The Roots of Spiritual Abuse in the N.A.R.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Browns, I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of WilliamBrandomHistoricalResearch at William-Brandom.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Pia Hugo, former sister-in-law to Cheon, who's a super apostle of NAR, and a missionary to the Philippines.

Pia, it's good to be back and to dissect this machine that we have been digging into, and I'm going to, just for you, I'm going to open up just a little bit more than I have ever on the podcast, because I try very hard to separate my family from myself, from what I do, and some of the things they believe, because I don't want people to point to me thinking that I'm looking at my family, and I do all of this because of some ill intent toward my family. I don't do this, right? But my family believes some weird stuff. I'm going

to open up and let it fly in this episode, because it ties directly to what we were talking about before the episode, and it ties to everything that we're going to get into as we develop, we're establishing as the framework that was laid to build this NAR system, and nobody knows how bad it is. I read through the comments and I read people are saying things like, this is serving a different God. Do you know this is serving a different God? If they knew exactly which God it was they were serving, they would attack it all the harder. They

would say, what on earth are you guys doing? I'm going to open that door today. All right, let's do it. So my grandfather, I have mentioned bits and pieces of this, but I'm going to lay it all out, and there are places where you can go online to see all of this.

But we're talking about today, an intersection in time, where Brannem has died, the shepherding movement is starting to evolve, and keep in mind as you think about that, that earned backster was not just Brannem's campaign manager. He was his close friend, spread of the doctrine, taught the doctrine. There was a lot of synergy there between Brannem and backster, and you have people like Tia Lasborn, which I'm about to mention, I've mentioned in the past, but there was a moment in time when all of these people believed that God had came to earth.

I kid you not, they believed that William Brannem had come to earth and God had come into William Brannem, and they were worshipping Brannem as a deity. My grandfather would say things like, we saw God when we saw William Brannum, or he would say, God tabernacled in human flesh.

Now, to the majority of people who look at Brannumism, they can't catch it because in the core central cult of Brannum, they use loaded language and they've actually loaded Bible verses and numbers and chapter numbers, as this thing that they're calling a doctrine, but what they're essentially saying is Brannum was this.

For example, I'm gonna point heavily to this speech that was given by multiple people when Brannum died, this memorial service, picture all of these men, full gospel business men, Brannumites, and William Brannum's son introduces the whole thing by saying he was Malachi four and five, and he was Revelation 10.7.

So he's talking Christian identity, this is William Brannum was the Elijah that returned, and Revelation 10.7 is the mystery of the seals is open. If you follow that passage of text and compare it to their doctrine, they're essentially saying that he was the son of man.

Another one that they will say is Luke 17.30, when the son of man is revealed, that was William Brannum. All of this loaded language. So picture this event, Brannum has died, full gospel business men are gathering together, it's held at a full gospel business men's convention, and then again later at the Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, and there's a speech that you can find online, and you can search any of these quotes, but I'm gonna read you a few quotes from these main figures as Brannum died.

So his son opens it with, he was the messenger of Malachi 4.5 and Revelation 10.7, and then another speaker gets up and carries it a little bit further. He, Brannum, represented the Lord Jesus Christ, and then he goes on to say it was Jesus Christ being manifested in the church in these closing days, so the believing the end of the world is coming, and he would say he was a prophet, but he was more than a prophet, which is a phrase I heard often.

He was the son of man essentially. Tommy Osborne, this is very key, because Tommy Osborne was working with Gordon Lindsay, who was the founder of Christ for the nations, who trains all of these people in deliverance.

He was very close to William Brannum. He believed Brannum was God in the flesh, and he opens by saying in short, we know as William Brannum was sent to demonstrate God again in the flesh, that's how he opened up his speech, and then later he explicitly said it, God came again in human flesh.

Wow. He went on to say he stepped down and sit a little man, a prophet, but more than a prophet this time, a Jesus man this time, a Jesus man full of God. And then towards the end he says, I saw Jesus that night in human form that they called William Brannum.

So picture Tiel Osborne saying these heretical things, these are horrific things, in front of other people who are in the same movement. So it's not just that he's saying it, you have an audience of people.

Tiel Osborne is one of the people who sent training materials to the leaders of the Shepparding movement when they began what essentially evolved into Shepparding. And I won't go too far, because I want to save some of it for the podcast, but I'm laying the bedrock so that you can understand that this wasn't serving the God of the Bible.

