From Assemblies Of God To An African End-Time Prophet

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org and with me I have my very special guest, David Smith, former member of the Charismatic Movement.

David is good to have you on and to talk about the Charismatic Church and the, I guess you'd call it, the prophetic movement. I'm actually not even sure what to call the extreme thing that you got involved with or your family got involved with.

So I'm very glad to have you on and try to untangle this. If you could just maybe tell everybody a little bit about yourself. It's great to be here. I'm like a big listener of your podcasts and I will say this.

I have actually learned a lot more about the full history of Pentecostalism and the Assemblies of God than I ever did in my three years at Berean School of the Bible. So just like a little bit of my background, I was born and raised in the Assemblies of, in a Pentecostal Assemblies of God family.

Now like my father, he came from a Presbyterian family. My mother's side of family were Assemblies of God. Her grandfather on her dad's side was actually an Assembly of God pastor. And my grandmother's side of family, they came from a Methodist family but then they came to Pentecostalism.

And my grandmother, she is still an ordained pastor within the Assemblies of God. That's quite a connection and I'm glad that you found the research that we've been publishing to be helpful. Now you're still involved with the church, is that right?

I still see the church as my second home because like when I was a child, my mother, she raised me and my brothers and sisters to study the scriptures. To love Christ above everything else.

And so going to church was again, it was the second home to me. And it wasn't until by the time I was eight years old, I went to, I was visiting my grandparents' house back in my hometown in Youngstown, Ohio.

I was visiting my grandfather in Youngstown, Ohio. And we went to their church, a highway tabernacle, which was also the same church that I was baptized in later on when I was 18. But I didn't go to Sunday school class like the other kids.

I stayed in the sanctuary with my family. And at the time, this was when the previous pastor, previous pastor, pastor offered was still alive. And my family, they spoke very highly of him. But while he was preaching, I was looking at him very intently and I said to myself, I can do what he's doing.

And so later when we went back home, we were living in Virginia at the time. I walked into my mother and I said, Mom, I want to be a preacher when I grow up.

So she said, well, David, you have to have a calling for. You know, I'm so curious. I know many people who have said exactly what you just said, you have to have that calling, my brother.

And I watched some of the people who had the quote unquote calling and watched some of the things that they did. And oh my gosh, did they really have a calling? That's one of the questions that I always ask.

But at the same time, well, and I'm not trying to be offensive, that's kind of funny to me. But there's a serious side to it too because there are people who get in the movement and they really feel like this is important to them.

And I had an experience, but it wasn't that. It wasn't like there was a calling or anything like this. I just had an experience that said humble yourself. But in Pentecostalism, you had to have the calling and the calling is what moved you.

And it's this whole big experience. Did you have that big experience? Apparently, I did. But like my mother told me, she said, well, David, you have to have a calling first because your father, he wanted to be an assembly of God pastor, but he didn't have the calling.

So my dad, when he first became, when he really became a Christian, because he was Presbyterian and named only. So when he really became a Christian, he went to Berean School, the Bible, and he was studying to become a pastor, but then he just gave up and he started his career in the electrical engineering field.

As I was growing up, I was constantly sharing the gospel with friends, kids at school. And as I got older, I started witnessing to people at work. And they would always say to me, you know, David, I can see you as a pastor.

And I would say, well, you know, that's nice, but at the time, I was... actually wanting to be a lawyer. I said, well, that's nice, but I don't really see myself as a pastor. I'm focusing on being a lawyer because I had these like this big ambition of going to law school, becoming a lawyer, and then eventually throw my hat in politics and become like a congressman or a senator. But unfortunately that didn't turn quite out the way it, I expected, because then I finally said, okay, you know, I'm going to become a pastor.

