The Hidden Struggle After Leaving a Destructive Church

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a false prophet, and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed is good to be back and to start talking about now that you recognize the signs that you're in one of these destructive groups. What happens next whenever you try to get out? There's so many complications to that, and one of the things that I was thinking as we were

talking about this topic last week, or last time that we spoke, we were talking about the organizations, and there's this motivation internally that the organization itself needs to protect the organization. It's never we need to protect the people, never about the people. In other words, the movement we have created is God's gift to mankind and forget mankind. We're going to take this gift, and it's just so backwards. But once you get caught up in that mentality, what do you do? Because you've also been trained that the organization, the prophetic history, all of this is the center, the

epicenter of your life, the epicenter of everything that happens in your life. So what do you do? And that's kind of what we need to focus on today, because I kid you not. I've gotten probably 100 emails this year about people saying, I realize that this is wrong, but what do I do? All my families and all my friends in it. This is really a hard thing to go through.

Yeah, and I'm sure that you've seen this too, but a lot of times when people are escaping from a cult, they will find themselves jumping into a different type of cult. And I've seen that so many different times, especially with many of the people at IHOP that I grew up with, and especially younger individuals who have grown up in the culture, which I think is we'll get into this, but that's a whole different dynamic when you, you know, you weren't in your 20s when you decided to join something you just kind of were in a

in it from beginning or from at least a very young age. It's all you know. And so you might even recognize, oh my goodness, Mike Bickel, the leader of this cult that I was in, or you might need not even call it a cult. You might just say, the leader of IHOP, who I realized, hey, Mike Bickle was doing some terrible things. And so you leave that community. And I think that's really brave and takes a lot of strength. But then if you don't, you're just going to immediately be looking to fill that void of community, of self identity, of all of

these different things. And so if it's too often, like I have a friend who I know who came out to California after escaping from sort of a bad situation that was similar to an IHOP thing. And immediately they got into a sort of new age cult community here in Los Angeles. And it was just half the dozen or the other. And they would even say that now because now they're out of both of them. But it's sort of the out of the pan into the fire situation. So I think that this is something that is really incredibly hard.

And when people who are not, like I'm sure many listeners have never been involved in IHOP or something, even close to it. And are more just interested in the topic. And I think that when you talk to people about cults in general, a lot of times there will be like, man, how could you let yourself get into this? Like it, obviously, oh, all of this information comes out about Mike Bickle. I would do you ever believe him. He wasn't even all that charismatic. But I think that that this, how do you leave question is so important

and so difficult that I think that that's part of the reason that people don't leave. There's what do you do? Where do we go? How do you fill? How do you rebuild your life after this? So it's an incredibly important discussion. It's a big deal. I've had people ask me after you leave, what do you do to help people who are escaping? And you've got this one side of the crowd that are saying they just need the gospel. If they hear the gospel, it's going to solve every problem for them. And that's all well and good. I'm not going to say that

that's a bad way to look at it. Yes, they probably do need that. But there's so much more that we really have to take a step in and as humans, there's a human problem that goes along with the spiritual problem or the doctrinal issues. They had, they were in a system that had a lack of accountability. So therefore, they're never going to trust another person who's giving them the gospel. So whenever you take that initiative, they're probably not going to listen to you in the first place. If you've been bruised, I was in that category.

And I had people come and they tried to share things with me. I just kind of tuned most of it out. And I started reading the Bible for myself. I wanted to just not trust anyone.

And that's one of the things that hits you really hard. You have a very, very strong lack of trust. And that is a problem that is more on the psychological side than the religious side.

Because they have protected the platform that they were pushing more than the people, it's created a lot of victims. And yes, when they leave, they go to another cult, it's called revictimization. It's because they were bruised in a way that some of the bruises became part of their identity.

And when you go to another group that is also a destructive group, they may have similarities in the same types of destruction. So they feel compatible with being bruised further. That's a bad way to say it, but that's really what's happening here.

And they look for somebody who has that same charisma, that same, you know, the same, they call it the power of God. But literally it's just a person who is just so full of themselves that they can take a group and run wild with it. They'll go try to find somebody else who's full of themselves.

It took me a long time to recognize that I myself was in that mindset. And I look for the opposite now. I want somebody who really doesn't want to be a leader but is doing it because he wants to help other people become leaders.

And for me, that's the true value of leadership. If it's not about you, it's about training other people to help themselves. If you're doing exactly what the biblical definition of a minister is, a minister uses the same word as deacon. It's a servant, basically, but it's a servant that is serving you the gospel.

