Indoctrinating the Innocent: YWAM, Spiritual Warfare, and the Psychology of Control

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jenny McGrath, founder of Endwell Movement and Sematic Experiencing Practitioner. Jenny is good to be back and to talk about Y-Wam. There are so many questions that I have about the movement that I'm still kind of forming in my head, my opinion. I don't have an opinion yet of Y-Wam, youth with a mission for anybody who is unfamiliar. But when you see

this group of kids and then you know all of the history of these different propaganda schemes and these mind control schemes from different groups that involve children, it raises so many questions. If you know history, you can't look at this and not question it. So I have all of these questions. I'm begging people to give answers and you're one of the first who decided to come on the show regularly to give answers. So let me frame this for you from the Brannum world that I grew up in and it will make some sense with context I think

with the world that you were in and youth with a mission. So whenever I was a little child and we were getting ready to go to Sunday School, while all of the other Christian churches were sending their kids to joyfully be in a Sunday school that's talking about Jesus and what Christ did for you, we were marching into our Sunday school room and we were singing songs about marching and how we are in the Lord's army. We had we would do the things with you know all of the motions. You've probably seen this, seen this at some point, but it was a very

militaristic child experience. And as a child, I didn't think anything of it. It was kind of cool. This was kind of fun. Whenever I became an adult through my teenage years and then later, I really didn't think anything of it. That's just what we did because that's what I did. Whenever I had children and they marched, I really didn't think about it. But after I left the movement and I started to realize that there were undertones of the movement that were very, very sinister and there were connections to different movements that were very, very sinister. Some of them, which

it involve actual weapons. And that history, I've given in a couple of books, I won't go there in this podcast, but knowing that there was a military history connected to the movement. And then now you have these kids and this, what is literally a mind control cult that are marching and using military themes, it raises so many questions about youth with a mission.

I wanna see if there's some crossover between the militaristic aspects of what I grew up in and what developed into Y-Wam. So thank you for coming on. Let's talk about the military mindset of a child.

Absolutely, so many thoughts. Come up. I did in Sunday school saying, I may never, didn't, I don't remember. Same exact one, so that is the song, yep. Yes, I know it well. And I was thinking as you were talking, I, for me, I feel like I grew up in a particular moment in time where I would say maybe the collective consciousness or psyche of the US, what was already at play for a long time in some of these undercurrents, I think presented itself more apparent.

And so for me, I was 11 years old when 9-11 happened. And I remember it very, very vividly. And it was not a year later, I was with my dance troupe at the Colorado State Fair, singing and dancing to a very violent country song about the red, white, and blue and putting a boot in your, you know what?

And I was 11, 12 at the time and embodying this militaristic force and we had like American flag shirts from Old Navy on. And I didn't exactly dance at a Christian studio, but it became the first time where Christianity and military for me were really, really embedded in one another.

So at the time you were experiencing 9-11, that's about the same years that my children were marching in the church. Yeah, and what was interesting was that I remember a lot of the Islamophobic rhetoric that I heard at the time, even as a kid, we're talking about children being trained up to be, quote unquote, jihad terrorists.

And I myself, for whatever reason, I have always been anti-war and I remember as a kid being like, wait, so then why are we celebrating George W. Bush sending military over there? Shouldn't we be, trying to figure out how to not go to war and how to not bomb civilians. And I often got told, like, you just don't understand how the world works. And from a very young age, I took the Bible and the words of Jesus very seriously. And to me, Jesus really presented as a pacifist. And so, it just, it could not make sense. But I think that there was the undercurrent of spiritual warfare,

which I didn't realize at the time. And I didn't appreciate how that was also embedded with militaristic movements. The very first Y-Wam-Base I moved to right after I graduated high school was literally on an old military base. It still is on an old military base. And when I joined staff at another Y-Wam-Base, we had, quote unquote, target nations, which is a very common thing for Y-Wam to call nations targets. And on all of this, there's, I think, very militaristic language. It gets justified because it is in the spiritual realm, and it's about spiritual dominion. But when you

actually look at the material impacts of a bunch of young, primarily white missionaries going and establishing businesses and nonprofits and churches and other nations, it ends up having more or less a very similar effect to that imperialism and more of the hard power of imperialism does.

Absolutely. And it ties to some weird history. I don't know if you're familiar with this history, but I have been studying the history of Pentecostalism, which birthed all of this mess that we see, and specifically studying the two main cults that Pentecostalism was based off of.

Whenever Charles Fox Parham created his sect in Kansas, he went to John Alexander Dauys, Zion City, and tried to figure out, how is this man making what was it? I think it was 10 million dollars. It was like a half a billion dollars in today's money. How did he do this in 10 years?

