Narcissistic Traits and the Neo-Charismatic Movement

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Bracken, 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, Paul, former member of IHOPKC.

Paul, it's good to be talking to you and to get your story about not only IHOPKC, but you've apparently gone through a different, a few different groups, and I've noticed that people who have gone into multiple groups, they have a broader perspective of just how much your life can be impacted by all of this.

I think I'll say it like that. My life was impacted in a similar way because I went to different sects within the group that I came out of, and each one had their own different flavor, their different version, their different spin, and after you combine a few of those, you get a broader perspective of just how wrong this was.

So I'm very glad to have you on. Maybe if you could begin by telling everybody just a little bit about yourself. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. I started listening to you right after everything happened with Mike Bickle, so it's been quite a ride. I really enjoyed the podcast.

I really enjoyed listening to people like Jed, Brantley, Adam, Franny, Jenny, Bob, Charles, everyone else that I haven't mentioned, it's been great. It feels like I'm a little less lonely sometimes when I hear all these stories.

So I'll just tell you a little bit about myself. My name's Paul. I'm 45 years old. I've been married for 23 years, just celebrated 23rd anniversary. I have three children. I have a bachelor's degree in communication arts and literature, which is a teaching degree from a known state university.

And for six years, I was an English teacher in a public middle school in Kansas City. And then after that, I started a small business, which I still operate today. And today live in northern Colorado. I don't live in Kansas City anymore.

And if I look out my window right now, I can see the Rocky Mountains, which is pretty cool, though they're covered in haze today from all the fires. But I enjoy everything that Colorado has to offer, hiking, fly fishing, going down to Denver, concerts, museums, restaurants.

I love hanging out with my family, reading, listening to podcasts. So that's just a little bit about me. And today I'm just going to tell the story of my life in the Neo-Kirismatic Movement.

That's where I'd broadly call it. Yeah, I spent time as a child. held in Iktis Fellowship in London, England, the vineyard movement back in the U.S. Torchbearer's International at Capenray Hall in England, which isn't neocarysmatic, but was influential in my life.

I hop KC for a long time and then finally a deliverance ministry before I exited in 2014 when I was 33. So I told you I was 45, I'm going to stop my story when I was 33, this is for the sake of time.

I got to stop around 2014, otherwise it will be even longer than it would be anyway. So yeah. A lot of people have trouble fitting everything within their story into one hour. It's kind of hard to do.

But out of everything that you said, you're talking about Colorado and you're talking about the smoke over the mountains, I hate to say this. My mouth started watering when you said this. We took a one of our wedding anniversaries and we went into Denver.

I'd never been and I went up into this town. You don't know the name of it, but it was like this old, timey casino town. Nothing had changed and when I was there, I had the best brisket that I've had in the entire United States.

Oh, wow. It was so good. But anyway, my mouth is watering now. Thank you. You're welcome. There is so much to tell, so whenever you're going through all of these different shifts and adjustment with all of these different charismatic movements, what would you say was the common thread that bound not only them together, but bound you to them?

Oh, well, I'm glad you asked because I actually have a theme for everything I'm going to talk about today. So let me just introduce this theme really quickly. There's multiple different themes or lenses that one could look at a destructive cult story through.

You have historical lens, like what you do with William Brandon Historical Research. There's a theological lens, you know, with a book like Counterfeit Kingdom by Holly Pivic, Doug Geivett. You can look at it through a sociological lens, like Brad Christensen, Richard Florey, that rides a network Christianity.

Legal lens, like Vanessa Johnson on YouTube. You can even, even in a pistol model, pistol, my logical lens, like how do we come to know what is true and how to end all this.

And finally, a psychological lens, like Stephen Hesson's bite model of authoritarian control, Daniel Lallich's bounded choice. I am all those lenses super helpful to me, but the way that I'm going to tie this all together is looking at it through a psychological lens, and especially through looking at narcissistic personality disorder or NPD.

Now I'm not a mental health professional. I can't diagnose anybody, I'm not diagn- I'm not diagnosing anybody. I'm just going to do a quick overview of NPD and then show you how some of those symptoms tie into my story.

But like I said, I'm not diagnosing anybody and I don't have NPD either. I'm just going to use that as a framing device for everything I'm going to talk about. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. And I'm glad you're doing this because it is something that is really important that people grasp. And one thing that you said, you're not a psychologist so you can't diagnose somebody. One of the things that's interesting about these cults, usually, and you can get this directly from Dr. Hassan's book, usually it's the narcissistic type personality that rises up to be central figure.

But what happens is when people take that cult identity and that indoctrination into their being, they're being indoctrinated with the identity of a person who shares those narcissistic traits, what isn't in Hassan's book, which I think might relate to this podcast, which is why I'm glad you went there.

When you are indoctrinated with this, you start to display many of those traits even though you may not be narcissists. Absolutely. And some of those people rise up to be leaders in the movement.

And so they may have narcissistic traits. They may not be a narcissist, but they have an indoctrinated narcissism. And they become leaders over people, then creating another cycle that just continues. So this thing spins out of control.

