Elim, Latter Rain, and the Bubble Nobody Talks About

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my very special guest, Hannah Joy Davis, former Elon student. Hannah, it's good to have you on. I've actually wanted to get somebody that is in some way shape or form affiliated with Elon on here to talk through it because in all of my research, which you and I have talked about offline, I keep running into instances where there is this conversion between either Branham or

shepherding or all of this. It seems, all trails seem to converge at some point or another with Elon and then converge again and again and again, yet at the same time they are disconnected. So it's a really interesting study and you and I have been talking about it through email through some of the research you're doing and anyway, glad to have you on. Maybe if you could just tell everybody a little bit about yourself and then we'll get into the talking about Elon. I'm Hannah Joy. I'm the oldest child in my family and I was pretty much like

I jokingly say I was born and raised on the Elon campus but it wasn't literally actually born on the campus. I just moved there when I was two years old I think it was and there was a couple years where we took like a hiatus when I was nine but up until I was in my early 20s I think it was I grew up really Elon focused and in that bubble. Like I said, it's interesting to me. I've studied different pieces of it. Whenever I first saw the convergence between some of the laterane movement and Elon, it made me want to dig deeper and see what is

this thing and so I went back and studied through some of the histories and it's a little bit convoluted because there's different flavors of Elon and there's different branches etc. So I started digging through things that you know I can't say that I fully understand all of it right now but eventually I'll dig deeper but in the end what I'm learning is this there are different movements and whenever laterane just started to explode and go throughout the United States and Canada, it was interesting to a lot of people.

They wanted to know what is this and so there were different movements that actually started to pursue. participate and where it gets a little bit sketchy is once it was denounced by the assemblies of God as being a they didn't come out and say destructive call, but they framed it much like you would describe a destructive cult. Basically said this is dangerous theology.

Once they did this, there were still movements like Elon that started to participate. And anyway, I'm like I said, I'm really excited to get you on and just pick your brain and try to understand what is this that we're talking about.

It's very interesting to try and talk about it because you kind of have to hold like two opposites in tandem. Sometimes when you're raised in that black and white thinking where everything is good or bad, it's very hard to recognize and look back and go. There were bad things and there were good things. And the one doesn't negate the other, they just kind of both live in a little bit of odd tandem and to come to that point of rethinking things and realizing it's okay. Like I don't have to look at the good and totally pretend

the bad didn't happen. And if on the other hand, I look at the bad and I talk about the bad, it's not like I'm making God look bad or just totally throwing Elon under the bus if you will because there were some bad things about it.

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny too because people who contact me, they've been burned by some religious group. There's different ones that contact me. And whenever you are in one of these destructive groups, they teach you a very black or white mentality to the true faults, on or off, black or white, there is no gray in between. Well, whenever you try to explain to these people that even your most sinister figure that I have on the website, yes, they may have done some bad things, but they also may have done some good things. So there's some really interesting characters. The only one that I can say I

can't find anything good about is William Brannem's mentor, Roy Davis. This guy was just purely evil. But some of the other figures, you know, I had a conversation with a guy who was helping many, many people out of a cult. And he had come in contact with earned Baxter. And this was probably about the same time the shepherding movement had been just completely exposed as a authoritarian structure. And he had nothing but praise to say about earned Baxter. He said, this was, you know, in his words, well, paraphrasing his words, this is one of the greatest spiritual men to have walked the face of the planet.

And I'm looking at it, just scratching my head, thinking, well, Oh, how can that be? This guy, look at the things that he's done and the people he's worked with. And the problem is people are complex.

And they can sometimes, even the best of people can get duped by the worst of things and get involved in sucked into a movement. So when you look at the cult members who have been sucked in and the things that they would have never done had their critical thinking cap on, well, the leadership is much the same way.

Sometimes they get sucked in. And whenever I look at Elon and I look at their participation to a limited extent, I kind of feel like that. There were so many people that were curious about what is this thing, this lateral-rain movement.

We're talking revival. So we want to participate of this is it. This is the revival. We want in. And then they get in and realize, well, I don't know about all this stuff. There's definitely a mixture, I would say.

