Why People Stay in High-Control Churches

Music Hello and welcome Another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Christian RC, former charismatic in Latin America.

Chris, it's good to be back and to talk about leaving a high-demand group. I have had many people ask me, what makes people stay in these things? And you can actually read this in the comment feeds. People will listen to the R stories and say, well why in the world did you stay in this thing? And it's such a complicated issue because leaving for many people is just not that easy.

They found something that they needed, a community, maybe a sense of direction, or in many cases just simply an answer that they were looking for during a difficult time in their lives. And the truth of the matter is that once you get into the community, sometimes it's very, very hard to get out of it.

So I wanted to talk this through with you because you have some special insight and talking with you, I've learned that what you're experiencing in Latin America is much like we have in the United States.

So let's break this down. Why do people stay in these high-control groups? Hey, hello, John. Thank you for having me on the podcast again and thanks everyone watching. I hope this is very helpful for everyone.

Absolutely. I know people will probably look at me and say, John, this is out of your element. You were born and raised in the group that you escaped, you and your family escaped. And so you have no frame of reference to this thing that we're about to talk about in this podcast.

However, I have worked with many people who were in the support groups who came into the high-demand group or high-control group after they were born. In fact, some people were in it like five years and I often wondered, well, what would make you join in the first place?

Because you're basically forfeiting all of your freedom to believe and be dictated to what you must have as an opinion or what you must believe as your worldview. Why would you do this? Why would you forfeit your freedoms? And if I go back to the laterane answer, Brandon was telling people that a Christian forfeits his rights, which is so wrong in so many ways.

But to the point we're talking about today, why would you stay in it after you realize that you had forfeited your rights? And from the people that I've spoken with about this, there were different varying...

levels of indoctrination and people were in it for different periods of time. Some of them, like I said, as short as five years, some of them came into it at age 18 and 19 and they were in it until their 60s. So for those types of people that were in it either long term or short term, they all had one really common aspect of their joining. For one reason or another, they were vulnerable. And if you think about how the later laterane movement began and the premise behind it, you had all of these people who were coming to the healing lines because they wanted to see

a miracle. Number one, but there were many people who were vulnerable because they needed a miracle. So they came simply because there was something that happened to their mind, body, or spirit that they were just broken down and they needed to find answers. So they came to join this laterane thing. Well, once they're sucked in, they're being controlled. It turned into a high control group. And it was very difficult for many people to leave, especially those who did experience some sort of a change. There were people who were healed for one one way or another. They were healed in this laterane thing or this healing revival thing.

And so for them to leave, they have to think back, well, what was that that healed me? And you and I have talked about this before, they're looking to the man on the platform for their healing or for their having healed them. But he was just the man on the platform. If you believe God heals, he's just the side story. And you actually should be looking up, not straight ahead at the man behind the pulpit. But they do, whenever you're in this type of mentality, you look backwards to the event, the thing that made you seem or feel less vulnerable. And you look at that as an

experience that must make you stay. That's one of the one of the strong aspects of being in this type of movement that has this charismatic style, ministries. So for me, it's really important to understand that people who are leaving, it's not just that they can simply walk away.

They also have to think back and process what it was that made them join in the first place. And conquering that, you know, that tie that's binding you to it for whatever made you vulnerable in the first place, that's really, really difficult. Yes, of course. There's a cycle that I've been investigating kind of trying to find out why it is so hard for people to get out of this high control churches. And mainly trying to, you know, put a name on a lot of the things that I went through because I based on the comments and based on feedback and conversations with a lot

of people. I've come to realize that the same thing that I went through is pretty much like a copy based of the same thing that, you know, other people are going through or went through, not necessarily faith, the construction process or reconstruction process or anything, but just the same things happening over and over again. And you're right, the first step is vulnerability. That's the first stage. And one would think that a vulnerable person is a weak person, not necessarily. To give you an example, it could be a transition period of any kind, relational or job related or, of course,

in a, you know, sickness situation where a person needs some answers, but basically the vulnerability state is just a place where you need answer for any question that you might have regarding your life, your personal life or pretty much anything. So that's so dangerous because everyone goes through those kind of faces, right? Maybe you're changing a job or moving from one state or one country to another and you're vulnerable. In my case, specifically was many things converging at the same time. So I had problems at a job at my job, but I was having a few situations with