But anyway, yes, I get it. And I'm glad you went there. Okay. Great. And I've heard you in recent podcasts start to go there a little bit. But I've heard you talk about that.

And so I thought, I'm glad you've talked about that because you have some idea of what I'm talking about. So I'm just going to quickly do an overview of narcissistic personality disorder. I have to do it just because it's going to stick with everything that I'm going to talk about.

So narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder, causes lots of problems with relationships, school, finances, work. It's not cool or trendy. People suffer from it. They're suffering when they have it. They don't flourish because of it.

They may seem to be riding high on success. They may seem to have it all together, but they probably don't. And here's a couple of symptoms. And you can see these symptoms from Mayo Clinic website.

I just pulled off a couple here. People with MPD have an unreasonably high sense of self-importance, expect to be recognized as superior, even without achievements. Make achievements and talents seem bigger than they are.

They're preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty, or the perfect mate. They believe they're superior to others and can only spend time with equally superior people. And I'm really going to just focus on that superior part of it where people believe they are intrinsically superior to other people.

They believe they possess superior insight or wisdom for living. And they believe their calling or destiny is unusually significant. And therefore, they're superior to that of other people. So it's really a tight focus.

or my story and what I'm gonna talk about. And the most important thing to really grasp with all this, you know, with people with narcissism, personality disorder, I'll just say NPD. They believe they're superior.

They believe they have superior insight. They believe they have an unusually significant calling. And they believe all this without strong evidence. So that without strong evidence is really something that I think people need to think about when they're encountering people like this.

Yeah, okay, so I already said all my caveats. I'm not a psychologist. I don't think I have NPD or anything like that. So I'm really gonna just focus all my story and, you know, up to the age when I was 33 in 2014, just looking at it through the lens of narcissism.

Anything you want me to clarify from that or any thoughts? No, I think you really cleared that up for people who may be unfamiliar. And for people who are familiar, I want to take it a step further than that because churches, believe it or not, have this unique ability to maybe not breed narcissists, that would be the wrong phrase, but unintentionally reward people with those traits because you have a pastor who's a leader, right?

There's a built-in authority. Many churches, they have and show admiration for the pastor, even healthy churches that I'm talking about. So you have the built-in ability for somebody who has those psychological leanings to go that direction.

Now take it out of the normal church and put it into churches like you're talking about, I hop KC, whenever you have something that, it's a group that the church, their entire ideology is built around the leader.

In other words, the prophetic history. If you take the person out of the prophetic history, the church is no more, they're completely imploded. When you have it to that level, now whether the leader is narcissist or not, it puts them into a position where they can start to show traits even though they may not have any leanings towards narcissism because the system has built and enabled this to grow within their personality.

Yeah, and like I said, I don't think I have NPD, but as you'll see through this story, I think that I started to develop some symptoms of that would be similar to NPD. Once again, that psychologist, I'm not gonna try to diagnose myself.

So let me just, let me start at the very beginning. I'm gonna start at the very beginning, people will laugh, I'm gonna start when I was born. But remember, I'm just going up to 33, it's not gonna be my whole life story.

And even this is a bridge, I'm leaving so much out just for the sake of focus. But I was born 1981, Madison, Wisconsin. My dad was a grant writer or overseer for the state of Wisconsin, so he had a government job.

I remember going down to the Capitol and for like, take your kid to work days. So he was successful there. My mom was a copywriter at the 40s. first products lab and then after I was born she stayed home to raise me and I had a great time in Madison, Wisconsin growing up there, the beginning of my life, real quiet place, big trees, three big lakes in the center of Madison, fishing at the lakes, going to the Henry Vialis Zoo, anybody who's from Madison is going to know all these stuff.

But just really cool. My parents were very loving, had a really great, you know, for six years childhood. And then in 1987 my dad started to pray through these little missionary prayer cards that he got and really developed a heart for international missions and joined a missionary organization called Operation Mobilization started by a man named George Verwer.

And just real quick about George Verwer, he was a Moody Bible institute graduate. He started with missionary trips to Mexico. And if you want to know more about them or about him, there's a documentary on YouTube called George For Real that I think is really interesting.

So in 1987 my dad joined Operation Mobilization and we moved to London, England, which is a burrow of Bromley in South, or which is, we moved to London, England and then moved to a burrow called Bromley, which is Southeast London.

And my dad joined what was called ICT or the International Coordinating Team for Operation Mobilization. And there was actually in 1987 there a great storm hit London and so many trees fell over. Anybody from England will remember this.

And even if you see the movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, you'll see trees that have been blown over and it's from that storm. And I remember that storm in 1987 when I was six, it was crazy.

But I went to Church of England schools there. It was all overtly Christian, which is very different than the US. We even had like a church service every Wednesday morning where we sang songs of praise altogether as a school and all the schools did this, you know, that were Church of England schools because that's the public school in England.

But I had many good experiences in England, you know, we lived in London and we went down to Herod's to see Christmas windows plays, went to Trafalgar Square riding the tube and the train all around London, double-decker buses, school field trips to the Tower of London.