Like, to an extent, because the way my mom raised us, my mom was very high control. Her way or the highway, that totalitarian, you wouldn't know that we had a dad in the family because she was the head of the household.

She raised, it's very interesting, because she raised us to be very, I think, it's called patriarchy, but at the same time, she was the matriarch. Like, it doesn't make sense that our brain was wired to always be this way, patriarchy, when we were being raised by mom.

She was the one who did the spanking and disciplining and that kind of stuff. And let me pause there. So you mentioned spanking. That's something that we also had in the random calls. And I grew up, I thought this was just a normal thing.

Everybody does this until, I'm not going to say which, but one of my family members apparently went a little bit too far with their child and the doctor saw it. And then that turned to a whole, a whole nother mess whenever the doctor saw the bruising.

There are a lot of questions that are raised whenever this is discovered. So that kind of put, send a shock through the whole system, right? Because now you're faced with, well, yes, we're, doctrinally, we're trained to do this, but at the same time there are laws that prevent doing this.

So it turns into this weird gray area. And it sounds like the Elam churches had that as well. I'm curious, I actually want to know more about how much alignment between what we had and what you had.

What other doctrines or practices did Elam have that you would just say other Christians would have frowned upon? I should have made a list when I've been watching your videos, just kind of marathoning through all of them.

And I should have been like writing them down because lately I've just been like, oh my gosh, there's another one that we did. There's a, but I don't remember what all it is. anymore. But I will say this, Yolum never itself, never like explicitly verbally, at least not that I know, have said from the pulpit like this is how you discipline your kids. But they had those books in their library. The home school group, the local home school group actually had its own little library in the basement of the in one of the rooms in the tabernacle of the

Yolum College. And there were those books in there like from James Dopson and things like that talking about spanking. I know too that there was there was this kind of thing where it's like moms knew who disciplined their kids that way and who didn't. And so sometimes like I can remember sitting in that homeschool group library while like everybody else was off doing gym because I was disabled. So I usually didn't participate in gym. And I was reading a book and my mom would often be there talking with another mom or sound just killing some time. And you could always

tell like I don't know how the mom's new but they knew who you could talk to about the discipline and all of a sudden somebody came in that wasn't one of those moms and they got real silent.

And so like there was definitely a very big mixture in that church and in that college. But somehow they knew who you could talk to about that and who was okay with that. There was also like I don't know how to explain it but there was almost like a mental thing in our heads as well as children of this to recognize that it wasn't acceptable to the outside world. So you had to keep it inside like you couldn't share outside of your circle you couldn't share outside your home.

But it was seen as like the world was was wrong. The world was invading and the world wasn't correct. It created a very odd dichotomy in my own brain like curling up when I would hear because you know like in our home you would also joke about that kind of stuff like I'm going to wolf your butt. And yet in healthy families they don't even joke about that because that's not funny. I've tried to put a term on eloam and it's very difficult to do the very first thing that I saw whenever it's involved with all of these movements and then they share some of the

behavioral aspects. The first my mind immediately went down what is this a cult? And I haven't really answered that question yet. I don't know. Oh, I'm not gonna say it is or it isn't.

I just don't know. But what I can tell is it reminds me a lot of just simply the Amish or Minonite. It's more of a community than it is anything. And the community is it's shaped by institutional teaching that has cultural reinforcement and the culture is like self-contained.

So there's these family level authoritarian structures. Is it dictated from the top? You can't really find it if it is, but it has developed into this. And my wife grew up with an Amish community.

She wasn't Amish, but she takes me and we visit all kinds of Amish families when I go to Ohio. And I've learned the Amish ways and I've also learned that even within the Amish ecosystem, there are different families that it's much like their families have progressed some healthy, some a little bit unhealthy in different ways, right?

And how do you put a label on that? Because everything's different. It's not like the top is dictating it. It's not like, you know, again, I found a use at me, earned backster had gone to the Elan churches after shepherding head and turned into the thing that it was.

Your first thought is, well, this must be an authoritarian structure, but you can't find the chain up to the top, or at least I haven't. So I'm, at this point, I'm looking at Elan, it's more like a bubble.

It's like the social and psychological containment bubble. It's funny that you say that because they literally refer to it as the bubble. You know, Elan College itself is up on a bit of a hill in the Lyma town.

