Inside CFNI: One Woman's Escape From A Cultic Bible School

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-brannem.org and with me I have my very special guest, Lexi Sanchez, who will remember of Christ for the Nations. Lexi, it's good to finally have you on. I've been dying to get more people from Christ for the Nations. CF and I as other people label it.

There's just so much going on. We've been talking about the things going on with Vince Belter and now the News Media's investigation into CF and I and I kind of really labeled that as irrelevant to the whole conversation. The deeper conversation is how did CF and I sway American Christianity into basically what became the NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation and why did it do it and what was behind the motivations and for me to piece together all of that puzzle I need more input from people who were involved with Christ for the Nations. So welcome to the podcast. Maybe if you could tell everybody just a little bit

about yourself. Yeah, awesome. I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, my name's Lexi Sanchez. I'm originally from Houston, Texas. I moved up here to Dallas 10 years ago now. So I went to CF and I in 2015. I was professionally 18 years old and yeah, I've been here ever since. I graduated from CF and I in 2018 and I worked there for two years and that I left and since then I've just been doing full-time photography with my husband who I also met at CF and I and yeah, I haven't been working in ministry since I left. I

was working briefly at a church after I left CF and I but the church had a very has a very strong relationship to CF and I so it's a lot of the same beliefs and kind of ways of thinking and so it just wasn't for me anymore. So my husband and I left kind of shortly after that. But yeah, so that's all I can think to say. So I'm interested to hear specifically about those beliefs and I understand you have a much broader story so maybe at some point in the story, you can go into this, but wanting people to understand the difference between CF

and I, what it teaches and what broader Christianity teaches. So that's really, honestly, when you said you were coming on board and you mentioned that you were with Christ for the nations, originally, I wanted to know more about that.

So maybe as you tell your story, you can inject that, but so you met your husband at Christ for the nations and tell us what that was like. What was dating like at CF and I, tell us the whole story.

So I have two friends, they were my roommates, and we are still, they're like my best friends of the whole world, and we all met our husbands there, and we all say that we are survivors.

Like if you really should, you can make it out of, like if you can make it out of, if you really should, you can make it out of Steve and I, you're good, you are, you can make it anywhere, because just the, the pressure and there's this joke that they have at Christ for the nations where they call it brides for the nations, and it's so weird.

Like when you're there, you already kind of feel weird about it, at least I felt weird about it. I thought I really didn't like that, and there's a lot of pressure to like find your spouse when you're there.

And it's, it's really icky, and, but at the same time, the rules that they have around dating are very rigid and impossible, honestly. And I do feel like they treat women very harshly in those environments too, there's a lot of pressure on women to don't make the boys, you know, sin or don't make them less.

It's all the pressure on the girls. You have to make sure you're wearing shirts that cover your, that are long enough to cover your bottom, because God forbid, if a man sees your, your butt, like that's even if you wear jeans.

So it's, it was a lot of pressure, but my husband and I started dating. I think it was my third semester. We had been friends since my first semester, but we hadn't hung out too much, but we kind of started hanging out more, just with like groups of friends and things like that.

And we realized we liked each other, and I feel our perspective of relationships was a lot different than other safe and Irish perspectives. Like we had a bit more, I guess, like we weren't like, oh, marriage is this thing, and it's, you know, God put us together, and he chose us to be together, because there's a lot of that there, which on its own is very unhealthy and just not good.

And it shows. Yeah, relationships are usually from safe and I don't do very well because it's there's a lot of just unrealistic ways of thinking and just mystical thinking that just it's not good for the real world, the material world

But my husband and I were very like honest like okay like we know with the relationship You know you have to work on these things be honest with each other and Honestly, it I feel like we are really lucky We always say that we found each other on hard mode because of the environment we were in but um Yeah, I I feel like I wouldn't have been able to kind of Untangle all the wires From the situation and like from where we were without him like he definitely helped me work through that. I think that

We as being there for each other We were able to like work through a lot of the stuff that we experienced like talk through that like our first year of marriage It was like We would just go on walks around the safe my uh Track outside and we would just like talk about what we were because we were reading a lot too and trying to understand um Our beliefs and believe the system that we were under and you know the history church history and you know What it means for us now?