So, you know, I'm going to get into some bad stuff, but there's a lot of good stuff there too. It was a really fun experience and, you know, my parents were loving people. So that's kind of the setting there.

Now in 1987, my dad and my parents began attending this neo-carismatic church called Iqfis Fellowship. Have you ever heard of Ick this? No. Oh, it's really interesting. Okay. So Ick this was started by a man named Roger Forster.

He was born in 1983. He had a Methodist upbringing. He earned some theology degrees from Cambridge, spent two years in the Royal Air Force as a chaplain, then started Ick this fellowship in his home in 1974.

They Ick this is still going strong, even though Forster died in 2024, but Ick this has 10 congregations around London. Have you ever heard of Graham Kendrick, the worship leader? Shine Jesus shine. Yeah, he came out of Ick this.

So my parents began attending this fellowship. And then in 1987, right around the time they started there, so all this is happening right away, Roger Forster joined with two other church groups, a church group called Pioneer and then Y-Wam and they started this organization called March for Jesus or this event called March for Jesus where everyone would march around the city of London and Forster viewed this, these marches as like weapons of spiritual warfare to fight against Satan's rule.

And he explicitly said that and I looked up some of this quote and stuff. So I remember as a kid taking part in these marches for Jesus, probably in the early 90s, I don't know if it was, I don't know if we went to the first one in 87, but what's really interesting is that in 1986, at the same time Peter Wagner was writing spiritual power and church growth, he was writing territorial spirits, Frank Peretti wrote this present darkness in 1986.

So there was all like parallel thinking of like, we're going to fight against these demons and stuff like this. And even though I was very young, it started this idea in me that my leaders have this unique and superior insight into reality.

And what is interesting is that unique and insight that superior insight into reality kind of placed them at the center of cosmological battles between good and evil. So even when I was six years old, it's like, this is the mill you I'm growing up in.

You know, my leaders are special. The group is special. You know, and we've got a bad, we've got a role to play in this spiritual battle to take back London for the kingdom of God.

No, like I said at the beginning, and I'm not laughing because I know lots of people believe this. That's fine. I'm just saying without much evidence, it's like we just, we always think this is what's happening.

So let's march around the city and sing shine, Jesus shine. And that will mean Satan will fall or something like that. And there's no way to verify it. And there's no way to even prove it false.

It's unfaulsifiable. You could say whatever you wanted actually happened and no one would know the difference. So do you have any? Have you heard of this present darkness, but you never heard of like forced or anything like that?

You know, after you said that, I just, I'm really bad at remembering names, which is one of my biggest downfalls in what I'm doing. But I remember reading about that event because I was digging into early Pentecostalism.

And I found where Charles Fox Parham was influenced by both John Dowie and Frank Sanford. And I was trying to find more about Frank Sanford Colt, which is really weird because it's a fundamental part of Pentecostal history, but you don't find much about it.

And so I'm digging into it and I'm finding that the spiritual warfare concept started probably long before him, but he was doing it and sailing around the world, preaching at a continent as though he had the power to do this.

And at the same time, so I'm studying narcissism, I'm studying Pentecostalism, I'm studying all kinds of different things. And then it all kind of hit me whenever I read that because that's the visions of grandeur.

You are, you literally have something that nobody can prove, but you can prevent them that you need to do this. You need to follow me and do this. And they have no way to qualify what it is that you're doing.

No, absolutely no way. And that goes back to that epistemological lens that you can look through, which is a whole other story. So that's kind of where I'm growing up in London. And then in 1988, there was a little revival in London and my dad took me to it.

I don't think it's some famous or has a name. But there was a man speaking their name, David Pauson. David Pauson, he's an older English gentleman. He passed away in 2020. He's born in 1930.

He also got degrees from Cambridge. He was a chaplain in the RAF, a Methodist minister. And then he left Methodism to become a Baptist minister. And when he was Baptist, he embraced the charismatic movement.

And he became a bridge of sorts between evangelicals and Charismatics. And like I said, he died in 2020. But my dad took me to this revival where David Pauson was preaching. And it was in an old Anglican stone church.

You know, dark wood pews, stained glass windows, stone floor. I sat in a pew with my dad at the back of this revival. And I do remember a man who kind of came down with like holy laughter.

He was laughing hysterically and uncontrollably. And I was a little kid, I had no idea what was going on. But no one seemed scared. So I didn't seem scared either. It was just kind of strange.

I even remember asking my dad on the way to the revival. Like, dad, am I going to be able to fly? after this revival, like I had no idea what was going on. So what was interesting is that at the end of the revival, or at the end of this meeting, David Paulson said, I have a prophecy that I'd like to share with a person named Paul.

Now, if you remember, my name is Paul. I was too shy to say anything. And in this church, there was maybe 100 to 200 people. Nobody raised their hand and said their name was Paul.

So David Paulson said, well, I'm sorry, maybe I got it wrong, and then ended the service. Well, at the end of the service, my dad took me up to David Paulson and he said, hey, my son's name is Paul.

