Christmas After Control: Letting Go of Fear, Legalism, and Judgment

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-Brannem.org and wanted to wish you and everybody listening a Merry Christmas.

I know that some of you may not be watching or listening because you are spending time with your family. As I will be during this time, you won't see me online or in the comment feed, so I'll be spending the time hopefully opening presents with the children and enjoying Christmas like I, like we have done for many, many years.

I know that there are many people who are suffering, who have escaped the religious movements and some of them are on the fence. Do I celebrate Christmas? Do I not celebrate Christmas? I have people on the podcast that I don't fully agree with on everything, some of which, some of whom are not people who celebrate Christmas.

So I understand that there is the issue. So for the people who are listening who are struggling because they have escaped a call to a high control group and they are not people who celebrated Christmas, I thought I would pre-record something and put it out there so that people who are struggling can hopefully find a little bit of hope and a little bit of Christmas joy even if they don't celebrate.

So this will be an unusual episode. There are many things that I'm thankful for that I'll mention and there are some historical aspects to this debate on whether you should celebrate Christmas or should not.

And I may edge just a little bit close into theology, which I try to avoid on the historical podcast. But theology, I'm not a theologian, I just simply read the Bible and like you two can read the Bible.

There's a passage that we were indoctrinated of the exact opposite of its meaning, but there's a passage that says the prophecy, the scripture, is of no private interpretation. And Brannum, many Pentecostal groups, they would twist the meaning of that word to say the exact opposite of what it's saying.

Of no private interpretation means that there is nobody private who has sole access to interpret. You too can read the Bible, you too can understand what it says, it's of no private interpretation. In other words, we didn't write this in secret, we didn't write this in private.

You too can read and understand it. But a lot of the leaders and the historical lineage of the modern cults that we see today, they tried to present it that way so that they had the soul authority on doctrine and scripture, much like the Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church did for decades, to some extent still does today, although they have changed quite a bit from what I understand, unless you are in one of the extremist groups of the Catholic Church, which, again, those are very cultish, very much like the Protestant cults, so there are extreme versions of both,

there are, you know, there's a middle of the road that some try to walk, and then there's this conflict over doctrine, which I don't get into that debate if you are, you know, if you're not of the same opinion of me, whenever he listened to this podcast, that's fine. I tried to make a safe place on this podcast. For anybody who is, maybe this is your first time listening, you're not familiar with it, or if you just found it and you listened to a couple of them and you found out that, hey, I fully disagree with some of the things being said, well, rest assured,

I do too. I have tried to make a safe place where everybody can share their opinions, share their history, their stories, and we can kind of learn from each other. It's not as though any person, in my opinion, there's no person who has a single right answer on doctrine and scripture and truth, that's why all of the many, many denominations exist. So I try to make a safe place where I don't care what you believe or don't, you may have some pieces of the research puzzle that I don't have, or you may have been influenced by one of the cults, and you may have gone through

experiences that paint a more clear picture, a clearer picture of what the cult group was, what they did, how they did it to the people, and everyone from my guests on the Friday, our stories, series of the podcast, to even some of the host, I'm not in full alignment with, but I want to hear what they say because I want to learn from them, and maybe in sharing information and that back and forth of the conversation, maybe they can learn something too.

I usually try to ground it in fact, and every once in a while, again, I'm not a theologian, every once in a while I will try to throw out a scripture here and there that they can maybe understand and apply to the situation, but it is intended to be a safe place, and I hope I have made it that way. So, very thankful today, um...

It's Christmas, and I think that a strong part of Christmas for many families is to share what you're thankful for. I know it comes right after Thanksgiving, which is also sharing what you're thankful for, but for me, Christmas is something that was very precious growing up.

I really miss it, and I get really emotional sometimes when I think about all of the family times that I used to have where the family would come together and we would share the experience of Christmas together.

It was something that I really miss it, and for those who are struggling who their families like mine have either emotionally shut them out or even fully physically, they're not allowed to be around them.

I sympathize because I share that same experience. Christmas is a sad time now, but it's also a happy time because I'm building new family and new relationships. We're having new emotions. Recently, it just added another person to our immediate family, so we have many, many things to be thankful for.

And hopefully, you too, if you're struggling and listening to this podcast, hopefully you can look through the things that are happening to you, some of it may be bad, but hopefully you can find some of the good that's happening in it, which is exactly what I'm going to try to focus on in this podcast episode, many, many good things that are happening.

