Escape From the Cult With No Name: Global Missions

Hello and welcome to another episode, have the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my very special guest, Matt Hannigan, former member of Global Missions. Matt, it's good to have you on. I have actually wanted to have somebody on from Global Missions. I haven't even told you this but I've been in contact with other people out of Global Missions, some of which are ranking members and trying to get somebody to open up and talk about it and lo and behold you

contacted me and you are the first person that is willing and able to talk about it. So thank you for joining. Maybe you can tell everybody just a little bit about yourself. Yeah, I know. I appreciate it. Longtime listener, first-time caller. I've been enjoying the podcast for a long time now. I got your book and read it or listen to it on audible preacher behind the white hood. And I took, I guess I guess I got two firsts out of this. I'm the first person who grew up going to the Sharon Orphanage Church every Sunday in North Battleford that

to come on the podcast. And the second first was I was the first person to write your book on audible. So happy to be, you know, to have two firsts for the podcast. But yeah, I, boy, I think I left 34. And I left when I was 27. But there was a long road, you know, coming up from when I was born into it. You know, my father was born into it. So I'm kind of third generation into this, you know, high control group. And boy, there was a lot of, I just experienced a lot of like

really weird things growing up that were normal to me. But we're, you know, looking back on the, we're very, very strange. And a lot of my like struggle these days is like kind of like pulling apart like what was weird and what was like a heresy and what was actually like wrong and bad versus what was just weird, you know, it was just strange and pretty much harmless, other than it just being a little bit strange. So yeah, it's been, it's been quite the road, but yeah, I've maintained my faith and I, I still am a believer and I go to a

different church. Now that's a lot healthier. So I'm very thankful to God for that for my faith and my ability to You know, maintain my faith and all through his grace, of course, but yeah, it's been it's been quite the road, but I, like I said, I've been really enjoying the podcast.

It's helped me understand how things came to be and why things were the way they were and it's given me a lot of peace just being able to see that I'm not alone in all of this.

So I appreciate your work, John. Well, thank you. I'm glad it has helped in some way and it is odd, you know, I've, as I said, I've spoken to the other people who are in the movement.

And not just this one, I've talked to many people who have are either still in or were closely affiliated with other similar movements. And many of them, like global missions, will say, we have reformed.

And the question that always goes through my head is, well, how much did you reform? Did you put a pretty bow and tie on top of the package that was already there or what it, what is it?

I'm one of the many hobbies I have, which I don't think I've talked about much is I'm into cars and car restoration and I have an old sports car that I tinker with. And I like to make it back to the pure original.

That's how I, how I work on my car. Well, if I had a, if somebody were driving an old dump truck and tried to turn into a sports car, but left the whole frame of the dump truck, can you really call it a new sports car?

And would you even want to drive it in the first place? That's kind of how I look at these things and you're right, there, there's so many parts to go through and filter and try to understand because some of the things that were taught are very healthy, some are good, pure, some have good intentions.

And then there's always that thing that you're wondering in the back of your mind, what does that, what is this harmful thing that I'm sensing here? How can it affect my life? How can it affect the lives of my children?

So I'm glad you're, you're able to talk about this. Yeah, absolutely. No, I, I can really identify with that analogy because I think the thing that really got me to take another look at leaving the church was, you know, thinking about like, is it, is it superficial things that are wrong or is it fundamental things that are wrong?

And what I found is that it was, you know, the fundamental teachings of the church that were actually unbiblical and actually harmful. And it was the superficial things that were great, you know, all the relationships and the family and the friends and the activities, like, nothing wrong with that.

And like, everybody needs a, you know, a good strong community. And I still have, I'm very happy to say I still have lots of friends in the church. And I think everyone there now, I mean, anyone who's left there a true believer, right?

Like they, they are not trying to deceive anyone. They are a true believer. They really believe what they're teaching. But that's what I ultimately landed on was that it's the core fundamental theology that's wrong.

the fivefold ministry doctrine. It's the sons and sonship doctrine. It's the laying on to the hands of the Presbytery and the impartation of gifts through prophecy and all these things that I just don't think there's a, I don't think there's a lot of thought that has gone into whether or not these things are safe or they are publicly appropriate.

And any kind of claim of the church being reformed, like, yeah, I mean, they may have dressed it up. They may have put the, you know, the body of a Corvette on the dump truck frame, but it's still the dump truck frame at the end of the day.

It's, they're, they're not going to leave behind the sons and sonship doctrine of the fivefold ministry or anything like that. Like those are core things that, you know, probably one out of every four message preached at these churches during the camps or during the Sunday services, you know, where there's different assemblies around Canada and the United States and elsewhere.

Yeah, it's going to be on sons and sonship or, you know, the prophecies in 1948 that, you know, talked about, you know, re-establishing the gifts and fivefold ministry and all those doctrines that really came out of the, you know, message cult.

Absolutely. And one of the things that people struggle with when they're in such a movement is the ability to critically think and re-examine the doctrines without fear of eternal damnation. There's always that fear in the back of your mind, well, if I question this, well, if I examine this, what if I get it wrong?

And I went through it too. I went through it for a long time and I finally came to the conclusion that, as I'm peeling back all of the layers of these things that were taught in my head, these doctrines, not only were they doctrines of men, they served a different purpose, they misapplied trust.

And many people who are in the movements do not really think about trust. But in fact, I just got an email today on the same subject and I get these all the time. People say, all you're doing is critically examining, you're never pointing people to where they should go.