So I look for people who are of that mindset. And just to reiterate, it is a huge problem that goes beyond just the minister. It's the psychological problems, the identity problems. You have to work through a lot of things when you leave.

The statement that you made about the gospel, just the true gospel should be able to pull people out of this. I think it's interesting because there's been two sort of frame of references that I have had in my life when I'm looking at people coming out of or even myself how to get out of these cult communities.

And I think that a lot of what is talked about you either, so the two frame of references are either from a Christian perspective that is looking at the new apostolic reformation or the more extreme.

So it's Christians looking at cult Christians, basically, and saying, hey, this is just not a true expression of the gospel and doing it from a sort of doctoral perspective of just being like, this is not true.

The other frame of reference that I've had is that going and being more involved with academia and getting like my... and doing philosophy, like I've looked at the way that academia talks about cult communities.

And in a very similar sense, it's sort of just like these people are irrational. And you need to

get them to build their worldviews from a more rational perspective. It's battle for rationality. And recognizing and showing people that they're being tricked and trying to you know, open up behind the curtain. And I think both approaches are similar in the fact where it's like the number one thing that we talked about in our last episode about what are the red flags of a coercive sort of new apostolic reformation genre cult community. The biggest thing that I that we talked about was supernatural authority manufactured through deception. And so it's a very natural thing of like speak truth to deception. And that will undo deception.

But unfortunately, I have never seen that at ever work. Like legitimately, in my experiences, I have never seen someone just be truth out of being deceived because that is the whole way that these systems are structured is to inoculate people from the truth. Like though, it's like you give there's there's version of apologetics where in say you're in a co-community like IHOP, we had a lot of eschatological and apocalyptic doctrine, which from people who have more sort of mainland Christian, that was the big red flag. And people would, I even remember people talking about like, hey, you talk about the end times a whole lot. And I

I remember being like 10 years old and already being prepared to defend myself against accusations of

heretical apocalyptic doctrine. And this sort of like, oh, well, it's not either not rational or not biblical to believe that God is going to come back in 2010 or 2015 or that were among the last generation. And that just, it never was too threatening of an idea to my system and to my conceptual system. And I think this is true for a lot of people, not just me, who are in these communities because that's the whole point. Like if they we build our worldview thinking that we are separate from everyone else, thinking that we have information that everyone else doesn't have.

And so When people come and say, Hey, here's the truth. We say, no, you just don't know like that. And even when you are ready to step out of the world, even when you're maybe two feet out of the world, I think that there's still that response of being like, well, no, that those belief systems that I fixed into my brain, it takes a long time to rewire those.

And so trying to address it either internally as an individual or externally, like say, you're trying to talk to a friend or a family member who's in these communities. If you attack it via a rational, doctrinal perspective, it just will create this sort of adversarial tension that is part of the whole scheme to keep people coming back.

And I mean, what are these communities do but separate people from their family and their friends and the other people that care about themselves? So if John, you come to me and you're telling me, hey, Jed, these beliefs that you have about the end times and X, Y, and Z are not based in gospel and are not true and they're false.

All of that is so totally fair for you to be saying. And obviously it's stuff that we talk about on here all the time. But I have been sort of inoculated to be able to be like, oh, I've heard that before and I know how to respond.

And I will now not only remove myself from conversation with you, but I will start discounting other things that you say. And that's a really hard thing. And I think that that's why the first step of coming out of a community like this is it has to be identity and community based.

It has to be, it's the same as like if you're talking to a family member who is in an abusive relationship, like you have to create a safe space for them to feel loved and cared about so that they're not terrified, that when they lose their abusive relationship that they will lose all connection to the only people that they care about love and that's the same thing I think in cold communities sort of like if people do not feel like they have an identity

outside of that cold group or don't have a community outside of that cold group or don't have people who care about them outside of that group, it is incredibly difficult to step out. Early when I began doing this, I had a guy tell me that if you get them doctrinally sound, the rest will take care of itself.

If you can teach them a correct sound doctrine, the rest will take care of itself.

And I ran with it because I was stupid I mean I hate to say it I know that that's going to offend a lot of people and I'm going to qualify that so don't get mad at me yet There are people who believe that that is true But they're not thinking of the other side of the equation and the other side being you can try to teach them sound doctrine But you have a level of learning that goes far beyond what they have Because they've been trained everything to be different and I'm going to use this example

Which is a I'm not sure it's the best example, but off top of my head If somebody were to tell you it's a really good thing if you rotate your tires often on your car That's actually true. It's a good thing you you will wear the tires evenly. That's good But what happens in these extremist groups?

