Christmas and Cults: When the Grinch Has a Pulpit

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Brantley Smith, former member of International House of Prayer and Christmas Connoisseur. Brantley is good to have you back. I've been having, I don't know if you've seen it, people in the comment feeds, they have said for a long time, we won't Brantley back, we won't Brantley back and we finally we finally connected but I was thinking this might be a good Christmas

present to all the listeners just to see Brantley's shiny face and his Santa Claus red beard. But I'm, I'm sad I didn't have a Santa hat. My wife's going to get a kick out of this though because I'm kind of known as a scrooge around our house. So I'm the one that doesn't let Christmas get put up to laugh to Thanksgiving and all that kind of stuff. But you've been begging me to come back for a while and my life's just been crazy. So we'll be honest about that. I've been, I've been saying, I can't do it. So I'm the opposite of a scrooge. My

family, it's interesting. I think we've talked about this in the past. But in Brantemism, Christmas was a thing you were not supposed to exchange gifts, you were not supposed to definitely not decorate. If you had a Christmas tree, you had just put a pagan idol in your house. That's how ridiculous it was. But see, my family grew up around the Brantem family. And while Brantem is out there preaching hell fires and condemnation to anybody who celebrates from behind the pulpit, man, he was accepting Christmas gifts. They would bring him in the church.

And he's it, he's like opening up, oh boy, a present, I got a new suit and all of this stuff. And all the little kids are thinking, man, I wish I had one because their parents wouldn't allow it. Well, my family knew the Brantem family and they had a tree in their house, they celebrated like every normal family.

And yet he's condemning the whole world. So I got to have Christmas. But then when I married my wife's family, they didn't know that the Brantem family did this. So they just took the cult doctrine at heart. And so there was a little bit of a collision, not much because they did celebrate Christmas, just not anything big. But the moment the decoration started to come, that's whenever we're like, okay, we get to have a talk with each other. Because I wanted them fast forward, I left the cult. And my family had never decorated outside the house

because you can have it in the house. Nobody knows you're doing it. But once you put it out there, that's a marvelous display. The whole church knows you're doing it, right? So after we left the call, I hung Christmas lights and I was proud of it.

I put it all over social media and I kid you not. The day after I put it on social media, somebody had come and they cut in several places, the lights that were around the house and just destroyed my Christmas lights, man.

Oh my gosh, what is it in their mind that makes like Christmas so bad? Is it the commercialization? Like, why was it like a no-no? It's a cult and you can't have fun and a cult, man.

That's about what I've come to the conclusion of. It's true. At IHOP, we really didn't have like a whole, like Christmas holidays really weren't much of a thing at IHOP. Like Christmas, I remember Thanksgiving.

Over Thanksgiving time, it was whoever was in town would play as many sets as they could. I had what one Thanksgiving's coming to mind that I played like six or eight hours that day.

I think I worship led a couple sets. I played bass and my hands were like bleeding. I think at the end like I've cut open from plans for for so long. But Christmas always got kind of ignored because we always had our big end of the year event or one thing conferences, which I think always started like December 28th, I think through the beginning of the year and it was like a big new year's thing.

So it was all hands on deck because it was like the big Bartle Hall conference center. It'd be like, I mean, whenever I was there in the heydays of it, man, it was 20,000 people, something like that that were showing up for those things.

And it was majority done off the back of the members is what it was. And so her awful stories of people not sleeping for days during those periods and just like having all kinds like horrible body responses, just their body shutting down on them because they weren't sleeping and all that kind of stuff.

So everything was not jolly and bright. It Christmas are cold. Yeah, it's Christmas is a thing. It's funny. I wondered what would it be like if you're in the international house of prayer and during Christmas, what would Christmas be like?

And part of the reason I wanted to discuss this specifically, I'm diving deeper into Joel's army because I'm starting to understand there's a lot of events, a lot of research that you and I haven't even talked about yet, much of which I've not even published yet.

But before the lettering started, William Bratham was apparently gifted the mantle of Smith Wigglesworth in a church of a sexual predator in Los Angeles or Oakland. It's an Oakland church. So he goes in this church and I've got some of that research published but the way Bratham's mantelism worked is he would often say, well, he died one day and then I died the next and he would do this.

He never used the word mantle, but he would elude to the fact that there was a passing of spirit. That's usually how this worked. And when you put the timeline together, it's really weird because you see this alleged prophecy happening, whatever happened happened.