And I was fine with that. He wasn't embarrassing me or anything. And David Paulson looked at me and he said, he said, God, it has a very special purpose for your life. And that was it.

He didn't say anything more specific than that. You know what I said? Thanks. I'm a little seven-year-old. I don't know what I'm doing. Now, there's many different ways someone could have received that. And I was young, I was seven or eight.

I could imagine myself completely forgetting about it and ignoring it, but it really kind of became the background music of my life. Like I really kind of lived in this expectation that someday I'd have this unique and special calling that would be revealed to me.

And if you remember those three signs of narcissism or three symptoms, one was that someone believes they have an unusually significant purpose. And I, from the time I was seven, I started to believe that about myself and it was all ways in the context of the Neo-Carrie's Mac groups I was growing up in.

It's funny, as you were thinking about that, you were thinking from the framework of this, this was something that he could have gotten many ways. And I'm sitting here thinking, okay, I'm gonna pull up my internet and I'm gonna find out what's the percentage of the number of men named Paul, back in the 90s.

And it's like one in 10, man. It's way up there. So, and those vague prophecies, I, what's interesting is the group that we came out of, we would condemn that kind of thing, but there were traveling ministers that would do it.

And they thought they, you know, they thought they were the best things in sliced cheese, but whenever you give such a vague prophecy, what do you do with that? And where in the Bible do you find a prophecy that's that vague?

And what, what would they have done with that? They would probably be like, okay, that's fine, that's nice. I'm glad you said that. Right, I think the only thing it really contributes is just like to a personality disorder.

What's something like that? Because you just think you're a super special person. And it's completely unfalseifiable. It's unverifiable. So, anyway, I'll move on. So, my time in England, you know, eventually came to an end.

And just something that was very interesting is that in that documentary, George Verwell George Verwell talks about recognizing that he thought he was a very significant superior person and that he thought he was better than everyone else.

And he kind of instilled O.M. with a little bit of that DNA. What is unusual is that he actually recognized it and he recognized how harmful it was to people and he worked to help mitigate that in many ways.

But it just contributes to the whole context of where I was growing up in England at that time. I was like, George Verwell is important. My dad's important. I'm important. We're in the center of a cosmological battle between good and evil for the spirit of London.

All that's happening there in the background. So came back to Madison, Wisconsin, back to the United States in 1995. My parents joined a vineyard fellowship church and the whole thing was a huge culture shock to me just coming back to America anyway.

I left a lot of friends behind. So I don't remember a lot of things in the vineyard movement. I do remember the time where we had leaders go visit the Toronto blessing and then when they came back to our vineyard fellowship, they had a revival meeting where they were throwing Holy Spirit snowballs at each other where they would pretend to hold the Holy Spirit in their hand and throw it at somebody else.

And then that person would follow it in the Holy Spirit. I was, I think I was 14 or 15 at the time and I didn't know what to think of that. But I didn't, I also at the same time didn't dismiss it completely because that was the culture I grew up in.

So that was vineyard. Then I, in a halfway through high school in 97, I actually returned to England to visit friends and I went to a soul survivor conference there where I got to hear Matt Redden and lead worship.

I think he debuted the heart of worship. I got to listen to Kevin Prasch. I remember being in the front row listening to Kevin Prasch's band. And then people would argue about who's the best worship leader, Matt Redden or Kevin Prasch and all that stuff.

And then I got to hear Mike Pillavachi speak who himself had allegations of abuse against him. But it was also, it was all in that context of like, you know, Christianity's really awesome when we're all together with a bunch of, you know, young people doing really important things listening to really important people.

Then came back to, then, you know, that was just for a summer I was in England in 97 and then, you know, got back to Madison and then my parents actually left the vineyard fellowship and we went to a church in Madison called Mad City led by a senior pastor Shane Holden who actually, and Shane actually later became an IHOP KC board member.

But he really was trying to kind of help the situation right around the time. I'm where everything came out with Mike. So he believed victims. He wasn't part of any cover up as far as I know.

And even his time on the board lasted quite quickly, but it was a lot of connections to later on in my life there. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, 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.

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As you probably have seen on the podcast, I've been digging a little bit into what happened in the UK because as I was trying to investigate the transition from the latter reign into, there's this weird transition that happened with the shepherding movement before it became charismatic movement and finally NAR.

I was looking at John Wember, I was looking at what happened in the UK, and there's some other groups over there that caught my interest. But there's too many names. And I struggled all of the names.

It's so big, it's so big. It's such a, it spreads like a virus. I recently started this series with Pia Hugo and we're talking about, she's talking about people of destiny, which is integral to everything you're talking about, everything that I've had in the podcast, but not many people recognize how significant that actually was.

So so many things to tie together here. John, I can't get into this, but after 2014, I went to a church that was highly influenced by people of destiny or sovereign grace ministry, but I don't have time for it.

But okay, so I'll just get to keep on going here. So after high school, I went back to England for a year to go to this Bible college called Capenray Hall, which is part of Torchbearer's International founded by Major Ian Thomas.