They'll take something that's so simple that everybody else has a common sense understanding and they'll take it to an extreme level so say they're preaching well, you need to change the tire. You need to rotate the tires every day So now the frame of reference is different So if I come to you and I say, Jad is good to change your tires frequently Your your frame of reference is okay. I must do this every day. He just said that he affirmed it But he didn't really affirm it. You're two people speaking Basically two different languages, and that's really what I'm driving at

When you're in that mindset you've been trained that the end of the world is coming soon Every single aspect of Conversation has that frame of reference. So when you're talking in the background I'm thinking okay. I ran as having this meltdown right now that's going to wreak havoc in the gasoline systems of the world That's part of the coming in time and I can see that the end is coming my frame of reference is grounded in that So when you come to me, you've never been in this kind of thing your frame of reference is not grounded in the fear that we had

So the two languages don't actually work together It's you might as well be speaking Spanish and I'm speaking English and I don't understand Spanish. That's really how it is Now take it a step further We were trained in the movement that Separation is a good thing and we were trained to those same extremes like rotating the tires I've heard I can't tell you how many times Jesus said it will cause father to separate from son mother from daughter all of all of those references in the Bible are just pounded in my head but We thought separation meant from other Christians so we had taken it to an extreme level

Anytime somebody talks about a passage that's like that To a person who has escaped that type of group Well, they just left their closest friends. They just left all of their family all of their friends everything they had They left behind they feel like they're actually fulfilling that passage And you're trying to get them into a new body of people and so now they're part of it wants to go down the martyr complex route and the other part is thinking, but I really need friends.

So really, the underlying issue, that is a psychological problem. You really need to go into some counseling when you're at that level of destructive. But there are people out there that try to fight it with theology instead of proper counseling.

Yeah. I'm kind of like you, it really doesn't work first off. When you first come out, you really, really need, even if it's not a therapist or a licensed counselor, you need at least a minister who's willing to sit and listen to you and hear you before trying to correct you.

The problem is, as I experience when I left the group, there are a lot of a lot of ministers who really want to correct you first. Yeah. It does not work. Yeah. Yeah. Because you need to rebuild the house immediately.

There's this sort of desperation to both on the individual level and on the then past story level, there can be this obsession with like, don't deconstruct too far. We have to have these sort of foundations.

We got to have these pillars, which honestly, this is why, and I've talked about this before on here, I, the healthiest from a psychological perspective, an emotional perspective. I think that when people have just lost religion entirely, I've seen quicker processes of healing, not to say that they can't reconstruct or refine their religious identity afterwards, but when you, it's so difficult because it's every piece of your doctrine is so intertwined with the doctrine that you were a part of, and that's, I think, that's what the scary part of it.

I remember myself being like, I can't question prophecy because then, I don't know why, but it was like, well, if I question prophecy, then I'll just question God. It's sort of like, if God isn't speaking, then God doesn't exist, and that's not necessarily a rationale.

Again, that's not necessarily, you could totally, I could be like, oh, okay, prophecy as I grew up with, I can let that go, and still totally have a firm understanding of God exists and maintain my Christian sort of rudimentary basic beliefs system, but for, but when I was like 24, 25, I remember this, I remember this mental hang up, and I can still almost even feel it where...

I would be questioning, because of course I was a very questioning individual who's trying to get to the core of what was going on, but then my questions would inevitably have limitations where thought processes would go so far and then they would hit this wall where internally I was like, okay, if you take one step farther, the whole house is coming down.

And honestly, it wasn't until I allowed the whole house to come down and was like, okay, well, like, so then I don't believe in God. And there had to be that moment of me saying, okay, let me just, let me just start again, you know, and once I step past that, I remember I can still think about where I was.

I was on a walk in near my old apartment and I can still see like the, I can hear the walk signal going on because I'd hit the button and there was the walk signal that was going off and the, so it allows you to go and on that block I had been hitting that wall and then going back around and then hitting the wall and then stopping and hitting the wall and then finally I was like, well, what if I just didn't?

What if I just let it go? And I remember as I started walking the street, it's like, I believed in God on one side of the street and then I didn't believe in God by the other side of the street.

And I think that this is going to be very hard and people are not going to love what I'm about to say here, but I think that was probably the most singular healing experience that I had internally.

There was other things that happened, but that was one of the most important deep programming moments for me because it was the last real bit of leverage that all of these really nasty belief systems that I had grown up with.

It was the last thing that they sort of had to cling onto and once I sort of cut that, then I finally could be like, okay, what do I believe? And then I started reading Kierkegaard and I started reforming my worldview and repaste it together and had a different sort of conception of God and went through.