This was actually something quite different that was developing. Oh my gosh, my mind is just like exploding right now,

because I have been following your past podcast, John. I mean, I have a lot of catch up to two, because you've done so much. But what you just told me, I don't know, is just so hard to wrap my brain around that all these well-meaning Christians, I mean, if we can even call them Christians,

could actually believe all this nonsense. Like, wow, so I'm, well, I'm glad he started there.

Because now we are going to pull it further into like the 70s and the 80s and 90s, which is, by the way, it's so interesting to me that William Bratham was, he died in 1965, right?

And I think I told you I was born in 1965. So, and, you know, even though I was 19

by the time I got sucked into this system, this noir system, I was Catholic from, you know, from my babyhood till 19 years old. But obviously from the time Bratham left Earth as a human being, by the way.

He is six feet under, like everybody else, you know, this get resurrected, by the way, Jesus, is the only man who has ever and will be resurrected, right? But yeah, during that time, this, this noir system, this PDI, I'm gonna just shepherding about this, shepherding movement, PDI, noir.

These are the three big cogs that are now going to really go full force coming from, Um, um, um, the laddering movement, um, which random was a part of. So, all right. So I, I want to pick up where, um, I left off the last time where I, I talked about three men in particular that I was, um, in personal contact with.

So starting with, of course, Jay, um, former brother in law, he was also the senior pastor, um, during this time, during the PDI movement days, um, he was senior pastor of abundant life community church, which was in Pasadena, California.

Um, then we have, um, Larry Tomzack, who was the co-founder and director of People of Destiny International PDI and my highest boss, right? So last time I talked about how I was once an employee of PDI.

And then, um, the third guy is CJ Mahaney, who was my senior pastor, my very first senior pastor, um, of Covenant Life Church was, which was also in Maryland, um, which is where PDI headquarters was. So these three men, um, I mean, little did I know, right, that they would have such an impact on my, my, not just my life, but my family's life, my children's lives.

And, um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back, you know, in the, let's go back to the 70s when they all met. All three men were, I think in their late teens or early 20s, can't be sure, but they were all part of the Jesus movement of the 70s. They all got radically saved.

And somehow, you know, they will say that they were all three divinely connected. And they started tag, taken gift, which was this small Bible study group meeting in someone's living room in Washington, DC. And these three men would take turns, you know, teaching straight from the Bible. And then it just mushroomed into this huge group. And I think, um, it's high, taken, give had about 2000 members. Pretty sure they weren't needing at a living room at this point. So, um, obviously, they needed a bigger place. Obviously, they needed a more formalized structure, right? These hippies couldn't continue just like, um, winging it every,

Sunday. So they needed some system of church governance. So now this is where the people that you know about John and the people I know about, this is when now they converge into this point of intersection. So there were five founders of the Shepardine movement as you've been teaching and one of them is Derek Prince. So when these three young men needed a mentor, needed someone to kind of guide the way for them, incomes Derek Prince.

So Derek Prince kind of became like a father figure. And one of the things that he brought with him from the Shepardine movement was this idea of a single shepherd or single pastor which would who would now have absolute authority over everyone.

I mentioned this body of people that were believing something so wrong. It was a false God. They were believing this this dead human guy was a God, right? Well, think of the people that I'm talking about. You've got earned backster. You've got the Fort Lauderdale Five, which included Derek Prince. Then on the Jesus movement side, you had Lonnie Frisbee who's working with Chuck Smith, John Wember, Lonnie Frisbee, who stayed in an apartment owned by Derek Prince in Florida. This is all connected more than you can possibly imagine. And there's a reason for it. As we said in the last episode, the Jesus movement had grown until it was this,

it was a train barreling down the tracks and nobody was really sure where it was headed. So you had these men who wanted to establish where it's headed. That's not a bad thing. I'll give them that it's probably a good idea to try to put some sort of boundaries. But what they did was they took this false God and many of the things that he said. And over time, they eventually stripped his name off of it. So Brandon's name is not mentioned.

It starts to become shepherding documentation. These conventions. You go to a convention and you might see literature that's published by voice of healing back then. Later it becomes Christ for the nations. You get teal Osborne with his training materials. That's entering into literature published by Eldon Purvis, who was one of the most vocal and public Christian identity leaders of his time, who was also instrumental in founding the shepherding movement.