And then he also went to a sect that was in Maine, the cult following of Frank Sanford. Both were both faith healing type ministries, missionary type ministries. Frank Sanford was unusual in that his cult, because there was so much scandal with the

interestingly, the issues in the minds. There was a young lady who went crazy in a made national news in his sect, because they were very, very authoritarian. Well, whenever it looked like there was about be some legal action taken against him.

He took his entire cult following, bought two big yachts and started sailing the world to target specific nations. And they would go up onto the shores. I think I did mention this with you in the last podcast, but I didn't go this deep with it.

They would go up on the, near the shores, not even to the shores, but near it and preach at the continent. And so, you know, they're not making any effect if you're considering this spreading the gospel.

There's not a single person that could hear them. So, they're not actually spreading the gospel, but it's more the idea that they're in this spiritual battle. Nobody can see it, nobody can feel it.

And even the people who they're targeting have no idea that they're in this spiritual, that they're a spiritual warrior for the enemy side, right? But from the flip side of this, what happens to the brain whenever you take something that you can't see, you can't feel, but you're told is there.

So, there's this enemy we can't see. We're told that it's there. We have to believe it. Take it a step further. Now we're fighting the enemy. We don't know we're fighting it. How are we fighting it?

We're just simply praying, singing, whatever, the chance, whatever we're doing. It takes you basically, it separates your mind from reality. And the moment in which your mind separates from reality is when it is most susceptible to mind control.

A person can literally take your brain and hijack it once you have separated from reality. And again, this is early 1900s. I think it was around 1910, if I remember correctly, that they actually did the sailing.

So, Pentecostalism had already been birthed by this point, and then they sailed the world, with the spiritual warfare thing. And they were under such authoritarian control, one of the ships capsized. So, they lost most of their supplies.

Those who survived the capsized went on to the other yacht and sailed back for Maine without enough food for the people. And the cult leader was not about to go without food. He lived like a king.

So, when they made it to the shores, he walked out and his fancy suit, and he's fully flushed, and he looks perfect. The people who came to rescue them said that the entire crew looked like they were skeletons with skin wrapped around them.

So, they had not eaten, they were scurvy on board, and the sky walks out and his fancy suit, just like nothing ever happened. And he was under that level of control of his people that they even starved themselves without throwing him over the side of the ship.

So, all of this to say, once you engage in the spiritual warfare, it is dangerous because someone can take over your mind. Yeah, I find myself asking this question. and I'm not a sociologist, although I love studying social sciences, but I love the phrase, conditions of possibility. You know, what are the conditions of possibility that create these vacuums and these cults and enable them to happen in the first place? And I think one of the things that comes to mind is that that sounds so isolating. And I know that that is a part of the experience in Y-WAM, in that to enter into Y-WAM, you have to do what's called a discipleship

training school, which is five months. And it includes three months lecture and then two months outreach. And you know, I was 18 years old when I did my outreach in the red light district of Thailand, seeing and experiencing some incredibly traumatic things. And then I came home to my quote-unquote normal 18-year-old girlfriend talking about boy drama. And I was like, I cannot relate.

Like, there is no part of me that gets why you think this is important right now. And so it just became the sense of these are the only people that understand. These are the only people that know how important it is. And so then it became easy to give up food and things like that, you know, and I'm thinking as you're talking, it's really not that dissimilar from a lot of the hierarchy I experienced in Y-WAM, where I was paying thousands of dollars to do different schools in Y-WAM.

And in one of them, I was in South Africa. And for months, we were eating lettuce and mayonnaise for most of our meals. And maybe bread and peanut butter and lots and lots of broyboast tea. And then occasionally we would go to the houses of people that were on leadership team of Y-WAM international. And this single person living in this five bedroom house telling us to close the windows because the baboons are going to come in from the forest that they live right near. And I'm just

the immediate cognitive dissonance even in that to be like, wow, you must have a lot of supporters or you know, you must have a really strong church supporting you. Whereas I was like agonizing trying to live off of $200 a month because it's really hard to get people to pay you to be a missionary. And so I think that I can really relate to that where it's like if you are one of those quote unquote foot soldiers, if we stay in line with more militaristic language, those who are the generals or the captains, so to speak, are the

ones who aren't tending to do that amount of suffering. And I think there is, again, I don't know enough. I'm not in the brains of each person to know. I tend to be an optimist and a cynic at the same time, but I do think that people are born predators.

I think that people become people who prey on others because of conditions of possibility that make them that way, because of lack of accountability, because of these systems that create hierarchies that push people in to different roles or things that they may not have in another context.