You know, I'm filled with questions that I'm dying to have answered, especially. So you describe, you've had the Pentecostal call, then suddenly you decide you're going to become a pastor. How long does it take? Exactly. Whenever you feel the calling and you become a pastor, how long does it take before you suddenly feel like, okay, I'm a pastor, we're in a movement, we need to claim dominion over the people. Two years ago, I was down in D.C. for the FFC or Faith Freedom Coalition Convention, which they're really into the whole dominionism ideology. They've got the section

of the Seven Mountains mandate in their booklets. But that can be another thing for another time. And it's ironic because last night when I was coming home from work, I was listening to your latest episode on Dominionism and the Seven Mountains mandate. But anyway, getting back to my story. So I went, first I went to Messianic Bible Institute, and it was in Virginia, but that school's been, it's no longer around. So then I did that for about three years, and then I switched over to Berean School of the Bible, which is an online Bible school affiliated

with the Assemblies of God organization. And I hate that term. It just doesn't set well. Even when I was reading the bylaws of the Assemblies, its full corporate name is the corporation of the Assemblies of God of Springfield, Missouri. And I'm just thinking to myself, how far have we fallen as a church? I know that I'm a big history nerd, and I've been for the last year and a half, really diving into church history. And I've always known that the church eventually had to get organized and institutionalized. But when you start calling yourself a corporation or

an organization, it doesn't sound kosher if you will. No, it doesn't. Not if you're and that type of movement. I remember being in that movement, having these weird critical thoughts because if you understand how brannemism developed, actually, if you understand how the assemblies developed, this was a group of people who felt like the mainstream church had either grown cold and formal or apostate or just simply weren't, early Pentecostalism, they felt like they weren't manifesting the gift so they must not be spiritual.

So we want our new thing. And many of these groups develop independently. They say we're non-denominational. We don't want to be part of the bigger thing. And then what happens is over time, they realize that once you grow to a certain level, you have to form an organization because it grows out of control if you don't.

There has to be some sort of a governing body that's leading it and it presents this array of weird problems that, you know, from people who are going their own direction and you try to stop them to what happens if one of those people goes rogue, do they represent the entire body?

So you have to have this some sort of an organization. Yeah, and so when I started going to Berean, one of the classes I had to take was the history of Pentecostalism. Well, the thing is, is that everything that I learn about the history of Pentecostalism, it wasn't the whole entire history because I didn't know who John Alexander Daly was.

I didn't know who Frank Sanford was or John G Lake. They, the information that I was taught and given was about Charles Fox Parham, how he started, you know, this class and the one guy woman, she starts speaking in tongues so he started to say that this is the baptism of the Holy Spirit because of Acts chapter two, then you go to Azusa Street and I'm just thinking and that's like the one, it was pretty lengthy.

And even to this day, like, you know, the assemblies of God, they still hold that the Azusa Street Revival was the third great awakening. And then you get to William Brannum and FF Bosworth and their own, they're briefly mentioned.

You don't, when it came to William Brannum, they talked about how he started out as a fiery Pentecostal preacher, but then during the, his laddering movement, the assemblies, they saw that his laddering movement was heretical and so therefore the assemblies broke.

free from from random uh with ff boss worth uh i didn't realize that he among the other 300 white uh pastors had started the uh assemblies because they wanted to keep everything segregated because in the azusa street revival it was like a mix congregation of whites and blacks and parmed in like it boss worked in and like it and so they basically broke ties started the assemblies and i had no idea uh about that either yeah and you know not just the assemblies but if you look at any of the different branches that came from the pentecostal route there's some

really strange history involved and i'm not saying that any one of them are bad necessarily but they just have some really strange things in their history and the sad part is if you start to examine them i've mentioned this before it's like there's a incentive to cover up the sketchy past and i'm i'm not really sure that that's a good idea within christianity you just don't have this you you should be transparent and if there are there are problems with the church you want to document those problems because what happens if those problems repeat themselves yeah and the

other thing too like when it when it came to the uh sent to the assemblies of god and if i'm not mistaken this is basically like you know pentecostalism as a whole um well one is pentecostalism i don't consider that i consider one is pentecostalism a heresy but i digress on that but one of the one of the core beliefs of the assemblies of god and pentecostalism is the third work of grace which i think you've probably mentioned before in past episodes but from my from what my understanding as the assemblies of god came out the holiness movement which came from the methodist movements where

John Wesley was talking about the second work of grace where basically you continue pursuing a life of holiness until like new one day you just stop sitting all together and that's like you know the whole entire sanctification pentecostalism and the assemblies of god uh they had preached that the baptism of the holy spirit with the uh evocation of tongues uh being the evidence was the third work of grace and we were also told that if you're not speaking in tongues you are not truly born again and you are pretty much destined for hell and you know that was one

thing like uh because my brother they're in sister, they were freaking out, they were terrified because they weren't speaking in tongues and so because they weren't speaking in tongues, they were afraid of everlasting damn nation in hell.

