Leaving the Evangelical Covenant Church- When Leadership Trust Broke Down

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-Brannem.org and with me I have Joshua Ruzinski, a former member of the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Joshua is good to have you on and to talk through some of the pros and cons of the different various groups. You're leaving the Evangelical Covenant Church and you're coming to another group, so we'll talk about that.

I got your email and I was reading through it and you struck a few interest points for me. As you're talking, I'm probably going to throw you some questions too, but maybe if we could begin by just telling everybody a little bit about yourself.

My name is Josh. I am the father of four children and been married for almost 20 years. My wife and I are church groupies. We take a very serious role in our churches that we've always been part of.

My wife has always been in music and music ministry. I can barely sing or carry a tune, but I sing enthusiastically and she often can hear me from the stage. So we love the Lord. It's a very serious part of us, of our family.

Our kids are humbled by how good my kids are considering that I was such a bad apple when I was their age. They're both participate in worship in a church, one runs soundboard, one plays drums, and the other two are too young, but they're budding once piano, once veyola.

I think she might be more on my side of things, but that's okay. She has gifts too, obviously. But yes, we're experienced some rough stuff coming out of the evangelical covenant church that we're part of.

I was on a leadership team. Betsy was in charge of worship, and sent an email to you, John, just, hey, we're going into the CMA. I'm a little bit concerned getting some of the CMA stuff that I've read from you and stuff now to be very fair.

Our pastor is pretty awesome. The elders is very awesome. It seems like the CMA at least locally has really cleaned up their game. But you know, there's these just interesting aspects to the CMA.

And I guess if there's something I want to get off my chest as it were, it would be that church heard experience. And just I want to approach it very delicately and not hurt anybody.

But you might want to retitle this the book of Jude, right? It's such a warning. So I'll just leave it that way for a question or two to try to open up a little bit.

I'm sorry, don't really have a format or anything like that. Just to me, the most important thing is that this might help two people, one person, half a person, even just buys some time for somebody.

That's to me that made that experience worth it because it was hard, it really was. And came in there thinking, I've been asked for leadership team. This is great. And I really took it seriously, read my Bible all the way through for the first time.

And I didn't stop John. I read it maybe five or six times before I took on that mantle. A couple times was in the tenure. I didn't last out my terminal. Yeah, when I got your email, I was reading through it, thinking it's interesting because you're leaving a church that is deeply tied to various aspects of my research.

I've not researched that group directly, but I've researched everything that influenced them. Are you speaking, I don't want to interrupt too much, but are you speaking of the evangelical covenant church? Or the CMA?

You are, you research the evangelical covenant church. Yeah, well, not them directly, but I researched the things that influenced them. And it's kind of weird because I was looking into the covenant churches specifically because I was studying the shepherding movement.

And there is not a direct tie, at least not one that I could find. However, they seem to adopt many of the principles of the shepherding movement presented. And the ones that were apparently the more, the ones that led to the more destructive aspects of the shepherding, those seemed to be the ones that were picked up by not only that group, but there were different groups that seemed to pick it up.

So there was this weird time in the 1980s. And we're still dissecting that. I've actually just started a series with Pia Hugo. And we're talking through some of that. She has quite a bit of that history.

She was on the inside. But we were examining how the charismatic churches, it was very, very popular to spread the shepherding thing. and so people were picking it up who weren't even directly tied to the shepherding movement so that's why i was studying it however you know the ecc it's much more complex than just that one aspect but that was the aspect that led me to it that's fascinating john uh because believe it or not the old timers that were really involved i would say in the church and you could tell that they had roots of leadership in the eighties right they all pined for

the nineteen eighties as like that was i mean my wife and i had we were transplants from Illinois we had no idea in Minnesota about any what church even looked like in the nineteen eighties to us is like oh okay pop culture the nineteen eighties yeah that was fun you know i mean like what what what is it that you're pining for so i'm wondering if you could put in like one sentence or something what the shepherding movement is and maybe the seduco puzzle in my head can like start to solve right well there were many names for it you had shepherding some called it