Where we're living like in America and in the world we are um and I'm just really grateful. I had him um, but yeah dating at safe and I was Was a lot of pressure and there's always like People are always like oh are you guys holding hands or are y'all doing this and it just was just so weird and It just didn't feel very I don't know um It was very hard. I will say but we made it we survived um, we've been married Almost six years now, so We're doing all right. We're doing all right. Yeah, it was it was tough. I will say it was tough

You're describing my childhood and the funny part is if you're female listening to this and you've never experienced this You're thinking oh my gosh how this is this is horrific and women have it so much harder than men Well, I can assure you that that same environment is just as hard In some ways may be more difficult for the men because of what it does to the heads of the men we so Picture what you said about covering the bud. We had the same thing you weren't you know It was the women's fault if if a guy looks at you. It's her fault. She looked that you looked at her right

But they took it a step further to the ankles. You cannot look at the women's ankles And the branemism and so you're stuck with all of that weirdness But dating was it was difficult to navigate because there were different levels of I'm just gonna use the word destructiveness that the groups had one group that I visited they took it so far that When you were dating a female could not travel in a vehicle with a mail.

As weird as this sounds, we, so after church, we were all gonna go out to eat. There were, gosh, I wanna say that there were eight or nine guys and two girls all going to go out to eat.

Well, they all had to ride in my vehicle. All the guys had to ride in my vehicle and I had this little sports car. So we were crammed in, people laying across people and one of the females driving had a big Lincoln Continental, I think it was.

And so she could have fit the whole party in her vehicle, but we couldn't ride there. So here I am, we literally had a guy laying across from front to back with his feet in the dash and his head in the back console.

That's how bad it was. And you don't really think about what that does to the man's head, but picture being a man, telling them that they cannot look at the parts of a female body because specific parts, God created as evil for you to look at.

And then think about what that does in making the men wiring their brain to objectify women, that's essentially what happens. And it is terrible and it takes a long, long time for men who escaped us to get over it.

Completely, and I mean, I've had a conversation with my brother and my husband about just the way that it,

it alienates the way men think and like, it makes, so an example kind of speaking to what you're saying, like I had a friend who, one of the reasons why I went to cars for the nations was there's like a childhood friend from home who started going there a semester, or I'm sorry, a year before I did.

And he was like a big brother to me. He was a bit older than me and, but he was one of the worst leaders. So he was like, someone that was really close to my family and he was like, he was like family.

And so him and I, whenever I started going across the nations, we would hang out a lot because I'm just turned 18. I'm living in a new city, this is the only person I know and this is someone that I look to like a brother.

And so we would like, he would like walk with me into the cafeteria or we would like hang out often and he would like take me to play like, oh, there's this event going here, I'll take you, I'll take you in your roommates.

And people would be like, oh, are you guys together? Oh, there's, because there is no way that a boy and a girl could be friends in that situation because, oh, guys have to automatically want to pursue this person.

And I think that is really hard on men. And I think we do see a lot of, you know, what we see, just like harmful behaviors because men aren't, you know, they don't know how to have these relationships with women and they don't really know how to do it.

to understand themselves because they're not really allowed to learn how to understand themselves. But yeah, I just wanted to add to what you're saying in that. Yeah. It's a crazy, crazy world. So dating was much like what we had, which is honestly that's kind of what I expected because what we had came from the same root as what you had. It just, you know, developed in completely different directions, which is odd and there's some history around why that is. But what other things would you say was really unusual or odd about Christ for the nations? There was a couple of things. And I guess the dating

thing was like very strange. Something else that I felt like I wasn't really able to understand until I watched some of your videos with the history of William Brennan and like learning more about Gordon Lindsay was the very odd relationship they have with Israel. And the way they treated it is so strange. So I grew up in a household that was very like as you got as poor as you no matter what, like we love Israel. Israel's their number one, their number one. And so I, I had like my own kind of beliefs, but like that's something I grew

up believing. And so I didn't want to see if night like wasn't it's not like I had never seen that before. But I feel like the it was brought up to a degree that was just so bizarre.

And if like you could walk into a room and it was like just like Israeli flags everywhere. And it was almost it felt at the time kind of like a weird orientalism like this obsession with it. And I, I don't know, it just was something that I was like, I don't know what's going on here. Like you guys love this place. And then for mission trips, so they have mission trips every summer. And you could go to different places. I went to I did two mission trips my time there. You have to do a mission trip to graduate. That's one of the kind of I guess like you get

like credits for it. It's like one of the summer credits you get. Um, so you go to all these different places. But, um, and so whenever they're promoting like, okay, we're going to go here.

And we're going to go here if they would have people go up and talk and they would be like a five minute thing. But for Israel, it was a whole 30 minutes. And it turns out it's not even like a mission trip. It's like a vacation that you go on and they make it seem like, oh, we're going to go here and we're going to do this and do that. And then it just, it's just so strange. And also it just feels like they don't really understand Judaism at all. And it's, it just feels strange.

It feels like it's like this magical place that they're disconnected from its history. you're just connected from the people's history. It's, that was my experience, that's how I saw it. But yeah, that was, that was another thing that I felt was just strange when I was there.

You're not alone, it is odd. And I have not, I intend to take a deeper dive into that. I have not yet, because I'm trying to think through very clearly how to present it in a way that people will understand.