From a website, podcast, video, platform, perspective, things have been really good. The growth is really good. We are seeing a large number of people, not just from the Brannem cult, but from many of the cults that descended from Brannemism.

We're starting to see much more action than usual this year. Many people are escaping. I'm getting the questions that I'm getting in the comment feeds and in my email box are really, really good questions.

You can tell that people are strongly aligned with the idea that they should engage critical thinking. Even if they're in a healthy church, they may be in a healthy church, some of them, it never hurts to engage critical thinking of what you're hearing from behind the pulpit.

Even some of the new churches that I've attended, which I would say that out of the many that we've experienced after leaving Brannemism, I could say that only one was really cultish. I may not agree with everything they say, but they had good intentions and I can learn something from them.

If you go to church, it's not just even the learning. For those who are attending church, it's a community, it's a place where you can share your experiences. If you are struggling, you can share your struggles. You can bring your burdens to the group and the group can help you with it. So very thankful that there are people who have found a good place to find a good community. For those who aren't, who have left the cults and are no longer attending church, some of them have de-churched, some of them have actually gone beyond and are no longer participating in any religion

or believing in any religion. Some of those people have found healthy groups too. While I wish that they could find a good church, I understand that there are people who have struggled with the cult experience so badly that just the thought of church makes them struggle, just thinking about going to church. Many of those, I truly believe that some of them have de-churched and have started to deprogram and are struggling so badly inside that they have claimed to be an atheist, but I don't really believe that all of them are. Maybe some of them, but I too

for several years after leaving the cult, I thought about how much I struggled with all of it. And the doctrines that were programmed in my head were not healthy good doctrines. In fact, some of them were so destructive that it was intentionally designed to break families apart so that you could leave your family and join into the cult. That was the motive, I believe.

And so because of those destructive doctrines, it's very hard when you're being told that those destructive doctrines are part of the divine order of God and yet they are against other people. Well, then you suddenly think, well, I don't want any part of this God. This is not a God that I want.

And so I went through this too. I struggled deeply. It took me years, and I want to say from we left in January 1st of 2012, by about 2015, it had hit me so hard that just the thought of talking about religion was so abrasive. I couldn't stand it. I was struggling really heavily.

And it took a few years after that. I started to circle back around a little bit and begin to understand that what we were taught as God wasn't God. And many of the things that we were taught, the religious ceremonies, the religious practices, what we were supposed to enjoy, what we were supposed to condemn, all of it was just based off of somebody's opinion, not really a biblical position.

And the sad part about that is that began to spread and cascade through many, many different groups. Well, I began to realize that the God that I was told about from birth until age 37, it wasn't the Christian God.

And so I had to come to terms with the fact that I did believe in God. I still consider myself to have been a Christian back then because I read the Bible. But I was given such an abusive form of God that it was a narcissistic God that I just simply didn't want.

I'm a people person. I like people and I do not ever want to be that person who is a narcissistic person serving a narcissistic God. I'm of the strong opinion that those who leave Christianity for that reason, I'm of the strong opinion that they're actually making the right move.

If you believe that God is a narcissist and you are angry or rude to other people and you think that that is a divine mandate that you must be this way, it's actually better that you leave that religion in my opinion.

Now if you believe that God is in control of all things, you also believe that when they do leave that God will work with them and lead them back. So I'm of the opinion, I don't even try to force my belief set on somebody if they decide to go that pathway, then that's not my journey.

That's their journey and that's something that they can go through. So I'm thankful that there are people who, in fact, I just had a person this week contact me who had left religion entirely, had become an atheist and discovered that no, that wasn't the Christian God that they were teaching me about and he circled back.

So I'm thankful that there are people who can get on that journey and find their way. It is a difficult journey and I'm right there with you. I know exactly what you went through.

So many things I'm thankful for. From a website perspective, we have seen so much traffic to our William-Brandom.org website. It is actually starting to burst at the seams. We've had, I have a Patreon account for people who want to support the website and the growth.

I've mentioned a few times, I think, really, really early in this year that the website was bursting at the seams and it was time to start moving towards a new platform. So this entire year has been development of that new platform and I've got some really, really strong feedback on the things that people would like to see, how they would like to watch it grow and we're trying to, as much as possible, incorporate all of that in there.

It's a huge, massive undertaking to just put it in a proper perspective. There are so many research files and research data elements that is in the website. that one of the initial moves was the cost of moving the files from one place to another.

