest of the words of the apostles. They're very important, but they also are the words of a man, a human. And so there's a human perspective. And you find situations like Paul and Barnabas where they're actually at odds with

each other, right? Because of the human perspective. So what I started to realize is the churches, and especially those who teach that they have an apostle, the apostles will fight with each other, much like Paul and Barnabas. And they will basically teach the people that they need to also fight against the other guy, because it's enough.

versus them mentality. When Jesus would, if you follow the words and teachings of Jesus, Jesus would come and say, no, let's all be together in love. And there's a better way, let me show you the better way.

And people are just missing the better way. Instead, they want to give the vinegar to those who are not of their same opinion. Yeah, interestingly, this, the phrase, but I show you the better way, that's the ending of 1 Corinthians 12.

Yes. 1 Corinthians 13. And the, like, when you're, it's so interesting, that's like his ending verse, when he's explaining all of this carismania stuff. And then he's like, let's set it aside. There are so much, there are things that are much more important than this.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

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

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

Let's go back to your example of the women showing their skin. So if that's my preaching in the congregation, I'm missing the point because there is a time and a place for such conversations, even within my own family, where my daughters are not well-behaved or they are not well-dressing, I will tell them that.

But the time and place is not the congregation, if it's not a bigger problem of the congregation itself. Let's take Woody Borkham, for example. He died just a few days ago. And he was a strong, he was always describing this tension between, if you are attracting the wolves into your congregation, you are basically starving your sheep.

If you are doing all the circles, etc., you will starve your sheep, you will attract the wolves and then you have no congregation. There's nobody of Christ left because the sheep will leave the church.

Last discussion we had this, we wanted to make this at which point you can't say this is a healthy person anymore or at which point can you say this is not a healthy Christian anymore.

So what are the characterizations of that? And the same goes for a congregation. If your congregation is all about those symptoms like your clothes, your outward behavior, etc. then there may be something wrong.

If it's always this high criticism, high idealism, high standards that no one can meet and there's no grace, no love, no forgiveness, no room for being an authentic human being in all of his brokenness.

For me it was this simple. I was trying to learn what does it mean to be a Christian. And they did have at least one of the churches that I attended early. They did have these classes you could attend and it was basic Christianity.

What is the gospel? What does it mean? I did learn some things from this. But what I'm finding is it has become more of a tradition. What does it mean to be a Christian?

Here's the book. Here's the thing that somebody has sold and published to the congregation. But even the leadership haven't really learned the concepts. I had a conversation with Bob Scott and he was talking about very much the same thing we're talking about today.

He says, I really wish that instead we would start having churches and bars, which I know offended a lot of people because if you take the mindset that we're going to take our sanctuary, our holy thing, everybody goes into much like they would revere the temple in ancient Israelism.

And then we're going to instead go to this place where the, I don't know if you have this term, the riffraff, the despised ones are going to the bars and the minds of the people listening to this, right?

But what you find is the people in the bars are often more authentic. They're showing their authentic self. They're showing who they are, they're being who they want to be and they may not share your worldview.

But when you start having conversations with some of these people, which I have, you find out that in many ways they more resemble the words that Jesus Christ was telling the people who were also despised in his era.

They resemble that more clearly often than some of the Christians. They're more authentic. They're genuine people. In some cases, they're loving people. They want to help lift other people up. And so you see this false dichotomy, basically, of what is Christianity.

Christianity means we need to become more and more holy, which is a concept that, you know, latter reign. helped introduce this idea that we need to strive to become perfect, and once we achieve this, then Jesus returns.

That concept seems to have plagued Christianity from what I can tell. That's an unbelievable way you are putting on people. I am a Christian myself that comes from the world, so I have a baggage on my back.

I have a past that I will never get rid of, never. The pictures, often when I go just throughout the day, I have pictures of my older self, of my old behavior, of things that happened in the past to me that I am deeply ashamed of, or even psychosomatic things, I don't know if you say it, like psychosomatic, like when it becomes like a bodily tension out of your thinking.

Psychosomatic things that stem from my past, it is in God's hand to take those things, those feelings, those scars from me, to make me holy. That's a process that I can't speed up. I'm totally dependent on God to help me with my thinking, with my behavior, with my addictions, with my consume, all of those things.