But the one thing that came to speaking in tongues, I was familiar with the term Glosselaya, as a tongue twister Glosselaya, where it's just gibberish and I remember when I was going to an assembly of God's church in Newark, Delaware and people would be giving a message in tongues, it was the same guy and it was, he was always saying the same words like every service and I'm just thinking to myself, okay, this isn't tongues, this is just gibberish, he's just saying the same words again over and over again.

I can go on with that, but you know, another thing about the assemblies of God that I had to learn the hard way was pastoral authority where, and by what I mean by that is, it's almost like the past, the senior pastor of the church is the supreme authority, like yeah, they have like, you know, trustees or deacons depending on the church, but when I was being mentored by the senior pastor, he had hired a new youth pastor and the pastor had a Bible verse or not a not about verse, it was a Bible scripture tattooed on his

chest, it was from Jeremiah and the past, the youth pastor said that he was using that as a witness statement and so when I was in, when I was teaching Sunday school class and I had the pastor's granddaughter as one of my students, yeah, I brought up about how, you know, God has answered our prayers because we were praying for a new youth pastor to replace the one that had left and all the kids got excited, my pastor's granddaughter mentioned about the tattoo of Bible verse that he had on his chest and I said, yeah, that's

it's going to have a new youth pastor, however, I don't encourage any of your kids to get tattoos when you get older because... We're not supposed to mark our bodies like, you know, the heathens do quoting Leviticus.

So then the following week, I was at Wednesday night Bible school and, you know, Wednesday night Bible study. And once when the service was over, Pastor called me into his office and some thinking, okay, we're gonna talk about what we're gonna be doing on Sunday.

So he had me sit down and as soon as he sat in his chair, there was a long pause and he looked at me dead in the eye and he said, you broke a cardinal rule and I was, I was like, okay, like what cardinal rule?

He said, whatever decision the senior pastor makes is final. You know, and that's just it. There is a hierarchy within each of the individual churches because many of them don't really adhere to a formal structure or there's a formal set of standards and rules.

What happens is you end up with miniature kingdoms and empires and the pastor becomes the king of their domain. And it's just such a problem because when you use your authority like this instead of just calling your side and saying, hey, let me teach you a little bit about what I believe.

When you instead play the authority card, what you're showing is that you have an authoritarian control over the people and I can't even imagine what did that make you feel whenever this happened to you?

After that, I realized that I had to be very careful with what I was saying. So it was like after that little meeting that I had, it was almost like I was walking on eggshells.

Exactly. And you know, if you read the books of the Bible that are talking about the structure of the church, there are books that talk about this Timothy, for example, the letters that Paul wrote.

It talks a little bit about it. There isn't such a situation where the pastor has a governing authority. The pastors are basically, if you understand the language, the pastors are basically servants to help the people learn the gospel, help them with their problems, et cetera.

It's not something where they become a king of their own domain. So the structure itself just really doesn't even match the Bible. Yeah, because the way that I've always understood it, and theoretically, this is supposed to, that this is how things are supposed to to work.

You have the pastor, the bishop, you know, to pay on the denomination that one is in. Then you have the deacons, the elders, and then you have the lay people, the people in the congregation.

And so, I always understood it that the pastor and the deacons are supposed to, like in a form like this, council. where they debate on certain issues and then come to an agreement but it's the way that I had learned from these assemblies and then later learned from the cult that my family is in now that basically that's just a show that the pastor, the bishop, he is the supreme authority and though the Bible says that we are to use the scriptures to correct our brothers and sisters or even those that are in leadership if they are in an error, you

try to correct them in love, they see that as a threat, they see that as a challenge and you are immediately chastised or put off to the wayside. Yeah, I can't even imagine. I mean if something like that happened to me, that would be the last moments of me being in that church. I'm guessing you didn't stay very long.