discipling and the concept itself is actually not that bad the concept is we have new Christians we want to help teach them we want them to grow learn etc but what happens is sometimes you get people who aren't really suited for that job and so they want to become more than themselves and it turns into a hierarchy and just because of human nature not because of structure or agenda or anything like this just the simple human nature you're going to have that happen whether they intended to or not and what happened over time in the shepherding movement you had five

people one of them earned backster was part of the backster brand of campaign so he's deeply rooted into my research five people decided that they were going to do this thing right after the Jesus movement so you had this huge audience of people who were new Christians who were hippies and music lovers all of this we need a way to control these people we need a way to establish governance and teach them and disciple them and okay discipling in that in that framework meant the whip you know they're trying to whip people into Christianity shape I guess is I don't know how you would explain

it because I think their agenda was actually they had good intentions to begin with and then it got horrific you had adults spanking other adults in some of the more extreme branches that spawn off of this so I'm investigating all of that now all that said the ecc does not equal shepherding and they again there's no direct ties but it was becoming so popular that even John Wember who people will say he was never one of the shepherding movement he is so interconnected and he's using the language, the verbiage, that it sounds like he's supporting the shepherding movement.

And he's on stage with the guys he's being advertised in their magazines. So you had this broad coordination where all of these different charismatic Pentecostal groups are coordinating efforts to work together to help train this massive influx of Christians from the Jesus movement.

And it went awry. Interesting. You know, that does bring some bells only because one of the last pushes that are... Okay, so our lead pastor is pushed out. That was the primary trigger for things that kind of fell apart.

Now he was not pushed out in any sort of church constitutional way. It was done by insiders, right? So the church did have a lead structure, if you will, that I was oblivious to.

In fact, I remained oblivious to it till somewhere where maybe three to four months before I left the church that was even starting to see the outlines of, right? So the church... It's going to...

I hate to be so parenthical, or if like, let's keep backing you up to describe the thing I'm trying to describe. But I think it's important, if you look at the covenant affirmations that the ECC has, they interpret the living Word of God, the famous Hebrews, it's even printed on the quote or the verse is even printed on my little Bible here, I can barely see it.

But you know, Hebrews 4-12, the Word of God is living in active, sharper than 200 sword. No, look, that's one of my favorite verses. But you have to be really careful when you're talking about the Word of God, what if you're going to have a fringe interpretation of it, my opinion is it should make itself into a foundation of a church affirmation.

In my opinion, that's what it was, is that became the foundation of the church affirmation of the evangelical covenant church, and it is to this day, back in 74, I believe. And what does this mean?

Said a lot of words, what does this mean? This means that they took some instruction and you know, go to this affirmation of the centrality of the Word of God, this all can be found at their website, from a character name Philip Jacob Spencer, who presented these ideas in way back in 1675.

Now, whatever he did, I don't agree with even how they interpreted what he did, but what they say is what was new in his proposal was not another doctrine of inspiration, right? Not no scripture, or a new recognition of the authority of scripture, which was an issue back then, but what was new was his recovery of the living nature of the Word of God. It sounds fairly innocent, but it goes on to state, and this is the one I have a problem with, the dynamic life-shaping power of the Word of God has been at the heart of the covenant church since his

founding, okay? But what they're saying, I'm trying to find this dynamic life-shaping, okay, when I say, or when the Word says, John, could you take on this? The Word says in Hebrews 4-12, do you mean that the Word of God is changing? I don't. I believe that revelation is completed.

That's one of the most interesting parts and part of the reason why I went there just a little bit. Like I said, I've not deeply studied them. I am familiar with their, what is it, the six covenant affirmations or whatever. I'm very good at that. They're vaguely familiar with this, right? But here's where it gets interesting. If you study those principles at face value, what they're describing sounds really healthy and sounds like it prevents the things that happen with shepherding. However, when you take those little twists on it and what you've just described is one of the little twists in my opinion, whenever you take something that the Bible says

explicitly and then try to shape it just slightly differently than the Bible says, but keep it where it sounds biblical. What you're doing is you're actually injecting your own thoughts into it. And the problem with that particular injection is that that is rooted in what the shepherding movement borrowed from Brannemism, Brannem borrowed from his predecessors. It was the idea that revelation took precedence either along with or over top of Scripture. In the more extreme cases, the speaker, the preacher, they would often come and say, I have a message for you, a message from God for you, something like this. And they were speaking what we call the spoken word of God.