And everybody refers to that as the bubble, especially if you're raised in that. And I've had a lot of friends like, after I did also go to Elam as a student. But after that, even I had different friends who would be like, what were you raised in a bubble?

Because there would be so many things that I didn't know that were apparently common knowledge. But I also had a friend who jokingly would gave me the nickname Men and Night. Because she's like, you're not quite omnis.

Yeah, it's like I say, it's this weird bubble. It's really hard to explain. And at the same time, I look back at, so that's on the, you know, if I was considering it a social community side, we'll take it to the other extreme.

If I were to go down the path and consider some of the cults that are similar, John Alexander Dowey, when they were basically forced out of Chicago, there's a long history there, which I cover in the book, but they get to the point where they start to found Zion City and they created a bubble.

And to the outside world looking in, when it was first established, they just looked at it like, well, that's weird. Nobody really said this is cultish or this is destructive. It's just weird. And the community of Zion City started building its own ecosystem.

It had, it also had a college, it had a church, it had a school. There were mission pipelines coming into it. There were mission pipelines going out of it. And in every way, shape and form that I can describe what Zion City was before it went really destructive.

I look at Elam and I see just line for line, all of the same attributes, right? But yet Elam has lasted for years, Dowie went destructive very quickly. And I don't see a central figure.

So part of my curiosity and part of the reason why I'm just so excited to get you on here, what would you say is the top authority at Elam? Is there an authoritarian structure at all, or what is this?

That's a very interesting question. So you kind of got to go back in history a little bit. So you had Ivan Spencer who kind of started Elam, if you will, there was an old Elam that the dunk and sister started and he went to that college.

But then at some point in time, he decided to start his own college and around that same time the dunk and sisters, Elam was canceled or died out or whatever. So he started Elam and he had students coming in and sometimes they would go out to the mission field and usually they would go through a different organization for that mission funding covering whatever.

And at one point in time, one of those people their organization or funding or whatever said, we'll only continue if you cut ties with Elam. So then they're like, okay, so we got to do something about that.

So then they created what's called Elam Fellowship, which was their own organization to help with the money to go to the missionaries. And then underneath that, they also started doing Elam affiliated churches.

And then from that, they also eventually created their own church as well. It used to just meet at the Tabernacle on the college campus, but then it got so big that they actually built like a mega church on somewhere else on the grounds and they sold it to the church.

And so separate now. But it's one of those things where I've heard that there's a leadership over all three Elams. And they decide who comes and goes and sometimes who's the president of... like the college, but I don't actually have any idea who those people are. I'm not sure if it's just ill and fellowship has some leadership that it oversees the church in the college or if there's like, I don't know. I've heard that there's an organization out there or covering over the illums that decide who comes and goes where an illum, but I am

like it. It sounds like a weird sci-fi movie. Yes, there's there are the prime three, but nobody's ever seen them. That's in fact, I just what I wish I could recall the name. I just watched a movie that was like that. But yeah, so what you're describing in a weird way reminds me of what I call management from underneath. So you have leadership, but nobody really knows who they are. They're doing things. Nobody really knows what it is that they're doing, which is kind of funny. Well, in systems like this, especially the more communal type systems,

the doctrines aren't really flowing from the top. They're kind of flowing from underneath, and instead of pushing a doctrine or behavior on the group, what happens instead is they reward behaviors like like you're talking about the corporal punishment, etc. It's not really push, but whenever you do it, oh, that's good. I'm glad you keep your child in line with the board.

Whatever it is, right? And so, interestingly, when you have that type of system, because it is a rewarded for doctrine type of system, there's this fear of outside influence, because if the outside influence comes in, well, what if somebody accidentally rewards something that we don't want in our ecosystem? You know what I mean? But without having a clear set of standards of what it is that we want, how do you stop things coming from the outside?

Would you say that it is, and I hate to use the word, because again, I'm not trying to brand it as a cult yet. Would you say it's a closed ecosystem? Would you say that they try to keep doctrines out from the outside? I would definitely describe the college as a closed ecosystem.