In other words, you're announcing all of the critical flaws, but you're not giving them the name of the church that they should attend. It's usually where this ends up, which I never do this.

I will let people take their own journey. But what it says, when I'm reading that, is this person who has written this to me, does not trust that God will lead the person that God is in full control.

And therefore, we need a human being to step down, tell people what they should do, tell people what they should believe, where they should go, all of these things. And if somebody's crying out, hey, there's danger in this water, don't swim.

Well, they're trying to say that the person. and getting the people out of the water should also take them to the swimming pool. And that's not usually how this works, right? But it's all about the trust.

If you trust that God is all powerful, then it doesn't matter if you help somebody out of the water where they're sharks, then God's going to lead them to where they should go. But if you don't trust God, and you think God is weak, you need a human to do it, that's where the problem comes in for me, because where is that balance of power?

You're actually taking the humans and you're putting them in place of the God. And quite frankly and quite bluntly, you're basically usurping the role of the Holy Spirit. So a person who asks this question does not actually believe what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit.

Yeah, the role of the Holy Spirit is super critical when it comes to our sanctification, right? Like salvation is a free and wonderful gift, but it's like what happens after that? Well, we need to submit to the Holy Spirit.

That's something that we can only do as individuals, right? And that cannot be infringed upon by any other person, and otherwise it will,

yeah, it'll just get in the way of the process, because it has to be a very personal, has to be a very personal relationship with the Holy Spirit and that sanctification. So yeah, I think that was one of the things that really bothered me was the claim that all of the brethren at the Sharon Orphanage were apostolic and I just could not get over that.

It was like, especially when I started doing some more reading myself and the Bible about like, when the disciples are looking to replace Judas, they talk about what the requirements are to be an apostle, and it was like somebody who has seen Christ on earth.

And then more over, there's early church fathers that wrote about how they did not think that the headship of apostles passed down to their, you know, passed on, you know, passed that, you know, 100, like the year 100, like it was just like these were the apostles, they saw Christ in the flesh and like Paul being the most, the most, you know, extreme example of that where Christ met him on the road to Damascus, but he still appeared to him and he saw Christ.

And it's very likely that Paul did see Christ as a human being before his death because he was around obviously. So that claim of apostolic headship or having some kind of apostolic position and the church just seemed so incredulous to me, but I felt like the bent, like even if it was true, it's like the benefits of having a leader that was apostolic did not.

a way to downsides of having a leader that was apostolic because suddenly you have this person who's just a man who is basically on par with scripture, that's going to go wrong every single time. Like every single time that's going to go wrong because how are we as like responsible church members supposed to differentiate between their opinion and their apostolic direction? Absolutely. There's not a case where that goes right. Even if the person has good intentions and for some sake of, you know, some sake of an example that I don't believe exist, say that they are 100% on par with scripture, which I question this, that doesn't mean that they

will always be this way. And so if you're putting your trust in this person, there are many things that can happen. And some of them, the movement itself defies like a person can start out good, have good intentions and then go through some sort of a mental health battle or some sort of a trauma that causes mental health conditions and then their personality shifts or changes and their mood changes and even to some extent their belief can change in this way. But that doesn't mean that the person is on par with scripture the entire time. Their entire belief system can

sometimes change, not by their own will. And we've seen examples. So I've studied Jim Jones. I've been working with the Jones town foundation. This is a person who actually started out seemingly pretty good. He had some fundamental flaws in his childhood makeup. He had some trauma that he had to get over. But his intentions were really good. If you look at the Indianapolis years, those are the same years he came into the movement. So he came into the movement, decided that ironically that this movement is not of God. I'm leaving it. And Jim Jones of all people left

the movement and said, I'm done with this. But look where he went. And this is a person, like I said, good intentions started out well, discovered all of the flaws in the movement. And then something happened and he snapped. I can't yet find what this is. Maybe he always had some sort of mental health issue all along. If you read the book, The Raven, it's that way. But where I'm headed with all of this is if you put your trust in a human being, you're putting your trust in a human being as though it is forever in time instead of just this minute. And that's really the problem for me.

We need to live for just this minute. We don't need to leave with the expectation that somebody is a superhuman. Agreed. Yeah. 100% on the subject of Jim Jones. I haven't read The Raven. But I have listened to Darryl Cooper's podcast. And it's I think it's an eight part series on Jim Jones.

And they're like, you know, five or six hours a piece, right? So it might as well be a book. He drew a lot from the Raven, a lot of sources from it. And it was, it really humanized Jones.

It was really like shocking to me because Jones is typically, you know, public enemy number one when people are talking about him. But it, I think it increased the impact of Jones kind of dissent into hell because he did start out with these like, you know, grand, this grand vision for what church should be.

I don't know if he ever really believed that, you know, believed in Christianity, but he certainly believed that he was his brother's keeper. And he certainly believed that he, you know, it was his responsibility to take care of the people that were coming to his church.

Like the one story, for instance, where he just, instead of preaching, he just got up at the front and basically asked anyone if they were having a problem. And this one lady said, well, I am behind paying my power bill because like I just, I just can't keep up with it, but on top of that, they also won't come and fix it.

And so I've been asking them for months and months and their power is out. So I don't feel like I should pay for it if it's not working, but then they keep telling me that.

And so he, what he did is he sat down there and he wrote a letter to the city and he got everyone in the church to sign it and then he sent it in, sure enough, the power company came and fixed this old lady's, you know, home.