my family and having some situations with my friends. So I was in a vulnerable state. I was looking for answers. Later on, we will see, and I will tell a bit more about how I ended up in the situations that I ended up. But anyway, that's the first step. That's the vulnerability state or vulnerability stage, which of course will produce you searching for answers, which is step two. Well, where you go from being vulnerable to searching for answers. And that's those two steps are pretty well known. The third one is where I think we should spend a little bit

more time explaining or not necessarily explaining, but just sharing ideas and thoughts because people will relate to that. And maybe that's what's going to open up their minds to regain critical thinking on a lot of the things that they went through. Exactly. And those events, those things that people are going through, they can be really, really tough. Some of them are life changing events that bring people into these types of movements. And what happens is you are are in a state of mind where you are so traumatized that you're looking for some sort of an answer,

like you said, and what they're looking for really is an explanation to what is happening to them as much as it is relief for what is happening. And when you're in this type of charismatic style environment, you are finding both of those.

They're giving you both the explanation as to what's happening, usually it's a demon who has plagued you or your family or your history, but also come to us, we can give you relief, and they give you this emotional high.

It's always, I know I have seen this overused, the shiny, happy people example, but it really is that. You come into this group of people that they seem like they have no worries whatsoever.

It's all over their face, they're shiny, they're happy. But deep inside, like many people who are in high control groups, there's this person who's inside who's desperate to get out and they can't get out.

Once you get in, you're sucked into this. So people are asking, why is this happening? What does it mean? What should I do? They come and they find this answer. And this is a system, this charismatic movement is a system that gives you a framework for answering those questions, even if the answers aren't real.

And I'm using that statement with caution. I understand the complexities of the theology. Don't give me wrong, I'm not, from a theological standpoint, I'm not saying that God can't do any of this. What I'm saying is they're giving you answers often when they haven't even sought for an answer from God.

They're just bringing you into the framework because they know once they get you into the crowd, they excite you with the music, the very excited preaching, the charismatic style preaching, you're going to feel better because you're going to feel all those endorphins going through your body because you're part of the movement.

And so they believe that just simply by being in the movement, you get an answer, and that is the framework for answering these types of questions. Come join us, you'll find your answer. But the sad truth of it is, a framework like this doesn't really give you the full spiritual answer that a Christian would be seeking.

Or for those who aren't Christian who are just wanting maybe to learn more about Christianity, they come expecting to find more in what they find instead as euphoria. They find these repetitive songs with these phrases that are just drilled into your head.

So when you walk away, you're thinking of the things that you memorized during the song or some of them, you stage lighting, et cetera. What they're doing is they're exciting your senses. And so the answer really is an excitement of the senses, but the danger is this, whenever that framework becomes impossible to question.

When suddenly you realize, wait, this is a feeling that is on a motion, not really an answer to my problem. Once you get that question forming, who do you go to ask this to?

They'll tell you that's the devil talking. They'll tell you that, and just trying to lure you away from us, stay with us, and it gets really hard to get out because of this. So people have this challenge, is this a lack of faith, or is this really me internally questioning what's happening to me?

Yeah, thank you for introducing the explanatory system or the encounter with the next planetary system. And I would also like to introduce everyone, and you, I don't know if you've heard of this before, but it's the cognitive closure.

And I would define what goes in your mind when you go through a cognitive closure as this. I found an answer, so here it is, what I should believe. So this is the truth.

And from there, I will start to develop the rest of the ideas that I might have, the rest of my entire vision of how things should go. So for example, it's pretty easy, it's A plus B equals C, just to give a very common example on the specific cases is, let's say I'm having a hard financial situation because I'm not typing, so therefore I should type and give more to my group, right?

That's a very common scenario, but you can name pretty much any kind of situation

that we've been talking through, it's pretty much the same. So what is an explanatory system?

Basically is when you find an explanation after being in a situation of vulnerability and of course step one, two, three end up in this. So an explanatory system is very dangerous because it will give you a conviction that later on will define a very well how you're going to behave based on that specific system.

Now what is the danger? And here's where I'm going to give you examples based on my personal experience, so people can't understand what I'm talking about. And basically, so I remember very vividly, I was not in church when I came to Christ.

I was really not interested in going to church or any youth group or anything. I was just doing my life the way I thought I should. I was around 22 or 22. Yeah, 22.

And I remember that, as I said before, I was going through stressful situations at my job and stressful situations with my family, a bad situation with my father, and it was a messy place, let's say that.

So I remember I was in my room alone all by myself, and all I felt was, okay, just a couple of times that never happened to me, no different than anybody else, I'm that special.