So he's working with them until they find out that he also was homosexual and he gets booted out. But all of this is connected. And like I said, Brandon's name eventually gets wiped out.

but it's wiped out from a movement that literally believed he was God in the flesh and he taught them the ways that they should behave like gods. Well, let me tell you, these three young men had no problem learning how to act like demigods.

I'm gonna say it that way. I don't think they ever saw themselves as gods. I don't think they would ever say that. So let's just use demigods. They were still partly human. I don't think I've ever heard any of them say that they were like Jesus incarnate, like William Random did.

But, you know, these three young men, again, Larry Tomsack, CJ Mahaney, Che on, they were very ambitious, very charismatic and they were very interested in controlling the little kingdom.

That they had somehow almost by accident built. I don't think any of them realized when they were first saved, you know, as hippies, that what they were creating would morph into this, I don't know, little machine,

you know, because you already have this big machine, right? That Brano had created, but they had their own little machine in Washington, DC. That at first was not connected, but I honestly feel like when these three men, you know, kind of like crashed into Derek Prince's big machine, it was like a perfect fit if you know what I mean.

All four men just developed this bond very quickly and like I said, they were fast learners, John, because all of a sudden they were calling the shots. They were probably just in their late 20s, but now they were part of, again, that cutting edge movement.

They already had, you know, thousands of young people all under the age of 30, right? Hungry for more of God, you know, needing guidance, because again, like we said before, they're not going to trust anybody above 30, right?

Now, now somehow these three men decided to trust Derek Prince. I don't know why, but, you know, that's, I guess that's the charisma of Derek Prince. But definitely all the younger ones under Larry C.J. and Che, you know, we were more than happy to comply.

And that includes me. Hello. I was, um, yeah, I was 22 years old, I believe, when I was hired by, by PDI and, you know, talking about authoritarianism, I just, I just remember like Larry Tomzack, you know, who, again, he was my, he was my big boss, my, my direct bosses were the controller and the conference director, but every now and then Larry would walk in and say, hey, Pia, are you doing anything? And of course, I was, you know, I was busy doing stuff. I was like, um, I really need a babysitter this afternoon. And I would be like, well, I have a deadline, blah, blah, blah, like,

oh, no, no, no, let me talk to them. And of course, right, my, my, my direct bosses couldn't say no to the great Larry Tomzack. So I would sometimes find my afternoon being filled with, you know, babysitting duties, picking up clothes from the dry cleaner. Sometimes when they would have their like pastor's meetings, you know, their directors meetings, I would make coffee for them, right? Like, that was not in my job description. But back then, I did not even know how to say no.

Like, I honestly felt like these guys are, are very important. And, you know, we're, we're all people of destiny, right? They are fulfilling their great destinies. And hey, if I can make coffee, if I can take care of their children, you know, if, um, whatever, if, if I, can I just share one little anecdote? Yeah. Um, so again, as assistant to the conference director, I was the one calling hotels and booking rooms whenever these guys would travel. Well, Larry, um, came back from a trip and he realized that he had left his electric razor in one of the hotel rooms. And he called me

and said, could you call that hotel and have them ship my, ship my electric razor to the offices, right? And I thought to myself, you want me to just buy you one? Like, you know, go down to drug store and buy you one. I think that would be cheaper. Yeah. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, that was a, that was a gift from my wife, Doris. That's special to me. So please, you know, go call the hotel. Well, of course, I call the hotel and they're like, uh, no, like, it's probably thrown out, right?

Or whatever somebody's using it, you know, so, so I call him back. And I say, I am so sorry. Like they don't have it anymore. And he just kind of went ballistic. He was so distraught.

And honestly, that was the first time John that I started to see the feet of clay, right? Like, hmm, I, you know, I thought we were all supposed to be like, Jesus, like, this is not very Christ-like behavior.

So these were the things that I would observe, you know, behind the scenes. And, and I was also in charge of like photocopy, you know, back in the day, it was not as easy as the photocopy machines that we have now, you know, it took a long time and, you know, and I would have these like thick manuals that I had to photocopy.

So while I'm photocopying all these manuals and handouts for their leadership conferences, their, their pastors conferences, I would just read them, right? Like I would just read and like, let me see what these guys are talking about in these all important, you know, close doors, only type meetings, you know, no women allowed and, and mind you, most of these leaders, most of these pastors, we were PDI at one point was overseeing 40 churches all over America.