But that moment for me I think was so important and I think that for people who are listening, I think there's probably going to be people who are right there and in this really difficult situation where they have these, like I can't let go of this belief because if I do everything comes crashing down and sometimes you've got to let it come crashing down.

And again, regardless of whether or not it's about a good doctrine or rebuilding the house, I think that people just having the space and freedom that they can allow that conceptual scheme that they have built in their heads, allow that to crash and feel that the people around them will still love them and care about them and be there for them is incredibly important to anybody's transition to or deprogramming of,

we could call it bad doctrine, we could call it cult beliefs, whatever deprogramming of whatever that you wanna call it, I think that having that safety and security to re-pick up the pieces or to let the police drop is so important.

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One of the things that so many people miss whenever somebody leaves one of these groups is that every single person who leaves it, whether they are Christian afterwards or not, they all, in my opinion, become atheists for a brief second of time.

Because they've been taught a false god, you have to tear the false god down. And when you tear it down, you have to decide what is God. So there's this moment in time where you have nothing and then you have to rebuild.

That is the most difficult process to go through. You're basically shaping your own identity, but it gets worse than that. You were trained in these movements not to trust your own judgment. So whenever you're in a high control, high spiritual environment, they're telling you that don't trust your own judgment, trust the leader's judgment.

He will give you all of the answers to all of your questions. Well, now suddenly you found out that those answers are wrong. Yeah. And how did I not know that they were wrong?

I was in the group, I'm smart, I'm a smart man. How did I not know that they were lying to me this whole time? So what happens is your system completely collapses. And everything...

They told you about God, you start going back through all of the prophecies, all of the Bible passages that were your favorite, it's all of the different things that you believed. And you start to realize that when it's like pulling, you ever played Django, you pull that bottom, little bottom block out, the whole things come crashing down.

If you've got one solid false doctrine that everything's built on. And what happens for most people is they'll start pulling out little pieces at the top and they're afraid to address that big bulk that's at the bottom.

So they take off the top and say, I'm still a Christian. But they still got this thing underneath that's really, really bad that came directly from the cult and indoctrination. And then what happens is, like I said at the beginning of this, now you've got somebody who is trying to help you in a Christian way with good intentions.

And they say, okay, let's rebuild this at the top. And they're really not addressing the core. So that core still exists. What happens? And I've actually seen this quite a few times now, though the people get into a church, they have people who are doing this and they're so happy, they feel free.

They have this, I hate to say it, but it's like the smiling kid through the graveyard for one to five to seven years. And then suddenly somebody pulls out that one Django piece. And the whole thing comes crashing down and their world has just ended in the new church.

So now they begin to lose confidence in the new church because, oh my gosh, how did that happen? And you can't tell somebody, okay, your entire world view, everything that you believe is going to come crashing down, fix that first and then go into a new church.

I'm not saying that at all. But you do have to address the core problem. And when you do, it's going to come crashing down. What really people need, they need a strong support group of people who can help them win at crashes because they have also gone through the crash.

And I think that people who have gone through the crash or even hearing testimonies, I think this is one of the biggest things that has encouraged me and sharing about my story in my life is there's a lot of people who are in the midst or have been going through the crash and hear a bit of my story or this isn't just about me, but from where it's felt how you both share in my story is that just when you're in the crash, it's an incredibly isolating alone period where you feel uniquely like you are dealing with something that

no one else understands or has gone through. And I think that makes a whole lot of sense. Like if you are a part of a community that was very specific in its doctrine and very like specific in its sort of apocalyptic or religious makeup, deprogramming it.

It feels different. Like you can read about people coming out of other cults and whatnot, but it just doesn't feel quite the same. And you also, it's you. It's you are then in this place of being like, well, who am I?

What do I believe? What do I think of myself? I had so much self pride and identity built into this idea that like I was hearing the Lord speak to me in my Bible studies.

And now I don't know if I believe that anymore. I don't, you know, that fire tunnel that I went through at Bethel, like I felt changed as I went through that. Do I have to rethink through that experience and reform who I am?

And it's incredibly terrifying experience. And I think that that's why, you know, I want it will, it will be terrifying. Like I wish that I could get on here and say that it won't that it's easy and you get through.

And I mean, I talked about the, I believed in God by one side of the street and by the other side of the street that my belief had totally changed. Which is true, like what's schematically, I think that there was a mental shift and I think that those mental shifts can happen incredibly quick.