The cost was upwards of 1,500 bucks, so we're talking a massive, massive amount of research data. And my intentions for next year, which I'm really thankful that the timing of this move has kind of aligned with AI interfaces.

I'm hoping that next year, the search utilities will be able to dive deep into not only the text describing the research data, the newspaper articles, publications, et cetera, but actually be able to search within the elements of data.

So if you're searching for a newspaper article that is talking about John Alexander Dowie making $10 million or whatever it was that he made in the 1890s, you can just type it in and hopefully the search indexing will take care of that and help you to find it.

Long ways to go to get there and I don't based on the sheer volume of data we have. I don't know that next year is enough time making this type of upgrade on the budget constraints that we have.

But anyway, I'm thankful that the process is in motion and we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for the upgrade. So next year, at some point, we will be launching the new website, new upgraded website and hope to expand on that website because we have so many different groups that have developed from it.

Initially, the website, even its title, Williamdashbranum.org, it was just a collective research data for branemism. But we found over time that branemism was the very foundation that was laid from which so many different groups developed and the collaboration between branem and key figures that would later become leaders in the charismatic movement.

That collaboration also created bridges where cults spun off. So one of the things that has been the huge undertaking because it's mostly editing manual data records is trying to categorize which groups have the research material that we have in the website.

So if you're looking for research data on international house of prayer in Kansas City, we hope to have a category where you can click onto it and you can see all of the research data and then start building that out.

Most of the research has been on hold this year because building the, there's only one of me and building all of this out is a massive, massive undertaking. And the way that the way that it is structured and for security reasons, most of that work is on me.

because I'm very hesitant to bring other people in. We have actually had cult people who started reaching out to me and they're offering help and they're, you know, from all appearances they have good intent.

But once you start working with them, you find out that they're actually trying to undermine what you're doing. So I've learned very cautiously over time. It is something that I need to do and it's a heck of a lot of work, especially when you consider all of the, you know, the podcast editing and what not.

So anyway, I'm thankful that it has grown to the level it has because we do have that need, that we start categorizing material, start making it so that the different groups can find what they need.

But there's so many things to be thankful for and I could end up filling the podcast with that. I think I'll transition now, though, to the Christmas part of this episode because today is Christmas and like I said, my family, we're going to, we're going to be celebrating.

I grew up in a religion where a large number, I won't say a majority, but a large number of people were so strongly against Christmas that they were, many of them would be rude to other people if they saw them in the stores when they saw somebody celebrating Christmas even in spirit, they would be rude to them.

And in fact, my grandfather from behind the pulpit would talk about how they were in the grocery store and my aunt was just a young child and somebody came up to her approach them in the line in the grocery store and said, child, do you are, are you excited for Christmas?

Do you want, have you figured out what you want Santa Claus to bring you and very rudely my young aunt looked at her and said, as old as you are, you mean you still believe in Santa Claus and they would tell that and the whole audience would laugh and it was in every year thing because in the Brannum Tabernacle, it was very much like a group of wax figures.

Everybody is so programmed and so brainwashed that every year was the same thing. Every recording that they played yearly, the same statements would be made, many of the same statements and in hindsight, I look back at those statements and they were all to create an us versus them mentality where you would be rude to the people outside of the group.

And again, that's not the God that I would believe is the Christian God. And if it is, I'm very much like the people who have left. If that's the Christian God, I don't want it.

I don't want to be rude to other people. I don't want to be mean and arrogant and abrasive to other people. That's just not me and I choose not to be that way. So in hindsight, I look at stories like that and I realized the purpose and intent.

It was an intent to divide you from the outside world. world, and we would even say things like the world doesn't know the secrets that we have. It's very much a, in your mind, it creates this mental image of these walls that surround you.

So, even though we weren't in a commune, we were in our minds. We were collectively in a commune. That's how bad it was. And I know that many of the groups that sprung off of Brannemism haven't taken that level of destruction yet.

I believe that there are some measures in place that keep some of them from going that far, but I'm worried that there are other groups that, given the same foundation that they're building upon, eventually they're going to be just as destructive.

But Christmas, for me, we were in this world where everybody, like I said, not everybody, many people were against Christmas. But many of the leadership that was pushing these ideas were celebrating Christmas in private.

And I knew this because I was in the middle tier of the cult. In the cult hierarchy, you had the central figure, the middle tier, those that are special because they knew the prophet or whatever.