And you know what, one thing I remember, John, they were almost all white men. It never occurred to me before, but, you know, there was really no, no diversity. So, so anyway, I'm just reading through these manuals and you know what some of the concepts were that I picked up.

And of course, it's also in the PDI magazines. I'll mention three. So one was, of course, the five fold ministries. They were really unpacking the importance of the five fold ministries. And so part of that, of course, number two is the rise of the modern day apostles and prophets.

And so by this time, you know, we did have the examples of William Seymour, you know, Charles Poirot, and I'm sure William Bram is somewhere there, like all these guys that we, you know, that they needed to emulate, like these guys, you know, laid the path.

So now we're going to move that movement forward. So, so that was the second, the third one. And was, of course, the idea that we are living in the last days, and we all need to prepare for the rapture.

We were all, you know, needing to build this church, this last day's church, which was also the pure and spotless bride of Christ. So what does that mean in layman's terms? We just meant that we had to be pure and holy, as God was pure and holy.

So here's the big question, John. How do we become pure and holy when we are just rotten, stinking sinners? So I'm going to ask you that question, John. What do you think, what, what answer do you think they came up with?

Well, I'm going to answer it in a long, drawn out way, because I want to paint an illustration that combines all of this, because it makes sense if you understand the doctrine. And again, people today, they don't know it, because they don't, they can't look inside this box.

This is a sealed, brand-of-might coat box. But if you understand the doctrinal pieces, all of it makes sense. So you use the word demigods. That actually is the correct word, however, not a single person in it who is behaving like this would call themselves this because what they have instead is a manifestation of God.

I mentioned the Bible, the Bible verses that are used as loaded language. So the big one is the Elijah. Malachi 4, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the end of days.

They believe that was Brannum. Then they say, when the Son of Man is revealed, that's when Brannum is revealed as the God-man. Well, once you accept the God-man, then the God-man dies what happens.

That was the question that was asked. So eventually what happens is that transition to, okay, the God-man came, and now God is manifesting Himself in this Elijah form as a corporate body Elijah to the church.

So we all have it, but we must have the fivefold ministry because there are different levels of manifestation. I've got a lot because I'm an apostle in a movement. You've got a little because you're just a rank and file member, so they created this pyramid, right?

They're teaching how these modern apostles and prophets will have the power to deliver demons, and they can forcibly do it with their own power. It's not simply, so there is a difference between biblical deliverance and their version.

In biblical deliverance, you pray to God, God does it, anybody can do it. You don't have to be an apostle. In that version, you have to have that pyramid, and the guy at the top has the most power to do it, and then it goes down the chain.

So that spawned off deliverance ministries. Where it ended up is the story that I'll give you. of you. I was in that movement and I encountered somebody in business and they said, how can you work in business with these people? And they're referring to the people of my call, right? And I said, what do you mean? And he says, these people think that they own the world, they own the earth and wear their servants. And I said, how do you mean? And he started going through examples of how they were just so rude and they would ask of

him things that they would ask nobody in the right mind would do this. He said, they're the worst possible customers you can have these people. And he said, how are you not like this? Because I was never like that. And I stopped and thought about it. And I went back through my memory of all of the people that I knew. And I was like, oh my gosh, this guy's right. But I didn't want to say this move. I said, well, some people just have a personal issue. And I left it at that. Now that I'm out and I'm starting to understand

how this works, when you believe that you are God's gift to the earth, and that the earth is about to end, and that you're powered with this manifestation of God in you. And those people don't have God in them. And they're about to die. They become your servants in your head. So mentally it changes you. And you start to look at people like this.

Well, again, go back to the documentation that's spreading through all of these conventions. They're teaching that concept because they want it to spread through the movement that this is the corporate Elijah. And we must perfect the church because once we do, we're out of here. The problem is it never happened because that's a works righteous face. You can't face. You can't do this. And so in the end, what they had was something that didn't work. So they started trying different ways to perfect the church. And that's actually what birthed the new Apostolic Reformation. 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 Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So John, there's some verse that's been kind of running through my head as we're talking about all of this. And it's...