So Major Ian Thomas was this exchanged wife, Christian teacher. It's not, it's not Neo-Carrismatic, but it came out of this movement called the Chesaque Convention, where these people in England had this idea that Christ didn't just come to die for the forgiveness of sins.

He came to live the Christian life through you. So the Bible college would talk a lot about Christ and you, the hope of glory. how if you can just figure out a way Christ will live through you to live the Christian life. And then you'll live this victorious Christian life where you don't sin and you do all the stuff that you're supposed to do. Now I had a fun time at Capron Ray. It was in an idyllic part of England. It was like a BBC manner from like Downton Abbey or something that we stayed at. It was

beautiful. I made great friends. We had a great time. But at the same time I was learning like just yet another leader who has some superior insight into the world. And if only I could grasp that insight, then I could be the super Christian I was always wanting to be. And I remember being even so confused by this teaching. And I remember pulling one of the Bible teachers aside once and asking them, I don't understand how this works. I don't understand how practically I'm supposed to let Jesus live through me. And they even they would even say Jesus. They wouldn't say the Holy Spirit or something like that.

And I just got kind of a word salad answer from the teacher because I don't even really think he understood what he was talking about. But I'm sure there's lots of people who think they really do understand what they're talking about.

And I'm trying to make fun of them. I'm just saying that I never really understood that. I had a great time at Capron Ray Hall. But I didn't understand what they're talking about except still had this idea. Oh, Major Ian Thomas, another great person. If only I could live like him, if only I could grasp this superior Christian wisdom, you know, maybe I'd be great like him. Now this is interesting, but like Torch Bears has different schools all around the all around the world. And one of them is in Estes Park, Colorado. It's called Ravencrest. And Ravencrest has a couple infant misalemni. Bob's got Mike

Bickel. So those two guys actually went to the same type of organization that I went to after high school, even though they went to it, you know, long time before. And I remember Bob's got talking about reading the book Reese Hell's Intercessor and then meeting the author Norman Grubb and how disillusioning that was for him. And I had to read Reese Hell's Intercessor at Capron Ray. So I wonder if Bob and Mike had to read that book at Ravencrest. I don't know if they ever told where they read it. But I just thought that was an interesting

connection when I read Bob's book and later talked to him about it. So you know, after that year, I went back to America and I started college. I went to a known estate university in Minnesota and right around 2001, I was going to a Pentecostal church and they knew about IHOP KC and organized a trip down to the trailers when IHOP KC was first in these little mobile homes that they had been put together. So we went down in 2001 and you know, Mr. Edwards is leading worship on the piano a couple feet away. Mike's there in

the prayer room. Mike prayed, I never got to know Mike or anything like that, but he prayed for me. He put his hand on my chest and shouted, fire, fire. You know, and I didn't feel anything or anything like that, but that was my first introduction. And I remember Jed hardly talking about the bumps in the carpet at the IHOP KC prayer trailer. So I remember that. I remember those bumps in the carpet. And I think, wow, did I see Jed hardly as a little kid like running around those trailers trying to staple those in, but so that was in 2001. And then in January 2002, I'm pretty sure this

is IHOP KC had their first one thing conference. And I went down there with a bunch of other college students. And that was the time where I really got like indoctrinated into it. I remember watching Mike preach this sermon on David running to God when he sinned instead of running away from God.

And I just have this memory of Mike on stage running from one side of the stage to the other representing running from God or running to God. And it was a moment in my life where I thought oh, this is now like the superior wisdom, really. You know, I didn't understand capenray, I didn't understand vineyard stuff, but this makes sense to me. Like, I can live the Christian life if I know I'm just can run to God in my weaknesses and my shortcomings and stuff like that. And I I just dove in head first, got Duane Roberts apostolic prayer CD, listened to all the Mike

Bickle teachings, Song of Solomon and times, started hearing snippets of the prophetic history, but I didn't like I didn't even enter it hearing the prophetic history at the onset of it. And then so and and then would and then during 2002 would go from Winona down to Kansas City to you know, visit maybe two or three times or something like that and just go into the prayer room, study, listen to different teachings or something like that. Then a year after that they had another one thing conference. This was like over New Year's Eve, December 2002, January 2003.

which was just another incredible kind of hype, conference, loud music, probably 10 to 20,000 people. I remember going to a breakout session where Mike and Diane answered questions on what makes a great marriage pause for laughter.

But I'm so dumbfounded, I couldn't laugh. It's crazy. But it's just like you go down there and everyone's jumping around. You just think, oh, I found the people. I found the superior people and I'm the superior person and we've all got this going on.

And it really was quite something. So I was totally into IHOPKC then, and I hope everyone kind of understands like the threads of NPD going through everything. Superior people, superior wisdom, unusually significant purpose.