What I did not say is that I was married during that time. And then I, because of that experience, not just because of that, there was other things too. But like my shift in my faith and my belief very much impacted the fact that I very quickly got a divorce after that in my relationship with my, then wife fell apart and my relationship with my father became extremely strained and my relationship with some of my best friends.

I was in a Bible study and like a house church and it wasn't even really that toxic house church or anything like that. But I had suddenly lost a piece of connection with many of people I cared about.

So as much as it took me only a crossing of the street distance to sort of let that Jenga fall, the consequences of that in my life were incredibly difficult and to be honest, I even had a lot more resources than a lot of other people.

Like there was a lot of people in my life who were there and supporting me and wanted to hear me ask questions and we're going through some of the same, like whether D programming or D converting in general

or just D programming from sort of IHOP version of Christian and indeed there was a lot of people who were going through that that I could kind of talk with and identify with who were very empathetic.

And but even that, like there is a darkness, you know, dark nights of the soul period. And after I had that jenga fall down, and I, I think one thing that is very hard that is specific to the sort of new apostolic reformation world, I'm sure it is for other sort of cool communities as well, but the desire for supernatural giftings and the excitement and frenzy of the world that we have talked about is so enticing and exciting. It is also something that talks about radical transformation all the time. I mean, that's how you get people

into these worlds. That's the cell is your life will be changed in an instant. All of these revival groups and revival meetings are all about the presence of God will come and touch you and your life will be changed in addiction and pain and these feelings of loss will be healed in a second because that's God's power. And a lot of people do feel some of that to begin with, where it is radical immediate transformation. I mean, this is that I'm using language that literally, I think Bethel uses a lot of this language. It talks about radical transformation.

The harsh truth of life is that things don't happen radically and quickly. Like they just don't. They, they, the ship turned slowly. And I remember talking with someone even within the last few months about how I was talking with someone who was still at Bethel. And I, I think they were a very good person. And I very much appreciated the conversation with them and they're doing what they can to help advocate for system changes of accountability in Bethel. So all of, all really good things, but they were talking about my dad and they're like, hey, we can,

there is this new, I don't remember what they called it, but it was basically like a center. It wasn't a rehabilitation center. They called it something different. It literally might have been called a transformation center. I think I may have even mentioned this on a previous podcast, but it was a place where they were like, hey, I want you to tell your dad about this. He can come get healed of drug addiction, of alcohol addiction and, you know, mental health stuff.

I've seen people transformed. It's a week long process. And I remember being very immediately frustrated while on the phone call with this person, because I was like, this is not a week. You don't, you don't go and spend when you have a lifetime of alcohol and drug and mental health, like that is a, that is something that my dad will, if he so shows, and I'm hoping he does, if he's choosing to address those issues, it will take him his entire your life to get out of that because, you know, the whole, the body keeps score from like a very

physical and physiological thing. And just even like a spiritual and emotional thing, especially when it comes to addictions like, it takes time, it takes effort. And you, it takes the individual being brave enough and confident enough and committed enough to making that decision every single day. And I think the bill of goods that these new apostolic reformation worlds sell is that, hey, we can do it in an instant. We can give it to you right now. No costs, zero, you know, zero down payment, no crossup front, zero APR, you know, like you, it's a sales technique

to be like your life will transition the moment that you step into our doors. And it will be different. And so I think that it's uniquely difficult for people coming out of that world to then be like, hey, not only are you going to lose all of this stuff, it's going to take years, months, maybe even decades for you to deprogram and to not be dealing with some of the wounds that you gained in this world. And it's so much easier to be like, okay, well, I'm going to just ignore it.

I'm not going to step out because I'm not, I'm not ready to do a two, three-year process where I feel terribly alone. I'm not willing or that's, you know, going back to the why people are out of the frying pan into the fire. You go, you step out, you immediately feel this loneliness and isolation. And then you find a different fix to be like, okay, well, this group is structured very the same, but their leader hasn't committed sexual assault or something like that. And so therefore, they must be a better group and community. And it's the same stuff, just different

branding than or 10 years ahead of time. And so I think that that's, unfortunately, I think that that's what makes it such a hard sell is that it takes time and it's going to be hard for a really long time. I want to circle back to something you said. I've talked about this before, but very minimally, because there are topics that are really hard for people who are thinking about leaving. And this is one of them. Picture a Halloween party where you come to the party and there's a man that's standing there giving you the mask that you're going to wear and gives you a

slip of paper that says you're going to become this character. So here's your mannerisms. Here's how you're going to act. You're going to wear this mask. And then you get into the party and they're telling you on that piece of paper, if you leave this party, you can never come back into this party.