Matthew 15, 14, and it goes like this, leave them. We need to leave them for they are all blind guides. And if the blind, lead the blind, both will fall into the pit. And now that I know what I know, thanks to you and your research and the other, you know, research I've done myself. Man, like, it all started again way back. And one blind guy is now leading this blind guy. And then it's leading this blind guy. And now we come to the 1980s, right, where I am just like taking everything in like it's a gospel truth. And I don't realize that

all of these men who are paying my salary, who are leading my church and who are supposed to be like my spiritual fathers are all blind. You know, none of us knew this. We were all grouped. We would have these big PDI conferences where all the churches would come together under one roof. We called them celebration international. And there was, it was so big that we had to split it between the East Coast and the West Coast. And I would go to these conferences and I would look at the sea of people. And all I could think of back then, John was, wow, I am

so honored that I get to be a small little part of, you know, surely this is God's movement. This must be the most important movement that God himself is doing over planet earth. And so, yeah, little did I know that we were all being dragged into the same pit. So I want to go back to what you're saying about Derek Prince and his deliverance, his methodology, right, for deliverance.

I guess you could call him like the deliverance guru of the PDI movement. Everything he taught us about how to cast out demons, how to cleanse ourselves so that we become that pure and holy bride. Like we just ate it all up. And there were, you know, class after class, like it was being taught from the top down, right. And

You know, it got to the point, John, where we did not want to lock eyes with any of these leaders, these pastors, you know, these BDI directors, because again, we looked at them as like demigods and somehow if we locked eyes with them, they might see something in us.

And, you know, and I laugh about it, but I actually saw some of these leaders have private meetings in their offices. And I remember one of my co-employees, you know, he was called in and then when he came out, he looked all white and he looked like he was going to cry and I'm like, are you okay? And then he's just like, well, I just got rebuked, like really?

What you do? And, you know, I don't quite remember the exact details, but I think he was just questioning, you know, this guy eventually left. You know, whenever anyone dares to question the authority of these men or any of their doctrines or any of their, you know, practices.

And honestly, you don't even need to be a Bible scholar. You can just like look at some of the verses and then compare it to what they're doing and it's like it's glaring. It's like, hold up a second. Like, it's not even biblical what you guys are teaching. And I think that's what this guy was doing.

And so, you know, when you would dare to question or use your critical thinking, you were accused of having like a spirit of rebellion, right? Or being unsubmissive and, you know, what's wrong with you? Just get with the program. And for women, sometimes it's what we would wear to church.

Not me, of course, because I knew better. But, you know, I remember some of these younger girls. I mean, they're teenagers. And, you know, being told, oh, you're causing the men to stumble. So, you know, you have a spirit of Jezebel, you know, spirit of seduction.

And you tell a poor like 18 year old things like this, like you have these demonic spirits in you. I mean, it's going to cause a complex, right? Like, you're just, you're just being an innocent, you know, young, young girl living in the 80s, you know, listening to Madonna. Like, have you seen what Madonna wears on stage? Like, like for them, it's all.

part of the culture for the young girls, but in the eyes of these men, you know, oh my gosh, we cannot have that, you know, you are bringing in demonic spirits, like it just went to the extreme.

And so, yeah, I wanted to emphasize that, that the deliverance ministry that was brought in by Derek Prince very soon became one of the most important and prevalent ministries within the PDI system. And like you said, obviously, it went further when Che, Che on and Luangal started NAR in 1994.

You know, anytime I publish anything about Derek Prince, he apparently has this strange cult following that they will seek out an attack and try to destroy anything that could potentially be negative about him, which is, it raises a few red flags that that exists.

But when you consider all of the connections, it's not just that I'm talking about guilt by association. These are men who believe the same thing. They taught the same doctrines. You can go to the Full Gospel Businessmen's website and you can type in Derek Prince and William Branham.

You can find Derek Prince in the lineup of ministers whose headline speaker was William Branham. Derek Prince is right there on stage with him, right? And if you knew how that worked, you can see these pictures.

You can see all of these men sitting together in these folding chairs and then the guy comes out and speaks. They're all together, right? Well, carry that just a step further. So one of the things that Branham taught that was apparently adopted by the charismatic movement was that the healing was actually like the bait on a hook.

Branham would teach this over and over. He would say, I would cast the hook out and it was the healing. That would attract people to the faith. Once I got them, I snagged them.

Basically, I recruited them if you think in the cult language. But that concept now that he's dead and the healing revival starts to fade away, what do you do with this? You have to shift.

So you start to believe that, okay, the healing has passed. We have just seen Elijah Com, the son of man Com. We now have the corporate body Elijah. So what you're talking about in the 80s, this is a very important shift.

And you have to understand all of these different streams of doctrine that all come together for this shift. You're starting to introduce the discipleship doctrine. We need to disciple the Jesus people movement. We're bringing in the accountability doctrines.