And then after this suddenly, Brannum is instantly famous, not just not a gradual famous, not like building up a career instantly in all of the Pentecostal networks. He's famous. So as you know, he tours through Canada and Sharon Orphanage gets involved. They start going to the meetings. He's a catalyst for basically the, you know, the lettering revival, lettering movement. But where it gets really, really odd to me is as I'm studying the history of Pentecostalism combined with the culture and the history of the world wars, we had the Hitler youth, which instantly was indoctrinating children on an ideology. Then

you had right after this, and this is happening towards the middle or end of World War II. You had all of these weird Christian groups that were starting similar youth programs, right? And they're trying to, you know, probably with good intentions, trying to indoctrinate youth with Christianity. But mixed with this, you had Christian identity. So mixed with Christianity to the youth, they also had Christian identity, which is an ideology. Well, that ideology was clear and present in the Sharon Orphanage from some of the research I have on the leaders, who later got rebuked publicly for their very racist comments and saying, I won't even

say what they say, but it's very, very horrendous. But then you go look at what's happening in that youth, and that's where it gets weird, because Pentecostalism claimed a prophecy from the book of Joel, Joel 2. It said, behold, I will plow my spirit out on all flesh, et cetera. Well, there's a phrase in there that comes next that says, your sons and daughters will dream dreams and prophesy. I can't remember the exact verbiage. But Pentecostalism, Azusa Street, all of that was starting to fade out. And suddenly, somebody came up with a great idea that, well, we need to focus on the youth. They're the ones that are going

to prophesy a dream dream, see vision. The old men will see dreams and dream visions. The young men will prophesy. So they're trying to build this youth thing. And eventually this combined with the manifested sons of God to become Joel's army. And that's the first iteration. That's not the IHOP KC iteration of this. So as I'm diving deeper into this, and I'm thinking, well, now you've got Joel's army. And in that era of Pentecostalism, they were starting to just come down harshly against anybody who celebrated Christmas, not just exchanging gifts, but the whole whole idea of Christmas, they were fighting. So now that I'm thinking international house of prayer

with regards to Christmas, how much of that was carried forward? Yeah, I don't think, I never heard people talking negatively about Christmas, but I also don't remember things like gift exchanges. I mean, we were all poor, like all of us, I was talking to somebody this week and telling them about how much money I made during my time there. Like I was practically living off $400 a month, like my whole time there.

This would have been 2008, 2012. And so my rent alone, I think, was like 300 of that. And eventually, I got into a gig where they gave me an apartment, kind of thing, or a room in an apartment. But it never was, never was talked about a whole lot. Like I remember Christmas messages, and it was just kind of like traditional kind of Christmas stuff in carnation and and that kind of stuff. And that's what was so weird about IHOP is with all the fanaticism and like fringe beliefs and things. There were sometimes that like Christmas where we would hear

like a message on the incarnation, and it would feel okay. Like it would seem a little bit normal. Which was always, I think you probably had that I'm sure within the brand of stuff is, you almost had like resistors within the system who tried to push back, who maybe believed in the big vision of the organization and what they were trying to do. But there was some theological differences like at IHOP, which I'm surprised. Like I had IHOP you teachers who came from like Methodist backgrounds and had some more reformed influence with a couple of them, which was very

surprising. Yeah, we really didn't have a whole lot of that. The Joel's, Joel's army stuff. I mean, in the youth, I mean, that was always a focus and still seeing it. And that's one of the things I think that like upsets us, the former members, the most, like when we're having conversations and stuff as we see these guys rolling out the same tricks, like the playbooks haven't changed at all. Back in our day, it was like the big conference promos and social media wasn't as big at that point in time. And so everything was was geared towards those big conferences. Like the

one thing was like their big recruiting event of the year. And you'll hear former members talk about all the false promises that were made to people about the education that they would get. And what the experience would be like and it'd be world class, like for the music school, maybe like world class music training. And you'll hear some stories from some of them, they're like, I barely even played music in the music school kind of thing. And so it was like all just kind of felt like a little bit of a front. And we're seeing it. I don't know

How, how much you guys have kept up? I've not listened to the show recently, I'm sorry, but I, with the recent IHOP happenings and stuff, like IHOP itself kind of low key still. It's like a small group that's keeping things going.

Hope cities kind of popping off, which is my big sister, who's kind of stoking the flame a little bit, but the one that's standing out to me specifically in the context of this conversation, time at youth and the Joel's Army kind of thing is the group in Atlanta.

I don't know if you've kept up with them, but also there's Billy Humphrey is the leader there who was, he was an intern of Mike's. He came out to Kansas City into an internship and such.

And so it was raised up on that. They ended up developing like their own version of prophetic history and they started going 24-7 sometime around like, oh, eight, oh nine, I think. But they ended up rebranding, like right around whenever all the Mike Bickle stuff came out.

So they were called IHOP Atlanta for the longest time. They rebranded Gate City. Gate City church, they ended up like merging with a local church there. But the stuff that they're doing, it's still the same stuff.

It's come and give your youth, come and give your best years. It's the, you know, godsend revival to this generation. Like it's not changed at all, it's weird. Like it's almost like deja vu when you go back and look at it.

It's like, man, when I was 18-19, I was here in the same exact things. Keep yourself from the world. Don't do these things, don't do this, don't do this. Give everything to Jesus, which we know, it all sounds innocent.