I have multiple family members on both sides of my family who have mental health issues of some kind. And some of it is quite mild, but there are some extremes. And so I have seen everything from the mild to the extremes.

The mild generally in thinking through the people that I'm aware of, they are mild because of their situation. They're in a very comfortable situation. They are, if medication is required, I don't think they all require it, but those who do are taking the medication and they live comfortable, healthy lives.

On the other extreme, you have people who are environment in environments that aren't so calm. And also they are in situations where their medicine is not taken as should be. And this is especially the case in a divine healing movement because God has healed me.

I feel good once the medicine takes effect, and then I stop taking it because now I feel better, didn't God just heal me? That's usually the cycle that repeats and repeats. In those weird instances, not many people are aware of this, but when your mind goes into the altered state from these types of mental health disorders, and this is not my opinion, this is study you can actually read about this, you become heightened spiritually.

There are people who think that they are Jesus. When they get in this weird situation and I'm laughing, it's actually sad, but I'm laughing because I have seen some of the funny things that happen whenever these people think they're Jesus, and it's hard not to laugh with them, but it's hard because you want to cry at the same time that you're laughing.

It's funny, sad, all at the same time. So this is one of the burdens that I have to deal with, and I have seen this time and time again. I look at the leadership that have turned into authoritarian cult leaders, and there's this wide variety of people.

There are those who did admit to having mental health disorders. So William Brannum mentioned every seven years, he was even hospitalized a few times for his mental health issues. And yet they're in a religion where when you reach that level of extremism, and that level of, I hate to use the word, but that level of insanity, the people who are in this spiritual state where they have this altered sense of reality, they see that as actually, they see the mental health issues as actually the Holy Spirit.

They start thinking, wow, this person, he's crazy, he doesn't act like the rest of the world, he must be filled with the Holy Spirit. And so they all try together around the crazy guy.

And this appears to happen quite frequently if you study through the history of cult leaders. So I'm looking at all of this, and then I'm looking at, like you said, the environmental conditions, this is something that I have studied, if you study different developing nations and study the, not just the culture, but the state of mental health, medication and access to medication, you find that in the developing nations, it is a widespread problem.

It's not quite a pandemic, but it is a huge problem. And yet these are the nations that are being targeted by youth with a mission, by apostolic faith missions, by brannemism, by all of these different groups.

And I have talked to people in those countries who say, it's crazy, John. There are so many cults here that it is like a breeding ground for cults. So I try to see how much of this can be connected to the mental health issues, how much is it because of, is there a strategy behind the missions?

What is it? And I always come back to this, they're sending people on a mission often for, the mission itself is just for the people who are being sent, not so much as the people they're sent to, which is really weird, if you think about it.

But I have come to the conclusion that that seems to be the case. Absolutely. Yeah. And I talk about this a little bit in my book as well, that there's often the platitude. We were more blessed to give, you know, and that's not actually said in the gravity that it deserves, because it absolutely is, I think, more about those who are going than it is those who are receiving.

And I have been really impacted by the work of a professor for Osmongi, and he says, you cannot fight poverty, what you can fight is those who make people poor. And he's been researching a quote unquote development work in Africa for many, many, many years now.

And a lot of times I think this is the same in the missionary world where it's, we're going to help these people that are quote unquote less fortunate. And there's never a question as to the history of imperialism and capitalism and colonialism that has...

undeveloped these nations and and how being able to fundraise in churches and communities that have extra hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars to give in the first place is part of what it means to be in a world where there is wealth disparity and income disparity and and so I think there is a part of it where it becomes almost like conscious laundering like I can feel good about coming home and taking a break and going on sabbatical because I've gone and served so much rather than how do I look at dismantling these systems that

continue to perpetuate injustice in these worlds and I think especially if you spiritualize that injustice then it causes you not to look at billionaires or the systems that we live in that that create these power vacuums and these social service vacuums. Yeah that's exactly where I was headed so you go out on this mission you're going to a nation developing nation and you see some sort of a a person who's quote unquote filled with the spirit but really they're in a mental episode. To the people who are on the mission they see this as oh my

gosh this person's filled with the spirit look what I've done I'm on this mission I've did this thing to the people who are leading it I think some of them have to recognize because some of them they themselves might even have some issues so they realize what's going on but there's this weird thing where if you are in leadership in these movements and you send somebody out and you can make the person who's giving the blessing be blessed then it feels like you have done your job because you're you're they're not only for the people

that you're sending on the mission too but you're there for those who are being sent so they can also rise up in the spirit or whatever so there's this weird vicious cycle that happens and the reason I mentioned the mental health at the landing party you know wherever they're headed those people you know some of them have had issues and people surrounding them have seen these issues but they'd never really put it into the context because they in developing nations don't understand the mental health so they see this and oh these people are coming and they say this is a good thing that this person is

acting a little bit off and so they start to say well I too want to act a little bit off so so in the Charismatic Circus Pentecostal Circus they teach them how to in in branemism we use the term nut which is offensive but branem would say things specifically like they call us nuts but you need the nuts to hold the bolts together your car will fall apart those are the kind of things that we grew up hearing so there's this weird vicious cycle that happens you have people who who are acting crazy because they're in their religious euphoria.