So it was just rooted in everything there. Halfway through college, I took a little bit of a detour from IHOPKC. I was still involved, but in June of 2003,

a person that my dad knew from Madison organized a retreat in Colorado at this place called Wind River Ranch. And Gary Weans was the speaker there. I don't know if you know Gary Weans from IHOPKC, but he was a leader at IHOPKC early on and then left at some point, I can't remember when.

But at this retreat at Wind River Ranch, Gary Weans was the speaker and there were other prophetic people there. And one day I was sitting down for lunch and this prophetic woman looked at me and she said, God has one special thing for you to do that will be your life's focus.

And I lived all my life in the shadow that David Popos and prophecy. And then in all these communities and groups where you think there's all these special people on stage and you're just like, oh, if only I could be one of them.

And it was just like this added little boost, this nitrogen boost of NPD. You're a superior person. You've got an unusually significant purpose. But without any real evidence, except just people telling you that.

Nobody knows who I am. That's fine. And I haven't done anything unusually significant and that's totally fine. But it's just those little seeds just planted in you, planted in you and it's the whole culture too.

Nobody's, no one has a prophecy for anyone where they're like, hey, guess what? You're just gonna be a normal ordinary person. Exactly. I am so glad you said that. I have wanted to say that, but I've been waiting for somebody to talk about it.

There's not a single prophecy that says, you're just going to live an ordinary life and you're going to die and nobody's going to know who you were except me and your church body. And that's the majority of people in the pews, right?

Yeah, it is, and I want to say, I lead a very happy, wonderful, blessed life in many ways. And I'm very special to my friends and family as they are special to me. We have those significant relationships that are very meaningful and very powerful.

But I'm not going to be on a stage talking to millions of people and that's never going to happen. And I'm not even, and I'm so glad it didn't happen while I was in this movement.

So anyway, after that little retreat at Wind River Ranch, I got married 2003 and my family is really important to me, but just for the sake of time, I really can't talk much about my wife or my kids.

And then in 2005, after I graduated with my teaching degree, I moved down, I moved to Kansas City with my wife. And it really was like arriving to live in the Magic Castle at Disneyland.

It's like there are fireworks every night. There's a parade every day. I mean, it's just like, and it's like, oh, you saw Mickey Mouse on TV? Oh, there he is on the stage. It's my pickle.

It was like, it really was a total fantasy land. So by just one, I hope I can tell people, or I hope I can express just how special it was for me at the moment, like when I moved down there, I just thought I had arrived at the promised land.

And my life just revolved around IHOP KC. Even though I had a full-time teaching job that in the entire time I was there, most of my life was really about IHOP KC. I was on prayer room staff for a while where I did 12 hours a week in the prayer room, and I was an usher.

I would go to EGS and counter-god services on the weekends, go to conferences, do private Bible studies. Every Sunday morning, go to four-round under Christian fellowship. Even there were times where I wasn't on prayer room staff, I would do six to 10 hours a week in the prayer room, probably from 2005 to 2011.

So we're talking about like six years of just really focused time in the prayer room in Kansas City, just really baptized into it, really indoctrinated into it, loosened to all of Mike's teaching, song-a-songs, go to E12 groups, power of a focused life, power encounters and finances, book of Daniel, a life of David.

I'm just saying all these, anyone from IHOP KC will just be like, yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, looking at revelation, apostolic prayers, and I really just thought, oh wow, I am fulfilling my life's purpose.

And one day it's gonna culminate. In my unusually significant calling, being revealed specifically as to what it might be. And by this time I just thought, well, it's got to be standing on a stage telling people about my unique insights into God, because that's all I saw modeled.

And then I just thought everything will culminate in a procession down Blue Ridge Boulevard to Arrowhead Stadium where the great End Times revival will break out. And everyone's going to get healed and the End Times will begin.

It's just that it's carried on a stick where you're just like, it's going to happen. It's going to happen any moment. It's going to happen this year. Oh, there's prophetic signs that it's going to happen maybe next year, six years of that.

Just heavy indoctrination and even before that, my entire life was quite indoctrinated into the whole thing as well. And I did all that while working 40 plus hours a week as a public school teacher.

I had good performance evaluations. I really enjoyed teaching, but it was like teaching was my side hustle. Yeah. And I have Casey was the thing that I, you know, I really cared about. Yeah, there's a reason why they call it a high demand group.

It's a high control group, obviously, and we're talking about some of the control, but it is also a high demand group. What's interesting for me, whenever I was escaping what I did, I did some work briefly with Dr. Stephen Hessen and he was explaining all of this work.

I rejected the notion that my group was a high demand group. I didn't see the high control, but I rejected the high demand because we didn't do many of the things that you did in IHOP Casey where you sleep deprived and all of these things.

He did in the moonies and that's what he wrote about. But long after processing all of this, I realized that different groups in different ways have different tools for making it more high demand.

We actually were a high demand group, but the focus of the demand was actually inside of ourselves. We were listening to the recordings. We were doing all of these ritualistic things, which is weird.

But all of that aside, being in IHOP Casey and the things that you've been through, it was levels worse, I think, than even what I escaped. And if you stop and think about that, whenever they talk about the cults and they talk about some of the more destructive groups, randomism is one of the more destructive.