So widespread through the lettering movement, you had all of these ministers. Jim Jones is another one. He would say that we have the spoken word today. And what he's saying essentially is we have the Bible, but now we have a clear insight. So the Bible is becoming more active.

to us today. And if you read between those lines of what's in the Bible and what they're saying, what they're saying essentially is, I have the power to interpret that you don't have sitting in the pew. Absolutely. Absolutely. It drives you insane, too, because anybody who reads their Bible knows how wrong that is. And it doesn't take reading it over and over. Just read it through once conscientiously, slowly. So you're actually understanding what you're reading. Don't read it like it's, it's your feed, right? You read it. You read it. So you understand it. Was that mean to me? Well, it means to me, John, I sometimes

reread the same thing five times. And it would go down to sounding out the vowels in my head explicitly, because I'm a stubborn man. I'm a, you know, I'm a fallen man. We're all fallen. And what you just said made me feel like rejoicing in a way, in a sad way, because it's just like, ah, there's some understanding here. Because when you go through it, it's so painful because you don't get a lot of friends in this. It's really tough, you know, especially if you're a small town, it's not like a lot of people have all the time in

the world like I do. I have like, I have an architect for the state. I have a time. Okay. I have time that my, my, my fellow parishioners at the Evangelical Covenant Church really didn't have. And I had, and my hobbies were, is on top of it, is studying the Bible, right? Like, to me, that was great. Even the best of circumstances, even with everybody's following Christ and everybody's in step with the spirit, that's still rare, that there's people just like, I'm just going to keep reading the Bible. So, yes, this caused a lot of problems. And

I'm trying to find the tale of the story where I was at. But just even entering the leadership team was a serious red flag for my wife and I because we were both like, well, why doesn't it say elder? Right? Because is there anything in the Bible that says leadership team? No, it's all under elder. And even the term elder had been hijacked by this centrality affirmation of the Word of God, which just like so many laws in the books is the opposite of what the title is.

This is the opposite. It is so funny. But this happens time and time again. Let's pass a law and see what happens. We pass a law says the good law that keeps people from stealing. And your state will just explode with fraud. Right? It did the opposite of what?

statement said it does and I don't know if that's fallen nature of us or what that is but absolutely that was the heart of the matter and I was very concerned anyways back to the story and I'll remembering um everything started to happen and snowballed itself because there was elite families in the structure of the church that I was unaware of these hidden reefs okay going to jude I'm gonna keep going back to jude because to me jude is such a powerful uh what warning warning sign for followers of christ please rejude if you're suffering

from church hurt because it can at a loan can save you you can discount everything I say or anything john says or whatever that alone is enough is enough these hidden reefs that you hit and you're just like why am I bleeding all over how did that happen and these these uh elite families really did control the church and they wanted to continue to control the church and they knew or at least one uh a couple of them got together and they knew they didn't they didn't have the power of the good people I want to emphasize the very good people the very good

flock of that church who were very good Christians strong Christians many strong Christians they knew they didn't have the votes but they knew how to undermine and I don't know if that they did it consciously or subconsciously but I really do believe john it's part of our sin nature to be able to fared out that kind of evil without any plan whatsoever you know you just kind of just agree to disagree and so they went around the leadership structure to our organizational structure I don't know what you'd call a polity that's above the church right it's like our association I don't know I'm not I'm not that versed in church structure to be

honest which is sad but so you're an architect and I can say this and you'll understand this and I'll have to maybe I'll break it down simply for the listeners maybe the maybe this is a good example so a counterbalance if you understand what a counterbalance is you've got a balance you got something that's weighted and there's a heavy weight and instead of having the bulk of the load of the weight on the one side you put a counterbalance and it makes things for for simplicity's sake I would say like a hatchback hinge you lift lift the hatchback up and today they have

pistons but in the old days they had a counterbalance and it just really really easy to lift so for somebody who can understand that if all of the weight was on the the side that you lift you're really struggling to lift that thing but with the counterbalance it's really really easy. There is a problem architecturally if you architect the counterbalance and give it twice the weight that it needs because then suddenly the things just doesn't work right.