You have people who are around the religious euphoria who are suffering and they're struggling. All of this to a group of adult missionaries and adult missionary can kind of see this and kind of discern, okay, this person needs help.

Let's get him some real help. Let's get him some meds. But take 18-year-old children. I'm not certain that that's the case. Whenever you saw, did you ever see anything like this? Did you ever see people who were struggling?

Yeah, yeah. I was actually just having a conversation with a friend recently about this and that I absolutely think that there are those instances

and there's a book I really love called Crazy Like Us. And it makes me hesitant to take kind of western diagnoses and put them on other countries or other contexts because I think there's so much nuance there of what is cultural, what is so many things that I don't want to always pathologize.

So I just want to give that disclaimer. And I remember being in so many contexts either in the States or abroad where people were getting quote-unquote slain in the spirit and they were writhing and it was either slain in the spirit or they were possessed by a demon, but it looked the same.

And so it seems like it was up to the religious leader of the service to determine what was happening if they were being slain by the spirit or if it was a demon. And I don't know what to do with those experiences.

The closest I can get in some ways is a Meal Dorkheim's phrase collective effervescence that there is something in us that can get stirred up when we are in a collective frenzy space. And as we talked about last time, there is so much manipulation with the way that worship music has played, the way that prayer is.

I've had like people literally pushing on my head to get me to fall down. And at times I'd be like, okay, I guess I'll just lay down because you're just going to push me over and I'll just lay here for a little bit and then get up.

And then I would be like, how many other people are doing this to? How many people are having a seizure? You know, there's so many different things that it could be. And I find those environments very concerning because they really do make people susceptible to whatever the person who is on the pulpit is going to be saying that.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign charismatic? and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation, you can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. It's interesting you talk about slain in the spirit, so that's something we did not have in the churches that I attended. In fact, we condemned it. We said,

this is all show, this is all fake. And what's interesting is I have come full circle. So I left the cult, I started, I actually had a really good friend who was helping me as I was leaving the cult, who was in another cult. And I didn't know it at the time, but he had gone to a bitty hymn concert. And he was saying, I was standing there, John. And he did his thing. I don't know, he slung his coat or whatever. And he said, suddenly the power of God just struck me down. And I

fell on the floor backwards. And I'm like, did it hurt? And he was expecting a religious response for me. And I'm just logically thinking, oh my gosh, I can't believe they're doing this to people.

What if somebody gets injured? That's the thought that came into my head. And so I go down these weird rabbit trails of research. I started researching slain in the spirit because this is a big deal for me. If this is real and my friend, I trust my friend, I don't think he was lying. If he really fell over and really believed that the power struck him down, what is the explanation for this?

Because I knew it wasn't God. This is not the way God works. So I began studying it and we talked about last time or the time before about the neurological disassociation. That's one of the explanations. I have seen people who get in such a hyped up euphoria that their brain just literally disconnects. And that's one of the explanations. There are people that just get into the state where their brain shuts off. They, yes, you're going to fall over because your brain just shut off. Your motor functions aren't working, right? But there's more to it than that. There

are just other contributing factors. So some people stand with their knees locked. You're cutting off your circulation or if you're in a strong hyped up sense of fear whenever the, when the guy's approaching you and he's going to sling his code at you, it's going to scare you because you're going to be like, I've never fell over backwards. Am I going to get hurt, right? So The blood pressure goes up and if your knees are locked, you could, without even a disassociation, you could just simply fall over because your blood pressure drops so quickly.

I've seen some weird things around this area, but the power of suggestion is the other thing. I have seen the power of suggestion. I have seen what it can do to people. I actually, I've never talked about this before, but in one of my high school classes, and I don't remember which one, but I was hypnotized. And this was a very weird thing. The teacher came in and just hypnotized four of us. I got picked to be hypnotized. She sat down in a chair and I was hypnotized and we were asked to take one finger, our index finger. Each of the four children

put under her, under her thighs and under her underarm. So I was under her underarm. And with the tip of our finger, just like this much of it, we picked up a 200 pound woman.