I think a lot of the other churches, even though a lot of times they are people that originally graduated from the college, who became the pastors of the different churches, I think they have more freedom to operate on their own thing. But they've been indoctrinated with Elon College first, so I will say this though. The college currently has a president that didn't come from the college originally, which is a rare thing. I'm not sure how they found him or where exactly he came from.

He supposedly has like a cycle a gene degree or so, so like he was a therapist and everything, I'm like, this is very different if you will. And to an extent, like I kind of like him, I've had a couple, because I was celebrating my 20 year class reunion recently, so I was back up there, and I kind of like him, but I've also had some incidences with Eel and College, just some of their responses to different things that have occurred on Facebook, and they had Sean Floyd out there last year.

And that's one of the other questions that I had, like, so you mentioned dobs and you mentioned goathers. So there are some outside influences coming in. What kind of criteria do they use whenever they consider what can come into it?

I'm not completely sure unless it has to do with either what will bring in the most money or favoritism. Like if they really like somebody and they recommend that we bring in somebody, then we'll bring them in kind of thing.

Like I'm not totally sure, but it was one of those things where a lot of us were trying to be like, yeah, I don't think having Sean Floyd come out is a good idea.

And it's not shining a good light on you. Like there's a lot of stuff going on, and they kind of buckled down in emails and actually eventually locked up their Facebook, so nobody could respond to their, come join us on this date because he's going to be out here.

Because I mean, he's hard on people that aren't Christian for not behaving like Christians, and it's like, can we focus on putting, like having issues with leadership in the Christian community that are in failure and sin instead of being like, we hate all gays and getting everybody to like practically pitch for gays?

It's like, that's not, that's not a good look. And we also, some of us were aware of some of the financial issues with Sean Floyd and some of the things he was doing. And we're like, there's some stuff going on, Elon, that you're not aware of that you really don't want to push, and yeah, they continued to have them out.

And I don't know if in the end it's because they thought he would bring in money, because they ended up having to change it, so he doesn't just come in for one thing, but he came in for two, and they kind of locked down the campus, and you had to have a ticket in order to get on the campus, and that kind of thing.

So they must have- at a lot of people that were wanting to attend so and I think they paid him to originally because if you look on his site you you can apply and you pay so much.

Elon President sent out an email to somebody that I know and they said they worded it oddly so it came across like they didn't pay him. But then we were looking at it and it's like well no he didn't actually say we didn't pay him.

He just said this wasn't the amount or something like that it was I don't remember what the exact wording was but it was kind of a twisting of wording so you you would think okay so they're just blessing Sean Foyton having come out no we're pretty sure they paid him so then they couldn't refund it or maybe they still wanted him to come out for the popularity I don't know but it's a mess.

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On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research we want to thank you for your support. We were levels more destructive I can clearly say that I came out of a call and there was this type of community system where we didn't let much from the outside come in.

The interesting part is Brannumism split and splintered and there are many different factions and I went to this one church and they would invite people from the other factions to come and have like, you know, just preach a series of sermons on different Sundays during the month and so you'd have this guy come in who's preaching from another faction doctrines that you don't agree with, doctrines that are actually against many of the things that you agree with and then after they would leave, you know, everybody's having the dinner on the ground, everybody's happy, cheerful, nobody's saying anything negative as you're

absorbing that doctrine that's being taught. It wasn't until after he left that they would start preaching at him for the things that he said. And by that point in time. And the congregation had already absorbed many of the things that were taught.

And you can't really weed through your mind and say, well, what parts did I learn that were good? What parts did I learn were bad? We were being influenced from an outside source from something that we didn't really agree with.

And it reminds me, when you, the moment you mention Sean Foet, that's the exact thing that came through my head. Because again, go back to latirane. Elom did not have to really formally declare that they're part of latirane to absorb its theology.

And whenever I began to study what is Elom after all of this, and I'm looking through just some of the things that I've read from other people about what it was like being part of this, I see so many similarities.

And it's really hard to distinguish the two yet they are distinguishable. And the only way that I can say that this could have happened is basically they did exactly what they did with Sean Foet here, they're bringing people in, they're absorbing some of the theology.