It's too light, right? I have studied after we left the cult that we escaped from. I went to several different varieties of churches. I wanted specifically to learn even the ones that I knew I would never continue attending. I wanted to learn what they believed in why. So we went to a few different ones and I went to the ones where they were the collars and they're all formal and all the way down to some that were just one step away from what we left. And what I found was this.

They all believed in the new birth because the Bible talks about the new birth. And when you're talking about the new birth I'm going to frame it that it is the actual weight not the counterbalance. Those that took the Keswickian way and the way in which you're looking for the new birth but the counterbalance is if we don't detect it you don't have it. That's the counterbalance. Those that focused so heavily on the counterbalance they were so out of balance that they focused so heavily on the negative if you left now it opened the door for shunning.

They left because they didn't have the counterbalance. They left because they didn't have the higher life. They did the new birth. The higher life. And so what it does without that proper balance it develops into a cult. So groups like the one that you left, like the one that I left, we heard sermon after sermon after sermon in the group that I left about those that left because they were not of us. They didn't have what we have. We have something the church down the street doesn't have. They're talking about that higher life. And that influence for me it's devastating to a

church because especially if your children raised in that environment you're raised to fully support the counterbalance and not the actual thing that you're supposed to support. Worst John in my opinion is that even in the covenant affirmations they actually codify that behavior. They really do because they'll go on to say the church is a fellowship of believers in a way that almost implies like you're another if I'm going to say something that that where where I push you out of that circle. Now I'll give the credit to the covenant church the evangelical covenant church affirmations at least doesn't go so far as to believe that if you

don't or fully in line with us they don't say you're not a Christian. They just say maybe you don't belong here and that part is in the reality of the freedom in Christ which is one of the last affirmations. It is the last affirmation.

And what they actually say, which blows my mind, is that there's enough freedom in Christianity where it's almost like if you're orthodox, maybe you just don't have an open enough mind to really be part of our fellowship 100%.

Maybe you should find another place. And that's more personal part of the tale why Betsy and I actually, that's my wife's name, why we actually wrote a letter to why we were resigning. And eventually we should have just left the church then, but we're stubborn, everybody's stubborn.

Let's try to make this work, and it's about two months later we are out the door anyways, as anybody with half a brain could tell. Except for the money you're in it, you don't have the brain.

But again, to the underlying story, so these family members got rid of this Bible teaching,

awesome pastor, awesome. And a critique of the system that the ECC uses, which is a lot of other system, is if you could imagine a skyhawk that just comes and grabs people in need, that's what they offer their pastors when there's trouble, is they can just go down and say, hey, we have another church that needs a pastor, grab the skyhawk and no questions asked, we'll just throw you out of that church and to another church, no questions asked.

And I still consider that pastor a friend, but because of that type of way of handling things, nothing has ever handled. And all this types of stuff, when you take the word of God and you twist it like a Rubik's cube, it's not the word of God anymore, it's just a messed up cube, it lost his perfection.

And what I saw is that there was problems like a play to spaghetti, of problems that have been plaguing the church for my opinion for decades, if not lifetimes. And because those were never, ever addressed in a healthy way, it exploded.

Because everything when you reinterpret the word of God, abusers love to cite Matthew 18, as like the all be all of, well, if you didn't go about it this way, well, look, you have to be appropriate, that is a personal sin from one brother to another brother, right, example, John, I lied to you about something I sold your son, right?

It hits you personally, it's a sin that I did. I have to repent to that directly to you, right? And if we don't meet, and there's a problem in the body between us, that's what other people get involved.