The first time I tried it, I did not think strategically and people just didn't, they fully didn't get what I was trying to say. But in a broad, you know, five minute overview, Gordon Lindsay, who founded Christ for the Nations, was a key speaker in Christian identity conferences.

These are the people that hate the Jews. They hate the Jews. So when you think of Christ for the Nations being supportive of Israel, and you think of Gordon Lindsay, speaking in a group of men and with a group of men and an audience who hates the Jews, you think, well, how does that work?

That doesn't fit. And then you think of William Brannum. William Brannum was in the same way they were, they were hand in hand. Gordon Lindsay was his campaign manager, and Brannum was supportive of Israel.

How is this possible? Brannum is teaching the core doctrines of Christian identity, the serpent seed doctrine, where Eve made it with the serpent and produced this bad blood line versus this good blood line.

Well, the bad blood line according to Christian identity is the Jews. So how can you be supportive of Israel? But you have to understand, supportive doesn't mean that you are in favor of. They're supportive in the Jewish agenda because, number one, if you include Israel in the agenda, you are including all of the Doomsday scenarios that was presented in Latter-Rain.

Israel is where this is going to keep your eye on Israel because this is where it's going to happen. They look for these prophecies. I may have mentioned some of these, but they look for like the red heifer prophecy.

If you can find somebody who has a heifer that is red, oh my gosh, the end of the world is coming. I remember when this happened. This happened, I want to say it was 1993 or four.

It made news and it was just like this little news blip that a red heifer has been found in Israel. When the cult church is, it's like, the end of the world is coming.

Get your kids and sons and daughters ready. It's coming. And they'll look at planet alignments, all kinds of weird things. What's because they're looking for Israel to be the signpost for the destruction in the coming end of days.

And they picture Israel to be fully slaughtered. So they're supportive of this people that they feel sorry for, that they're going to be just fully slaughtered. They believe it's going to be fully destroyed and divine judgment, all of this nonsense.

When Brannum was preaching, the quote unquote gospel. And if I remember correctly, it was the same year's Lindsay was involved with him. I'd have to go back and double check that, but Brannum taught that all of Israel was not the target of the gospel.

He said the gospel was never intended for the Jews. He says something to the effect there will be some renegades who might break away from Israel and accept the gospel, renegades who might accept the gospel.

But that's the way that this movement viewed the Jews. It wasn't that they viewed them as their Christian brothers or even potential converts. It was that this was the slaughterhouse. Let's watch for the slaughter because Armageddon will soon come after this.

Yeah. And like you're saying, that idea of, okay, we need to make sure that all the Jews go back to Israel. Like that's something that they taught. Like, oh, this has to happen because, and then it feels like it's a doomsday cold.

It's like, what are we doing? Oh, I had a thought. It just lost it. But we did have a teacher that I felt he taught Old Testament. It was called the Old Testament Survey, it's like one of the classes.

But he was a Jewish man who, I think he was a rabbi or something. And I remember people would say like, oh, he doesn't get along with these people. In my mind, it's probably because they have such wildly varying beliefs, like he believes his own things.

And I will say a good thing that I experienced at Christ for the Nations was I feel like the head, like the people in charge kind of had like their beliefs. And they had some people who believed similar things that worked for them, that would teach and stuff.

But for the most part, you could meet people who believed very different things in those spaces. I mean, for example, me and my husband, we had kind of like our own beliefs. And we didn't agree with like, even me as a kid, I was like, I agree with some of these things.

But you kind of meet that a lot and there's even like teachers who were like, oh, this teacher says this, but I don't really agree with him. I think this. And that was kind of nice to see.

I feel like that helped me a lot kind of fit. Like it kind of validated me a little bit and like the way that I was like, okay, well, I don't also believe that.

And I guess that's kind of okay. But I will say between like the students, there was a lot of, oh, you don't agree with this teacher says, do you think you're better than him?

Do you think you know better than him? And it was a lot of like, well, he's got put them in charge of us. So we have to agree with them. And I'm like, they don't even agree with each other.