It's very complex if you have a past. Sometimes, I often think it's really hard for, I just talk about me right now, for Christians like me to fit in with Christian society because I am so broken, and to find a healthy place for Christians like me is so hard because on the one hand, I'm sorry, you have all those charismatic weirdoes that are more open for guys like me, but they are, they are carousmenia in all of his forms, and on the other side, they are Christian, healthy Christian congregations, they will take me in as well, but there's some kind of hidden hierarchy in those Christian

environments. It makes me so sad, one very real example, there's one seminary I want to attend for like five or six years now, and the roadblocks and the hoops I have to jump over just to study there are impossible for me to overcome.

really, really impossible, and that makes me sad. I love those people. They speak my language. I love their teaching, I love their books, I love those people. I am with them for over 10 years now, but they won't accept me as a student because of minor things. I can't understand it. So here's a Christian that really wants to grow, that wants to study Christianity in all of its

greatness and color and perspective and the whole spectrum. But yeah, I'm sorry, you don't have the right certificates. You can't study here. That's so stupid. So my question is, where is a place? So if Christianity is a call to the most broken people out there, and it is, yeah, Jesus is called, it's for the most broken people out there, where is the place where those people can fit in and strive and mature time by time to become grown, educated Christians. If we measure them by worldly standards, if they have a past, I'm really, I'm from the streets. We talked about it.

I was a musician. I'm from the streets. I was a leftist. I really leftist. You can't imagine the word I am from. Maybe you know the word I am from from new movies, totally white movies.

I lived that new movies before I came to faith, really. I was a leftist, through and through. So where's a place for me? I don't feel I belong to Carismania.

I have a place in more traditional Christian environments, but in those environments, there's still a hierarchy, and there are roadblocks that a person like me with a past can't overcome. So where can I go? And I'm talking like, I mean, I'm just one broken person. There are millions out there. And Christianity is really called for them. So where's a place for them to grow and be part of it, to work for it, right? There's so much in what you said that I just want to explode over.

Charismatics, if you understand how Carismania works, it is an appeal for the broken. That aspect of it is, I will say that aspect is pretty good. But what happens when you join this? I read the book by Dr. Stephen Hassan, combating cult mind control, and there's a thing that is called love bombing. I don't know if that translates for you. So love bombing, if you go to join a Charismatic.

church. You will instantly be loved bombed, especially if you're from the streets. That's how it works. They have been programmed and trained to do this. And you will find people who will defend it to their dying breath because before I joined this charismatic thing, I was this lowly center.

I was doing this horrible thing. And I saw God in this. What they really saw was love bombing. They saw everybody who's genuinely pouring out their love to them. But then on the flip side, you have people who realize after they're there, something is not quite right here. I can't put my finger on it. I'm going to ask a few questions and I'm probably going to leave.

The moment you ask those questions, love bombing turns into hate bombing. You find instantly people are very offended if you don't. If you joined and you don't join into the same mindset and you're going to go down a different pathway, well, you're not of us. You're against us. You're the withers who are against us. So I'm starting to detect you're against us and I'm going to show the dark side of myself that you never saw whenever I was love bombing you as you join this thing. In many charismatic circles, that is the way it is. Then the flip side, like you said,

they go into mainstream Christianity. Mainstream Christianity, for me, who is experiencing it for the first time, it has become so traditional that there's the tradition over and over and over again. Well, many who weren't Christian before, which I consider myself, like I said, I put myself in that mindset. I want to understand the tradition. Why the tradition? What is this tradition? Why are you doing it? And often the traditional things that they do, the forbidden question, the forbidden question, often the traditions, things that they do, you can't really find it in the Bible.

The Jews didn't have the ceremony and the Christians didn't. So you're like, well, where did this come from? What is this? Why are you doing it? Well, if you ask those same questions to the mainstream Christianity, oh, he's questioning us. He must not be with us. He must be against us.

So the same mindset kind of evolves into different ways and different forms with different groups. And you go back to the words of Jesus, love those who despise you. Things like this that you're reading as what a Christian should be from Jesus, you're finding that it doesn't really exist in either circle and Christianity and many, many religions of many denominations of faith.

Yeah, back to love bombing. That's also just one very superficial way to attract people. But because it's superficial, the moment you are asking deeper questions, it falls apart and shows its emptiness and voidness of any meaning. Because it doesn't bring you this whole kind of Christianity doesn't bring the broken person that came to faith into a position that is meaningful. Is there someone that helped you to find a job, to overcome your drug addiction, to give you some time to just, I mean, if a person like me in his twenties or thirties comes to faith and is cut off from his entire life that he lived

before, like 20, 30 years, that's, that's a rock pool, you would say, like you are losing everything you had. It's worthless, of course. I know that. I experienced that. My entire lifestyle, I lived and was saturated in before I came to Christ, was empty, was meaningless.

But nonetheless, what's the thing I can build upon a new life in Christ? And there are not many churches and many peoples and many principles that brings those broken persons into a position that is meaningful, impactful, they can do something in Christ Christianity, have a place in Christianity that is meaningful. So like you're stepping into your church on a Sunday, yes, or fine, yeah, we love you, blah, blah. And then they people go home, no one invites you to their table, no one asks, hey, did you find a job? Can I help you?