That doesn't apply to teachers or people that are in the public. We should not pretend that it does. This is a huge, huge problem. You see it at Bethel. You see it. All these things are exploding.

Oh, well, did you go to him as a... Well, look, if I have a public audience, it should be handled in a public way. It's not appropriate to use the Bible anyways to hit over the head of other Christians.

There's nothing in the word that I ever saw that was like the word sharp and active to add sort. So stab your brother in the heart, you know, like that's not, how is that biblical?

How is that loving? You know, I meet so many mistakes too in this leadership role. I am not a saint. I am a sinner too. Okay. I made lots of mistakes. But I had nobody, well, people did side me in the leadership team and we had a majority but that was very short-lived.

And then it's sort of like, well, we have to accept this as our lot is basically what kind of boiled down to. I never addressed that this pastor was pushed out. I was just asking for, like, look, like, I finally got to the point where I'm pleading with who I thought was the problem and not going to name them, but I'm just pleading with them.

I was like, can you at least, for the good of the body, could you stand up and just say you're sorry? That this happened? Like, to me, that would have been, that, there would have been so much grace for that man, that it really would have helped just, but again, the last thing that could happen is you never error anybody's laundry to the point where all of our clothes stink.

I mean, it just, you just can't operate like that in a Christian way. And so I wrote the letter, I was coming out of the frying pan, I was like, am I going to get boiled in this kettle of CMA because this horrible experience with the look like on paper are really awesome orthodox, meaning not orthodox, you know, but orthodox in belief church, nice cup, to something that was like, well, and it's actually sort of charismatic the CMA has charismatic beings in it, has this guy who's a little AB Simpson who kind of is real shady and how he collected money and there's two books and it's like, oh my

goodness, thankfully, that we don't have a lot of choices in a small town. It's it's either this the Catholic Church. We're now Catholics, although my wife works for the Catholic Church at their covenant but which is funny but Lutheran we're not Lutherans so you know you have to you have to unless you're willing to travel hundreds of miles and some people say you should I don't think you ever should honestly but be that as it may John I took a little bit of time there you know it's just it's just so wild to me so when you said those words like oh wow not only you actually did research to the the

CMA are not the the ECC which I really think it's the point of problems there's so many problems if you just let the word of God speak through your spirit you eliminate so much problem 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 Steven 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 so you being an architect opens the door for me to explain everything in your email in one

summary everything about AB Simpson everything about both the groups that you're talking about and ironically everything about everybody else that I talk about not and not everybody can get this because not everybody has an architectural mind oh I love this people who have an architectural mind struggle in church and they don't know why they're sitting in the pews they're listening to the sermon they don't know why they're struggling and they'll go from church to church I know this because I do it church to church to church and you're you can't put your finger on something's

off what's off something's off and it is this architectural problem which you will understand and I'll have to explain it to the audience there's a concept and architecture called oversimplification what it means you have a complex problem and you're trying to give it a very very simple solution usually with only two sides and the problem that emerges from this is The two-sided solution can't solve the ten-sided problem.

When you're hearing a preacher, often, they're trying very hard to make their sermon appealing to the itching ears. Like it or not, I don't care if it's a big church, I don't care if it's a small church.

They do have to get income to pay the light bill to keep the church going. They have to do it. And if they were boring as heck, everybody's going to leave and they're not going to come back.

They're going to go to the church down the street. So everybody does it. I've not yet experienced a church that did not. So what they do is they try to take an ancient problem that is being addressed by an ancient letter that is to the church today but is addressing a problem to the church of a millennia ago.

And it's a much less complex issue than it is in today's world. Today's world, it's not an A or B solution. It's a ABC through Z solution in many cases. So they're trying to make that leap and you can't do it because it's oversimplifying the problem.

And instead of just pointing the people to say, here's what the problem was, here's how they fixed it. And we can do the same thing today in our more complicated scenarios, right? So because of this, now add to that complexity the mission of the church.