That's what we get roped into it. But it's sad because the tactics haven't changed at all and we still can't see it. And that's frustrating, it is. It is sad, you know what? So in Brannemism during Christmas, you would have widely different varying views on what you can do, what you can't do, what's demonic, what's not demonic.

And it's kind of like you said, it really depends on the minister and their background. If their background was one where they celebrated Christmas, everybody would and if their background was one where many of them came from hardcore Pentecostal sects which were likely Pentecostal cults and they would have sermon after sermon saying, you're worshiping the sun god if you have a tree.

It's like, there's this concept, I don't know if you've caught onto this or not, but in many of these movements, there's this idea that you can accidentally worship a demon. And in other words, you're like, you're carrying on throughout life and then suddenly you do this thing and oh my gosh, you've gave praise and empowered a demon in your house and having a Christmas tree was like that and some of those cults sacks.

But you know, back to the Jules. That's a memory because that's how it was treated like in my upbringing. So like, I don't know if people remember, but like, I joined like, I hop like it.

like my early teen, 17th when I moved out there. But I was raised in the context, my grandparents were holiness, pinocostle. And so we very much had that. And I think there was a little like snootiness towards like the commercialization and stuff, but there was, I think I definitely got a little like, St. Nick is demonic kind of stuff.

And Jesus is the reason for the season, you know, we had the whole Christ and ex-mus kind of thing. And yeah, I was joking with this guy one time. I said, we celebrated my son's birthday this week.

And he said, oh yeah, and I said, yeah, his birthday was a few weeks ago, but he wasn't, he wasn't feeling well, the family couldn't come. And so the Saturday everybody gathered together and we celebrated his birthday.

And he said, oh, that's great. I love it when family gets together. And I said, yeah, it's the thought about his birthday and the memorial that, you know, everything that goes through a hedge whenever we're thinking about his birthday, even though it's not his birthday.

And he said, yeah, absolutely right. And I said, it's kind of that way with Christmas whenever you believe that it wasn't the exact birthday of Jesus. And you could see suddenly his face turned man.

He was so angry, no man, that is different. You're worshiping the sun god. And actually, no, not how this works. People have just, it's weird because they get so indoctrinated that they literally shut off their brains.

And they don't really think about what it is they're saying to the extent that they will trample on humanity. Well, think of all the children who are watching. Think of in, in Brannemism, all those kids sitting in those seats watching William Brannem open up a, the wrapped present.

And they have heard all of their friends say all of the things that we've, we've got for Christmas and we're so excited and they got nothing. We got a rock basically because they weren't allowed to.

People will trample on, trample on just human emotions, human feelings to try to uplift a doctrine. And in my opinion, that's actually the same as worshiping a demon, which brings up I hop at Lanta.

Recently, I had this interview with this lady, I don't know if you saw this or not, but did I do much it? Yeah, okay, yes. So I had an interview with I hop at Lanta, you know, a lady, she'd gone through a horrific experience.

And I, you know, when she first said it, I was like, I didn't even know how to respond. I didn't know what to say. I'm trying to picture a case where any human would do this to another human.

And there just isn't one. That's not something that you do, but this is happening in a church setting and the backlash, man. It's like, do people not even know what you're doing is wrong?

And they don't because they're so indoctrinated to think it's more about the mission than it is about the people. Yeah, it's so difficult, too, because I see it like, I've helped facilitate peer support groups and stuff for I hop people and other like.

adjacent kind of movement kind of stuff and it's interesting to see even in my own journey here I am so I left I hop in 2012 so we're almost 13 years removed now from Kansas City and I'm still gaining language and articulating the things that I experienced and still there's some of it that I still don't know how to talk about And so like there's that that continuing thing is people start to speak up for the first time Like we're seeing with Atlanta like there's not been a whole lot of people who have spoken up publicly just I can count probably on one hand

The number podcast and things like that that have been done about Atlanta Although we've met met them behind the scenes and stuff and I've got to hear their stories and And I think that that's you know they start to hear that for those first grumblings and people start reacting and start, you know Saw a lot of People jumping out to protect leaders even though there was no leaders named Nobody taught named a leader nobody talked about it These people jump in and start bringing names into it and start you know defending people and And then it's

We see it all through society too though, and that's what's scary is is the propensity of people to dismiss others experiences and to say that cannot be true and and whenever it's something that you experience whether you're Perception of it is Maybe their perception of it or whatever you can't deny what somebody experienced like if they think that they were hurt At least from their perspective they were hurt And we we Don't have the ability to slow down and listen in society anymore. It seems And so saw a lot of that towards her which was just I can't I can't imagine you know how how she feels

You know after sharing her story and speaking up and talking about something so vulnerably And to see the negative reactions and and the things that people have to realize is That which which most people I mean most people who listen to your stuff been in cults and stuff so they understand That the people who are responding are not strangers It's it's like the people who were your pastors or the people who were your friends and teammates and different Context and so to hear you know those those negative responses. It's betrayal trauma all over again And so it brings up so so so much stuff

But yeah, it's it's been disappointing and I think After after there was there was a couple podcasts put out with with Adam short you've had Adam short on here Before and he interviewed a couple Andrew and Joy Bullard which I can connect you with as well, but They worship leaders and stuff at Atlanta and they share their story on Adam's podcast and it kind of went under the radar I think people tried to ignore it And in and your experience like significant abuse and stuff. I just got labeled things and you know, put try to push it into a corner.