And afterwards, we're thinking there's no way that we can do this. That's a superhuman feat, right? But the funny part about it is my brain is so different from everybody else. And I've studied this too, not everybody. There's like one and four that you can't program their heads. So as we're in the state of hypnosis, and I clearly remember entering into it, and then I remember nothing until I'm thinking as she's up above, literally above my head, right? I started to think, you know, this isn't physically possible. And the moment I thought this, my finger could

no longer support her weight and down she went on the floor. It's a wonder she didn't get injured. But that's the power of hypnosis and the power of suggestion. And working with Dr. Steven Hassan, he has gone through, and I think this is in his book, a combating cult mind control.

There are hypnotic techniques in the speeches of these men before they come and sling their coats. So there are so many different elements to the slain in the spirit, all of which are fully explainable. But to the person who falls over, they think it's unexplainable and they believe it.

And it all comes back to the spiritual warfare. This is a, you're fighting a demon that doesn't exist. You're slinging a coat to slay the spirit of a person. And yes, the person may have a spirit if you're a Christian and you believe this. But what does slaying it do? You're not really slaying the person or his spirit. You're just causing them to fall over and you might cause them to be injured.

Yeah, it makes me think of this sort of hilarious and embarrassing example. I was with my husband and my brother and sister-in-law and we were in this quirky store in Seattle. And I saw these fun glasses and I put them on and I was like, oh my gosh, and I lower and I lift him and I lower him, I was like, oh my gosh, I think I might need glasses.

And my husband put them on and he's like, oh my gosh, I think I might need glasses too. And my brother comes over and sticks his finger through the glass. There was not even a lens in there, but we had both convinced ourselves because we had glasses, we could see better through them.

And who knows, maybe there was something about it like obscuring vision or something, but our brains are so susceptible to influence and to being influenced. And I think especially when we don't have places we can go to reality test and be like, hey, was that weird?

Because if you say that, then that is questioning whoever the spiritual authority was for that service. And then you're sowing discord and then you're all of these things that are, I think part of that manipulation is just baked into the community of don't question, don't dissent, don't have an issue because as soon as people start having issue or questioning it seems like they just disappear.

And all of a sudden they're gone and we're praying for them and wishing them well, but it's never, but what happened to them? Where did they go? Why did they leave? And so I think it is really, it appears and feels like a very, very close community, but you also, I think kind of visceral level know how precarious it is.

And you know that once you start going, wait, hey, this isn't possible. Wait, this doesn't make sense. Like your teacher, the whole thing is gonna fall down. It's one of those weird stories, I've got a million weird stories that people just, the stuff that's in my head, you wouldn't believe it.

But where, what really bothers me? So after this happened, I'm thinking analytically, analytically, logically, I can't hold this person up, they fall to the ground and that's that. I was not traumatized because my brain had actually worked.

The other three were like, did you see that? I'm Superman, I have the superpower, you know, it affected them after the event. And in the, in the situation that we were in, this was not a scary thing, this was, it was even set up to watch, you're going to be amazed.

It was like a magic trick, we're gonna do a magic trick. And so the people enjoyed it afterwards, they thought they were Superman. That's literally how this was. However, once you start considering the mindset and the framing of how spiritual warfare works, you're taking people who, number one, they believe it or they wouldn't be there in the first place.

Number two. if they're young adults or children, why, why I'm some of the other groups, they believe it because they're being told they must believe it and many of them do. It causes fear.

So take that same scenario. I'm under this weird hypnosis that I never even signed up to be. My parents would have been mortified if they knew that I was being hypnotized in school, right?

Right. It's such a weird thing. But if it had have not been as a joke, if we had all been scared that she was some sorceress and watch I'm going to do this wizardry on your head and be afraid of me, be afraid because there's spirits among this room.

Instead of walking away thinking they were Superman, the children would have been traumatized. And this person, this teacher would have been sued. All the parents would have said, you traumatized my child in your classroom.

I'm actually surprised she didn't get sued anyway. But now we're doing the same thing in church. There are men and women who are hypnotizing other people to various degrees. They are causing disassociation through the spiritual warfare.

They're doing it in a context of fear. There are demons. There are real demons out there. What it does to the mind of an adult, I have seen because I have felt it. You're in this type of mindset.

You're scared of the demons and you are traumatized. It causes real trauma. People develop cult PTSD from this. What I don't know because my indoctrination was different. I was indoctrinated from birth on up to age 37.

And then I left and I deal with the trauma. I still deal with the trauma. But somebody like you who went and got almost instantly traumatized at one of these groups in youth with a mission, it has to be different.

What did it do to your head when they did this? It's interesting. I think it was definitely different. And I think that there were so part of my story that feels important is I grew up in Colorado Springs.