And the mission varies from church to church. The CMA, obviously the Christian missionary alliance, their mission is the missionaries. The evangelicals, it's to evangelize. But now add to that the complexity of the human mind.

Not everybody is intended to be an evangelist. Not everybody is intended to be a missionary. And so you're trying to put these people in boxes that they can't fit, giving them a solution that is not the right solution for the architecture that you're building.

And in the end what happens is this. You get people who rise up into leadership who aren't really leadership for the mission of that particular church. And the example that I usually go to, and I hate to continue to use this, but it is the best one.

I was in an evangelical church. And the minister was bragging behind the pulpit how he evangelized recently. Like within the last month of that sermon, he went on a bus or a train or something, an airplane, he's sitting next to people who he has no idea what they believe, who they are, anything, and says, did you know you're going to hell?

And that's how he opened his door to evangelism. This is not a man who has cut out to be an evangelist. This is not a man who you cannot do this. He's the wrong solution for the job, right?

Now might he be somebody who can support a missionary? Maybe, might he be a missionary? Maybe, but he's definitely not an evangelist. he's in an evangelical church. So he's not suited for the mission.

He's part of the issue where you're oversimplifying things and trying to put everybody in the same box. The very reason why all the denominations exist is because each one does have a different mission and there are people who are better suited to those missions.

And those, even what I just said is oversimplifying it because now they also have multiple doctrines, right? Right, right. But at the heart of the problem is this. Salvation is not an A or B simple answer.

Whenever you look at somebody and they say, okay, they've got the new birth. They've just had the new experience. Well, what if that experience is somebody who struggles with drug usage? Yeah. An addict is an addict for the rest of their life.

Once they get hooked, they'll get clean, but they're gonna have that struggle. Every, you know, I've talked to addicts who are, in fact, I know a guy who he still continues to go to the meetings, he's been clean for decades.

But he says, John, I struggle every time I see it on TV, every time I think about it. I have tools now in my head. I have these tools that I use to not go back to where I was, but I struggle with it.

In some of these new life, keswiki and churches, that means that this guy's not saved because he's not having the new birth. He's still doing this, right? They're trying to fit, they're trying to oversimplify the problem.

Now, take it another direction. Take somebody who, maybe their sin is lying. They've got a sin of lying, they have the new birth, and oh, I don't want to lie anymore. It's a little bit decreased because they don't have the addiction that's fighting and pulling on them.

Until they get into a situation where they're, man, it's still much easier if I tell a lie. But that problem does exist. It's just decreased, so you've got different varying levels of issues with this.

But the bottom line for me is, the human personality is so complicated and so complex that when you listen to a church with a mission that doesn't fit that personality, you end up alienating people in your church, and many of the people will think they're not even saved.

I don't understand this God that you have. This God can't be real to me because I don't feel it. They're just not really aligned with your mission. Yeah, that's, what you said is very interesting to me.

I do think that saving faith is simple because I think that we have, you can have somebody like Albert Einstein who's saved and you can have somebody who's down syndrome who's saved. But I'd agree that what that looks like is very different.

I think a lot of problems stem from, and it's almost a modern addiction, maybe more so, I don't know. But like, trying to discern the motives of people all the time, like that's like, It's so corrosive, but it's like it's almost something that ever since CNN or what what have you and I'm not Saying CNN. I'm just saying they're the first cable news network, right? They had 24 hours a day to do news and You could for a long time If I don't remember you probably remember these days, but every hour on the hour was like the same

Show because they literally had nothing else to say But they would just spin it and they would just keep spinning the plate because it was a slow news day There wasn't anything to talk about so let's just beat this dead horse to death and After a while the news didn't wasn't news. It was just opinion and Then we we kind of became a Culture maybe of opinion where we're kind of Owing that out and templating on on people and just really inappropriate ways that new life is Yes, it's funny you've mentioned that because my wife brought up that because weekend and she went to Northwestern