So why are we expected to just accept everything? But yeah, it is weird and disappointing. And I feel like there was a lot of the celebrating of, oh, we love, you know. Judaism and the Jewish beliefs and blah blah and then you talk to someone. They don't know anything like they don't actually Know history. They don't know, you know their values. They don't know It practices like just simple things, you know, it's it's a strange, but But yeah, I did like back to saying what I was saying before I do I think something that was kind of good that I experienced at the car

definitions was The way that there were there was space at times for you know Descenting beliefs. I remember there is this one teacher. So They at christmas missions. They love Martin Luther love him love him and this is one of my favorite things that ever happened, but on October I guess October 31st is the Reformation day And they have like this big celebration And they have like speakers go up and stuff and there's this one teacher we have who he only taught one class Which is criminal because he is incredible, but He went up there to talk a little bit about the history of Martin Luther and he goes oh, yeah guys by the way

He was anti-Semitic. He said all he was going through the history and like every one of the room was just like Like really uncomfortable and I was like thank goodness. Thank goodness. Someone is saying it, but um, you know That guy was really cool. He taught I think like History of religions and like different beliefs and stuff and he did it from a place that wasn't like Oh, they're evil like ooh, they're spooky and they think differently than us, but it was like okay Here's like historically how these beliefs came to be Here's actually some of like the historical connections between these beliefs and like how some of these things like leaked into each other and I thought that was really cool

But yeah shout out to that guy. I think about him all the time Yeah, there were a few people who tried to buck the system and branemism and there weren't really able to see it Diverged and it created two different pathways of two different types of groups with Christ for the nations Whenever Lindsay was working with branem. It was this mentality that we have a great movement with all of these hundreds of ministers each doing their own thing and For a period of time that worked out But they had an open theology and what I mean by that is one guy could preach something that was

completely against the core belief system of another guy and That this was allowed even they even had an article describing what happens when this is the case but and you know especially during the southern states in that era you you would have guys would say wait them's fighting word They would go off at it, right and that's that's the way it was was Well, eventually there was fights that kind of broke out, maybe not fist fights, but they would really get against each other.

Whenever Brandon was, when he was really cut off by most of the denominations, AOG cut him off early, but some of the others followed after, and whenever he started to get sanctioned, that's when things really begin to change, because when you sanction now all of the money that flows through those different groups, when the money's cut off, it changes sadly.

A lot of the things in Christianity that this was built on top of. So Lindsay kind of shifted directions. Well, Brandon becomes isolated and it became an isolationist cult, but Lindsay became more of a, I don't know what the word is, he tamed down quite a bit.

He may have even reformed quite a bit, but some of the core belief systems, like what you're describing, he did not reform from this at all, and this is literally, if you watch a movie or a documentary on what it's like living in a cult, everything that you've described in Christ for the nations is what they describe.

So how do you reconcile that? And that's part of the reason I've been wanting to have more people on, because people aren't aware that this is still going on in Christ for the nations.

Yeah, and I don't know. I think it was kind of hard, like if you would have told me this, like when I was at Christ for nations, like a student, like a little, like a little 19 year old, like see, I feel like nah, it's not like that, it's not that bad, but I feel like the more and more, I started kind of like educating myself more, even just wanting, because I've always kind of been, I guess curious, it's the best word, like I've always wanted to like no more, and I grew up Christian my parents

were youth pastors, and my mom and dad were like, they really got me to like read the Bible for myself and things like that, but also I read a lot, I was really interested in history, so I read a lot of like things outside of just like biblical literature.

So I feel like that helped a lot of kind of like, understanding different ways of thinking and so already like going into Christ's nations, I kind of wasn't like my, my worldview wasn't so narrow, I guess I could say like it wasn't just to the bubble of like I, I know church world and that's it, like I feel like I kind of had a little bit of an understanding of things outside of my world, and I feel like that helped whenever like little, like alarms were kind of going off, I feel like okay, this feels weird,

it kind of helped me work through that, and I think also having friends outside of that world helped a lot too, but I think I, Since I've been out of safe and I, I love learning about different cults and I watched so many documentaries about other high-control groups.

Me and my husband, we were obsessed with learning about the next EM case and I don't know if you've heard about that one. But just learning the ways in which people who, how people came, what sort of looking for, I think something I've learned is people don't trust themselves. They don't trust their guts and that's something I saw a lot when I was there.

And I guess I can just thank my parents for this, but they, I would have like healthy disagreements with my parents. Sometimes not very healthy, but like me and my dad sometimes would debate over like end times theology.

He would say this thing and I'd be like, Dad, the rapture's not real. And I was like 16, like getting into these discussions with my dad, you know? But like they created a space for me to like disagree with him and to like trust what I was learning on my own.

And, you know, also kind of be like, all right, have a little bit of, you know, except maybe you can be wrong sometimes, you know? So I feel like that was developed a little bit in me when I was younger.

So when I went to Christmas nations, I had a really good friend who like she wouldn't do anything without getting advice from some of the teachers. I would try to get her advice and she'd like, oh, well, I don't really know.

I think I'm going to go talk to this teacher and then she'd be like, okay, this teacher told me this song, I'm going to do it. I was like, dude, I literally told you to do that.

Like that's exactly what I told you. But it was this thing of like they feel like they have to have some kind of person who is like connected more to God than they are to tell them how to go about this and how to make these decisions.