We need people who are accountable to the leaders. Otherwise, this movement's gonna go just crazy. So therefore, we must also bring in the spiritual covering doctrine. You need somebody who's covering you from all of this evil that's in the world.

With that came past oral authority. the apostolic oversight. You had all of this weird thing that's starting to develop and in the end, what it is is a means to control a mass number of people who have just come into this movement.

How do you control them? You create a hierarchy. We're the generals, you're the rank and file members. That's exactly what happened. And it goes back to something that you said. One of the doctrines that Brannum taught but was not original to Brannum was this idea of perfection.

We as an end time church, we must be perfect. And they would use passages grossly out of context, be ye therefore perfect, that kind of passage. They would use that passage to say and mean that our church can't go away in the rapture until we are perfect. And so who's not perfect? I remember hearing sermons like which one of you is doing it? Which one of you? And so what happens in the congregation, everybody starts looking at each other trying to find who's got the secret sins, right? And another thing, this is really critical too. It's very important because my

family was very close with the Brannum family. And Brannum did this. He put on this air that he could peer into your very soul. And we have proven beyond the shadow of it out. He was lying through his teeth, but he would give you that impression that when he's looking at you, he knows your secret thoughts. He did this. And he did this to a very excessive level. His cult became very destructive.

I won't say that the other leaders did it then. But remember, this is the guy who was the son of man. And now that's starting to spread through the movement, even those who weren't in a heresy belief of this, they would still go back and say, well, he spearheaded the revival. He's the leader of the healing revival. This is what he did. And it worked. Maybe we should do it too. I think that's how it happened. And so there's a method to the madness that I have. I don't know if you've seen the different series of podcasts that I do. One of them, which doesn't get as much recognition

as it should, is with Chino Ross, who was out of the Hobart Freeman movement. He is a strong example of what this type of documentation that they would publish, the literature they published, would do. It spins off destructive cults. Hobart Freeman would go get this literature telling him how he can perfect his church. He tries to do it. And they went off into that several people died in his church. It's horrific. But that was the shift that was happening in the 1980s.

Wow. Yeah, no, I am starting to connect the dots. And the more I do that, really the scarier it gets, because it is just downright dangerous. Last time I was here, I said, you know, it's one- thing for these false teachings to harm our minds.

But it was more than just our minds or our ability to think critically. It was our souls, our emotions and our physical bodies. And so I wanna circle back to that book that I mentioned the last time that was written by Larry Tomzack.

And if you wanna bring up the cover of that book again, so it's God, the Rod, and your child's bod by Larry Tomzack and which became a bestseller, by the way. And it's still being sold today, I checked.

I would not recommend it, but it was required reading for all the PDI churches. And I think I mentioned, yeah, last time that my own husband own husband at that time used it. And he would use the rod to supposedly discipline, my two-year-old, but he would do it excessively because he could not control his anger.

Now, of course, Larry used that same method as well. And so this is the point where I wanna bring up a lawsuit

this was a 2012 lawsuit that was brought about by seven women and one male plaintiff. And I'm just gonna read directly from public records because I don't want us to get in trouble. So I'm just gonna read what is out there publicly.

So in this lawsuit, these plaintiffs alleged that they had all suffered severe mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual harm while participating within the PDI network. The lawsuit was filed in October 2012 and it alleged that several church leaders, which again involves Larry Tomzack, the director and CJ Mahaney, the senior pastor of Covenant Life Church.

That they failed to properly report child sexual abuse. They protected the alleged abusers and they participated in a pattern of concealing abuse from civil authorities. Some legal observers and commentators at that time argued that there appeared to be an institutional effort.

to avoid scandal and to protect ministry leadership and of course all the defendants they denied it right they denied any wrongdoing they denied any kind of church cover up

and it is important to note that the case didn't go anywhere not because the allegations were proven to be false but it's because many of the claims were dismissed on procedural grounds, particularly Maryland's statute of limitations. The court ruled that many of the plaintiffs had waited too long under then existing law to bring their claims. Several jurisdictional issues were also raised. So I bring up this lawsuit because I want to share one particular case. One of the plaintiffs her name according to public records is Carla Cole right so this is to protect her identity. Again I'm going to be

straight from public records. Carla Cole accused Larry Tomzak of physical and sexual abuse over a 25 year period beating her on her bare buttocks and assaulting her with plastic and wooden spoons.