Once in my time with Burin was over. It was time for me to go down to Mechanicsburg. I live in Pennsylvania. So I was supposed to go down to Mechanicsburg because that's where the district Presbyterian office of the assemblies of God is located and I had to be interviewed for my credentials. So when I got there, I was thinking to myself, okay, the first question is basically going to be tell us about your calling. That wasn't the first question. My first question was, why did I not go to a why did I choose to go to Burin instead of going to a Bible college like

Valley Forge? And I thought to myself, does it matter where I got my education from because according to the bylaws of the assemblies of God that as long as if you went to a seminary, Bible college, vocational school, any school that's affiliated with the assemblies of God that you were qualified for credentials. So after when I told them my reasons why because it was more convenient financially, then my second question was about my calling and after when I told them my calling, I started to give like a little bit of where I stood for theologically and I told

them that I was against like, you know, the whole, how should I put this? Not progressive church, but basically, you know, Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Church Movement where basically you have to cater to the masses in order to increase your numbers and to grow financially.

I told him I was against that. One of the questions that they asked me was, so if we were to credential you today, what is your main focus going to be? And I said to them that my focus was going to be on repentance and holiness to get the bribe ready for the coming of the Lord.

So then after what my interview was done, I got a letter from the District Presbyterian office two days later. They said that although we do see God's calling to ministry in your life, we feel that you should go to a Bible college solely for relationship experiences because I was told it's good to go to Bible college to establish relationships with other men and women that are becoming pastors or missionaries because you need that strong inner circle. Then they also said that I had lacked immaturity for relationships. So long story short, that was devastating news for me.

And I got angry at God because I thought, you know, where were you when I really needed you? This was like my biggest moment and I didn't get what I wanted. So I stopped going to church and it was around this time that my mother, she was making YouTube teaching videos on scripture and she was really adamant on water baptism being essential for our salvation.

Now I personally still believe that water baptism is part of our salvation. You know, people on podcasts made disagree and that's okay. But she was looking at videos trying to find other YouTubers that believed what she believed in and that's when she found this one video from an African man and he was talking about water baptism and he must have been describing it so well that she started to listen more of his teachings. By that point we had left the assemblies because we had come to the conclusion that they weren't following the true gospel. But then we started listening

to this man. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started? Or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition 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.

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Here's a go. When I first started working with people who had escaped different branches and sects of Pentecostalism, I came across this one lady who said that she had left her specific sect. I'm not going to name which one.

And somehow, she had connected with this ministry in Africa. And at the time, I was thinking, well, that sounds a little bit odd, why didn't you find a church local to your city? And I got to thinking about it.

And actually, this is part of the reason, I have multiple reasons, but as part of the reason, I dug really deeply into Pentecostal history. Because if you understand Pentecostalism, there was an original event in modern Pentecostalism.

You can look at a Zeus a street or some of the other different events. But what happens is the people see this as the original event, they form a denomination. That denomination grows and then it splits.

Then those two grow and they split into four or five or six. And this just keeps happening time after time after time. Each different branch of this will claim we're the ones who are like the original.

All of the others aren't. And they claim rights to the original thing, not knowing that they themselves have also changed over time. And so what you end up with is, in the United States, you've got all of these different flavors of Pentecostalism, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of them in the world.

Not a single one can really say that they're like the original, but they all claim it, which is weird. But here's the thing, whenever the people are in this experience, they have a really, really bad experience in the United States.

They start to look at some of the other branches and they see some familiarities. And so this branch, it's too much like what I came out of. I don't want this, where do I go?

And oddly, they seem to find Africa, because in Africa, the same kind of thing has happened, but each one of the ministries have progressed in a much different way. So when you look at Pentecostalism there, some of them go back to John G. Lake and the, you know, the apostolic.

faith missions, but they have grew and splintered and grew and splintered. And some of those are just so vastly different than the United States that if you're looking for something that makes you uncomfortable because it's what you had and it's similar to what you had in the United States, well now here's one in Africa that's totally different.

And the scary part, as I've noticed, they all seem to have some sort of a guy who claims that I'm the prophet or I'm the new apostle, much like the New Apostolic Reformation. And each one of them, you look at some of the things that they claim as prophecy and you're just kind of like, I don't know if I'll buy into this man.

He called himself the prophet of the Lord. His back story is always changing. So from what I do know, he was born in 1966 in a little village. I think it's called Bono Zincenia and some accounts say that he came from a humble family, others say that he came from an elite scientific family.