Should I do some phone calls? Stuff like as simple things, normal things that you do for every normal friend, but not for the most broken person that just came to Christ? Unbelievable. Yeah, there's so much to say. Yeah, but that's, that's one thing that is truly bothering me because I'm experiencing it as well. I'm a, I'm in a tradition that's called Bruder Gemeinder. They don't, there are many aspects about this tradition, but their main aspect is they don't have a pastor. It's just the older brethren of the congregation. Everyone has a right to preach and to lead and they are very democratic about their decisions. So over time,

I just realized I don't have a place. I don't have a role in this congregation. I'm just sitting there Sunday for Sunday. Yes, I can consume whatever day you give me, but what can I do here?

What's my purpose in all of this? So yeah, what's my purpose? What can I do here? So yeah. And the last thing I'll mention, which this is kind of a, for, for people who aren't aware and people have never been done that pathway, it's, it is quite offensive and I'm not taking that lightly, but there are many Christians who have been taught the Bible incorrectly. And I'll use fundamentalism as the extreme example. In Christian fundamentalism, there's a certain way that you read the Bible in a fundamentalist way. It's very black or white.

Whatever it says, word for word, even if it is a metaphor, I'm going to read that metaphor as though it is supposed to be literal and not metaphor. Or if it's symbolic, I have to read it as symbolic, I have to read it as literal, not symbolic.

What happens is whenever they leave the fundamentalist group, now to them the Bible doesn't make sense. They're critically thinking and they start critically thinking about what they understand of the Bible. And if you read it in a fundamentalist way, it is riddled with contradictions because the fundamentalist way does not work.

So take that person, now enter them into one of the new modern churches. Well this person is questioning the Bible, they must not be with us, they're against us. That is the mindset. I've actually sat down and watched this happen where somebody in the group filled with questions has been taught the Bible incorrectly.

And they are suddenly outcasts within their new church. It's terrible. And like you said, they have no place there because they have really, really good questions. They have questions that I think should have been addressed, but they're suddenly outcasts.

I can't even question the Bible in some of these groups. And that should be the most basic form of question. If you're a developing mind, if you're a child, you should ask those questions because you learn by asking questions and getting answers.

And often what I've noticed in the cases like I mentioned, if the minister or the elder or the leader who is working with the person does not have the answer, they'll make something up just on the fly.

And people can detect this, just to say face, right? And people can detect, okay, this guy is full of it. He doesn't know what he's talking about. And then that drives them further away.

Whereas I've also worked, I did apologetics for a while after leaving the cult. And you find the really experienced apologetics will simply say, you know, I don't know. I don't have an answer to that question.

But there are other things we can focus on and they'll start talking about the things that they can talk about. So you get that mindset. And all of this, everything that we've said for this entire podcast builds up to the question, what is the solution for it?

If you look back at what happened with the Catholic Church, many of the things that we have described in this podcast were things that Martin Luther began to notice within the Catholic Church. Yes, he noticed the sexual problems that the church had.

And most Protestants will go back and they'll say, that's what Martin Luther saw and it's a good thing he left that. But it wasn't just that. He started noticing that the way that they were teaching did not quite align with the world view that Jesus was presenting.

And so there was the Protestant Reformation. This became... movement that developed over time into what we're talking about, will now it seems the movement has shifted back towards that same root problem that Martin Luther was addressing. And so I'll ask you, what is the solution to it? Yeah, really the Solar Scriptura treatment. In Germany, we have a word that's called Betriebsblindheit. So because you're part of something, you don't see the problems, because you're part of the problem. That's what it means basically. In my congregation, it's like, we have those many elders. I love them. They're great persons, great Christians,

very well educated. I can learn a lot from them. But there's no place for the younger people in a congregation. We had a point in our congregation. We made some weekend workshop. Yeah. And by the time I was writing a new theatre piece for my congregation for the Reformation Day.

So every year we do some theatre and musicals. And last year I was the one writing the theatre piece and the musical. And while I was doing it, there was a lack of people contributing.

We don't have enough hands, basically, to help the case. And I was like, where are the young peoples? We want to have a musical. I remember back in my time when there was a theatre piece or a musical at my school, everyone wanted to be part of it. And in my congregation, where are the young ones? Where are the young people who want to play the main role? Whatever.

So I was writing the piece in the end. I was the main role being Tetzel, the opposite of Lufa. But that wasn't very satisfying for me, because at one point we had those weekend workshops.

And in those weekend workshops where young people and students, I have never seen before in my own congregation. I've never seen it. There were therefore years. Some of them were sons and daughters of my elders. And I have never seen them before. In six, seven, eight years, I am part of that congregation now. And I was saying to myself, that's unbelievable. How come I never saw those young people preach? How come I never saw those young people doing a workshop with us? I don't know.