Maybe they're rejecting some of it who knows. But the way you're describing it, because there's no formal accountable chain of command or chain of doctrine, there's no formal rejection either. So what parts get absorbed, what parts doesn't, that's where I'm confused.

Help me out, how does that happen? Well, there's definitely no formal rejection, because shortly after they had him out, then there was a Roy's report and a lot of other things came out. People started talking more on YouTube and stuff about the issues with Sean Foet and about the finances.

And I went on Facebook and because I couldn't comment on Elam's site, I did it on my own. I think I like shared somebody else's YouTube video or on my Facebook wall. But I tagged Elam and said, are you gonna apologize now?

And of course not. They're never gonna acknowledge that it was the wrong thing to bring Sean Foet out and kind of endorse him or be associated with that. No. Really what it ends up to be is, whenever this movement, these types of movements, they accept these outside influences like this, it's charisma over accountability.

If the person sounds good, if he can get the hype, build the people up, get their imagination flowing, we like that over the accountability. And it's Sean Foet. Anybody who is curious to know, just go to Google and type in Sean Foet and you'll see what we're talking about.

That's a mess. It's almost as big of a mess as a lettering, but the other thing that it brings because there isn't an accountability on doctrine. And I'm curious if it's this way. But in the Brannum systems, often the testimony was stronger than the doctrine.

If the person came and they had some big testimony that they could claim some spiritual experience, we would even invite average common people who weren't ministers or trained in ministry to come up and share their testimony and talk about things.

And they would wander off because you're in this spiritual mindset. So their mind would wander off as they're talking and lead you into a whole theology that the whole church may disagree with. So you're sitting here listening to this thing, but because the testimony was quote-unquote supernatural or spiritual, we would accept that testimony.

Did that kind of thing happen in Elim? I don't know if they necessarily had preachers like that, but I do feel a lot more was put on charisma and on feeling the Holy Spirit.

So it's understandable why they'd be okay with Sean Floyd because Bethel, there was a lot of like, from what I've seen of Bethel online and things like that, it's like, okay, I can kind of understand why Elim would be okay with that because they're similar enough, they really push the having a Holy Spirit show up and really, we used to have tent meetings every summer or camp meetings, they used to be two weeks long, they now don't even have them because they don't get enough people to come out for them anymore.

But those were revivals, those were having a Holy Spirit, they were a lot of like falling down and laughter and even in the kids, the kids group, which I don't necessarily, like as a continuationist, I don't necessarily think that any of that was wrong, but I think you can push it too much that you forget some of the rest.

I felt like that even just rereading Ivan Spencer's history because he at one point in time did go to like an actual seminary and didn't like it because it was too much theology and there wasn't enough of feeling a spirit and so that's what drew him to what's now called the old Elim was there was more of that and I heard somebody somewhere, and I don't remember if it was in the book or somewhere else, but somebody had said that they felt and I think it was with Ivan, it might have been his son, when they were teaching that

the first thing he would do when you'd get up to teach his class was say something about like let's pray about it and wait for the Holy Spirit. spirit first before he would teach, and they used to think that he was unprepared because of how that came across, and then they started realizing, well, no, he is prepared, he just really is into the Holy Spirit.

And so kind of in rereading those books, I'm like, hang on, is there maybe too much of a focus? Where's the theology? Can't we somehow blend them both together? When I was a student, we had a professor that I actually loved. He knew as Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, he had been to another college. I'm not sure how we ended up coming to Elon, but he had like a PhD in one of those languages, and he was very well versed, but he also understood and operated in the Holy Spirit. And he would get up there, and he would explain things

to us about different scriptures and how some people thought it meant this, and some people thought it meant that. And now looking back, because he left Elon the year after my class graduated, and now looking back, I kind of wonder if he left of his own free will, or if he was kicked out because he may have been explaining too much and getting us to think for ourselves and try and understand scriptures for ourselves instead of just focusing, well, this is what they tell us this means.