And I feel like because I didn't have that as much, I was able to kind of step back and at least it opened the door for me to do that. It definitely took time.

Like I don't think I kind of fully realized like where I was and like what was happening until maybe I was like 23. But yeah, I think that's one of the saddest things is, yeah, people just don't really trust themselves.

They don't trust that like, because there's this thing in the domination I grew up in where it's like you have to hear God for yourself. Like you have to learn how to hear the Holy Spirit yourself and they kind of like brag about how that's something that they can do.

And sometimes like they don't actually pursue that like, I mean for me, I don't, I have my own beliefs now and I don't really, I'm not. very like spiritual anymore. I'm kind of like if you want to like figure out what to do with your life, you know, if you want to make decisions that you feel God would be proud of just, I don't know, like a Jesus' life thinks he value it, I guess.

Like that could be something, that could be a step. But yeah, it would just felt like a lot of people, they needed someone to tell them what to believe, what to do like. And so like we had like these figures.

So there would be people who, even if they were kind of like well-meaning, I guess, just to be generous, they were, I was almost, there was a bit of cold personality around certain leaders and it was, there's too unhealthy degree, I would say.

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I'm of the firm opinion that many people who have gone through what some call it deconversion, some of them call it, you know, some even go so far as call it losing their faith.

I always go back and I think through the question, well, what did they have originally? This thing was called Christianity, but I can assure you, if you consider what the Bible says is Christianity, these groups, many of them do not have it.

So are they, if they're deconverting, which God are they deconverting from? So I'm one of the few people that I love whenever I get somebody who has a different opinion, especially somebody who has seen the dark side of these groups to come on and talk.

And you see in the comment feeds, I get all kinds of flack for it because there's this mindset that everybody must be of the same opinion. And that opinion is the right and just way that people should live because it is my opinion.

And I'm of the opinion that there are groups of diverse people who have different opinions and that's how the world works. Even within Christianity, the biggest shock for me came when I went to the first church that we went to after the cult and they started talking about the...

revelation, the end of day scenario. And the minister was very, very strangely similar to what I believed in branemism, which shocked me. They had really taken it, I guess, probably through the same influence.

I don't know how they got that. But I was talking to another guy who was, I think he was either the assistant pastor of one of the high up elders. And he was like, eh, I don't believe any of that, any of that thing that he said.

And he went off into what he believed, which is what I thought mainstream Christian by and large believed. But then I had another person, also a ranking elder in the church, who gave me a different opinion than those two.

And I'm like, how does that work? In the group that I grew up in, you had to have the same belief. You cannot have this variation because it's vitally important that you understand my belief and my understanding because I'm right, the whole world is wrong, us versus them.

It's always us versus them. So hearing your description of why you left, it kind of matches that I have talked to other people, some who for one reason or another can't come on the podcast, who have left Christ for the nations.

And it's a very common theme. When you leave Christ for the nations, many people go through this deconversion period. And how long that lasts is really up to the person. But it all comes back to the doctrines, which are very unhealthy, according to what they're telling me.

And the difference between mainstream Christianity and what they're describing is that the Christian doctrines are, for mainstream Christianity are made in such a way to uplift people, to help people, support people, help one another grow.

But what they're describing is very much like what I came out of. It's us versus them. It's very destructive. What are your thoughts on this? Would you consider it to be a destructive foundation or would you consider them to be more mainstream?

I've been trying to think about this too, because I do feel like it's a little bit of both. Like, there are definitely people who,

okay, how do I say this? Because they do have a lot of that mainstream where it's like, this is how you get deeper with God and things like that.

And they teach the way that they feel like that's how you achieve that.

But a big thing at C4.9.2 is like, here's how to have a successful ministry. Here's how to be a pastor. And there's a lot of that, but something that I feel that it's not necessarily often the teachers saying it themselves, but we have a lot of guest speakers that come, that get invited.

that I feel have a lot of us versus them kind of mentality. And like they have brought on like political people who straight up have said things like we have to have

more kids because Muslims are having a lot of kids. So we got to have more kids. And I remember I was taking notes and I was like, that's bad, but you're seeing right now.

That's horrible. And like the alarm bells were going off, you know?

I, there's a part of me that like wants to be, that's I guess because I grew up in a lot of like those spaces.

And like I've like, I know them. So like I don't feel like you are perpetrating this thing. But if I'm being honest, like the seven mountains, I've heard of like the seven mountains doctrine.

They love that. They love that. So yeah, they're all about that. They are all about that. And I've even talked about that with one of the teachers before because he was talking about it with us and explaining it to us.

And I remember being like thinking about the mountains and I was like, I feel like a lot of this belief, reminds me of like when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness and he was like, he rejected all of those things.

Like I don't know why we're teaching this when we're, we saw Jesus reject these things. So that's something that I don't know. It's, I don't want to say it's like, it's blatant and it's like in your face.