The history of the apostles, whatever. Why are those young people not part of the musical for this year? Why is it me playing the Tetzel? Why isn't not the young person playing the Tetzel? What's wrong here? So in my congregation, I know we are talking for at least three years.

before the pandemic. So seven years now in total, for a split, a healthy split, like we are 100 and 150 members of the congregation. So let's split. That's big enough. We take 50, maybe 75 people build a new congregation and so on and so on. Nothing happened. We are still talking about it. And in our own congregation, because every elder and their families are filling up every role in the congregation, no one outside of their families has a real purpose. Outside of coming to the Sundays, helping cleaning the toilet, helping to make some food for the Sundays. But totally

meaningless stuff, totally meaningless stuff, even our youth education. I'm asking myself, like one other problem, just to reflect on that. Maybe people out watching this have the same problems. Let's reflect on that. Okay. We have every year, we are like in a democratic process to decide what are we doing now. But in every year, it's the same seasons, the same events. So what are we talking about? You don't have to riddle this every year and you. So even the youth services, we have three classes for children, youth persons and teenagers, let's say like this. And then we

are again deciding what to do, what to do, who's responsible for this youth and the teenagers, stuff like that. But we have like a kindergarten teachers, basic school teachers in our congregation. Why not give one of them a job? So he makes the whole thing for an entire year, he can organize.

Well, area, get paid for it, have some security, have some stability in our congregation, instead of deciding every year new with a question of who's responsible, we don't have the people. Yeah, please give them a job, pay them some money and then you have never have to ask those questions again. There are enough people, but there's no room for them to express themselves or come into a position in a meaningful position. You know, it's funny, because I get asked this question often, people say, you give the problems so many times, but you never tell people what they should do. And if you actually listen to what I've been saying, of course,

the podcast, it is literally what you just said. The people have the power. There is this, I don't know if you've seen it, there's this internet meme where a politician is standing on a podium and he's got his finger up and he's addressing a crowd. Well, the crowd is standing on a board and he's hanging off of a cliff. And the only thing holding him up are the people who are standing on It's bored.

And one person is walking away, well, just because one person walked away means that the rest of the crowd is still holding him up. So even though one person has walked away, this person still has his platform.

And what I've been describing across all of my podcasts is exactly that. The people actually have the power themselves. They have the Bible. They could read the Bible. And what you're describing is empowering people to do this.

If you let the people, if you empower the people, they become the movement and the movement grows. And it's not a movement that is looking for an apostle as a leader or a new prophet.

A new word for the day is the charismatic would put it. You really don't need this. You need people who just simply read and understand what it says. So that's my advice. And I don't know if you have put much thought into just the politics of religion, how it works, how the people who are elected and put into the position of leadership in some of the charismatic churches, it almost becomes this thing where it turns into like a kingdom royalty.

Once elected, always elected. I kind of feel like there are, there's a human element. You mentioned psychosomatics, people who have a symptom and you can watch it manifest physically. Yeah, yeah. Often you can see people who change over time due to their life experiences.

And the psychosomatics, this may be the wrong term. I think there's a different term for it, but it starts manifesting in their character. The life experiences, sometimes very traumatic life experiences. Like I just saying, give someone power.

Yeah, exactly. You give someone power. Well, then when they change and their message is no longer the same as before, they're shown the true connoisseur, right? Yeah, not even true colors, but just simply the human element.

Some people change over time and what they say may not always be good. But once they're elected into this position and cares mania, they have this esteem of royalty and they will always, God's general is a term for it.

There will always be no matter what, they will be revered and respected. And their words will have more power than the people is where I'm driving at. If instead the balance of power shifts, like the world view that Jesus taught was there's Jesus and then there's everyone else, I don't care if you're a apostle, prophet, I don't care who you are, Jesus, everyone else.

If the church goes back to that mindset, I think it can correct itself. I don't see the problems of power and politics in my congregation, in my congregation. I think it's more a problem of, that's not the exact term, but for lack laziness.

Everyone, everything. so cozy, so fine. We all love each other. Maybe they don't trust their young ones or their own children to preach. I don't know, but I talked to some brethren of my congregation and they would

agree with me on the laziness. It's not laziness. It's like this. It's so cozy here. Why should we change something? It's good the way it is, so why should we change? I would call that laziness, maybe there's a better term for it. That's our problem in the congregation.

I call it stagnant. The water becomes stagnant and that's often what happens. It's sad. Anyway, one other problem is we have many people in a congregation that are just there to consume what's going on, but not many enough have the drive to build up something new or build up something different or break rules, unwritten rules that are not necessary, like with the same principle of solar scriptural. Let's go back to basic. Let's do away all this superficial, traditional stuff. That's not it. What can we do better? Absolutely. There's so much more we can talk about on this subject, but it's been an hour. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, too.

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.William-Brandom.org and sanctum-artifact on YouTube. From 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.