You mentioned Ivan Spencer, and again, I'm still, I guess, newly studying Elon. I have studied it quite a bit, believe it or not, but there's so much to learn, and the different variations of splinter groups, it reminds me a lot of how when you try to study the Church of God, it's very difficult to do because there's so many different factions, and the history is a little convoluted. One of the interesting claims that I have found, and I don't know if you've found this or not, but there is this claim by some people with an Elon that Ivan Spencer actually started laterane. Now, I have studied laterane, and

my opinion, I know that many historians say that William Brannum was a catalyst, and Franklin Hall was a catalyst. My opinion of the thing was that it wasn't really something that could be attributed to one person. It was this cross-pollination of ideas that exploded into a movement.

So, I really questioned this, but I wanted to hear what you had to say about it. Did I send it to you? Because in reading the book, there were a couple pages that I took a screenshot of. I might have only sent it to my siblings, but I can't remember. And it was where in the book, Willow in the Wind, basically they attribute the laterane to starting with Ivan and Elon. That's at least how I read it. Yeah, and you look at it and you just kind of scratch your head.

So whenever you see something like that, you think, well, they must have adopted laterane because they're trying to claim that he started it. What I've learned within all of these movements, and not just the cultish ones, but even some of them that I would say are more benign.

What happens is whenever there's the spiritual thing that happens that's very popular, different groups want to claim it and say, well, that's us. There's other people they haven't and look what they did. They went the wrong direction, rather than own it as a movement that everybody's kind of cross-pollinating is maybe it is a movement by God, which I don't think laterane was.

But maybe it was, if it was, then God is doing this from different angles from different groups, et cetera. If it wasn't movement by God, there wouldn't be a single group that would say, yes, it's us.

They would say, no, it's God, not it's us, right? But yet I read through what you said and I said, oh, my gosh, it's unbelievable. So whenever I look at this and I try not to think the cult, I try not to go down the path of thinking of a cult instantly because that can skew your way of thinking.

But when you see a group do that and they try to attribute it to a human rather than God, you really have to ask, well, what is it that they're focusing on? That's a good point.

I don't know what their focus is on other than it kind of creates this idea. I think whether they realize it or not, they're trying to sound so good that they'll bring in other people because now you want to come here because this is where God is.

This is where God has been moving. This is where God has consistently been showing up even before the ladder rain took off everywhere else. You know, this is where he is. So you feel like you're missing out if you're not a part of it.

And so that can kind of draw people in. And so I think sometimes that's why they want to claim it is to make themselves look better and to get more people. And I don't know if they actually knowingly realize that they're doing that so much because they're taking it away from God and putting it on a person or a place.

And you're the one who also sent me. I think I had found this in the past, but I never really made the connection. You sent me the newspaper article of Ernst Baxter going here.

What I haven't told you, I have been studying youth with a mission also trying to figure out, is that a cult? What is that? That's there are so many similarities, even between Elon, there's so many similarities.

And I came across a newspaper article which I've not talked about this yet. I don't think publicly, but Ernst Baxter is also working with the shepherding movement and he's going into some of the camps.

And this is during the heart of shepherding. this is a very authoritarian, you've got a system of five shepherds that are shepherding the shepherds of the shepherds of the people. And you can't look at this any other way, but see this is an authoritarian structure meant solely for the purpose of authoritarianism. So when I see Arn Baxter doing the heart of this movement coming into Elam, the very first question that hits me is, well, did they adopt any of this? If you're bringing in these ideas, if you're bringing Sean Foyt into the fold, and you're adopting Sean Foyt's doctrines, well, how much of the

shepherding got adopted? Are you aware of anything? Well, I'm not exactly sure what the shepherding is, but there's a whole funny thing about Y-Wam. So Elam used to have something called teen world outreach, which is their own Y-Wam, if you will. It's just shorter. So instead of having two months of training, you have one week of training, and then instead of being gone on the missions field for a couple months, you're only gone for maybe a month at the most. And it was called TW Teen World Outreach, and they had that going for a good while. And so it was one of those things

where at one point in time, my siblings actually decided to go with Y-Wam and went to India, I think it was, or something like that. And I thought it was very interesting, and I was talking with my siblings recently, like in texting and stuff, and being like, did anybody else ever find it weird that it was like, Elam always had to have its own things, and you never knew that there were other things out there. Like they never let us know or advised us, hey, have you checked out Y-Wam? No, instead we got to create our own system, and we got to do our own thing. And it really