He about drove himself crazy and you listen to his story on items podcast and maybe you can have him on and share it. But everybody tried to ignore that, I think. I think people were like, oh, it's one, one person. And whenever all the flare up happened was after Andrew shared, uh, was her name, Annalise, is that her name? After he shared her podcast on Facebook, everybody came out of the woodwork man into that comment section and started, you know, just blast and people saying, saying things like this isn't worth listening to.

And then they start coming after character assassinations on you, which was hilarious. They're like, John needs to do more Matthew 18 instead of recording podcasts with these people. He needs to take them to these leaders and he needs to, if he's really doing a ministry and I'm like, you know, I don't know who John is at all. I don't think he would call the ministry number one.

Like so, so many things I'm back here. Um, but they do whatever they can to shut out the dissonance. Like that's it. Like people cannot handle dissonance. Um, yeah, it's hard. It's hard. Well, what's interesting is as much as people want to admit it or not, what happens whenever they're caught up in these types of movements, it affects their outlook, their worldview, their personality. And what happens over time, what, what is essentially happening is they're under spiritual abuse, but what they don't recognize is as they're under the spiritual abuse, they're starting to experience trauma and trauma changes you. There are people who they manifest

itself in different ways. They might get angry. They might get depressed, but this trauma is deeply rooted. And whenever they see something that makes them understand that it's trauma, they start to lash out because they know inwardly, you know that you're being spiritually abused. You have to know it. So whenever somebody else is language for you, feel it exactly, exactly. And so they start attacking things. And like I don't even blame it, people who attack me, I don't even blame them because I was in the same place. I did the same things. I know all of these things that they're

saying usually before they say them. And in fact, one of the things that helps me is because the insults are almost all exactly the same. And after a while, you just kind of skip over the insult and you find the meat of the conversation in a comment or email. And that's what I've learned to do because it's it's a traumatic experience for them and they don't understand what's happening to them. We recently I started a series with Jenny McGrath. She came out of youth with the mission and she is on fire to try to help expose and help heal people who have been through this

trauma. And the part that was really difficult for me to understand and I started to piece this together. from my own study of psychology, from talking to her, from talking to, I've got a cousin, Jesse Collins, who's on here every now and then.

What happens when you have this trauma and you're in this cult experience, it starts to affect your behavior. And so eventually what happens is it molds itself in your head to this thing that is affecting your behavior held.

And so your behaviors start to become altered. That was a really difficult thing for me to understand because the people that you see whenever they're lashing out, that's actually not the person. You're just seeing the effects of that behavior disorder.

Yeah, it's, we laugh about it because that's all you can do. It's laugh about it sometimes. But I think about, I don't want to blake it statement, say everybody who left IOP has mental health issues.

But I think most of us do, like it's a fight because so much of it rewires your nervous system. It just me lately, I'm just realizing how much, here we are 13 years later.

And I'm realizing how much me personally that I'm always on high alert. I heard, I don't know if you're a fan of her or not, but I was listening to Brunei Brown on a podcast this past week and she was talking about how she could walk into a room and know how everyone in the room is feeling.

And she could read a room really well. And I felt like I was looking in the mirror a little bit because that's how I used to talk about, whenever I talk about worship leading, I was like, that's why I'm such a good worship leader, man.

Like I can, I can see the room. I see how people are responding. I could read, I know what they're feeling. And even when it came to communicating, like I can see people's things on their faces and all this kind of thing.

And she's like, yeah, that type of vigilance. I was like, and I was like, man, that's true, that's true. So like I've had to like work really hard to like find times to limit outside stimulation and just slow down, calm, find baseline again because my body doesn't remember what that's like.

My body doesn't remember what it's like to not be threatened by hell or to have my relationships threatened or just any number of things. And then you tack on other life experiences that everybody goes through on top of that.

And man, it's nasty, it's nasty. It is nasty. And what you're describing, people who are in that trauma, they go through that. And they start to mistakenly associate that with the spirit. That's the funny part of this.

As you get into a mental state where you're not yourself, you're something else. You can feel that something else is coming out. This behavior isn't me, what is this? It must be the spirit of God.

And interestingly, Joel's army, the latter reign, it all started with this because Brandon's mental capacity, his mental faculties were failing. And he actually, I don't know if you know this, but right after that first tour through Canada, he actually went into a...

into a nervous breakdown and left the field. That is why Christ for the nation's exists. Initially, Gordon Lindsay, who founded Christ for the Nations, he started with Brannum, this voice of Healing magazine, as a publication of Brannum and his ministry.