You don't hear the same level of destructive being talked about with IHOP Casey, yet they are more high demand. Maybe the difference is IHOP Casey was just a little, maybe a little less isolated and we could interact with other people, but I don't know the answer.

And I know plenty of people from IHOP Casey that had psychotic breaks from reality. That's sad. I know people also and randomism, same kind of thing. I mean, honestly, whenever you're in a system that taxes your brain that heavily and you were talking about the...

imprints of an identity from whether it's a narcissist actually diagnosed narcissist or somebody who just has the traits. When those traits get in you and they're not part of your internal makeup, it has to wreak havoc inside your head. Oh yeah, for sure, because I don't think that I necessarily would have developed any of these traits by myself. But I really started to think that I was just a real special person and one day everybody would see it. I'll continue on with my story. So in 2009, I hop had their tenure and anniversary and Mike retold the prophetic history and everyone gathered in the

Forerunner Christian Fellowship Auditorium for Mike to do these really long sessions. I think it was like four or five hours every night for three nights. And it was like listening to Moses come down from Mount Sinai with the stone tablets. I mean, it was just like such an emotionally charged time. And he just laid out the prophetic history. All the different stories. I remember one story in particular where he claimed that God told him that God was inviting Mike to be a part of a work that will touch the ends of the earth. And Mike

responded, yes, I will do that. And then God responded, you have only said yes, but you have not yet done it. Many have said yes, but did not do it. But where lest your brethren steal these from your heart. And the whole thing is just putting Mike Bickle on the pedestal of all pedestals as the most superior, significant person you could ever imagine with the most incredible divine purpose that anyone has ever had in the history of the world. Possibly more than Jesus Christ himself. It is impossible to exaggerate for me. I know that not

everyone at IHOP case see held Mike in this regard. But I didn't know him personally off the stage. So everything I knew is just stage persona. And I had grown up in this culture of stage personas. And to me, Mike was just like the pinnacle of Christianity. And if I stick with this guy, I'm going to see a great revival at the end of days. And I'm going to be a part of it. And I'm going to be this special person who's a part of it. And then after he told that prophetic history, I think at later that year that IHOP student awakening

happened. And you know, I still in the milieu. Now, I know we're kind of getting to the end of our time here. So I'm going to wrap this up a little bit. And I can't even really talk much about this deliverance ministry. I was involved in. But I eventually became a little dissolution with IHOP. I found I found that I was languishing. And And there were a couple that came into my life who led a deliverance ministry based on Brian Brent's Freedom Prayer Manual.

And I just wanna say those names in case somebody recognizes that. But their whole idea was, God has original design for your life. Because of your sin, you've allowed demons to come in and mess with that original design.

And the leaders claimed they were the people who could tell you what those demons were and how you could pray them off your life. And that captured me at the time. It's another other ideas of like, oh, wait a second, maybe Mike Pickle is a superior person.

But maybe these people, I know them personally, they've got the superior insight. Maybe they're gonna unlock my unusually significant calling. Maybe they're the special people who are really gonna help me. So that really captured me there.

And we met them in Kansas City for probably five years, I had a little bit of overlap between IHOP, KC and this deliverance ministry. And then probably around 2012 or so, I really kind of went full bore into the deliverance ministry.

And that was when this ministry moved from Kansas City to Colorado. And that's how I came out here to Colorado. But very shortly after we moved to Colorado and we moved in 2012 by 2014, everything had fallen apart.

And I had started to learn just a little bit about NPD and about narcissism and starting to see some of these patterns in my leaders. And this almost sounds like I'm making the story up before the podcast, but this happened.

I remember asking one of the deliverance ministry leaders, would you ever be able to consider that you're not a special person? And the leader just without a beat said no. And it's just like yeah, there we go.

There's no questioning of the superiority of people who demonstrate some of these traits when they're really into it. You know, when it's like wow, they're really strongly demonstrating some of these traits. It's very hard to question any of them.

So I said I was going to end in 2014 right at the time this deliverance ministry ends. And you know, that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to wrap it up here, kind of summarize it.

But I really had been indoctrinated, you know, during those first 33 years of my life to believe my Christian leaders were intrinsically superior people and possessed unique insight and wisdom and had an unusually significant purpose.

The communities I was a part of were the same way. Princeically superior to other communities, possessed unique insight and wisdom, had significant purpose and I was the same way. I was just indoctrinated into it.

I thought I was a superior person. I thought I had this insight into God, you know, that it mostly I just borrowed from the leaders and that one day my, you know, purpose would be revealed, you know, to the world.

I mean, I really thought these things and now when I think back on it, I think those thoughts are more indicative of a mental health disorder than they are of anything approaching the truth.

So I learned a lot about cults. I read a lot, I read many cult books, listened to many cult podcasts, you know, watched the lectures from cult experts and learned all this and I'm, this is just so brief summary of everything that happens since then.