This is a direct quote. I mentioned Carla because I actually knew her when she was a young girl and I still know her. She and I are still in contact in fact before this podcast I asked her permission. I asked if it was okay for me to mention this 2012 lawsuit and her case in particular and and the reason why I wanted to end our you know discussion today with this lawsuit is because I just want to remind our audience that this is more than just theological debates that we're doing here right this is more than just a discussion on doctrines and false

teachings and et cetera et cetera stemming from again randomism to lettered rain movement to the PDI movement and now the norm movement. If all it was was just an intellectual dissent from the Bible then okay that's one thing I probably wouldn't be here John because I'm not I'm not intellectual enough I don't know my you know I'm not a theologian right you would have a different guest if that was your intent but I I I am here on your podcast because I want to point out that we're talking about real lives that were ruined.

We're talking about real people who are still recovering after decades of abuse within these very toxic systems. Yeah, one of them is this poor young woman, Carla Cole, who is still feeling the effects, the negative effects on her life, on her body, on her soul, on her mind.

And thank goodness, I know she's gone through therapy, she's still going through therapy. I'm happy to say she's in a much, much better place now. But I really worry about other people that were affected by these movements, John, that some of them have never recovered.

Some of them have walked away from their faith, they've walked away from all churches, and they basically have lost trust, not just in the human beings, but in God himself. And that, for me, is what brings me a lot of sorrow, because they once knew the truth.

They were once on fire for Jesus, just like I was as a 19-year-old. Thankfully for me, God and His mercy allowed me to start reading the Bible for myself and really analyzing what was true and what wasn't true when I was a part of these systems.

And so I just want to end there, John, that I really hope that what we're doing here will make a difference, even if it's just one person listening to this. And they're realizing, like, wow, I was a part of PDI, or even SGM, now there's no more PDI, they've made the name a little more churchy sounding, sovereign grace ministries.

But again, even SGM, this is their roots. I know Chase is not a part of it anymore. I don't believe Larry is a part of it anymore. I think he left in the 90s, but pretty sure CJ Mahaney is still a part of SGM.

So yeah, I say all that to say, I really hope that the scales are starting to come off the eyes of some of your viewers and going back to that verse, let's leave these blind guides.

because these blind guides are leading us to a place none of us want to, none of us want to go to. I've said this to you offline and now I'll say it publicly. Out of all of the series that I'm doing right now, I feel like this is the most important for this reason.

All of the other series we're building up the background knowledge that you need to understand what we're talking about. I've spent over a decade doing this. I've talked about many different doctrines and histories and many different things.

And I'll say it like this. The book that you mentioned, the lawsuit that you mentioned, these are symptoms. This is not the disease. This is the symptom of the disease. And think of some of the doctrines that we've covered historically in the podcast.

Authorities sacred. That's something that was flowing through this movement. Submission is protection. Rebellion is dangerous. The church has been infected. We must perfect the church. We must bring the church to a rapture ready state.

Obedience is godly. The leader is no best. I could go on and on and on through all of these doctrines that combined make exactly the background that is necessary to produce a book like this or to have a lawsuit like this.

And it all comes back to this moment in time. When Brannem has died, they really believed he was god in the flesh. They really believed this. And so they said, what do we do with this? He's gone. He has shown us the way. What did he show us?

And then they tried to dissect what he showed them. And as I've explained and proven and all of the podcasts that I've done, his Brannem's doctrine was so conflicting that you end up with total confusion because one guy will go down this pathway.

The other guy, the polar opposite and they're both teaching Brannemism. And that was really the problem here. You had different movements going different ways arguing about which was right. And it wasn't just Brannem's doctrine they were using. They were using others from the healing revival movement who were also confused because they were in the same movement.

But in the end, where it ended up was the Christians must submit to the pastors and the wives to the husbands, the younger believers to the mature believers. There was this pattern of submission that was established by this movement. This is the central point in time, 1980s when all of this is happening.

Remember John Wimbler is working with these guys at this time. Yes, he may have later said some of these guys were bad, but this was the movement in the 1980s. So as we dissect this machine, as we continue to go, we're going to show how all of that background created the mess that we're in today. And it is a huge, huge mess.

Absolutely. I look forward to our future podcast. So thanks for having me today, John.

And you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org and Pia Hugo Ministries.com. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can check us out on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can check us out on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.