Brannum, Tourist of Canada, gets widely famous, comes back in the United States, Laterane comes in, he has a complete nervous breakdown, and he goes off the field. And now they've created this engine, they have all these people in the engine, you can't just turn it off. So they started publishing the names of other ministers, and it became this essentially a magazine of hero worship. And then Brannum sees all of this, and he sees what he lost.

And I guess he went, I've been told that he went down into Mexico, I can't prove this yet, but I've been told by more than one person, he went to a mental health facility in Mexico.

Whatever happened, he comes back on the field, he mentions that he is a, he's not completely healed, he mentioned all through his ministry, he's a neurotic. That's the word he used. And he starts to say, but that's okay, because the Apostle Paul was a neurotic.

And he starts naming all these biblical figures, and now that I look back on it, it's insanity, but when you are in a movement that is looking for hero worship and looking at the leaders on the stage, as though they're, they're not human, they're better than human, they're greater than human.

Whenever you see the insanity, you start to think, well, that must be God speaking. And a person can be just completely mentally insane, but if there are moments of coherence, they'll recognize the coherence and say, okay, this, this coherent thing is him, but he steps out of the way and the spirit moves when the insanity comes.

I think about my own experience that I think that I pointed at the Holy Spirit as the voice that silenced the dissonance, when really it was just cementing whatever that harmful thought, belief, behavior, whatever that was that I couldn't figure out that I was wrestling with, you know, I hate to use the word tormented, but sometimes that's how you felt with some of these things. Like you would have this dissonance pop up, and I'm not having any examples right now in the moment, but then all of a sudden, you know, I hop one of the big things with the apostolic

prayers. Mike had this like sheet that he would, and that's what we all prayed in the prayer room. Like if you went up to pray on the mic, you had to pray from apostolic prayer, you announced it to the room, told everybody. And I think that was part of like the plea to legitimacy.

Is that we were always praying scripture, you know, we were always singing scripture. But the most popular one was Ephesians one talking about the spirit of wisdom and revelation. And so we would not, that was what we would always say, man, the spirit of revelation came to me, kind of thing. And it was like that epiphany moment. And really all it was was, like my brain found a way to put the dissonance back in the box and shove it in the corner and give me- an answer good enough that that I was okay for a period of time, right?

But it's interesting because like I wonder like did did Brannum's mind body whatever did it react because he was experiencing that like was he realizing that he was a fake was he realizing because that's the thing like your body like you can't will your body and to keep going whenever you're experiencing these things like eventually you hit a breaking point.

I think I shared on one of my previous times on here with you about that that my body shut down for two years. I had constant vertigo. I had to nidus all the time.

I was losing my hearing periodically took everything with them. Me to get out of bed just to do basic like taking care of myself. And that happens like there's there's a cost to keep doing that.

And I've watched from afar like people who are still a couple of people. Obviously I don't want to name them, but like I've watched their journeys and how they've stayed there and I hop there were there when I was there.

They've stayed there and man it like just seems like they just get further and further and further from reality is what happens. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter rain, 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 McCummery, 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 recently had a podcast with Bob Scott, I guess that'll come out before this one, but we were talking about exactly that. There's different, well there's a variety of different aspects to consider. One of the biggest one when you look at all of these ministries that are these big, major apostles or prophets, they're starting to fall like dominoes.

And you're starting to see each one sexual sin or crime or whatever. Well, when you understand the nature of what it is they're doing, what they have is a stage persona. They come out on the stage and Bob was describing this, which I don't know, Mike Bickle from Adam.

So I know who he is, but Bob was describing his offstage personality with so far different from his on-stage personality. And so when you walk out on stage, there's the stage presence, right? I've been told the same thing.

by family members about random. He had a this powerful, powerful stage presence, but off stage, he was just a completely different person. How did they describe them? Was it like a melancholy kind of more thing or like?

Humble, gentle, meek, like all the aspects that you would want to see in a person and a leader, he would have it off stage, but then he would get on stage and he was just a ball of hatred, you know, that's really what he was.

So what happens is when you go on stage and you're entering into your persona, your mind starts to focus around that thing that you are while you're on stage and you feel empowered from it.

In the same way that there's people in the comments for IHOP Atlanta, the things that they said they would never say if they were in a group of people face to face, you know, in a room together, you just wouldn't say these kind of things, but they feel empowered because they're hiding behind a keyboard.

Well, whenever you have that stage presence, you are feeding off of the energy in the crowd and interestingly the crowd is also feeding off of you. And so it releases all of these endorphins in your brain and you can actually become addicted to those.

So there's an addiction that happens. Well, people who are experiencing this over time you can develop a narcissistic personality disorder just from the stage presence. So you find people who aren't narcissistic and people who knew them growing up they'll say, well, this was a good person.