Then in October 2023, I joined a Facebook group called Recovering from IHOP and the very next day after I joined it, the allegations from Mike Bickle came out. And then over the next couple years, Tammy Woods article appeared in the Kansas City Star, Julie Royes published a bunch of stuff.

I even, Kevin Prasch came back into my life through the dash cam footage of a police officer who was arresting a shirtless Kevin Prasch with Mr. Edwards, which blew my mind. And I want to take that seriously because I don't know the horrible situation that Mr. is involved in or I don't even know anything about it, but wild to see if Kevin Prasch and those photos, you know, Deborah Prickens eventually revealed her identity and then we had the Firefly Report published.

And all this time I had been learning more and more about these things. But after the, after the truth came out about Mike, I really thought about all the people who stood on stage next to him and endorsed him over the years.

And all those people who had similarly claimed to be superior people with who knew God's purposes and were themselves unusually significant. But yet they could not discern the character of the man standing right next to them on the stage.

And that, that was the evidence for me, along with many other things, that my neocureismatic leaders did not possess superior wisdom. They weren't superior people and they didn't have an unusually significant calling or purpose.

And then from that time I was able to unravel some of that indoctrination in my own life and come to a point of, and it's, I'm on the journey as well, like everybody. But more be able to radically accept or just accept my own human limitations and my own or nearingness.

And even learn to embrace and enjoy the experience of being a very ordinary person in a world in which I do not, I'm not superior to everyone else, even the communities I go to, or I'm a part of are not superior to other people. And just a little caveat, I know that some communities can be more harmful than others. But I'm really talking about more of a superior, superior mindset.

And you know, I realized I don't have an unusually significant calling. And I was able to put those prophecies to rest and just realize, you know what? I don't think there's any truth to those things at all. And I can rest now knowing that I don't have to try to find out one day, or live in the expectation that one day I'm going to be super important. And I'll be on a stage just like all these other people. And it really has brought a lot of peace to my heart over the years, even though like I said, it's always a process. And I'm still unraveling these things.

And it's been very, very difficult to unravel that indoctrination in my own mind. Because even after leaving the Neocure's Mac movement, I really thought I was a special person for a long time. And I even thought, oh, now my special mission will be exposing the Neocure's Mac movement.

I mean, that's, you know, that's how weird it can get. But, you know, I'm at a point right now where I've done a lot of work and it has been a lot of work. And it's been a lot of pain, a lot of trauma.

But there's hope at the end of it. And I'm living in a lot of that hope and peace at the moment. I can sympathize with every single thing that you have said. I had one minister, I don't know if he was a prophetic thing or if he just said it because he was shooting the breeze, but he told me that I would one day become a minister. And when you're, when you're younger and somebody says something like this, it does have meaning, whether they meant it or not, I felt it. But then when I got older, this isn't what I want to do. I don't want to become a minister. I want to be that

ordinary person. And even this thing that I do, I'm out of my element. But the reason why I never, ever really talk about myself and go too far with my journey, I don't want people to look at me like I'm something special because I'm not, I'm just John. I'm just the guy that's letting you share your story. And I'm very glad that you did. I'm actually hoping that you'll come back and do more because I feel like there's more to your story and people would really want to hear it.

So much more, John. So much more. But hey, we'll see if they clap loud enough in the YouTube responses, you'll come back for an encore. Yeah, we'd absolutely love to have you back. Could you give some advice for people who are trapped in this type of thing?

We'd just want If you suspect you're in a harmful community, I would just, I would advise you just to take as long a break as, as you feel comfortable with. And that might be one prayer meeting or it might be leaving it forever. But just whatever you're comfortable with, just take a break, just take one little break. And then set aside some time to do something you can enjoy without any guilt or shame. Like go for a hike, go to a beautiful place, listen to a favorite album, go to a restaurant. And just to get yourself out of the mindset for as long as you're comfortable

with. And that's different for everybody. If you're already out of a harmful community, there's a book I read that was very helpful to me. It's Alan Jacobs book called How to Think. It's just a very, very short primer on the thought processes that lead people to actually discover what is true versus the thought processes that lead people into thinking things that are not true. And he Alan Jacobs is an Anglican and an English professor. And if you're a Christian coming out of these groups or even if you're not a Christian, it's not written as a Christian book,

but it's a very helpful book. And then I just, I like to just give a shout out if you're in the Denver Metro area. A couple that helped me are Pat and Heidi Napp. And they run a a life coaching and counseling. I don't want to say ministry because it's not a ministry, but organization called Becoming Free. And you can go to BecomingFree.org. And Pat is a PhD who got his PhD in cult studies. He's written books on it. And they Pat and Heidi run support groups. And they are trained to help people come out of these cult situations. They've helped

all kinds of people from all kinds of situations. And that has been something that really, really helped me heal. And they're vetted by other people. You can go on their website and check them out. You know, you're not going to get yourself into another bad situation by going to Dan Heidi Napp. And so you can check that out. I just wanted to shout them out because they are so helpful to me. Awesome. Glad you did. Thank you so much for doing this.

John, thank you so much for having me on. It's been a pleasure. 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. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.

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