And then you rank and fall members. Many of you rank and fall members struggled because they were told they couldn't celebrate Christmas. Their children especially struggled because they're watching all of the other kids in school, if they're allowed to attend school, celebrate Christmas and the nice things are getting the gifts.

And to a child, that's, you know, a child doesn't understand all of this religious nonsense. All they can see is the parents of the children in school love them and they give them these gifts.

And they can see that love connection between the gift and the parent. And then they start to wonder, well, does my parent not love me? And fortunately, my family was in the upper tiers.

We knew that many of the leadership were celebrating Christmas. Even though Brannum would condemn all of the people for having a Christmas tree for opening gifts for even right down to just being joyful in the holidays, he would condemn this.

But at home, he had a Christmas tree. He exchanged gifts. Even in the Brannum tapernacle, he exchanged gifts. So my family grew up knowing this and my family did celebrate Christmas. Now, we didn't take it to the extreme others did.

I did not have Christmas lights on the house until afterwards, after we left. And the first time that I put my Christmas lights on my house, I was so proud of it. I took a picture of it and I put it on Facebook.

And I kid you not, the night that I put it on Facebook, that night, somebody came and actually they cut the wires in several places. So I had to throw out all of my Christmas lights.

I had to buy new Christmas lights. But that's the cult mentality of arrogance. that is indoctrinated, they want you to hate other people, and that's not me, that's not the God that I believe in.

I just will never ever be that person. Now, many of the people have been told that Christmas lights are of the devil and you've got a demon if you hang them. I decided I put up permanent lights this time and I don't have to keep climbing the ladder forever during the summertime, I can turn my lights on to just accent lighting and then at Christmas I can do all kinds of colors.

I know I put this out there and eventually somebody's probably going to cut the line, that's what they do. But for now, if it lasts this year and it lasts next year, I've saved myself going up and down the ladder a few times.

That's what I decided to do. I'm of the opinion that you should celebrate and you should get in the spirit of it. It's something that I had a conversation with this person recently and I knew what they believed and I probably shouldn't have done this.

It might have came across as arrogant, but I did it in jest and hopefully they understood this. But I said, my son's birthday, we celebrated his birthday this weekend and the guy said, oh, that's great, you celebrated his birthday and I said, yeah, I said, his actual birthday was a few weeks ago and we celebrate today and the guy said, well, that's great.

My kid just had one a few months back I think he said and I said, yeah, we celebrated my kid's birthday, not on his actual birthday and I said, and then we're going to celebrate Christmas and I realized that December 25th was not Jesus' birthday, but we're celebrating it then because we want to celebrate Jesus.

And you could just tell, I knew I took it too far, you could just tell he was a little bit hot under the collar because so many people have been trained to believe that you can't think logically about religion.

Logically, if I can celebrate my son's birthday, not on the birthday and we can have a celebration, we can love my son, we can give him gifts, even though it's not his birthday, the idea that we can't do that for celebration of Jesus as a Christian, that we can't celebrate because it's not the actual day.

The idea to me is just a little bit absurd. I'm not condemning anybody who believes this way, I know that there are people who do, but both are equal, yet one has the name Jesus in it and one has the name of my child, right?

So it's both the same. But I wanted to go deeper with that thought because there is some history there that people don't realize and not for simply the sake of the people who don't celebrate.

Christmas. I want to address it in both ways because there are people who do celebrate Christmas who actually don't know the history and they either mock or rebuke the people who don't celebrate Christmas because they do know partial history. They don't know all of it, but many of them know partial history. And I'll begin with the birthdays because in the ancient Jewish religion, as I understand it, and I'm not a Jew, but as I understand just simply from the study that I have done, Jews did not celebrate birthdays like we do.

So if you're in the camp where you don't celebrate Christmas, but yet you celebrate your child's birthday, you're actually doing what the pagans did. The earliest known celebration of birthday to my knowledge came out of Egypt and it wasn't from the Jews, it wasn't from the from Yahweh, the God of Israel. It was from the pagan gods and they celebrated the birthdays of the children and they saw it as a spiritual thing. It wasn't just celebration for the child. It was actually integrated into their worship system.

And so if you're celebrating the birthday of the child and you're saying that you can't celebrate the birthday of Jesus because it was associated with pagan worship, you're actually violating your own rules because the birthday was out of the pagan circles, not out of the Jewish circles. Eventually over time, it became, I don't think it ever became integrated in Judaism if I could be wrong, but at least within ancient Israel, don't think there's a birthday celebration per se, at least not in the way that we do it.