So it shows you that he had really good intentions, but that is not a precondition for apostolic authority. Like good intentions, right? What's the road to hell paved with, right? Like we know the old adage and it's because it's true.

And yeah, like I think there are a lot of good intentions at the North Battleford Group, Global Mission's Church. Yeah, I just, I'll take on a side to talk, speak about that for a second.

I grew up with the understanding that our church did not have a name. And it was the nameless church. And everybody that I talked to, who asked me which church I went to, I had this, you know, whole spiel, you know, ever since I was like six or seven years old to talk about why my church didn't have a name.

And it was a program didn't pretty early. That, you know, names just divide people and, you know, we're not part of a denomination. Like they didn't even like to say that we were non-denomination all, but I'm pretty sure now that that was just a way of kind of shedding any kind of associations with past groups.

Because boy, in the early years of the movement, they were very happy to be associated with certain groups like four square church and, you know, Amy Simple McPherson and, you know, lots of different, you know, message leaders.

I'll never stop being amazed at how many groups try to conceal their past. It seems like that's the case. And I truly believe that good intentions are there. They try to reform. But whenever you literally say we're going to reform by not letting everybody know where we came from, you're leaving the foundation of where you came from.

That's really the problem here. And even in that, there are some groups that I think probably have reformed and probably aren't on a good trajectory. But the moment that somebody comes across that past, if you're not open about it, well, what else are they hiding?

They're hiding this. What else are they hiding? That's usually what goes through the heads of the people. And it just goes to show that if you put your trust in a human being, humans do not like to find a black eye in any scenario.

So there's ways that they try to avoid the skepticism. One of the ways is covering it up. But in doing so, you lose your transparency. And so that, for me, honestly, in all that I left in Brannemism, I probably had they been transparent with me.

I would probably still be in that destructive group, which is ironic, because I would have never known they're covering something up. Once I found out, I'm gone. Yeah. And then I think, yeah, it's, I mean, praise the Lord, though, right, that they weren't, you know, that they weren't more manipulative because that was something else that I heard a lot growing up as a, you know, as a teenager, like I, you know, I'm being the son of one of the traveling ministries, which is basically being the son of one of the leaders.

I really felt like I needed to kind of, in my own social circles, kind of suppress questions and be the good, the good follower and, you know, be the, be the example of what we were supposed to be.

And I found that there was this one teaching that I just, it just really bothered me. And it was called putting it, putting it on the shelf. It was like, if you have questions about it and you don't, and the brethren can't, you know, give you a good answer for it, just put it on the shelf.

And the Lord will reveal to you later what that really means. And, you know, after reading Dr. Stephen Hassen's book, you know, The Combat and Cult Mind Control, that's just thought control. That's all that is, right?

It's just suppressing, it's suppressing your thoughts, your questions, and it's, it's a form of thought control. So, you know, one of the analogies that I would use with, you know, some of my friends who are still in the group was like, you know, if you imagine, you know, if you're in our church experience as a house, and there's a shelf on the wall, I was like, most of the things that I had that are in the house are on the shelf, and the shelf was pulling the wall down, right?

It's so heavy. It's so full. There's no more room for anything. And the house is just coming, you know, crashing down because there's so many questions. And, you know, I remember our young adults meetings during camp, they used to have like a question and answer period.

And it was hilarious. Like the first two were like pretty good, and then the subsequent like camps, we had about two camps a year, maybe three. There was one like specific young adults camp, and then two family camps.

Every subsequent question and answer period, the questions got better and fewer and fewer responses were made and eventually they just can't the whole thing and I was like, looking like I was angry, like that made me really angry when I was there but looking back on it, it's just like you can't, you just have to laugh about it.

It's like well, they don't really, they can't answer these things because they themselves at this point don't know the answers or they've suppressed themselves to a point where they can't actually do the critical thinking to get to the answer and it was really sad.

It really comes down to the fact that there is an ideology that is motivated by an agenda. Most people in normal conversation, if they discover that they've said something incorrectly or they believe something incorrectly, the open say, oops, I made a mistake.

That's generally how people behave. I understand that there are some personalities that don't really cave that way but by and large, most people are that way. But whenever you get somebody who's in this apostolic authority, well to maintain that title, you have to be all knowing.

Which again, it goes back to the Fifle Ministry error. It has created such a pyramid scheme of authoritarian control that the people at the top cannot admit when they're wrong. If they do, they shouldn't be at the top in the first place under the structure of the pyramid scheme.

So they have to behave this way and the problem is people underneath this tier can understand it and know it. And where I really have a problem, there are people at the bottom of, if you look at Dr. Stephen Hasson's book, he's got that pyramid of authoritarian control, the central figure at the top and then you've got, I can't remember how Hasson calls it, but I say basically they're the enforcers.

Well, right underneath that, in between there and the rank and file member, there are people who are aware of the issues and aware that the people above them know the issues, but they have to make a conscious decision not to let the common people know.

And I'm one of these people that in Christianity, I believe everybody should be the common people. And if you read the Bible and you understand what it's saying, there is Jesus and then there is everyone else.

I don't care if you are an apostle, I don't care if you are a prophet. There's Jesus and everyone else under Christianity's structure, but we have instead tried to glorify these different things. Like, if you can do some special thing that somebody else can't do, if you have a gift, we need to glorify that gift and therefore the person must be superhuman.

And I'm of the opinion, there are no superhumans. Yeah, I agree completely. And I think that's part of our human nature is that we actually want a law. We want the law. We want something to follow.