And my family went to a pretty middle of the road and non-denominational church. But by the time I was in middle school and especially high school, I spent a lot of my time at Ted Haggard's new life church which was very, very, very charismatic.

And so I was familiar with these worlds. And even then my parents were not charismatic. And so they were like, wait, where are you going? What's happening? And I felt conflict in myself always because I had kind of my family experience of a more traditional, fundamentalist world.

And then I was stepping into where my friends went to church in these more Pentecosts. stole spaces. And so I had seen that. And to some extent, you know, I, I think I believed in spiritual warfare from a pretty young age. And I also believed in, you know, I read the Bible and I took it very literally. And so as a kid, I would, I would be like, God, why aren't you showing yourself to me like you did to these prophets and the Old Testament and agonizing over that nightly and really, really desperately wanted some type of revelation and

extreme movement. And so I think on one hand, because of a lifetime of dissociation, I felt very familiar in why I am. It was a different breed of dissociation. But by the time I was in high school, I was often asking my parents, what does that mean when you feel like you're dreaming?

And they were like, we have no idea what you're talking about. And it wasn't until I learned about dissociation that I was like, well, most of my life makes sense now. But I, I struggled with dissociation from personal trauma and religious trauma from a really young age. And so I think that that is part of what I use the language groomed me to become a missionary. Because I think that those who already have a precarious grasp on reality tend to find their way into cults because it is more psychologically taxing to say, my brain sees the world quote unquote wrong

than the world is wrong. And so we, I think, are feeling beings who think less than we are thinking beings who feel. And so we will constantly seek out and create an external reality that matches our internal reality. So if our internal reality feels chaotic and confusing, we're actually going to feel more at home in a reality that feels chaotic and confusing.

And you can talk to almost anyone who has chronic anxiety. They'll talk about when 2020 hit and everyone freaked out. They were like, calm because they're like, yeah, we've been telling you, we should be worried about everything all the time. And so there's something weirdly soothing when you are in these altered spaces because it actually mirrors your own neurons in your brain where you're like, oh, okay, you have this actually feels better for me. And so for me, it wasn't until trying to come out of that world. And one of my therapists said, I think I may be mentioned this last time,

she's like, it's like you had the opposite of a psychotic break. And once I started to get more in touch with reality, what was honestly one of the things that was most traumatic for me was immediately losing people that had been incredibly close to me and feeling like we no longer exist on the same planet. We are so separate from each other. And in some ways, I consider myself very fortunate because I left by the time I was 25 and I was in graduate school. And so I had opportunity to leave. And I think part of what is so insidious and traumatizing

is that when people have been professional Christians, their whole lives, and don't have work experience or degrees or things like that, it becomes incredibly difficult to leave those every time you talk, there's just a hundred different things that I want to talk about. I'm actually starting to write them down now because there are just so many of them. I want to do an entire podcast on cult related anxiety, because this is something that's very deep and important to me. I did not realize that I was anxious and growing up in this actually in the same classroom, I

wish I could remember which it was. I think might have been psychology or sociology, but in that same classroom where this lady hypnotizes without our parents permission, we had to take some sort of a test where we were describing how anxious we were. I was like off the scales, apparently, but according to every answer that I gave, I was completely mild. And she actually talked to me after the class and said, John, I don't think you answered correctly. And so I had this self-induced air about me that I was not going to be struggling with any of

these things because I'm in a divine healing cult. God has healed me. I'm better than this. But I was really anxious. And she, what she didn't know was that I was in a doomsday cult where the fear of the end of days was every single time I walked into that building. Into world's going to come, well, what if it happens? Well, I'm here. My parents are at home. How do I connect with my parents? What if the rapture comes? What if they're flying up into the air? And I'm trapped in this building and I can't fly through the roof? I mean, there's all of these

weird thing like you don't, you don't know what the unknown is the biggest fear, right? So I was very anxious. Fast forward where so where this is a T totaling cult, there's no alcohol you're taught that even a little sip is going to put you down into hell. Well, after I left this and came to realize that came through study, I came to realize that the anti alcohol position is actually anti biblical position. They're drinking wine, they're drinking, I read the, I think it's the antiquities of the Jews.

And I think that's where it, where this came from. But David, King David would say things like in his ancient language before they go into battle, sober up boys because we're going to go fight.

And there was alcohol, there was wine, there was strong liquor. And there are words for this all throughout the Bible. So I came to the point where I recognize that it's actually more against the Bible to condemn somebody for drinking than it is to drink.