But eventually in Christian circles, it was adopted and much like the argument that eventually the pagans influenced the Christians and we celebrate Christmas, well, you can also say accurately and historically, eventually the pagans celebrated birthdays and eventually this was integrated into Christian worship or Christian life, I should say. And Christian life began to adopt the same pagan practice. And that's, whenever I began to learn things like that, I started to think about just the complexities of that thought as it relates to my belief system and what we believed. We truly believe that we could catch an accidental

demon by accidentally worshipping something and yet not be worshipping something. Like the pagan gods at Christmas, there are so many things that the pagans did that the children of God did as well. Right down to the so pagan practice, for example, Pagan's work clothes. Does that mean that I can't work clothes? Pagan's do a lot of things or did a lot of things that the ancient Israel, ancient worship of Yahweh did.

And some of it was spiritual. Some of it was part of their religious ceremony. Other parts were just everyday life. And so to take a hardcore stance, no, I'm not going to do this because the Pagan's did it. You're literally saying, I'm not going to wear clothes and I'm going to be naked because the Pagan's wore clothes. But take it a step further. Let's talk about just religion in general. In Pagan practice, there was animal sacrifice. And animal sacrifice was in the Pagan practice. It was evil. They would take the blood of the goats and the lambs or whatever up to the

temple. And the blood would run down. If you're, if you've studied archaeology or even if you've just went on vacation, you can see the step pyramids. We visited Chichen Itza in Mexico. I want to go to Egypt and see some of the pyramids and religious structures there. But they were very similar around the world. The blood would go into the temple and it would flow down. And the people would worship and they would say that we're doing this offering to our God or gods and kill an animal.

And we look at this today and we think, well, that's pure evil. I remember thinking that when I went to Chichen Itza and they were describing what they did, some of it was even human sacrifice.

But the human sacrifice was a little bit different. They viewed it at least the way that the tour guide explained it to us. The ancients who were giving their lives, they had, they would have this weird basketball game. I called it basketball, but there were these circles in in Mexico. I'm drawn a blank on the name of that city or that province. But there were these circles that they would throw this big leather ball through. And the winning team got to be sacrificed.

So human sacrifice was thought of much differently back then. An animal sacrifice was almost widespread among the ancient world. Eventually, according to Eusebius, who is the father of church history, according to Eusebius, eventually the animal sacrifice transitioned to grain sacrifice and they finally eliminated it in many of the pagan religions, not all. But animal sacrifice was a pagan practice. And if you are familiar with the Old Testament, you can read and you can see that the ancient Israel, ancient children of Israel, they were also performing animal sacrifice.

So if you are against Christmas and you're saying that we can't celebrate Christmas because the pagans celebrate Christmas. to their son God. Well, what about the ancient Jews? They were offering animal sacrifice in the same way that the pagans were. Now, they were worshiping two different gods, and that will be the argument that you will hear from those who don't celebrate Christmas. But on the other hand, for those who do celebrate Christmas, when they celebrate Christmas, they're not celebrating the pagan god. So animal sacrifice is actually a prime example of how, in my opinion, absurd the idea

is that you must forbid people from celebrating. Because in ancient Israel, they're both performing the same ceremonies. Many times, if you look through the history of the celebrations, the feasts, some of those feasts align with pagan feasts. And so therefore, they were celebrating at the same exact time in the same exact way to different gods, much like Christians are celebrating Jesus at Christmas in the same exact way as other people who are worshiping other gods. So for me, the animal sacrifice is a big deal. Burn offerings, incense, the altars, all of this is very similar to

ancient Egypt. You can look through some of the history online, and most of the ancient ancient children of Israel structures no longer exist. But they are described, and you can read through the Old Testament, read their descriptions, and you can find, you know, it's a very, very similar thing that they're doing. The sacred feasts in the seasonal festivals. Let's break that down a bit, because that also applies to both Christmas and the ancient world. The idea that Christmas is a pagan idea, they attribute it to the sun god. And the sun god worship was specifically

designed by ancient pagan religions to honor the sun in its strongest form and in its weakest form. So whenever the sun was in its strongest form, god had risen and was more powerful, and the crops started growing, so the people are starting to be blessed. And essentially, this is talking about from spring until fall, we know that we can plan our harvest, and we will have celebrations when we harvest the food. That's just simply human life. If you want to live, you have to know that whenever it's about to get cold, if you plant your crops, they're not going

to grow. And when it gets warm, the sun's coming down, the rains, the seasons. So whenever you think of the pagan festivals and the solstice worship that they had, it was more of a, even though it was dedicated to one of the ancient gods, it was more by design for just simply survival.

must survive by recognizing when the solstices were, when to plant, when to harvest, and then when you harvest, you would take a rest because now we've done all of this work, let's celebrate. Well, in ancient Israel, you have the same types of festivals and they're very much related to agriculture and seasons.