But I do, I do think that like it is there. For example, I feel like, I'm sorry, I'm trying to like think about how to explain this. So I really feel like there are remnants of the history of this ministry that still remain.

For example, like we had this class that teachers, it's supposed to teach like Genesis and they love talking about the Nephilim. It's a thing, it's a thing. But there is this one time where the teachers said, here's not a match of Pichu and he says, still in the line, along the lines of, it couldn't have been these private people.

They couldn't have been smart enough to make this. So it had to be aliens or demons. And I remember being like, so that's right, you can't see that. that is so messed up like how can you say and like for example my husband's Peruvian and he's like no we we could do that like we have mathematicians we had incredible scientists like what is he saying right now so there's a lot of like those remnants beliefs that I feel like are there and I don't think I don't feel like it was blatant but like if you I feel like when you see when

you understand like what those beliefs are you can see kind of like I don't want to come dog whistles but like you almost see like okay I feel like what he's saying here has is kind of coming from this place do you know what I mean but I guess just to answer your question I never felt like it was like a blatant like those people out there you know but those beliefs definitely were held by peers that you would see or like people you would talk to the cafeteria and you know they would say things that's not good y'all that's

not good but yeah it's yeah you you definitely see like moments where those things kind of like leak out and when you see it it is it is disturbing for sure yeah what you're describing is exactly what I was expecting I did I didn't want to push you to openly say that I wanted to see what you felt but what they're doing so the the Christian identity core doctrine included an alien component the alien component was that out out in the outer reaches of space was your celestial body in one day the UFOs would come back and you'd be

swept up Gordon Lindsay himself had a number of books on UFOs which tells you what the foundation of this doctrine was and they teach that but they don't openly teach it because it sounds crazy so what they do is they usually you have to go through these stages of they call it Christian maturity or spiritual maturity what it essentially means is they want to feel out are you gonna think I'm crazy if I tell you the UFO stuff that makes a lot of sense honestly because we yeah we it became a joke like some of my friends my peers

we would joke about like oh man we're going to this class or come on aliens again like and we would just be like kind of we're like literally like in the world and we just kind of like brush it off but I feel like in retrospect like looking back I'm like that's kind of a stuff actually like I don't think that is good now that I'm thinking about it I mean the doctrine itself is it's just wacky it's not I love a good movie like Stargate is one of my favorite movies of all time Stargate so if they were preaching it in the context of hey we're

all gonna get together and we're gonna talk about Stargate or we're going to pretend like we're in some sort of a fantasy world that's totally different I would be on board with that. But what they're trying to do is frame the biblical passages if they can find one word that is just obscure enough that people can't understand what it means, that they can apply to this mystery doctrine, whatever it is they call it, then they'll push it and they'll try to say that that's what that passage means. The rest of the world doesn't know, but we, brothers and sisters, we have the secret knowledge. The is basically

noctisism is what it is essentially. We have the secret knowledge, the noces. No, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, another thing was they loved talking about dinosaurs. And they have a museum with dinosaur bones. And in your first semester, they take you, oh, I forget where it is in Texas, but it's like, it's like kind of like a creek and they have, it's like where they had found like remains like bones. I watched the documentary about it the other day, about how like the Christian world, like actually like they obsessed over it. Like

there was this pastor who was a businessman and the whole history was so weird, but they make us go. And he's like a young Arthur. So he, I don't know what the point of it was. I don't know even because he doesn't, they didn't really teach anything scientific. I don't think they know that much anyway. So it just felt random. It just felt like, why are we doing this? But yeah, he, they have a museum with a bunch of like dinosaur bones. But I will say something that was really weird too.

That I feel, I know this is kind of taking a little bit of a turn. But I feel like it will add a little bit. But in retrospect, after learning more about Gordon Lindsay's past and history with William Brannum, this disturbs me a lot. But they, they really, really elevate the lens Gordon and freedom. Like they, like they are just these people, we have to learn all about their past and we have to read all their books, which also I thought I'd bring this Gordon Lindsay book. I still have this thing. I was reading it the other day and I was like, this isn't same. This is, there's,

there's some stuff in there. If you want it, I'll, I'll, I'll mail it to you if you want it. So you don't have to buy it. I don't need this anymore. So I'll send it to you. But um, but yeah, so they, which interesting enough, I'm like, they made it through to all these books about them and I didn't know anything about the stuff that you were saying because after I'd watched some of your videos, I went and was doing some research and I was like, oh my gosh, this is like, for real. Like this,

There's documents on this stuff. And they don't say any of it. They don't tell us about any of it, but they want us to read all their books and people call her Mama Lindsay.