All this to say, I went on a business meeting down into Atlanta, I've mentioned this a few times in the podcast, and it was at this open bar with nothing but top shelf. And here I am, I don't drink, I don't want to drink, but I'm at a table where when you set down, they poured you a drink, whether you asked for it or not, and just set there.

And I'm the only one on this big round table that's not drinking. And I'm out of the mindset, I no longer think it's wrong to drink. I just don't want to, I had no need to.

And I was convinced to try a little bit of the wine that was on the table. So I did, took a few sips up to this point and I'm 37 years old, 38 years old at this point.

The anxiety was so stressful on my head that it felt like needles were going in and out of my brain at all times. 24, 7, I couldn't sleep during the day, I had a headache the entire, my entire life, I've just had a headache, that's how it was.

So I had a little bit of wine and then that evening, suddenly I had no more pressure. And I thought, no, it can't be that wine. So the next day, while everybody's thinking about the business and the meetings and I should be networking, I'm actually more thinking about, I wonder if it's that wine.

And so I tried a little bit more the next evening. It was completely gone for like two or three days. And so I got home, I told my wife that I think I'm going to buy a bottle and see if this fixes it.

And she thinks that I've lost my mind. So I buy a bottle, it is the nastiest stuff I don't like drinking. I drink a just a little bit of a glass once a week.

I was able to come off my depression meds, my depression was anxiety related. I did not have the anxiety, the wine was cutting the anxieties, what was happening. And I realized after all of this, that the anxiety that I had, even though I did have hereditary issues, there was more cause by the cult that I had escaped.

I was in this mindset, the anxiety had set in, the constant fear had set in. And I was programmed to fear. And what's interesting is after I was able to release that anxiety, release that fear, because I'm no longer in this cult that is, you know, preaching doomsday.

my entire life. I went several years. I didn't drink anything. I don't enjoy it. I still don't enjoy it. Every once in a while, I have a little bit of a drink. But all this to say, the anxiety was programmed into me. And so this is the other reason why I really wanted to get you on and talk about youth with a mission because most of my anxiety was programmed when I was about the age that you're describing. That makes so much sense to me. And you know, I mentioned earlier, I was 11 when 9-11 happened. And it was earlier that year on that same television I had watched left

behind with my family. So as a kid watching these planes run into these buildings, my first thought oh my god, these pilots were just raptured. And I'm still here. And that was my biggest fear. And I went through the rest of the day thinking the rapture happened. And I just got left behind. And I had no concept of what was going on. And that was a constant fear for me. And I think of, you know, from a somatic lens, if we are in a constant state of what we would call our fight flight mode or

our freeze appease mode in our nervous system, which to me, the teaching of hell to young children or young adults or really anyone is a teaching of an inescapable threat. There's nothing you can do to run away. There's nothing you can do to fight this off. It's coming for you. That will affect our nervous system and put us into a state of survival mode. And we are wired to go into a fight of flight, a freeze response. That's how our ancestors survived. That's how we survived. We are not wired to spend days, weeks, months, decades in a stress response cycle. And so when we're,

when our body is in those states, our immune system stops working. We stop producing fresh red blood cells, our microbiome shuts down. And it becomes this feedback loop where our body says, I'm not well. So then we feel anxious. And then we, and it just that cycle repeats itself.

And it's incredibly insidious. And, and I think it, it feeds from an environment as well of you're not only responsible for your own soul. You're responsible for the billions of souls out there that don't know Christ. So how dare you take a nap? How dare you watch a movie and enjoy it? And you know, I was really really influenced by Francis Chan when I was in high school.

And I remember he had a YouTube video talking about his grandma's, like they were watching a play and she was like, I don't want to watch this play because what if I'm here when Jesus comes back?

And this isn't what I want to be doing. And again, I took that to heart and I'm like, yeah, every second I need to be waiting and ready for Jesus to return. And then when I wasn't, I would feel incredible shame and guilt for that, and so then it only up to the ante for how much I needed to do the next time around.

Yeah, the fear of hell, that's another, I do have that one in my list because I'm of the same opinion. And I think I mentioned this also in the last podcast, Martin Luther said, why would we preach this?

None of my people want to go there. Let's talk about heaven instead. And I'm kind of of that mindset. You don't train children by walking around with a belt saying, I'm going to beat you if you don't be good.

You instead teach them how to be good and to want to be good. And that's just, you know, the mindset is just completely backwards. But the anxiety, so what I was building up to is, this anxiety is real.

The anxiety is induced and it causes called PTSD. There are so many consequences of the way that they're teaching the spiritual warfare. Spiritual warfare has this effect on you that will cause this anxiety and it's dehabilitating.

There came a point in my life whenever I was struggling to function the anxiety got so severe. Would you say that the spiritual warfare that you experience, the, I'm assuming there are activities that you participated in that involve spiritual warfare.