And then suddenly everyone in the party gets amnesia and they try to figure out who they are. And the only thing they have is piece of paper and that mask. And so to continue wearing the mask, now picture two of those people get married. And they still have amnesia. And they still keep in character. And they still wear the mask. That's extreme of an example. But if you think about what's happening in these groups, and this is not my opinion, you can go read, I think I read that exact, maybe not the exact example, but very similar in Dr. Stephen Hasen's combating cult mind control. When you're in a

group and you get married, you are being given an identity from the leader. And that identity isn't yours. And what happens is your own personality tries to conform to the identity. And it creates your internal makeup of personality. It's not yours, but it is. It's yours combined with the identity of the group. So you have a personality type that's not really yours. Yeah.

What happens is when you leave the group, two people will be married. And as that identity starts to erode, they get to the point where now their true identity starts to come forth. And they start to realize that's not the same person that I married when I was in that group. I have talked to people who this is the issue. They suddenly realize I don't know my wife. I have no idea who she is because she had a totally, she was a totally different person in the group or vice versa.

I got lucky with my wife because I realized that when I was in it, I had a different personality and I was a jerk. And I didn't like that person. So I started to come up with a new identity and it was more genuinely me. My wife also is not the person she was in the group at all. You would not recognize her. But I like the person she's become. And so I'm one of the few people that I actually I actually ended up better in a better situation than when I was in it. But there are other people

who when their identity erodes their personality or their erodes the cult identity and the true personality starts to show. They realize that they actually have incompatible personalities. And what do you do with this? Right? Yeah. So there are people who work through it. They'll go to counseling, etc. But in the end, some people and there's a percentage of the people that they realize I can't reconcile this. This is just not going to work. And yet at the same time, in most cases, they've been taught that when you leave your whole world's going to fall apart,

you're going, in fact, I had prophecies about me and my wife getting a divorce within a year after leaving. I actually was prophesied against it. That's a crazy story for another day. But that's the type of mentality that they give you. You can't come back to our Halloween party once you leave. Right? And that's just so wrong. At the same time, you're dealing with that. You're dealing with something else that complicates it further.

You start to feel betrayed by the people that was in said party because they're telling you I can't I can't be with you I can't we can't fellowship because you're not part of us and not everyone in the movement is knowingly doing this They're just that's part of their cult makeup So you start to feel betrayed by the people that you left you start to feel incompatible that the people with the people you left with And now what do you do with this? You're not only are you dealing with all of the things that we've talked about where you're

Identity as a religious person is crumbling. Well now your identity as just simply the family unit is starting to crumble It's really hard and that's why I say you really need a strong group of support people who understand what it is You're going through because they've been through it as well. Yeah, and I think hearing those stories of people going through it and like stories like yours Where I Love what you were saying about how your wife is not the same person that she was but you

Appreciate who she has become and fallen more in love with you know who she's become I think of my best friend you know Just when I that Bible study that I was talking about

when I Kind of had to Deep program so much and and and came out of not just the the I hop Christian world But the Christian world in general and you know, obviously a very terrifying experience my best friend

Had a very similar experience. He had also gotten married Maybe a year before I had and so was was recently married and And both of us I remember us talking about it because we both sort of started Down this road and we both recognized that our wives were not with us on this road and That was going to be a problem and I remember him and I both having this conversation about how he would like We kind of were like I wonder which one of us is going to get divorced or both of us not in a not in a

Hey, we don't want to be with our wives anymore, but just in a we've very Had a very sober understanding that the world that this the steps that we were going down would lead to strain in our new marriages that would inevitably cause

Discussion of divorce if not actual divorce so quickly after that I my Me and my wife got divorced My friend though, however, it was the same thing after about a year or year and a half of some really tough times and their marriage, they both kind of came to a new place and they both kind of changed and took off the mask a little bit and were able to say, oh, the person beneath the mask that we were putting up are, is something that we love and care about and I just actually was visiting them.

I have two kids and are doing super well together and so you can see and you can hear these testimonies. It's not going to be this testimony of like, hey, I stepped out and my marriage and my relationship with my family and all of these things were suddenly perfect and all of these things.

This is just the one thing that was affecting me. You're not going to hear a whole lot of those testimonies of, hey, immediate transformation of freedom. Maybe internally there might be, there certainly are some things where you let that go and you're like, oh, my goodness, I didn't realize how much this particular fear of the end times, for instance, was affecting me on a day-to-day basis and that was terrifying and I suddenly let that go and I'm living a much healthier life.

That certainly does happen, but the stories of transformation are ones that take a long time and even for someone like me where my marriage did fall apart and there were my relationship with my father.