came up recently because Elam is doing it again. They've decided to restart TW, but under a new name. So it's now called Dream World Outreach. Wow, and I can assure you I have seen a sci-fi movie about that. That's kind of crazy. So I get what you're saying there. Whenever you have a system that is a close community, they try to build their own thing. So back to the Zion City example, in Zion City, they had their own banking system. And the same people could have gone just to the, you know, drove in their little buggies just to the next town and gone to a bank. But in Zion City,

they had to have their own. And the banking system wasn't quite as good as the outside because you couldn't trust the banker. You couldn't trust the banking system. And so you have to question, well, why did they do this? Why didn't they just use a normal bank? And right down the line, they had all kinds of different institutions and different programs that you could do, that the outside world had, but they wanted their own to kind of keep people contained. And the only purpose that I can think of for this in Zion City is that if you allow

people access to the outside world, they will get outside influence. And that outside influence may contradict your thinking about the cult doctrine. And we had this in the Brannum system. In Brannum Brannumism, you weren't supposed to watch television, you weren't supposed to listen to radio, you weren't supposed to read the newspaper. Things like this, you're trying to limit the information that people have access to because you might find out that the guy is on the platform or lying to you, which is kind of weird. But that's how it was. And whenever I look at things like you're describing,

it's really hard for me not to think of the cultish ways and behaviors because that's exactly the way that the cults do it. That's definitely kind of my thinking is like, why do we keep creating our own thing and keeping it within house? Why aren't we, even when it comes to like doing a missions trip, why aren't we teaching the churches how to reach out to some of their own missionaries that they're helping support and be like, hey, what do you need? How can we help and figure out how they can create their own team? And plus, sometimes it's nicer, you know, for missionaries

to only have like one or two people come over and help them with what they're already doing, as opposed to trying to come up with stuff for a whole team of people not to mention room and board for a whole team. Well, and more to the point, if you're going on a mission, you're going into a place where you may not have all of the resources to handle that mission, why not work with other mission groups? Why is there no collaboration between youth with a mission? I mean, the whole thing doesn't make any sense. In talking to Jenny who has recently started a youth with a mission

podcast series with me, it seemed that the mission itself was the priority. It was the mission because of the mission. There was really nothing outside of that because one of the other things that the cult groups do, if you can get people to focus on something and intently focus and believe that they're doing something for a purpose, even if there is no purpose, the mindset stays within the community. You're not thinking of the outside world. In other words, if the people of Elon were to go join youth with a mission, they might be influenced by them instead. We don't want

that. We want to keep them. So let's give them a mission. We don't care what it was. So maybe in the future, if you study that out more, I may want to pick your brain a little bit more about what is this mission. I'm not sure how to study that out more, but that is definitely my question, but I don't know how much of it is, Elon, and how much of it is just so much of the church in the U.S. as a whole. But I...

look at so much of it and go, why aren't we collaborating more? Why do we have to be so segregated? If we have the same core beliefs, what matters is if we have the same core beliefs beyond that, does it really matter some of the little things as much?

So having been raised in a cult and then having experienced mainstream churches, I have the same question about mainstream in general. Why is there a Baptist in a Methodist? Why are all these divisions? But the interesting part is I have not participated, but I have helped fund some of the missions and some of the churches that have been in.

And I will say that in the mainstream denominations, they will work with other denominations for a common goal. So it's not like there's this separation or isolation. But in the cultist groups, there is a strong division. No, we will not work with the other group.

So it leads me to the question that I'm building up to if you haven't been able to detect it. I'm going to ask you directly, do you think it is a cult?

Not itself, I guess. But I think there's definitely cultist influence. And I think there's definitely the ability for people to operate like in cultist units within it. I think there is some toxicity involved in the lack of clear leadership and accountability.