And it's weird the way they talk about it and her bedroom that's on campus is untouched. They haven't moved like her closet's still there, her bed's still there. And when I was working there, they're like, we're gonna turn into a museum.

And I'm like, girl, no one wants to go there. That's weird. A little less to see that. But it's very strange. And I think knowing what they were up to back in the day, it just makes me feel so icky.

And I wish people knew more about this. After everything that happened with the shooter, I posted some stuff on my Instagram talking about just sharing some articles. Because I still have a lot of people who were staff and are staff still that follow me and stuff like that.

And so I shared it and I was like, hey, you guys should do some research. Like this stuff doesn't just happen at vacuum. Like we need to learn more about how things leap up and how harmful beliefs can leak into as good, like well intention and well meaning as we can be, like things can leak into things.

And a lot of people were messaging me, dude, thank you so much. I know so many people were asking for your links and stuff. Because it's so helpful because we didn't know anything. They don't tell us anything.

I don't even know if staff who are there now know any of the stuff. But yeah, all that to say, the way they elevate them is just borderline, they make them saints. You know, it's strange, it's bizarre.

Hero worship. So the interesting part of all of this is I was hoping to build to a climax, but I didn't want to drive you there because I wanted people to watch. You openly talk about it and go to the same place that I was headed.

So Brannum created this scheme to basically create cults. And there were several numerous countless cults that spun off of this. International House of Prayer in Kansas City, for example, was basically Brannumism 2.0.

And think about the similarities. It has the hero worship. There is none greater than Mike Bickle. It has the prophetic history. When you come on board, you've got to know our history because that makes us better than the others.

We're more special than the other groups because we have the prophetic history. And yet we have all of the secret things that we're not going to tell the outside world. When you come to our website, you're not going to know half the stuff that we stand for, believe.

And what it essentially comes down to, Dr. Stephen Hassan calls it the bite model of authoritarian control. It is the true signs of marking. of a cult, are they controlling your behavior, which is something you've described?

Are they controlling the information? Are they concealing things, which is something you've described? Are they controlling your thoughts and your emotions, which are things that you've described? So in this podcast, without even meaning to or intending to, you have basically branded it as a cult.

Actually, it's funny you bring up IHOP because we have our own version. It's called Glop, Gordon Lindsay House of Prayer, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one thing that I do want to go back to because it was weird to you, and it isn't weird to me at all, is the dinosaurs.

Why the fascination with dinosaurs? There's everybody listening who hears this, they're saying, well, scratch your head. Why is that? If you understand Christian identity, they believe and taught, and I can't find Gordon Lindsay writing about this because they've destroyed all of his Christian identity books that he wrote.

I'm assuming he believed it too if he was attending the conferences. The conferences that he attended in, I think it was Oregon, they believed that there was a race that pre-existed before the Garden of Eden, and they were the mud people.

And Christian identity taught that whenever, you know, when the fall happened and they were banished from the Garden, well, the good seed continued through Adam and his grandchildren, great-grandchildren. The bad seed made it with the mud people, which is why the black skin.

And all of that would go back to the dinosaurs, which creates this fascination for anybody in Christian identity to understand the dinosaurs because one day they're going to find that missing link, they're going to find that mud person, and all of this can be unraveled.

It's crazy. And wow, okay, that's very illuminating for me because, yeah, there's, so we have, they have multiple buildings, but one of them you walk in immediately, it's just like giant dinosaur like bone, and then you go upstairs, and like I said, he believes in, they believe him, like young earth, and all that stuff, and so we have like these paintings of like, okay, men, you know, and then there's like an empty museum, like they wanted to be museum, but nobody wants to go, like nobody's interested, but it's just like dinosaur bones and things like that.

But now that you're saying that, that's so, that's crazy, yeah, I don't know any of that. But it makes sense, like, why they teach first semesters, they talk through all that stuff, that's crazy.

It's really interesting. See, I didn't know much of that. I knew that they believed in a race that pre-existed because Brannum, in one obscure sermon, he talks about it, he talks about the race that pre-existed at him, which...

If you're a believer in what the Bible says, and you're Solar Scriptura, you're by the Scripture alone, you can't believe this, because there is no precedent for mud people in the Bible. But he says something weird like before Adam's race, there was another race with hands-like monkeys and feet-like bears or some weird thing.

And he's essentially describing a drawing of the mud people that was passed out among the Christian identity circles. I saw it in one magazine, I can't remember which, but he's describing that, and that's kind of what they believed.

But I was not familiar with any of that until I read Michael Barkun's book Religion and the Racist Ride. If you want to know the true history of what you came from, that was actually what helped me understand that Gordon Lindsay was in that movement, because Barkun lays out the entire lineage of the Christian identity movement, and it passed through California and Oregon, and there were these massive, massive conferences, they were called the, I think they were the Anglo-Saxon Federation conferences.