We want law. If there's some kind of law or structure to follow, that means we don't have to maintain a relation. and those relationships are exhausting and difficult and tiring and emotionally draining, and we don't want to engage with that. We just would rather turn our brains off, agree with whoever's preaching to us and not do the work of actually reading and understanding the Bible. And again, that's part of our journey as Christians and the work of the Holy Spirit is to become sanctified. And so much of this would be solved if individuals had a respect for

the scriptures. I was just watching another episode of the podcast and you quoted this verse here, Matthew 164, a wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah and Jesus left them in one way. And so that verse speaks volumes about where are we putting our efforts as Christians, right? If the scripture and the death and resurrection of Jesus is not enough for you, then nothing will be. Nothing will be enough for you. No amount of loaves and fishes will fill you. If you step over the body and blood of Christ and his word that

is it hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of saints have given their lives so that we have access to the scriptures, but people would rather go and see an apostle or a prophet and have them speak to you specifically and get all excited about what God's going to do for you.

But you know, but step over the the the scriptures themselves, I think it's such a waste. And that's essentially what the the fivefold ministry does is that it says, you know what? It's it's

kind of reestablishing this often quoted, you know, dark age Catholicism where it was like the priests interpret the Bible and they kind of tell the congregation what they need to know. And I don't know, I think it's probably true in the message too, but in our group, you know, Catholics were, you know, akin to the devil, right? Like they were just they had so much wrong, you know, they were you know, like our brothers and sisters, you know, in in Christ who were, you know, you know, working, you know, workers together, but they were just, you know, they were they were not,

they were, I would say evil, but they were they were not, you know, a good group according to our theology, but you know, it was ironic because we would constantly criticize them for having this approach where, you know, the Bible needed to be interpreted by priests and then that revelation was given, you know, from priests through teaching to the people, but the fivefold ministry set up that was the example, same thing. It was the priest, there was a priest class, and they would kind of interpret it, and all of it would come down to us, and low and behold, it would all point to sons and

sonship doctrine, or the five-fold ministry, or the structure of the Presbytery, and gifts the ministries, and all that kind of stuff, and it would just reinforce that. What happened in 1948 was the most important thing that's ever happened, and oh yeah, that's the other thing too, is the little British Israelism that was sprinkled in this whole time. Yeah, that was such a revelation, man, when I heard about British Israelism from you guys and started looking it up, I was just shocked about that. I was like, wow, that's like literally my dad like preaches on that, like

probably one of every 10 messages he talks about that. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. 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. I'm just so fascinated with the fact that your church had no name because they were covering up the past. And yet this past, if you look beyond the movement that you were in, every single movement that has built on top of it looks at your past, the part that they're covering up, as though it is the greatest blessing America has ever had. And we have these rising groups in the United States that they look back to the Laterane, as this was whenever the first major outpouring of the Holy Spirit, when the manifested

sons of God were coming down, that was being birthed, and now we're going to claim dominion over this place. They all look at that as the epicenter, and yet your group covers up that past. So I'm trying to figure out how on earth did this happen. So I was talking, I was talking with my dad recently, we were, I was back in North Balfour. I was actually back on the grounds just a couple weeks ago.

It was, it's always weird to be back, right? But it's also good because it humanizes everybody again. Because even me, like it's easy for me to, you know, just kind of want to separate myself from that in a way to like protect myself from it. But to go back and to see everybody, it just, it really humanizes them in it.

It really softens my heart, which I think is a good thing. But I was talking to him and I was like, hey, I've got three older brothers, one of them still in the group and the other two have left.

And so I got my dad and my brothers together. And I just said, hey, by the way, I'm just going to go on this podcast and talk about my experience. And it doesn't mean I don't love you anymore.

I don't want you in my life. I just, it's my experience and I have to talk about it. And my dad said, right away, he just started, you know, rehearsing what he had been taught, which was like, oh, like, you know, we were told that like lots of people try to tie our group to William Brandon, but that's not true.

And you know, basically tried to like massage this message of like, oh, we're we're actually a part of it at all. But I actually have two copies of two similar books here. So we've got the move of the spirit and then George Warnox book, the piece of tabernacles.

And both of them have two very different stories about how the church began. And there's some interesting differences between these two. So in Warnox book, it talks about how people, and this was revised in 1978.

So the, or in the 70s, I guess I shouldn't say, oh, reprinted March 1978, okay, I'm good, I'm good. So in this copy, it says that some people followed the ministers that were touring around after the outpouring in 1948.

And so we know that that was Brandon, right? He was on his Canadian tour. He was, you know, trying to whip up support and honestly money, maybe even for Roy Davis, we don't know, in Canada at that time.

So they took his name out of it in the 1978 printing, but they still mentioned that people followed this group around Canada and they went, they said they went to Vancouver. Now in this printing, which I think is in 2005, it doesn't mention that at all.

It doesn't say a thing about the teenagers and the students of the Sharon schools, Bible College following anybody after the revival. It just completely removes that. And, you know, I was just like, why do we need to do that?

Like why do we need to edit history? Why do we need a ministry of truth? You know, like if there's, if, you know, I think it's so funny, like a lot of the time that there's been teaching on where our church came from.

It's like, there's this amazing outpouring in 1948 and all these things were reestablished. You know, there's this new apostolic age that began and you can just ignore the middle part and now we're the only people who still believe it and everything's great.

It's like, okay, I think it's probably, you know, a little more that went on there and you know, things like, they'll mention things like the Pentecostal, like the PAOC. kind of distanced themselves from us.