His father was like a civil servant, mother was a housekeeper. His conversion story changes. He says that he came to Christ when he was a boy, but then backslid another account says that he became a boy again in 1987.

And he went to a university in Israel. He was saying that his Jewish colleagues were telling him, remember Moses. And then he went when he came here to the U.S., even then his stories here in the U.S.

change. For people on the outside looking in, they look at all of this, you know, all of these conflicting stories, people who are claiming angels or demons or prophets or whatever it is. They look at it and they think, what is this?

Why would anybody want this? But if you have come from one of the Pentecostal movements that teach you in the five-fold ministry or anything similar, where God is actively moving in people like the book of Acts today, what happens is you start to look for different books of Acts.

If you have the wrong book, let's go get the other book of Acts, right? But then when you get into it, you suddenly realize, wait a minute, I don't know if I believe what these people are telling me because their stories are in conflict.

Some of them aren't really that biblical. They sound more like, I don't know, some of them sound like a Stephen King book to me. But they have so many internal flaws and you're not allowed to question the flaws.

Worse what they try to do in these types of movements, they try to position themselves such that when you read the Bible and you read of a Bible figure, they're alongside of that Bible figure.

Did that guy do the same thing? He said that God gave him a dream where... He was before the Ark of the Covenant, Moses and Elijah was on one side of the ark, Daniel on the other side, and then he said that he heard a voice saying that now I have all four of my prophets together.

And so basically he believed that he was the end time prophet, the prophet quoted in Deuteronomy 18, which we all know that's Christ. So then he said that he was going around trying to talk to big televangelists to try to make sense of his vision.

When he didn't get an answer, he decided to go back to Kenya in 2004 to start his own ministry. And when you see early footages of him, he's just wearing a plain suit. He's a clean shaven because he told him that the Lord commanded him to shave off his beard and hair.

And he was preaching on repentance and holiness because the church was in a state of apostasy that there was a lot of sexual immorality going on in the church. And as I'm saying all this, this is probably going to be bringing up a lot of memories up from the past.

So his congregation store to slowly grow, but it wasn't until 2009 when he took off. So your family got involved with this ministry from Kenya, developing ministry in Kenya, I should say. He learned of all these internal conflicts and his ministry's growing, developing, starting to flourish.

Did you believe that some of the claims that he made, like did you believe he was a prophet? For a while, I thought he was a prophet because I was a big listener and follower of David Wilkerson.

And I know that David Wilkerson, some people in the assemblies of God, highly respected him, others didn't. And from my understanding when came to Wilkerson, he started Times Square Church because at that point the assemblies kicked him out.

So he started Times Square as an inter-denominational church. But I realize now whenever you hear the term inter-denominational, it's Pentecostal. You know, I've often thought the same thing. Anytime you see a non-denominational church, you get in there and nine times out of ten, it is Pentecostal.

It doesn't mean that they all are, but many of them are, or they are somehow connected to the charismatic movement. There's just a lot of these. So the problem is whenever you're in one of these groups, you come in, you get acquainted, you get to know the people.

They don't... really tell you what's going on. But many of them believe that their leaders somehow, some figure that's biblical or even mentioned in the Bible. And so you get in there and you're unsuspecting, there's just a normal preacher, normal congregation.

And then suddenly you go out to dinner with one of them and say, yes, we really believe in our Elijah or Moses or David or whatever they use. And that's whenever non-denominational really turns into, oh my gosh, I somehow just got snuckered into a cult.

He stiles himself as the two witnesses of revelation, two and one, that you have to believe that he's Moses and Elijah, if you don't, then you're going to hell. Yeah, that's my exact point.

And so they build you up, they give you this feeling that they're more powerful than you. In fact, some of them go so far as they claim that they have powers that God has given them that's far greater than any human has.

Did this guy do that? He was the one who shut down the earth with coronavirus. And he would even say, I struck Chile with an earthquake, I struck Mexico with an earthquake. I did this, I did that.

Like, if you even like watch clips, there is this one clip where he said that God, the Lord, this was all a vision to claim why he is who he says he is. And he said that in this vision, the Lord gave him a cup of poison to drink and he drank it and then he died and the whole time God was laughing at him.