And that's the one that Gordon Lindsay was speaking at, so this was a big, big deal. And Henry Ford of the Ford Motor Company was sponsoring and behind a lot of this. There's a lot of politics, slash business tied into it, so there was a lot of, what that gives you is there was a lot of finances backing it.

So this was a very profitable thing to be in, which is probably why, according to my opinion, why Gordon Lindsay was in it in the first place, we can make money doing this. But he seems to be impacted by the doctrine because even after Christian identity started to diminish, he's still holding on to some of the doctrines.

So if you read that book Religion and the Racist Ride, you'll understand most of your heritage. Yeah, I'm going to look into it. And I'm, you're talking about like Oregon and his time over there.

And I actually just, like, we're kind of like see if there's anything I was like missing from this book, like that I forgot that might have been interesting. There's a whole section where he talks about him being an organ and he doesn't mention any of those things at all.

And I'm like, I guess that makes sense why he wouldn't do that. But that's, it's a lot. It's a lot. And I think like something that makes me kind of sad. Like in regards to all of this is like just how well meaning a lot of the people who like go to see if and I even like work there, like there are people who give up their whole lives to go to Christ of the Nations.

So I worked in admissions for a couple of months. I only lasted a few months. I had to get out of there because I feel like when you're a student, you see, you see things.

But when you work there, you really see things. So I was working there. for a few months and then I cut out. But I was doing admissions and for a bit, I was working with international admissions.

So I was working with like students who were coming from abroad and people were talking about like, yeah, I sold my house, I sold my car. I'm bringing all four of my kids and my wife and we're coming.

And I'm like, you're giving up everything to come to this school that like, I mean, I spent a lot of time here, but I don't think it's worth it. Like giving up all and having to pay for a visa, which aren't expensive, aren't cheap.

They're not cheap. Doing all that paperwork and then living in the housing that's there, which isn't the best, the food's not the best. And I mean, like, it's not, Dallas isn't fantastic. It's not a great place to live, I would say.

But it's just people really like think that their life is going to change like when they come. And like, there's like a slogan in that safe and I had for a long time where it was like, we're dreams find direction.

And it makes me sad because I'm like, people come here thinking that like, they're going to find their purpose. Like they come literally thinking like, oh, God's going to do something so big. And you know, oh, man, like my life is going to be huge after this, like, oh, my dreams are going to come true.

Like, it's going to be crazy. I'm going to be this incredible person. And then it doesn't happen. And then the people get really sad and disappointed. And I feel like it's always all with that guy.

I think it's, I don't, I don't remember his last name, but this thing of like, this is what I need. Like, my life is going to take off from here. And it's, it's a climatic and I just think people get really disappointed and sad.

Like, I don't know. I know a lot of people who gave up a lot because it's not cheap. The tuition is not cheap. People come and they give free labor also, because one of the things you have to do for your summer credits is you don't have to go on mission trip or you have to volunteer at a camp.

You pay to work full time job every single day. Like you barely sleep, you barely, like you work so much. And people are paying for it to do that. And I just feel like when people graduate or when they leave, they're like, well, what was the point?

Nothing's changed. I mean, I don't even have skills to get a real job. Like, it's either I go to ministry or I don't do anything. And it's just, I don't know, it just makes me really sad because there really are people thinking that like, something really incredible is going to happen or they think, sometimes not even that selfish.

Sometimes it's like, I want to be a tool for the gospel. I want to like give my life for this. And like, I want to help people. Like there are people who, Jamie, they're all their heart.

They want to like help others. And then they get here and they're like, I'm not able to do any of that. And it's just sad. It just makes me really sad. It is sad. It's basically it's not helping further the gospel. It's helping further the organization the bigger the numbers get the better the organization looks and let's attract the people. Let's get it bigger. It's it's bad. And back to Vance Belter. It isn't that they taught him to do what he did right.

But they have all of the makings. If you read Dr. Stephen Hesson's book, combating called Mind Control. They have all of the makings to create a destructive group that can radicalize people. And when you radicalize a person, you radicalize them on the ideology. Well, then the brain will sometimes go to the conclusions of how to enforce the ideology.

So what he did may not have necessarily been taught at Christ for the nations. But if he was radicalized and he was radicalized by them, if that is the case, then they could have been responsible for what happened.

And that's that's for the courts to decide. And I'm certain because no court in the United States really understands called Mind Control. It'll probably never come out to be this. But when you examine it, it's it's sad because there are so many people that like you said, give up everything to come join this. And in the end, what do they get? They get really nothing.

So thank you so much for doing this. Oh, of course. Thank you for meeting me. Well, if you've enjoyed a show and you want more information, 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 Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Automal.

Thank you.