But then they, in 1997, they gave us an apology. And so it's all good news when you're in the group, right? But there's so much more that went on there that I think would be really challenging for any current members to read and understand what was really going on at the time.

And the date, the 1978. So the Johnstown massacre was in November of 1978. But John's was going explosive through a good part of that year. So it's very telling that there was a revision that come out about the same time that Jones is going nuclear down in South America.

What's interesting is very much like your church covered up the past, my church covered up all kinds of past for everything from the clan to who knows what else. But the Jones scenario that played out in this area, they tried to cover it up.

I'm told by people who are, I can't give their names in positions, but they're in a position to know, I'll just say it like that, that my grandfather fought to keep the raven out of the library so that people could not read and understand that Jim Jones came to fruition, his people's temple came to fruition because of Brannemism.

And I had no idea that my grandfather took over Brannem's church. So I had no idea that Jim Jones was even set foot in my grandfather's church. This was shocking to me. And I can almost prove that he actually did step foot.

There's one statement that's made that leads me to believe Jones was actually there. But at minimum, the head of that church was going to people's temple and having these private interviews with people. And the way these private interviews worked in the Brannem cult ideology, it was basically what the Old Testament would call fortune telling and stone the ancients for because they would go, they would have this private session.

Oh, tell me how the trouble is in my life are going to play out. I'm in this bad scenario. What is going to be the outcome? Well, that's fortune telling, fortune telling 101. Well, he was holding private sessions with people who many of them, I'm certain, would have went to Jones town and died.

So what fortune did he tell them? Did he tell them don't go? I don't know. But it's odd that all of that's been covered up. And again, that date's just, it's shocking to me.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I think the tendrils run deep. I think I never, because we were so intent on disassociating from any kind of denomination, it was really easy for leadership to say, well, that is the Pentecostal's version of what happened or that is the, that's the Presbyterian version of events.

But it was very easy for them, because we, like, honestly, we had contempt for any other group that was not ours. And that is so unbi- of local to have contempt for fellow Christians.

Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, like that's, but we did, we had contempt. We thought we were better than them. And, you know, my dad tells another story about how he was, he was working in a nursing home.

I was a nursing home director in Prince George in British Columbia and these people came in and they had basically found the message cult in town and we're all excited about the fact that they had found something that went right back to 1948 that had roots in the, you know, the revival.

And my dad said, well, like that's, I'm happy that you found that, but like our group is actually the true group. And we're the ones that are actually, you know, we've actually like kept everything the way it should be.

And, you know, he said that they just, they're just faces just dropped and they just didn't want to talk about it anymore. And it was, you know, very telling about how divisive this was and that this, all these groups, they all want to have this like, they want to have this claim that they are the original, you know, that they're this original.

And it's like, man, like isn't faith in Christ like enough? You know, why is it not enough that we have faith in Christ Jesus? Like that should be, you know, salvation and sanctification. Like that, there's enough work there, people.

We don't need to add to that. Like, sanctification will take you the rest of your life. And, you know, a Holy Spirit will do a perfect work. You don't need anything else other than that.

You don't need apostles and prophets. You don't need, like you said, divination. That's exactly what it was. And when we had hands laid on us by the Presbytery, which is just a group of elders, they would, I mean, it was close to fortune telling.

It was close, you know, it was kind of like, you're going to do this and that and the other thing. And you're going to, you know, you have a gift of, well, I'm still not sure if it was, you know, how harmful or harmless it was, but they would say things like, you know, you're going to host a lot of people.

You're going to have a gift of, you know, ministering in this area or music or whatever. But yeah, even so, like it was, yeah, it was divination. It was trying to find out what was going to happen and try to give you some certainty about the future to, you know, reassure your fears.

And it's like, brothers and sisters, like that is not how faith in Christ works. We do not have faith in Christ because he tells us what's going to happen. You know, we have faith in Christ because we have salvation and he is God and he is good.

And that's it. That's all we need. And like, it's, I don't know, it's really freeing. It is really that simple. It is. And you know, whenever I talk to people who experience many of the same things I did, it's funny because they talk about how they're processing it and they're going through the information and they're coming to realizations.

Well, when I talk to people who put me back in the state of mind that, I had, it actually helps me to process, and one of the things that actually I'm just processing now, you mentioned how your father was talking about how we're the true church.

They're the false ones, right? That was a concept that it really stemmed from the way that the latarine movement was structured. You had the true church, and we're it if you're in the movement, if you're in the denominations, you're not.

That's why they want to be non-denominational. They actually want to have no name, so all of that's interesting to me. But that idea of the true church, we're the right ones, everyone else is the wrong ones.

Where this ends up is I get all these comments, and sometimes the email is talking about, well, if we're in the wrong, if we're in the wrong church, meaning we're in this cult, which one is the right one?

You've got the Bab, just the Methodist, all of these other denominations, and they usually come off with a comment, all of these denominations think they're the true church, which one do I go to?

And that is an indoctrinated false statement, that's not how churches work. There are people who have, if you're in a mainstream church, and I've actually been to different ones, I've been purposefully, went to different flavors of Christianity to understand how they think and why.

And if you go to the Methodist church, it isn't that they say we're the true church and the Baptist aren't, it's that they have an intention and an ideology. The Methodist like to help people who are struggling, and they will run donation drives for some child to sponsor, some child who's in a state home, for example, I actually participated in one of these drives.

It's the Methodist, they like the methods, that's how they are. But they don't say that if you do this and join our church, we're the one true church, and everyone else's faults. It is only the cults that do this.