I don't understand why they became like this. It's because of that exact scenario they become something else. Combine that with in Brannems case you also had mental health disorders that were affecting all of this.

When you have all of that, it's this recipe for disaster. So much forced conformity from folks and that does do a number. I think about as you're talking about that I'm thinking about my own experiences because I still lead worship in Christian churches periodically and still considering myself a Christian best of can although a lot of people call me a heretic but I recognize that even with myself that there are whenever I'm on a platform there's kind of a different way that I carry myself a little bit and I get a little bit of a different voice

and all that kind of stuff. And so it really can. It makes you feel like you're the center of the world a little bit after a while and plates the ego and that's one of the things.

It's been fun to be in church context because there's elements of all that we've experienced everywhere in churches like it's not unique to Brannemism, it's not unique to Scientology or wherever. Like there's these elements of control and cultural things that are done like...

Well, like with Brandon, like there's a preacher can say something from the pulpit and people not think twice about it and go, yes, we agree. So it's fun to be in those environments and be able to push back a little bit gently and have relational equity with people.

I'm not sure how I went down that hole of talking about that, but we're talking about forced conformity, what we're talking about. So I think it's interesting, we have to have people fit this cookie cutter mold to maintain the status quo so the machine keeps going.

That's why diversity of thoughts quenched. It's why the freedom of expression is quenched. That was a big one at IHOP. The way people dressed on platforms was policed and the way you worshipped or demonstrated worship on the platform was policed in a way where you go to like, you see some other charismatic movement like Bethel Church in California, and man, like them singers and stuff.

They're waving all over the place and they're dancing and shimmy in and IHOP. They stand behind a microphone stand and you get a little slightly raised hands and it was all about not drawing attention to yourself.

And I think part of that was it allowed. Mike is not that dynamic of a guy's let's say that for first like he had the mic two step as what we said, like he would stay behind the podium and he would talk in his monotone voice and probably that probably has a little bit of a psychological effect too.

But and every once in a while he would yell, but he had his hands up and he would do. If you're watching the video, you see it gets one side back to the other side.

And that was like, that was Mike's move. That's all he did. It was not a dynamic guy. But I think the side effect of that was that they had to tone down everybody else so that Mike wouldn't get over shadowed because the people that showed up at IHOP man, they were fireballs.

Like these were like the people who wanted to take Christianity seriously, which I guess is an element where it was different than brand, brand, brand, like most people weren't raised in the IHOP culture.

Most people chose to join the IHOP culture. It wasn't, it wasn't a very familial involvement kind of thing. But like we had rules like you can't scream on the microphone or you can't do certain things on the microphone.

Like when praying and I mean, if you're been to CARES, Mike prayer meeting, there's a lot of screaming. Like there's a lot of yelling at demons and all that kind of stuff. And but what was always funny is, is Mike could get up there and yell on the microphone and nobody would say anything to Mike when he yelled on the microphone.

And so there's like these double standards of conformity and such and yeah, you lose your identity. You lose your individuality. Honestly, that's another thing that Bob and I discussed when you're yelling. See I was born, I've got this Irish Collins background.

So I have the luck of having an Irish temper, right? Well, when you start yelling, your brain disconnects from your mouth and that's one of the problems. You say things that you wouldn't otherwise say when you're yelling, well think of this.

in the context of a preacher. Also think about the context when lateral rain movement is developing, they were used to preaching screaming at crowds because without the screaming they couldn't hear you. There was no microphone system.

Then once they got the microphones, they're so used to screaming while they preach. Now they're screaming in a PA system. And it just turns into this thing. What's weird about that is in the Pentecostal world, when your brain disconnects from your mouth, they see that as the spirit.

And tongues is when your mouth disconnects from your brain. Exactly. So they see it as the spirit. And when you're on stage, you have that feeling, right? You see how the crowd reacts. Like you're describing with the music.

It's simply going out as a musician. You feel this. You know this. I had that experience one time. When we left the Brandham religion, one of the first churches that I left after this, I showed up one day with my instruments.

And I just happened to show up with my instruments on the same day that the music minister was exchanged for another one. And so he thought I was part of the music minister, the crowd who's playing the music, right?

I came from a background where you didn't need to have any auditions or anything like this. You just showed up, right? So I just showed up expecting what I can show up and play.

He saw me. He thought I'm part of the band. And so instantly I bypassed all the auditions. Well, he got to know me and realized I can play all this stuff. I would just show up with a different instrument every Sunday.

There was a one of the first Christmas, I think it might have been the first Christmas program that we did. They had back-to-back services. And I was to show up. He wanted me specifically with a banjo for whatever reason.

So I'm to show up with a banjo and he crawls me up. And he says, John, I hate to tell you this, but he says our drummer is out sick. Our backup drummer has the flu.

He's been out sick for weeks. And we need to play the drums. And so I said, sure, I'll play the drums. So I get up there. I play the drums for... Did you know how at the time?