I didn't go to any Bible school at all. It's it's all self-taught And as far as drug use I unfortunately can relate when I was a teenager at a huge problem that so Thank God God can break those chains and I even think he can break addiction But not for everybody and not for all circumstances and don't feel bad if he didn't right this no reflection on you It's not god has his reasons um and and and uh I do believe by wife and I believe so heavily in the sovereignty of god too that we're looking at some of this going on and

The ecc of this ever-moving target of god's word and it's like that does not compute that's not a loving god He's not a mystery To us right he loves us. He didn't make the word of god complex uh in the sense of um To to be exclusive So John I think you'll get a kick out of this What do you think would not be helpful when You're kind of girding your lines to go against basically your whole leadership church When you have a dear friend who is a good Christian but he's kind of like a

Fivefold ministry guy What do you think would be the least helpful thing for that friend of yours to do in the privacy your home one day Well I you get out your imaginations probably going crazy, but I'll just tell you right cut to the chase He annoys me with olive oil that I am a prophet

That's just like I didn't even believe it um because I was just way too reform for that I'm just like I'm almost to see In fact, I flirted with being a cessationist. I also, at that point, was probably what they call what a cage Calvinist.

I'm not anymore, but I just, that's like, but you know, you can't help that that affects your ego, right? You think of the back of your head. Somebody who loves me, anointed me, to be a prophet.

I don't know how I can even go about it saying anything that happened after that fact, but it did happen in the privacy of my home, and my children were there. He left the door out of the front door, and my wife is staring at me, and my older two boys are staring at four children, and they're just like, I don't know what that was, but that wasn't, I don't think that was good.

I don't think that was good, Dad. I'm thinking to myself, no, that's, that's one of the only friends I have. Well, and that's very much like the example that I gave, right? It's doing the wrong thing in the wrong context because you're in the wrong mission.

Yeah. You don't understand how this works. You generally want to talk to somebody, at least, no, are they going down that path or not. The problem is, and you know, actually this might describe the reasons behind that.

The problem is when you're in that type of movement, where everything becomes spiritual, you start to see spiritual things that aren't. Yes. And when you start doing this, you start to feel like God is in you and you have a special revelation that the other guy don't have.

This guy, I don't know, he's a prophet. I feel it. I feel that in my bones, right? Yeah. The problem is, that goes to where people start saying, God told me, and it gets to the point, I've had people tell me, God's telling them things that, I'm just picturing God thinking, God doesn't care about that.

God doesn't care if he told you to go to the Kroger store or not. You go to the Kroger store because you need the food. No, but they get to that level. And it's, architecturally, it comes back to that thing.

They're trying to fit a complex issue into this simplistic thing, sadly, for the simplistic minds. Because in the churches that do what you're describing, most of them have, over time, they have adopted the idea that you should suppress all critical thinking.

And when you do, you have a simplified mind. The architects, if they break out of that, they're going nuts. Because it does not fit, man. The things that you're saying, I know that you think the Bible says that thing that you're saying, but that's not really what it means.

Yeah. That's what. happens here and you just can't for I've said this a few times in the pot you can't put God in a box and that's what they're doing trying to put God in a box give it to the people and it's a box with an on-off switch yeah you know it's funny too is they'll use that language against you too though they'll say well you can't put God in the box when you recite scripture right as if scripture was somehow not from God or didn't define on his I was in the army and they're they you know you have you're trying to get your shots in

between two posts okay that's like that's your range right like yes it's obviously true he's omniscient he's all powerful he's eternal you can't put him in a box but yeah he gives us a tool to to understand him right because he does want us to understand him so yes you put a very succinctly in a way I was going nuts because I am I'm hypercritical thought people kind of misinterpret that is is me being criticism like you know I think you know you have religious spirit you know throw these these things and I was like no I'm not