You had new moon feasts. So for people who are in ancient Israel who are worshipping Yahweh and celebrating the new moon, it was part of their way of life to understand how the culture could survive.

We are studying the moons, we're studying the sun, we're studying the solstices because that's how we plant, that's how we grow, and we give thanks to Yahweh, give thanks to God. The pagans were doing the same exact thing.

They were studying the sun, the moons, the seasons, and it was part of their worship. The difference was they did not serve Yahweh and they, in many cases, would apply the deity of one of the pagan gods to each independent, either moon phases or sun phases.

The sun, I believe in Egypt was raw and you had the moon feast and the moon festivals. They were studying the planets, so Saturn would have its worship, Mars would have its worship. And you can find that all throughout ancient Greece and Rome and many of the other ancient pantheons of mythologies, it was all related to this idea that to survive as a people, we must know and understand how all of this works.

Same with ancient Israel, but the difference was they were doing it under the dedication to Yahweh and they were saying that our Almighty God is the one who brought all of this in order and we give thanks to Yahweh for this.

And another difference, if you read the Bible and you understand the cultures described, while King David is practicing all of these things that I just described and he is attributing it to Yahweh and he is serving dedicated to God.

He believes, King David believes that God has all things in power, all things in control. The sun, the moon, the stars, the feast, the growth, the agriculture, he attributes all of this to Yahweh, but he doesn't become arrogant and abusive towards those who did not.

In fact, he was close friends to the King of Tyre. And if you understand the ancient worship of the King of Tyre, this was not a worship of Yahweh, but many of their feasts, their festivals, many of their practices, just human practices and religious practices, many of them were in alignment.

But... But King David befriended the King of Tyre, and because of that union, the two kingdoms became very powerful, very wealthy according to the Bible. And you can read some of the studies outside of the Bible, and you can see some of the same information, not just in that example, but in many other examples.

So by not becoming arrogant and not being narcissistic, not creating an us versus them mentality, God actually blessed David even more. So you could say that by not becoming arrogant about your belief against Christmas, you can actually become more blessed.

If you use that as an example, and vice versa, if you believe to celebrate Christmas and you're condemning those who are not, you're falling into the same problem, the same category that they are.

And one is not better than the other in my opinion. I believe that all people should love other people. I don't care who you are, what you believe. That's just my opinion, that's how I believe.

And there are many Bible passages that speak to that effect. So the feasts, the worship, all of these things really matched what ancient Israel had and what the ancient mythology's had, which is the point that I wanted to actually drive home when you think about this celebration of Christmas.

So I warned you that I would probably be going to the Bible for some of this podcast. And I'm not a theologian, I'm just simply going to read a few things that I learned in my journey.

And whether you are a Christian or not, I think these things will help you on your journey. Specifically, I'm gonna start with Galatians 3. And just the first few words, oh foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you.

When I read this and I started reading it in different translations, I began with the King James version because that's what I was most familiar with growing up in the Brannum called. But then I continued to understand the language as it was originally intended to be read and understood.

And I want to explain that just a little bit and then dive deeper into the passage because whether you're a Christian or not this applies to you. When I began working in IT, I started working mostly with English-speaking people, but eventually as global economy started to rise, I started working with people of other nations, other languages.

Some of the people that I worked with and managed did not speak English at all. And I was unfamiliar with this because I only speak English. I want to learn, I just haven't yet had time.

But I started to learn through speaking through an interpreter that I could say one word in the interpreter might have to speak three to four to 10 sentences to explain the meaning because of some of the words that the English language used did not have a one-to-one relationship with a word in another language.

In other words, it might take an entire paragraph of words to explain the meaning behind one single word. And vice versa, some of the things in their language could not easily be translated to me.

So I realized that I had to apply that concept also to the Bible because the Bible that I was reading was not in its original language. And in some cases had gone through a few iterations of language and translation to get to me.

And there are things, there's this phrase lost in translation. And I was of the incorrect mindset that God had fully pinned the King James version and that it was written in the same way in English that it could be written to the ancients, which if you study text criticism, which is the study of learning how the translations have came to be and the difference between words and in different translations and different families of translations.