More or less fell apart then and then certainly did later because of things that I have talked about extensively on here, but I am so thankful for, like I am living a much healthier and happier life.

I'm proud of who I am and I have my own conception of who I am and what I bring to the world and to the people around me is so much more stable and so much more actionable.

It's something that I can do on a sing, I can be a better brother, I can be a good teacher, I can be a patient partner, I can be a good friend, I can create good art, I can come on here and share my beliefs like there's so much that has opened up that were much more difficult to do in previous iterations of the life that I was living and I'm so thankful for it.

It just took me three, four years of some really dark times to feel the sort of benefits and freedom that was granted to me from sort of deprogramming and stepping out of a cool community.

I think one of the biggest things that I really need to mention on this is you may swing to the opposite of extreme after you leave. Picture this pendulum and you're in this pendulum of life, I'm using the examples hopefully they resonate with somebody, but you're in a pendulum, for me it was 37 years, so for 37 years, I would...

is in a pendulum that was pushing this big bag of baggage one direction this way, right? So I'm in this extreme. When you leave, suddenly you swing the other way and your baggage is still left back here and oh boy, I'm free, I can rethink everything.

I can, you're bouncing off the walls. And I've watched people, we actually, when I first set up all the support groups, I actually set up a specific group for the people that were the party animals who, oh boy, I'm free.

I've left all the states. What they didn't realize is they had, for me, it was 37 years of pushing that baggage on that pendulum one direction. Yes, I may have swung over here, but I left my baggage back over there.

Right. And I'm not really thinking through it. And some of that I needed. Some of it I didn't, some of it I, you know, it's a big bag of stuff you gotta sort through.

What doctrines do I believe? What prophecies were real? I watched things that I can't explain. Was that all fake? What was that stuff? And so you've got this baggage that you're sitting on the other side.

Yes, you may be off into freedom, but what happens with a pendulum? You're gonna swing back the other way and eventually you're probably gonna come back and hit that. And you do need to address it.

People who bottle that stuff up and say, I'm free, I'm just gonna join a new church. I'm not gonna think about anything in my past. I've had people contact me. Actually, I went out to recently with a person who we met for coffee and they said, I just don't think about it at all.

When people ask me what my background is, I just tell them it's uninteresting. And they don't even address it. So what they're doing basically is they're leaving their baggage back there, but they don't realize there are parts of that that contain their true identity.

And you really have to go through it and separate. Okay, what part of that was the cult creating an identity within me back to the Halloween party? What was on that piece of paper and what did I have before I got amnesia?

You really have to go through that and try to find, basically it's finding yourself. And if you don't do that, if you bottle that up, what happens is it's like the pendulum the other way.

The longer you go, the further you're gonna get and you're gonna come back crashing hard, really hard. I think if that's such a good, such a wise statement, and I think even for me, there was that experience of leaving the IHOP community and swing hard especially when I moved to Colorado after living in Kansas City in my mid-20s after getting divorced and leaving Christianity in general and having all of these experiences that I didn't wanna talk about because I didn't know how to contextualize any of them and whether from Christianity, IHOP divorced any of those things.

Like it was this weird sense where I, in certain communities, or conversations, I would just kind of be someone without. any backstory or any history. And I don't think that it was until 2023 when everything that went down with Michael and then obviously my dad, it sort of forced me to come back this way and not in a way that like, I believed these things growing up, I rejected all of them and then I came back to believe some of them more in a sense of like, I grew up in this world, I wanted nothing to do with that world,

I put it behind me, tried to ignore it and then I sort of was forced to be like, okay, well, what was the world that I grew up in? And how much is that still a part of me?

And I think with my father too, very much being like, how much did I internalize this? How much, especially with relationships, like romantic relationships, I think knowing I never had a very healthy relationship modeled to me from my parents, but not just that in the whole community at IHOP, there were not a whole lot of healthy marriages that were modeled to me.

And now, looking back, you can see that much more extensively too.

And so I think that there was a really important moment to come back and address and be like, hey, what are the things that I can own that are just about me, about like my own patients, my own expectations, one of the big things for me was like how I deal with guilt.

Like I have had a really hard time and been very manipulated by others and very manic myself when it comes to guilt because that was the way that people were manipulated in my community, especially I, like this is not just a Bethel or an IHOP, like IHOP specifically had this huge guilt framework.