I'm not signing motive I'm really just trying to understand I I don't I don't even care if if we disagree like that to me that's so unimportant in a conversation is is if we disagree I really want to know because I think a lot of times I'm wrong or I've been wrong in the past and how can I be right is is the the only way is to do that architectural model and critically think through all those steps and it doesn't matter how cherished that belief is that you landed on as the problem you have to expunge it and you have to get rid of

it if you don't you you missed the really point of critical thinking and you're right that suspension of critical thought is such a hallmark of not just the cults but just churches that are in danger right because at no time I think necessarily that the church is even a cult but it was cultish right it has cultish characteristics and and there is definitely cult behavior inside of it and that's that's what was so frightening to my wife and I was that this became an all-consuming thing because we took the church so seriously and I got

to the point where we're talking about it and when you're eight-year-old or you're six-year-old is parroting back some of the stuff that you're talking about maybe someone in confidence stuff that you know it's adult right it's not adult-rated obviously is just adult stuff and your six-year-olds saying that because they recognize it that's bothering you, then you know you have a problem. It's okay to take the church seriously, but as a father, you know, you have to protect your kids, you have to protect your family, and you really do miss the boat. It doesn't matter how, at a certain point, you're

donkiyote. You are just at that windmill full-tilt. You're just charging the thing and you just have to stop. You just have to stop, and that's what it was. And I was kind of that guy where I thought God is speaking through me. Thank God that He gave me the discernment, the gifted discernment, where at least I was filtering it through the Bible, so anything that wasn't biblical was being shocked. But did it make me pretty sharp-edged during that time? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was like a bull through the China shop because in a situation where you have a leadership that

don't know their Bible, and you do, and you have this fire in the bosom, you can be pretty...

I don't know. It's hard to say. I really think that as God is going to use this, He uses these things. I mean, it must drive demons' knots, right? Because in the end, they're always working for God, right? That's why they're so angry, right? They can't ever get it, right? Because even when they do these crazy movements, like the CMA starts this way, or even William Brandon, or whatever, God somehow used this for the force of good in the church, has helped so many people along the way. But I mean, that's a crazy tangent. But I did not

learn this whole point where I'm trying to keep our pastor, then he decides to leave anyways. Goodness John, that war is out. That war is out. And I also, it's been on my heart to say too, is that it's okay to be, to identify that you have been a victim. But let's be careful that we don't carry that through everywhere we go. We don't want the victimhood trophy, right? Because that does taint. After a while, I think as Carl Jung, definitely not a Christian, say the least.

But he did say something that was super smart. And he is just like the, what is it? The permit victim cannot be trusted. And it's wise. You know, it's wise because I'm sure there's a bit vocal equivalent out there, it hasn't come to me.

But if everything is a personal interaction, then obviously your perspective has been twisted. And I just say that for the edification for any listeners out there is like, you know, I think you do an important thing here, John, is that you let people who have been victimized speak out.

But let's just remember that too, is that that doesn't, that's not who you are in Christ. He doesn't, he wants you to take that, all the theology is suffering to help somebody else, right?

We're in the United States, we don't like suffering, but I have arthritis, I have pretty bad arthritis. And I believe that it, you know what? Look at it as a blessing. I can help somebody out there who has it, who's in the beginning stages.

I can learn from somebody who's has it in the advanced stages. I can use that to edify the body of Christ by equipping them with knowledge so that they can use wisdom with that awful thing that they've been burned with.

You know, and our heart wounds, our spiritual wounds, all the more so is their potency. Is that you can, you can take this, this thing that you had in your life, John, and you've been doing it day in and day out.

Well, this has been interesting. There's, we probably talked way over people's heads, talking about architecture. I was thinking, in the funny part I was thinking as you were talking about, even the demons do God's bidding.

Well, that's what an architect would call a managed risk, or a man, a man is the fat. You know, they control the good and the bad. I don't think the Masonic order has rights to have exclusivity on this, but God would have to be the master architect.

And so he would have everything under his control. The problem that I have had since being in the cult and since even experiencing, to some extent, some of the other churches, they don't look at God as though he's the master architect.

They look at God as though God needs them as the architects for the solutions. And that solution is their one-sided solution. And it's usually too oversimplified. So there's a bunch of architectural terms. Nobody's gonna get it but me and you, but thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you. Thank you for what you do. 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. From more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.

Available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― ― Mr. Sunshot on the ... ... ...

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