You begin to understand that that's really not the case. Otherwise, every single copy of every single family of the hundreds of different versions of text that has descended through time, thousands, I guess, it would all match 100% if God had pinned it and it was exactly in English.

But we find one study I found said that there are more discrepancies in words and translations than there are words in the New Testament for the New Testament, which that's a significant number. So I began to understand, I need to read this from the same way that I'm communicating with people in other languages and I went back to the interlinear Bible, which is basically taking a word and then explaining that word and what it means.

It takes a long time to read the Bible like this and I won't say that I read the whole Bible like this, but there were specific passages that I wanted to read and understand.

Galatians is one that hit me pretty hard. Oh, foolish Galatians who has bewitched you. When I read this statement after leaving Brannemism, I understood that Paul was rebuking Galatians because they had done something that was not following Christ's example.

And if you read through that passage, it talks about the righteous shall live by faith, which is one of the primary... concepts of branimism that I came out of and it goes on to say in verse 10 for all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. For it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. The sad truth of the matter is branimism and many of the Pentecostal faith-based religions have taken out of context of scripture the

covenants and the words of this passage whenever I was in the cult mean something entirely differently than what it means now after the cult and what it meant in the cult is in no way shape or form related to what it means as the intentions of the author of Galatians. If you understand the concept of the covenants, those who are under the law were under the curse of the law and that referred to the mosaic law and the mosaic covenant. But sadly there are many teachers of the Bible who don't even understand the covenants. So the text of this passage means something

entirely for them. Oddly if you study the position against Christmas you're going to find that many of the people who are against Christmas also don't understand that relationship between this text and the covenants because basically the position against Christmas is a very

legalistic way of thinking and what Paul is preaching against in Galatians 3 is actually legalism. He's saying that you're trying to abide by the law, you're trying to live by the law and in doing so you're placing yourself under a curse and he's very clear for all who rely on the works of the law or under a curse. For as written curse would be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them and there are other passages that go in greater detail with this but essentially that concept is trying, let's try to say this,

that passage is trying to say this, there were so many provisions of things of rules that you must do under the mosaic law. You had to do all of them to receive your blessings according to the old covenant but any that you failed upon you would receive a curse for not having kept them.

In other words the mosaic law was written very legalistically and Paul is saying don't bring yourself on this, who has bewitched you, who has brought you under this curse. In other words in today's language what's wrong with you people but if you continue on it says why then the law, it was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. So he's very clearly separating. We had the Mosaic Law. It was for the people who the promise had been made and then put in place through angels by an intermediary. And he says, now an intermediary implies more than

one, but God is one. So here it's talking about the Mosaic Law, the things that are, as I said, earlier in this podcast, the things that they were to uphold some of which did align with pagan practice. But our God is one. So if you think back to what I said earlier, yes, they had the feast, yes, they had the celebrations, the study of the Sun God, the study of the Sun, I should say, not Sun God, study the moon, the phases, when to plant, when to grow, when to harvest, when to have a feast, when to have a festival. And Paul is saying that yes, they did all of these things,

yes, there was a Mosaic Law, but we believe in one God. And that was a concept. I'll be honest, when I first started thinking through that, it didn't make sense to me because I had been misled into what the Christian faith was as it related to the old covenant. We would often, there were other passages where it says the people who are worshipping God must also adhere to the old covenant. Some of those statements are by Jesus. And we would hear those repeated sermon after sermon. I remember them. That's how you enforce legalism. But you have to understand

in the timeline of Jesus is talking to people who are under that old covenant. That's before the sacrifice, anything that Jesus said before he was sacrificed was applying to the old covenant. So there's a clear separation. And Paul talks about this separation quite frequently. He doesn't say that the law was a bad thing or that it was of not having a good effect. He's saying basically that was the law, but don't who's bewitched you to think that you must still be under that law.

So Galatians 3 hit me really hard. Colossians 2 is the other passage that really hit me hard. As I was trying to come out of this legalistic way of thinking. And if you put them together, it almost sounds like Colossians 2 is the warning saying don't do this. And then Galatians 3 is the, what's wrong with you people? Do you not know? And he's basically reaffirming Colossians 2.