Would you say any of these contributed to anxiety issues for the children who are there? Absolutely. Yeah, you know, I remember speaking of alcohol, I remember having a conversation with a woman when I had just joined Twilight and she was talking about being at a restaurant or a bar or something.

And she's like, and I saw the waiter grab a can of beer and a demon went on to the can of beer. And so I was like, oh my gosh, what else are demons attached to you?

And we would have, you know, when we'd have these target nations or these spiritual strongholds that we were supposed to do battle for in the spiritual realm, we would have 28, 48, 72 hour prayer things intercession happen for them.

And you would sign up for like a two hour slot. And maybe that two hour slot was two to four in the morning. And, you know, walk into this room and people are screaming at the demonic strongholds of lust or alcoholism or jealousy or whatever. And so these are not nervous system-friendly environments. If your nervous system steps into anywhere and sees people screaming at something that's not there, that is incredibly alarming. And, you know, I remember I came home from my first discipleship trading school with Wyam, like walking around the home I grew up in, like casting out demons

just in case they were in every single corner and praying in tongues and doing these things that I had learned in the last five months that I needed to do to stake God's dominion over my family's home and over these places where demons may have come in, especially because my family didn't believe in this. So I needed to be extra vigilant. And so it really altered my relationships even with my siblings because it was like, well, they are now a project to me. I have to work really, really hard to make sure that they somehow see the world that I do. And if they're drinking alcohol,

well, there might be demons on that alcohol. And so absolutely, I think that these environments fester anxiety and these states in our nervous system that are antithetical to feeling safe. Our vagus nerve is our nerve that is responsible for allowing us to feel safe. And 80 to 90% of it is what we'd call afferent, meaning it's sending signals from the body to the brain. And so if our body is in an environment where everyone else is feeling this, we're not getting proper food, all kinds of things that are happening, it's going to inevitably make us not feel safe.

And so then when you have someone saying your safety is going to come from xyz, I think it makes you that much more susceptible to try to do whatever xyz is. And these are the same people that are condemning the children who are waving the Harry Potter ones. And what they don't realize, they're doing the same thing, it's just a different type of role-playing. What is the, I may have asked you this before, but I am curious and I know the audience will be asking me, what are the age groups of the children who are involved at youth with a mission?

Most folks that end up doing a discipleship training school, I would say are fresh out of high school, 18, 19, 20 years old. Y William does have a lot of summer missions programs or week-long missions programs. So there's also a lot of people that go is middle school or high school. I believe it's called Kingdom Kids is one of their programs.

And then there are many, many, many, many children whose parents are on staff at Y-Warm. And to their, you know, every base you go to is filled with children of all ages. I, one of my roles on staff was teaching preschool on the Y-Warm base.

And it was children of staff and it was children of parents who were doing what's called a crossroads DTS. And so crossroads DTS is for married couples or families, whereas a traditional DTS is usually just a single person. And I remember even in, at that time, I was talking to one of the other preschool leaders who had children. And we're saying, it is right for me to expect 100% obedience from my child because that's what God expects of us. And even in that world, I was all in. And I was like, that sounds really scary. And, you know, I don't think it is coincidence that

these movements became really, really, really popular and gained so many people. Not long after James Dobson and focus on the family, which did actually teach corporal punishment and complete obedience. And so I think a lot of children who grew up in this world, who did grow up with, I'm going to spank you and mold you into who God wants you to be, it was an inevitable ending to then step into being a missionary where you think God expects complete obedience unto you being a martyr. Yeah, I grew up in a world where if a policeman had

entered the building of our church during service, the services were two hours long. You're listening to a recording of a man who died in 1965. And as you walk in, you walked past the two bathrooms, the women's on the right, the men on the left. And as you walk into the building, you hear the kids screaming and you hear the slapping on the butt because in the lady's room, there was at almost at all times. Every time I walked past it, there was some child being beaten and screaming because the children just couldn't sit this long. So that's another podcast for another

day. All of this is, it's really scary to me. The more I'm learning from you about youth with a mission, the more concerning it is. I'm a little surprised, especially when you mentioned there's preschooler children involved in this. There's so many questions that I have and things that we'll talk about in upcoming podcasts, but just some...

the biggest one that I have, maybe we can talk about this next time, child obedience, the way that they push it, it actually hinders the development of the child. And if we're talking preschoolers in this, this is just for me as a problem. It's it's a big problem. So thank you so much for doing this. Absolutely. Really always appreciate talking with you about these things. Awesome. 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 www.WilliamDespranum.org and www.indwellmovement.com. 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.