So if you've been programmed with this mentality, you've been falsely taught what other churches believe, number one, but number two, you're in this us versus them mentality that you can never associate with the outside as though they're Christian brothers and sisters.

Absolutely. It turns the, it turns the, it puts the axe back in our saved by grace, right? It's like, oh, you need to act a certain way. You need to have these certain rituals and practices or else you're going to miss out on what God is doing in this particular group.

And you're right. That's only, only someone who has had, you know, behavior control and thought control and information control would believe that every church claims that they are the one and true church. And that's the only reason people attend that church is because they believe they're one and true church.

I was chatting with somebody on an airplane as you do. And it turned out he was a, a youth minister for an era tree in church here in Winnipeg. And he reminded me of this verse, Philippians 1, 15, 10.

18, it is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of good will. The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.

The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in change. Verse 18, but what does it matter? The important thing is that either way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached, and because of this, I rejoice.

And I think that's so beautiful that Paul is like, I actually don't care whether you follow everything that I say exactly. Let's just make sure that it's Christ's death and resurrection and his divinity that's being preached. And that gives me a lot of comfort in this, that like, because I struggle right now with my current church, like knowing how much to engage with it and like, I see things that are wrong. And even a couple of months ago, our pastor became like pretty obsessed with the idea of revival and talked about the Azusa street revival and how like,

there's this golden thread between the Azusa street revival and Winnipeg, because of course, we have the Calvary Temple here. And so he's like, oh, we have a great history of revival in this, you know, province and in this city. And he was trying to whip us up into revival. And that really set me for a loop because I was like, am I ever going to escape this? You know, like, am I just like destined to like, yeah, because I wasn't looking for that at all when I found this, when I found this church for, you know, my wife and my family, but it's so pervasive. This idea everywhere. And I think,

you know, that verse in Philippians just really gives me a lot of peace where it's like, you know, what, there's going to be a lot of things that are wrong with every church. And let's just like, make sure that it's Christ crucified that is being preached. And I don't know, I think that's kind of a superpower of Christianity is that it's like, we actually don't have a lot of like, open like battles with each other. You know, it's like, yeah, we can disagree on a bunch of stuff, but there's actually something that there's the core theology is what we actually agree on. And

that actually allows us to, you know, that allows Christ's message in the Bible to be, you know, to, to last throughout history, right? And far into the future, God willing. Whenever I was teaching my oldest son how to walk, there was this thought that happened, I, oh my gosh, I can't let him fall. He's going to hurt himself. And you walk up and you try, you try to stabilize him, right? The problem is they're not learning from their experience.

And so when you walk away, they're going to fall because they don't know what the fall feels like. And by the time my third son came about, we're like, ah, let him go. He'll figure it out.

And he did. He figured it out in the same way the oldest one did. You have to learn through some of your experiences. And similar to what you just said, went, the first church that we went to after the cult.

We're in a divine healing cult. God heals those who pray in his name, and if you have sin in your life, then God punishes you with sickness. That's kind of the premise for our cult religion.

So I go to this new church, and they have this, for lack of a better way to call it, it was basically a divine healing mental health center. And they were saying things like, the reason why you have mental health issues is because you have sin in your life.

Come to us as your pastoral authority, we'll rid you of the sin, and we can cure your mental health issues without medication. Me who has studied medication, mental health has mental health issues in the family.

I'm sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, this is awful. This is like that close from the cult that we left. And I could not stay in that church very long. It was a grave error, it was awful.

But the more churches that I tried after this, maybe not to that extreme, but there would be something else that I knew that they were doing that just totally matched the cult that I came from.

And it got to the point, it was like my third child. You know, I can't stop this, even if I were to say something to them, they're gonna try it anyway. It has to fail, they all have to learn from that experience.

And that's the difference between a normal, non-cult church and the cult churches, because they learn from the experiences and they improve and they grow and they become better for it. In the cult churches, they have these guardrails around it.

They're like me holding a kid, you can never fall. And the problem is the people holding them in power, they themselves haven't learned either. So they don't really know how to walk, it's the problem.

And now I'm at the point where when I see something, I'm in a church and I see them doing something or they say something that is just cult 101, to me. I just say, you know, don't figure it out, let it go.

Not everybody can do that, depending on where you are and your journey out of these. Yeah, no, that's really sage advice. I think it's, cause what's the alternative to not participate in ecclesia, right?

To not be in a body, to not have, so and that's the thing is it's been tough because I've had to, oh, when you leave a high control situation, you mourn the fact that you cannot trust your instincts.

Like that sucked. I was like, oh, I can't trust my instincts anymore. Like, cause my instincts told me to stay for so many years. And like, I don't know about you, but like as a young man, I was dating and breaking up with girls constantly and just being a emotional bull in a china shop, right?