I'd never picked up a drum stick. LAUGHTER Hard can it be. Hard can it be. It's just beating on a stick, right? So I show up, I play two back-to-back, you know, the songs before and after.

Afterwards, this guy walked up out of the crowd and he says, man, I did not know that you knew how to play the drums like that. That's amazing. And I said, yeah, I didn't know that either.

LAUGHTER Oh, man, the music's such a weird... It's such a weird tool. It's a powerful tool. That's part of the reason why I've kept doing it is... We were talking about four-way started recording today.

We were talking about like somatic experience a little bit. And that's one of the things with singing that I can't let go of. There is some kind of... Hi, for like a better term that happens like when you get a room full of people seeing the same thing together And doing it freely like there's there's just something that's just Healing about that. It's a dopamine hit. Yeah, where do you have that it's a dopamine hit?

Yeah, and it's I think One of the things I've been looking at is my my coping systems I had like in my cult life versus like How I have like failed to kind of like maintain coping systems after I've left some of those practices and one of those things I think it's worship and singing that help bring some kind of release I think to like anxiety and like all these like pin up emotions Whenever I would get to seeing and and that's one of the reasons I've not let that go is because There's something there's something to it that I think that is worth keeping

And there's not many places where You see that outside of churches where people come together to sing music together For a common experience

Yeah, sorry, it's a little tangent but what's a good tangent there the churches are a community and I have This is an interesting side story, which I won't go to deep with it, but I have known people who went to churches Just for the community just for exactly what you're talking about it feels good you leave encouraged and One of the one of the people said John. I'm an atheist. I have been for years And I said I'm scratch him a hit thing. Well, why are you going to church man?

But he was an atheist he goes to church because he likes that feeling. He likes the community and I started I'm friends with anybody doesn't matter who you are what you believe or don't so I'm talking to him and He is you know, I'm trying to figure trying to figure him out I want to I want to unpack this box of this atheist who comes to Christian church and he says There are times whenever the preacher's preaching and he says things that I truly stand behind and I believe and it's all about Morality he he was a very moral person

But he just he just simply went for the community and for that feeling and that experience and One of the things that you know for me when I look at this There are a lot of people who would condemn him for going or you know, especially participating But when I look at this I look at this and I think you know everybody has a journey He's on that journey and what are that journey ends? I can't say yeah, it's it's one of the things about Different experiences and people being in different places of their journey

I think it's one of the things that the Evangelical Church as a whole can learn from is Being more open to these people because It's forced conformity and I think even geogalism is cult like it in the sense that it expects a certain belief system from every person before they can belong I think that we don't leave room for the humanness of it all and don't won't take serious the questions that people have.

But the reason that people go is for those reasons. It's for the community. Me and my wife talk about that all the time. And especially when we're having like a time where we're feeling a little bit lonely, we're like, man, can we stomach?

Like going back and being a part of a church, even if we don't agree with people. And just because it's such an easy way to make friends and have those relationships. And even in the context where I'm at, I'm at a church right now where I've been leading worship on a contract basis.

And theologically, I do not agree with them. Hardly at all, they don't believe like gender roles or they have some very draconian gender role beliefs, I'd say.

And there's a lot of things I disagree with. But like you're saying, there are elements of truth and there are those moments where where things, it's almost like the tunnel opens up. You see the light a little bit.

And those are the things that I wish people would recognize and value more is those elements of truth that might not necessarily be some kind of theological revelation, but just help us understand each other, help us understand life, help us understand how to find joy and purpose and meaning.

All these different things. Like it happened this past Sunday, the associate pastor was preaching. And I've developed a relationship with him and we're pretty good friends. And we'll go back and forth about theology sometimes, privately and stuff.

I try not to influence the church members too much with my thinking and beliefs, but we'll banter back and forth. And he spoke this past Sunday in the thing that I really appreciated, that I pulled out of it and told him afterwards was the vulnerability that he led with.

Like there's something human about whenever you see and refreshing, whenever you see a human on a platform who's a leader, show weakness, and show that they are just like you in their lived experience because so much of what we saw was God's generals, it was Hebrew worship.

It was some kind of superficial thing. And he took a moment to talk about masculinity in a way that was not John Wayne Rambo kind of stuff and talked about tenderness and valuing tenderness.

And I was like, even in there at the out, I'm like, man, it's not something you hear even in these circles a whole lot. But there are those threads of truth that break through and I think that are encouraging to people to speak to folks because you see that in every environment, I think, that somebody walks in and they see something that they latch onto that does something for them.

And so they choose to be a part of it. I mean, that's why we joined cults. I think what you're describing is healthy though. When you're in this new apostolic reformation, Pentecostal Charismatic type religion, where you have these figures that are more than human, they're God's voice to you, they're, you know, basically they're the mediator between God and man.

You start to... looking them differently. And when they say something that is offensive to you or something that you don't believe, because you're indoctrinated to think that it's got on the platform, you start to, it starts to mold your opinion.