But in Colossians 2, it talks about verse 6. It says, therefore as you receive Christ Jesus, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established by the faith as you were taught, a bounding and thanksgiving. Very much like the beginning of this podcast, give thanks. That's what it's saying. But it goes on to savor.

say it is what changed my way of thinking entirely. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ, for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

In other words, we're worshiping Christ, and we're not worshiping the pagan gods, but then skip forward to verse 16, or actually read the rest, but eventually land on verse 16. Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you, and questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival, or new moon, or Sabbath.

These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. This is the verse that if you understand everything that I have said to this point in the podcast, and understand the context of it, he is saying that you are not to pass judgment on another person who is celebrating one of these festivals, or new moons, or Sabbaths, and in Colossians, he's speaking to the people of Colossia, and he's saying, yes, these things are worshiped by the other gods, these people are worshiping other gods doing these things, but nobody judge you for participating in one of these festivals, or celebrating

a new moon, or celebrating a Sabbath. Paul understood that the things that were being part of the things that were in the rituals of the ancients were belonging to Christ, and he says, the substance belongs to Christ, let no one disqualify you.

And yet at the same time, these are part of a way of life. You have to do these things in the ancient world. You had to do these things to understand when you plant, when you grow.

Many parts of their life revolved around the moons, and the sun, and the festivals, and the feasts, and it wasn't just the pagans that did this. It was the Christians, and Paul is very clear here that Christians are to not pass judgment on other Christians who are doing these things.

So if you think back to the debate, do I celebrate Christmas, do I not celebrate Christmas? In my opinion, that's the choice that's up to you. It's not something that I'm going to tell you one way or the other, but if you are in the category of celebrating Christmas, don't judge those who do not, and if you're in the category of not celebrating Christmas, don't judge those who do.

If you do judge people for this, or you curse them, or insult them like the story that my grandfather would tell with my aunt, if you're being rude to somebody, you're actually in violation of what Paul is saying here.

And so this changed my life as it relates to Christmas, but also far beyond Christmas. Think of Halloween, and if you study the history of Halloween, you understand that that was a transition between the harvest and now we are into the celebrations of the harvest. Yes, the pagans did this.

I'm not going to say that pagans did many of the practices that are being condemned by the legalistic crowd. They're absolutely correct. They were pagan, but they were also part of Christianity and they were also part of Judaism.

That's the key concept that I don't think they understand. This was a way of life. You had to live like this in order to survive. You had to know when to plant your crops, when to grow them, and when the feast would come. When you would enjoy the crops that you planted, and that's just all parts of life. Again, it goes back to the thing. If you're trying to say that don't do anything that the pagans do because the pagans worship another deity, it really comes all the way down to don't wear your clothes because the pagans wear clothes.

It's so similar across all of the religions. Every ancient religion that existed in time, if you study all of their attributes, they all share common attributes, all of them. Christianity, ancient children of Israel, the worshipers of raw, the worshipers of ancient Egypt, Roman, Greco, all of these different religions, they all share similarities. If you try to isolate one aspect, one religious aspect of their way of life, you're actually condemning the Christians who are the children of Israel. You can't live like this. You can't be rude like this and try to say, otherwise you're also in violation of when Jesus says which one of you is guilty cast the first

stone or remove the speck in your eye when you're blaming other people when you have the speck in your eye. You can't live like this. It's not a healthy way to live. So hopefully this helps. I know that I've jumped from topic to topic and I am the opposite of a person who is qualified to be a theologian or preacher anything like this. I never intend to be. I never want to be. But I do think that it can help people on both sides of the aisle to understand the way of life that was.

And these aren't simply things that I'm coming up with. If you want to find out more, you can simply go into Google or any of the search engines and every single thing that I have said in here, you can type it in and you're going to find a hundred different articles on each of them.

From the birthdays in Egypt all the way to the celebrations and the feasts and the festivals, you're going to find a wealth of information out there. So hopefully this helps. And hopefully, if you are in the camp who is celebrating Christmas, hopefully you're not listening to this at all.

you're with your family, but if you are struggling and you are listening to this, hopefully I've said something that gives you a little bit of encouragement and mostly releases all of the fear that we were indoctrinated with. Because like I said, I too was indoctrinated with a narcissistic angry God of wrath that hated people. That's not a God that anybody should want to serve. If you believe that that is the Christian God, leave. Go find something else because that's not the Christian God at all and you're actually worshiping a demon if you think that you must hate other people or be rude to

other people. So at the end of this, I want to say Merry Christmas from our house to yours. I want to offer my blessings for Christmas and hopefully that I have said something that can give you a little bit of Christmas joy. So if you've enjoyed the podcast and you want more information, 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.