Like I would go on these dates and be dating somebody for, you know, nine, 10 months. And then you would kind of, it would kind of dawn on me that they were never going to accept.

you know the cult belief and the cult standards. So I just had to you know break up with them and I did this over and over and over again and it was so it was so hard on me and it was definitely hard on them. But it was my intuition was telling me that there was no chance that they were ever going to accept this and so then I had to look for somebody in the group and I was not attracted to anybody in the group at all and and I was like oh man like this is going to be rough I'm

going to have to like suppress my own like natural like you know God given desires to find someone attractive and I was going to have to kind of just kind of deal with it because otherwise I would just be alone forever and the when I stopped doing that when I was like okay let's just take another look at what's going on here and I left I had to adjust you know my expectations I was like okay I can't just trust my feelings on things because my feelings are they're real but they are also they've been crafted right like they have been they've been messed with they've been

controlled so yeah that was really hard on me and like a lot of people have a really hard time so then you get yourself into this position of like okay like I can't trust my intuition so I can't relax I can't relax anywhere and I have to be critical of everything all the time and I have to um constantly be extremely vigilant right and that makes for a really stressful worship service you know if you're like just on the edge and just like analyzing it's like oh no another Hillsong song no it's so it's so heretical you know like you have to just be like no it's okay

like just um every button is going to fall down and they're gonna figure it out and I think that mechanism that you talked about how it's like the the there is no thinking being done in these high control groups there's a pattern and that pattern is being just kind of like relaying and redrawn every single time whereas in a free thinking group yeah they're gonna make mistakes and they're gonna pick it up and they're gonna try something else and so when you're for me that's how I kind of just was like I'm just gonna relax I'm gonna let them stub their toes on this stuff that

I know is like if garbage for me doesn't mean I need to engage with it you know there's still lots of other things to do like there's still food drives and and community groups and stuff that I can get involved with at church and and music I'm on the worship team there so it's like I'm happy to engage with that um and it doesn't have to be perfect for me to engage with it yeah exactly it it goes back to what I said earlier about the trust if you trust God to lead then it's a different

God than the one that you can't trust to lead you and I've came to the conclusion if that's the case if this is a God that I can't trust or even want to serve that God in the first place and why Am I having to serve a different God than the one that's described in the Bible?

That was my logical thought process as I'm coming out of this. But one thing that you were talking about dating and I'm going to be very, very cautious about this. I don't go here for obvious reasons, but one of the things that, and it ties back to the trust, one of the things that happens in these groups and because I have to be so cautious, I'm going to instead talk about what others have told me as they escaped.

One guy escaped and he said, dating was just a nightmare. He said, it's like all the women in these groups just let themselves go. And interpreted what that means is the women are in a group, a high controlled group, where they are so constricted and restrained that they just literally give up.

And they're also, depending on which group you're in, some of them are in groups where it is, the end of the world is coming soon. You have one job that's to bear the children before you leave and then the world is going to end.

Well, you don't care. Why do I need to fix myself up? And then add to this the complexities of the Pentecostal foundation where women are evil if they do fix themselves up. And so there's this fine line that you walk between, well, I want to be pretty, but if I do, I'm a sinner and I'm going to hell and I can't be pretty.

And God gave me my beauty as it is. Well, if you've ever seen what somebody looks like when they just wake up, that God-given beauty needs to be fixed up a little bit or they look scary, right?

So there's this fine line that you have to walk between all of this. And I'm being very, very cautious here because the men have the same issues, right? But there is a tendency in these groups because you're so burdened down with all of the pressures that they give you in these high control groups.

People just give up. And what it does is the pool of people to select from, well, I'm a male, I want somebody who's at least trying a little bit to fix themselves up, right?

So that mentality is what I'm told for multiple people, both male and female, this happens. And then what happens that's interesting is you find some people who go outside of the group to try to find their mate.

And then the mate comes in contact with a group and like, heck, no, I'm not going to join a cult. Are you crazy? Yeah. And so there's that that goes on. And it's another podcast for another day, but dating has its own sets of challenges within the group.

And when you leave it, you're like, why on earth did I put myself through all of that? Yeah, it is. It could be its own completely own podcast, but it was what I ended up having to do was just two different people, right?

And then if I wanted to have a genuine relationship with anybody, I couldn't keep doing that. So then those two worlds, and then they were, yeah, they were incompatible. And so then, I don't know, the result for me was a lot of depression, right?

It was like, oh, like I have all these skills and I can use them outside of the group, but I know my true identity, or every time I got, you know, went to a camp meeting or went to church on Sunday, you know, they were reinforcing that your true identity is a member of this group.

And what's happening out there isn't true, it isn't you. So I was essentially split in half and I'm still stitching the pieces of myself back together and I don't think I'll ever be done doing that.

That's just the reality of kind of mental trauma and the trauma of control, is that you are, yep, every once in a while I stumble onto a part of myself that was like, oh my God, I like really forgot about that part of my life.

I really forgot about that happening and this and I was like, well, I should probably, you know, spend some time reintegrating that part of me, but yeah, it's, I'm so happy I don't have to date anymore.

Yeah, oh man. But yeah, I am, the way I got out is, unless you had something else you wanted to tag onto that. No, go for it. Sure, so I was going to my church in Saskatoon called the church in Saskatoon because we didn't wanna have any names and it was, and all of my male friends,

they had kind of either left the church and gotten married or had just kind of moved away and moved on with their life. So I was pretty alone in my little church there. There's probably about 40 people and I was like, you know what, I need Christian friends.

I don't care that the brethren are discouraging us from going to other groups. I am just gonna go to a church and I'm gonna go to their young adults group because I need friends.

Like that's a basic thing. Like the scriptures are pretty clear about the benefits of friendship and how you can, it's biblical to have good friends. So I had friends from work and stuff that weren't Christian, but I would, I was like, I gotta take a chance.

So there was a panic hostile assemblies of, panic hostile assemblies of Canada. So PAOC church that was kind of the de facto young adults group for many small churches in Saskatoon. Like Saskatoon's only 300,000 people.

So, and it's really just a really big small town. Like there's lots of little churches and little towns around it. But this church, I think had a, you know, a Sunday service of around 800 people, but their young adult group was 400 people.