That kind of structure, because I went to an illum affiliated church for almost a decade and ran into situations with that church. And that was some of what I noticed was even though they're supposed to be under-ealum fellowship, most people don't know that they're under-ealum fellowship. So they don't know who do you call? Who holds who accountable? What happens when you run into problems with that pastor? And that's the same kind of thing we face, believe or not, in brannemism. Even though I can clearly say that the entire structure was a cult, because of the bite model that Dr. Stephen Assin showed me that you can go through the

criterion determined. Is this destructive cult or not? But one of the other questions that I have, which they go hand in hand, however, they are quite different. Some of the groups may not meet the criteria of the bite model, which is behavioral control, information control, thought, control and manipulation, emotional control and manipulation. By that criteria, you might not say that they're a cult, but you could, at the same time, still say that there was some spiritual abuse happening. Would you say that there is spiritual abuse at illum? There's definitely potential for it. I don't know how much there is. I haven't been there in I mean I've

visited but I haven't really lived there in 20 years so I can't really speak to it as much in my childhood. I know that my mom was very abusive and like always physical, spiritual, mental, emotional and I don't know how much of that came from Elon and Elon influence because one of the things I've noticed is that sometimes people don't explicitly or literally say something but they just the way they do things it catches if you will.

And so I know a lot of the people were okay with spanking. I don't know how many of them actually spank their own kids but I know that enough of them were okay with it that even though we lived on campus nobody got us in trouble and there's no way they didn't hear that. They didn't overhear that you know from apartment to apartment.

Well and more to the point I've experienced both sides and the spanking I can say you know it's just one small aspect of all of this but I'll use that as the example since you went there.

When you walked into the brand of tabernacle the very first thing that you heard if you went if you came in middle service was right to the right room next to you some kid screaming because they're being beaten and this I often if I had to work late I would sit in the very back where I could you know I was just right next to that room. It was like a constant scream they're the rest of the service because they're beating the kids who are trying to the parents are trying to force their children to sit through a two and a half hour or one and a half hour recording from 1965

and the kids just can't do this man. So they were doing it. What you did not hear were anybody preaching who stood up and said this is wrong don't do this and you're talking about spiritual abuse it comes in many different forms not just the spanking obviously right you don't find in the cultish circles you don't find people who are speaking out where the congregation can recognize the spiritual abuse which may be happening in their own families and so you have parents who aren't being trained properly. In the churches that I've gone to afterwards they have all kinds

of programs and Bible studies and there's different tools that you empower people to learn and to help them and help them grow and some of those tools do include ways to teach them not to spiritually abuse or give examples of what is spiritual abuse at minimum.

Did you see any sort of example that was teaching people not to behave like this? There was definitely nothing saying not to do it. There was, at one point in time, Elam would give anybody any student a class credit if they went to a bill gothard seminar that he would sometimes put on in Buffalo.

So even though they didn't say, hey, follow this teaching for being a parent, you got a class credit if you went to his teaching on how to be a parent and that included beating your kids.

So it's definitely better and there's definitely like the spiritual abuse part can also include like when they're twisting scripture. And so to validate that they twist the scripture saying, you know, spare the rod, spoil the child, which actually is not the actual wording of the scripture, but they twist that to mean that you're supposed to beat them.

And at that church that I was a part of for 10 years, they actually had a parenting class and I don't remember who it was that was teaching it was like a video book thing.

But some famous dude somewhere who's written books and he was talking about that it's okay as long as you're not doing it out of anger. And so he was saying, you know, spanking is okay as long as it's not out of anger, but I was talking with one of my friends and I was like, how exactly do you do that?

How are you? How can you hit somebody and be okay hitting them and not have any sort of negative emotions of any type? You know, like it just doesn't compute. No. And the fact that they're promoting it that says more than I can even say, Sean Foyte is he's been publicly accused multiple times if I remember correctly.

Um, the fact that I just pulled up a newspaper to check that I got my facts right, but he's been accused of everything from financial troubles and accusations of financial accountability issues to spiritual abuse.

So if they're inviting a person who is publicly known for spiritual abusing and they're selling tickets to get there, it's just, it says a lot. It says more than you and I could possibly say in a podcast.

Yeah, that's, that's kind of my thought. I've noticed all too often places will kind of argue in the whole, hey, we don't teach this or we don't say this, but it's like, but who are you associating with?

Who are you promoting? Who are you allowing to promote you? It also says a lot, you know? Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for doing this. I know I've asked you more questions than you've asked me, but I had a lot of questions, and this has been quite fun.

I might do it again with you sometime. All right. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-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.