And then he said when he died, he saw that his spirit was leaving the body and then Moses and Elijah just possessed his body. Again, to people who've never been involved with this kind of thing, I'm certain that you're listening to it thinking, oh my gosh, this guy's crazy.

And I'm the same crazy, right? I came out of a movement where I believe just outlandish. I believe that our leader had a magical sword. That's how bad it gets. When you're in this type of movement, it puts you into an alternate reality.

And while you're in that alternate reality, literally anything that they claim you can believe, no matter how big, small, great, fantastic it is, because you have now entered into their fantasy world. What was it do you believe that led you out of that fantasy world?

So like when I started like you listening to his claims, and they were all boasts, and I'm thinking myself, wait a minute, truth and like the prophets of the Old Testament, they never boasted, they never glorified themselves.

They always pointed the people back to God, but they never glorified themselves. And but of course, The ministry does try to justify it by saying, well, if a prophet's prophecies come to pass, then they must truly be a prophet of God.

And in my early years, signs of wonders are like the big thing. When I first joined, the biggest thing was the sun clapping at his healing services. And they would show like, you know, footages of the sky and the sun basically just, you know, flashing like it would go dim and then it would become bright.

And that was, and so that was like, that was one of the big things which was actually debunked by, because it's basically a trick of the camera. That reminds me of a book I read by James Randy, the faith healers.

James Randy was a magician. He knew all of the secrets of magic. And he had a pretty good stage act, but he left the stage act because he started watching these faith healers scamming people out of the money.

And the faith healers were using the same types of strategies that he had used. And he knew how to debunk them all. So whether it's a trick of the light or a slight of the hand, or there's a multiple array of different things that they were using, which developed and got stronger over time, these ministries built into big names and they started scamming people out of money.

So he's going through, he's debunking them. And the problem is, the movement was growing so fast, his debunking could not really stop it. And they developed into very authoritarian leaderships. You had people with narcissistic personalities in power.

And the people are just prey to these types of individuals. So as they build their empire, they become even more narcissistic. It's funny. When he claimed himself to be Elijah, he said that the Lord showed him who the other witness was and the other witness was going to look just like him.

Unbelievable. What other tricks did they have? Another thing that they have is a picture of him being transfigured on stage, where he's just completely radiant. And it reminded me of that one picture of William Brannum, where he had that halo over his head.

But with this transfigured image, I remember listening to one video where he said that Jesus Christ was the presence of God in human form. And then he says to his bishops and pastors, he says, it looks like the Bible is repeating something.

I'm aware, and then he points a picture of him being transfigured since when do you see human beings look like this? So basically, he was proclaiming himself to be the new presence of God in human form.

And we were even told that he was also the new Ark of the Covenant. And when you call him out on all these heresies, his followers always say, but he's preaching repentance and holiness, like the devil doesn't preach repentance and holiness.

And so it's like, was we brand him like that to a degree? Oh, absolutely. It's, there's a theme that grows in the movement that the end justifies the means. So if you point out something that's just unbelievable that they're making this stuff up, they're lying, the large parts of William Branham's life story are fiction.

If you point out the fiction, the actual answer that I get, believe it or not, is they'll say, well, Abraham lied, it's okay. But no, it's not okay. And why would you say that Abraham is lying?

But that's usually what I get. They try to justify everything that is wrong by saying, but he did good. And I hate to say this, but Jim Jones, he was in the movement as well, and he did some good things.

You can read it in the newspapers, but do you want your children to go with Jim Jones to Guyana? Absolutely not. That's the real problem with these movements. Yeah. And see, even when it comes to healings, it's mostly people that are crippled, blind or deaf.

And we all know that those miracles can be manipulated, they can be fake. Exactly. I mean, there's so many different tricks, like I said, you can read James Randy's book and you can see how some of these guys are doing what they're doing.

Did you ever get convinced that it was so real and so true, so right, that you actually went to Kenya? I went to Kenya back in August of 2019 for one of his healing services, and I remember I would say, he was coming down the stage, walking past all of us, met this one group of Kenyans, they just fell backwards, being slain in the spirit, and I'm just standing there thinking, why wasn't I affected?