I'm a guilt doctrine and we can talk about that more other times, but the idea is that there was always this responsibility that you're not doing enough or what you're doing is not right and that the manifestations of the Holy Spirit are not coming or coming because of things that you did or didn't do and every victory was because of God and every thing that went wrong was because of Jed, and so I would have this sort of very defensive reaction towards any measure of this feeling of guilt and whether it was small things of a partner being like,

hey, you left your dishes out or something like that, that just this overwhelming sense of like I am way too upset and defensive because I got a very simple correction and then I am upset with the person who said that to me because I am not understanding.

My own internal reaction has little to do with what they did. And so I feel all of this like, oh, why are you making it such a big deal? And it's like, I'm the one who's making it such a big deal.

All that to say, I think until this sort of process where I was sort of forced to come back and deal with some of this poor wiring that had been done both because of me and because of the community that I grew up with surrounding guilt.

Because I pendulum swaying back and was sort of forced to address this baggage that I grew up with, I genuinely think that that was very transformational for me and very important for me to be able to realign and fix some of the, some of the pitfalls that I had developed in response to the community that I was raised in.

And I don't agree and don't think that people should just like abandon and not look back, you know, with the, do the whole pillar of salt thing of like run and don't look back unless you turn into a pillar of salt.

I think that, you know, you need to be able to recognize what was the effects of the world that I grew up in. And again, takes a lot of, a lot of courage and takes a lot of like failing, you know, relation for me, it was a lot of me being like poor at maintaining relationships because of this guilt that I was bringing in that was like, okay, I got to get my shit together.

You know, like I got to figure this out. And yeah, so it's not just the first process of leaving. It's also the process of then after some healing coming back to do more of that healing.

And I'm sure there will be another whole swing and it'll keep going back and forth. But yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a process for sure. So here's the worst analogy ever. And everybody can, you're welcome to hate me for it if you want, walking dead the TV show.

There's one lady that's got the swords coolest person on the show if you've seen it. And she has two of the zombies. This is a zombie show. And she's got chains around their necks.

And where she goes, they follow everywhere she goes. They can't make a decision for themselves because there's zombies. They literally, if they were human, they could literally just stop her because there's two, the force of two against one.

But wherever she goes, they're leading. We were in that type of relationship and the cult leader had to change around our neck. That's, that's where I'm headed with that because think of this, we had relationships that you had to be in agreement.

And that goes far beyond marriage. We had relationships with friends. You had to be in agreement. If you disagreed with their theology, their doctrine, whatever it was, you're out. Yeah. And here's the hard part.

When people will get ready to leave, there's this fear that the world is gonna come crashing down. And the reason is because they know they were indoctrinated with that and everybody will cut them off.

Because you had to be in alignment, you had to be in agreement, you had to have the chain around your neck while they led you around like a zombie. When you're in that type of environment and you leave, marriage is really hard.

Because now you're in a world where you're not being led around with the chain around your neck. And what happens whenever you have a different difference of opinion with your spouse? I remember telling somebody, this is probably a year after we left, that my wife and I have never had a single argument.

And they looked at us like, are you kidding me? How does this possible, right? Well, it was because of that. We were so indoctrinated that when the first disagreement happened, our world came crashing down, man.

It was awful. I still remember it, it was awful. And what happens is you leave and you need to build new relationships, but you're so walking on eggshells because you need friends. I need anyone who I can have.

I've lost my friends, anybody, come be my friend. But that's not what you need. You need people that you can build a relationship that does not depend on being in agreement. True friends, they'll disagree, they'll have arguments, they'll, we both like the chief, so I can't use this example with you, but I've got another podcaster who he likes the Steelers and we give each other a bunch of crap because of it.

You need people that have differences of opinion. You're not all zombies with a chain around your neck. So worst example ever, but that's the one that I'll end with. I think that makes a lot of sense.

I wouldn't say it's the worst. We've definitely, I've definitely given worse analogies. So I think that's a good one. Well, anyway, hopefully something we've said has helped somebody because I know every single thing that we've talked about I went through and it was the hardest thing ever.

I know that there are other people that are probably thinking the same thing. So hopefully we've said something to help somebody. Yeah, and just last thought too of help people understand for if you're not in it and you're wanting to help someone who is in it and is stepping out like I think that if there's one thing that sticks with people is just having a sense of empathy for people who grew up or are a part of some of these cool communities that it takes a long time and being patient with them and being there to help them during this long process

is truly the only thing that is going to make it possible for people to get out of it. And I am so thankful for the many people who were there for me. And I don't know if I would be here talking with you, John, if it wasn't for a bunch of different people who were there.

for me, and patient with me, and helped me deprogram. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, my pleasure. Well, you've enjoyed a show, and you want more information. You can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-pranum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.