And most of the people there didn't go to that church on Sunday, but they were kind of in the same position as me. There was maybe three or four young adults in their church.

And instead of trying to put on a young adult's meeting at their small little assemblies, they would just come to Elam. um, uh, Elam, Elam Church in Saskatoon. Um, and so even then I had no idea that Elam Church in Saskatoon had anything to do with my group, which is just so funny, like, thinking about it in the past. They've never escaped. Um, but I went there and they had, they had good, um, they had good leadership and good teaching and I would consider them to be pretty reformed.

Um, but they, uh, they had a podcast and they had this lady come on her, the podcast and she talked about the group that she was a part of and they had, you know, they had to wear long skirts and they had to wear doilies on their heads when they were in, in the meeting and they, and she started saying all these things and I was like, boy, that sounds a lot like my group. Um, and so I talked to her about it and she was from a message group in Saskatoon and they were listening to William Branham and they had their own, um, I don't know

what he called himself. He was definitely their leader, um, but he, like, I don't know, probably, probably claimed he was a prophet or something, but he was, he was a high control, um, you know, cult leader right in Little Old Saskatoon, listening to the message every single Sunday.

Um, and they, uh, yeah, they, she, her uncle actually paid somebody, they, they convinced her to go on a trip and they cornered her in a hotel because she wasn't supposed to be going on trips with her family, right? So they took her out of town, they convinced her to stay for four days and the first two or three days of that, there was a, um, like a professional, like cult rescue person, like a, like, uh, there was a professional intervention, interventionist, um, who sat down with her and basically kind of went over all of these things that the message taught and basically

kind of broke her out of that. And so, you know, she was living in like a group home with, like, three or four other, um, girls that were all part of the, the, the message cult. And, uh, it was super high control, right? Like every single hour of every single day was, uh, scheduled. And, uh, the weekends, there was always the leader, he had this farm and he would get them to all go do, like, manual labor on the farm, like every Saturday and, and then Sunday after church and stuff.

So they were just dog tired all the time, right? Which really opens your, opens you up for control, you know, behavior control, emotional control, so on and so forth. Um, and yeah, so she broke out of that because her uncle had left previously and it got his wife and kids out and then was, um, starting to try to pull other members of his family out. So she went on this podcast and talked about this and I ended up chatting with her and I got in touch with her uncle and he sat me down and kind of walked through all this stuff and it wasn't an exact one to one, you know, um, it didn't

really speak to me super, you know, relevantly because I, I didn't grow up in a message group, right? I grew up in the, like, on the ladder rain, North Battleford group. So I, but I still knew that there was something going on there. Like he was still speaking to all these things, you know, the five-fold ministry and prophecy and all this kind of stuff that were, he was kind of hitting on all these topics that, to me, were sacred, right?

And that were not to be questioned, but he was bringing up a lot of good points, like a lot of good points. And he, he was the first guy that kind of put me on the path of reading books like twisted scripture and combat and cult mind control. So I ate those up and boy, the second that I opened up freedom of mind.org or freedom of mind.com, I can't remember what the URL is, but I just went through the bite model and I was just like, wow, it's just everything's there. Like just multiple points in every single category and it just blew my mind. And then, you know, I went back

to ELM and like at this point in time, I was just not attending the Saskatoon assembly because I was just like every time, every Sunday morning, I would just get so depressed and I just want to lay in bed because my body and my soul knew that I was going there was actually hurting me. And so my body protected itself. It said, you're not going to go. So every Sunday morning, I felt sick, every Sunday morning, I stayed in bed till noon. And so, but Tuesday nights, right? I would go to young adults at this church and there was actual preaching and a worship service. And so I still

felt like I was being spiritually fed. And then when this information came to light, I was just, you know, I was just a gas. And I remember, I remember the day I was telling my community group, I was like, I think I grew up in a cult, you know, and they were like, what do you mean by that?

And I was like, I don't really know. But I, you know, I'm starting to read these books and there's these things coming out and like I'm terrified of what's going to happen. If I admit this, you know, and like what is what's my family relationship going to be like? And you know, all these things are changing because it had really been my whole life up until that point. But I'm so thankful to God that there was somebody who was willing to talk about it at that young adults group. And like, I was 27 and I think she was like 25 or 26 of the time. So it's like not, not like still pretty

young, like still pretty young people going out of their way to tell their story, which I was really thankful for. So yeah, it was, it was, I think it was perfect that it was a message group because there were so many things that were similar. And the more I read on your website and the more history I read about and uncover it's like, oh man, like these groups are so closely tied, so closely tied together. It's like one big cookie cutter stamp that stamp, I've got a cult stamp, I've got another cult. I mean, really, that's how it feels. They change the doctrines. And so what happens is

if you're in one of the cults, you compare the doctrines and you say, well, I'm not a cult, I'm different than them. I have a different doctrine, but the same mechanisms for control exist. And that's why they, from the core foundation, it is very much the same. But thank you so much for doing this. This is quite a journey. I'm sure you've got a thousand more things that you could go through as similarities. But in the end, it's the same cult. It just has a different, well, I was going to say it has a different name, but it had no name.

It's the same cult, but it had no name. The cheaper store brand, right? The cheaper store phone. Thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, thanks for having me, John. It was a real pleasure.

And yeah, appreciate your work that you do. And yeah, anything else I can do to help out, just let me know just an email or a phone call away. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want to share your story, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org.

For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.