But when it came to cripples being healed, I remember I saw this one man who was crippled, he was just laying on the ground, he was trying to stand up, but he couldn't. And then one of the ushers told him that he had to leave.

So within these types of movement. It's where there's a healing aspect to it. Usually the people attracted, they have some need that you're not going to get from an ordinary hospital. Did your family have anything that would have attracted you to the healing side of the cult?

So my son's autistic and we were praying and my mom asked him if he can heal my son of his autism.

He basically made the decree that my son was healed and he said to her that it would be a slow process and then one day it will be gone. My son's autism has only regressed.

It's he's still nonverbal and actually he's been declared intellectually disabled by a school psychologist. But I remember also that in it was one of his revival meetings in Germany back in the summer of last year, where towards the end of the service he was saying, I raised my left prophetic hand and I decree that everyone here is going to be healed of all their ailments.

So then he gets down and was asking if there were any cripples and then he saw this one young man that was just staring at him. So he came up to him and said, why are you staring looking at me like that?

And the man's mother said, well, he's autistic. I'm going to pray that my God will totally heal you, not laying on hands to heal him right there. He just said, I'm going to pray that God will restore you completely and then he walked away saying, are there any more cripples?

Are there any more cripples? I can write a whole book. That's just so sad. And I'm really sorry that your family's going through this. I have friends who have a son that is autistic and the struggles that they have, I would give anything to help them if I could.

I can't even imagine being one of these so-called faith healers on a platform and making a family feel like they have false, this hope when it is false hope. It just angers me. And if you look back through the movement, it's not just the autism.

As far back as you want to go, they're telling people that they can be healed and as I mentioned, like John Alexander Dowie, I've done the study in the book on him. There were people who were actually dying and he wasn't telling anybody that they were dying.

They would sneak their bodies out after dark. But yet these people had these false hope that their family members who they gave to Dowie's care would be healed. Now, I have a huge problem with this because if you're a good person, you don't do this.

You don't give people false hope. If you're a Christian, you denounce this kind of thing. But even just take Christianity out of the equation, just good people don't do this to other people. So I'm- Like I say, I'm sad that you're going through this.

I'm actually breaking up a little bit, trying to hold my emotions in, but I'm pretty angry that this happens. If you could give advice to people who are experiencing this not just in what you're describing, but this is a broad issue that's in many different groups that have descended from Pentecostalism, what advice would you give them?

If the only advice, like real advice I can give them is to first off, continue to study the scriptures, and the other thing too with the other piece of advice that I can give them is really focus on your relationship with God.

The more I started educating myself in scripture, reading the writings of the early church fathers, the reformers, and listening to podcasts and videos like yours, for example. And it does help me to solidify my decision of leaving.

And the other piece of advice I can give is just don't be afraid to stand up. Don't be afraid to stand up for the truth. Even if your loved ones believe that you have completely turned your back on God, which was my case for a long time.

Well, thank you so much for doing this. And I'm just, like I said, I'm so sorry that you're having to go through this. And this is something that you'll have to go through for a long time with your son.

I just, I get so angry that people would abuse somebody who's struggling. I can't, I can't imagine hitting somebody when they're down, but that's what these people do. That's what these movements do. And just to, just to let you know and to the audience, because I'm certain you'll be curious, I'm going to go back and I'm going to cut out the name of the group that you've mentioned and cut out some of the details, because as you've been talking, I'm pulling it up on my screen here and this seems to be a very active group

that's very dangerous. And I don't want to do anything that would put you at further risk than you already have gotten yourself into by getting involved with this group, but I don't want any danger to you and I don't want any risk to anybody else who might get sucked into this.

So I'll be cutting the names out. Hopefully people can connect with the story anyway, because this is a common story. This is not that unusual. Yes, it's in Kenya. Yes, it's a, you know, it's a quite different group than what we have in the United States.

But if you look at the doctrines and look at the structural framework, how different is it? As you've mentioned, some of the things that you're seeing, exactly what Brannum was doing and you had all of these groups that spawned off of Brannumism so I'm like I say I'm just sad that this has happened to you so thank you so much for doing this. I am in my pleasure. Well if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story you can check us out on the web you can find us at William-Branum.org from more about the dark

side of the new Apostolic Reformation you can read Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.