Instead of you helping to mold their opinion correctly, and they're just a human like you and me, they're just a natural person who is learning like you and I are learning. Yeah, it goes back, I mean, I've been, I've been diving into authoritarianism lately, just like the ideas of authoritarianism and how it played out in the way my parents parented me and the environments I grew up with, the way we related the pastures and preachers.

Like it doesn't surprise me to see society going in the directions it is whenever we're like, we were raised in very authoritarian type spaces. We do and you know, so it's those authoritarian spaces that really go back to this idea that you can take a figure who's just a normal person, like you and me, put them on stage, let them feel the dopamine hit, but now empower them with an authoritarian structure for the church.

Well, they start to feel like they're a miniature god and they eventually take on that mindset. That stage persona overcomes their authentic person. So while they're on stage, they really do think that they're either god or there's something really close to it.

They definitely see you as bigger or more powerful than the people in the seats. And that problem becomes secular because the people in the seats start to see it as well and they start to get excited, the crowd gets excited, they get a further dopamine hit and everybody is in this cohesive drunken status in the church and this drunken stupor leads to all kinds of problems.

Yeah, the power is intoxicating and it's something that I've had to reckon with even though I wasn't like ever like a senior leader or anything like that, like people, but because the way the culture was formed whenever you walk into a room like you're respected just because you're a church leader of some sort.

And it does, like it leads to narcissistic traits is what it leads to because if you don't think that you're god himself at the very least, you believe you're the mouthpiece of god to these people and that's just a weird positioning from the get-go whenever you put in prophecy and all these things dipping back to Annalisa's story earlier we were talking about with I hop Atlanta, that was the thing that was like so heartbreaking to me that I don't think most people

who are within the systems realized the gravity of is whenever that leader looked at her and said, God wants you to dance. Like the thing that you have to realize is what backs that statement is all the things that we believe happen when we disobey God.

If God wants us to do something and we choose not to do it, we've been conditioned to- it should our whole life to believe that sin and that there are consequences for that sin.

And so people want to know like what controlling behavior looks like in the church, that's how they do it. Like it looks innocent enough and you think and at certain points it may give you a dopamine hit to know that God wants you to dance.

And it may feel pleasant in the moment, but like in her situation like it was, you know, it was detrimental for her health like she was in a crisis state. And that's the thing that people won't reckon with.

That was a conversation I was having with people on social media afterwards was like, we have to have some sort of accountability. Like if we're going to speak on behalf of God and like we get it wrong, like there needs to be, there needs to be something, you know, some kind of checks and balances and accountability.

Or we just need to keep God's name out of our mouth. Like you don't have to talk about spirituality, to talk about Jesus. You don't have to speak on behalf of God to talk about religion.

Like you can have these discussions and maybe that's where, like we've lost the nuance. That's where we have lost the diversity is because it's this forced conformity to this one set of beliefs, these creeds.

That's where I've been geeking out lately is going into creeds and I'm like, how in the world do these things form and all that kind of stuff? And you just realized a human involvement that's like with the creeds, the thing that's getting through the creed right now and this may get you in trouble.

But is, I realized the audacity of to ever have, how many minutes was in a room in NYSEA, you know, year 300 to go, we got God figured out. We're going to write a document.

We understand who God is. We're going to tell you who God is and everyone has to agree with it or else you're not of us. And in that, like that dividing line, you know, is crazy.

I remember earlier where I was going to go when we were talking about authoritarian stuff just to bring it full circle Christmas is that's what we did with Santa Claus. Like in our culture, like growing up was, Santa Claus was like this arbiture of justice.

It was not even nice. And we took that seriously, like almost as serious as we took. Like Jesus and God, and you know, and that kind of bleeds out into other cultures and I've seen parents like even like in today's age, like tell kids like, man, you better not do that or Santa's not going to bring you anything or like, you know, Santa's always watching.

Like that's the creepiest song. You know, when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake. Like that sounds like the God that we've painted a whole lot, you know? Well, that's just it. They look at Santa Claus as though he is this God or demigod.

And yet they're doing the same exact thing. They're speaking as though they have the mouthpiece of God. And so I'm going to recommend for Christmas this year that if you're in one of these churches where these guys are doing this, constantly saying God told you to dance.

God told you to do this. We need a thousand will smiths to stand up and smack them and say get God's name out your mouth I'm all for that I'm all for this Well, this has been fun. Thank you so much for coming back and doing this. I did hound you how many times did I hound you?

I think I've had to turn you down at least five times, but it's probably been more than that I mean, it's you know every other month or so and I'm just like things are still crazy John It's still crazy like I wanted to but it's just been nuts. Yeah, it's same here I mean things from cold hard It is man. I'm still recovering. I may recover the rest of my life But hopefully we've given some people in some encouragement and hopefully people can stand up and say get God's name out show mouth

Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web You can find us at William dashbranum.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

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