And all I felt was a really deep feeling of voice in my head that said, hey, now you realize that you're wrong. But at the same time I was so loved, I felt so much love that I knew that I knew that I knew it was God, no doubt about it.

So that's perfectly fine. That can happen to anybody, actually, I think it should happen to everyone, but all of a sudden I knew, okay, God exists. He wants to be present in my life, have no doubt about it, I've been wrong for 22 years.

Now what I should do is just go to church because that's the idea that I have, you know, you want to know more of God, you go to the people that know more of Him, right?

Okay, nothing wrong with that. If you find a healthy community of the levers, they will guide you into a good way, which is, okay, you need to have a relationship, a personal relationship with God through His word and prayer.

Nothing wrong with that. The problem is that I came to an explanatory system that was really biased in some case, in some things, some specific things. And again, I go to this church, well, I asked a friend that was going to church, hey, I would like to go to church, of course, his eyes lit up and he was like, yeah, sure, let's go next Sunday.

And I remember I went to that Sunday and after dad, I continued going to church and getting involved and all of a sudden I started visiting some youth groups and houses. And then I joined the worship ministry and I was a really, really bold and leadership in that specific church.

And if you ask why, well, I've asked myself why, and it was because at that specific moment I was vulnerable. I knew that God wanted to have a relationship with me, and I went, and I did my research, and I remember that I had a friend that was going to church.

I asked him to go to church, and he took me to this church, and all of a sudden I encountered this system that gave answers to me of everything that I was trying to find answers for.

Again, nothing wrong with that. The issue is that, for example, well, big issues with my father. First thing that I remember, you know, like having to deal with was that, and all of a sudden they tell me, well, you have a father that loves you, and wants to restore your relationship with you, and that's pretty much the first step.

Second thing that's going to happen is, are you going to start restoring the relationship with your earthly father? Nothing wrong with that. Okay. And later on, you start to find things, as any, pretty much any, the nomination and Christian nomination, that will, you know, introduce things that are not necessarily biblical, not necessarily godly, but that's the explanatory system they have to be able to continue.

That's pretty much how they do things. So eventually, what's going to happen next time you are in a vulnerable state, or that you're looking for an answer for any question you have, you're going to go back to the system that provided that reassurance in the first place.

So what's going to happen, the cycle is going to go again. And more specifically, they're going to go back to the person who gave them that experience. Think about this. It's called the charismatic movement.

Many people who are outside of the movement looking in, they mistakenly think that this means something entirely differently because of the way that the speakers speak. However, charismatic preaching is really talking about the Greek word charisma, which is talking about the Holy Spirit's activities in the church, including spiritual gifts, healing, etc.

But there's another type of charisma. This is something that the ministers in the charismatic movement almost all have. They've been trained because so many people do it, you have to be like this in the charismatic movement.

It's just part of the culture. And that is you must speak with personal charisma and that's a big difference. The word When you think about charismatic style preaching it should mean we're open to the Holy Spirit and its gifts But usually it is morphed into this the preacher is expressive. He's very compelling very excited and They're what they're doing is they're trying to stir up the people's emotions Whether or not they belong to the movement and this can be good. It's sometimes they're doing it for good, but in Almost all cases when you're in a high demand group or high control group

They're stirring up your emotions because you can find the sense of belonging and when you find the sense of belonging through what they're doing Sadly, it goes to the head of the person who is doing the exciting So they believe that they're the ones who is really bringing heaven down and in fact you can hear them say Things like this in their sermons. They believe that they're the one who is channeling the Holy Spirit. So Some of the researchers who look at the occult and they say, well, this is channeling. This is what they're doing

Yes, but it's more to the point that they're using a charismatic style emotional Speaking to bring you into that same emotion. So they're not only channeling like a in the spirit world If you believe that they're also channeling your emotions and so they have a very charismatic style preaching now The problem is once you leave or try to leave and you start to come back you come back to get that experience Think of it like you got a hit in in the drug addict world You got a hit where you want to go back to your the person who's giving you the drug

They list a drug so that you can get the hit. Well, that is usually the speaker and the sad truth of it is It has created this interface where when people think about the ministry They don't think about God so much as they do the person who brought them into God and so they become literally the mediator between God and man Yeah, of course We are talking about the toxic environment where a leadership Is going to try to lead every every aspect of your life, right?

There's as you said nothing wrong with people trying to help you But what happens when this people that are trying to help you As well as you found or had an encounter with an explanatory system that was actually biased and That was not entirely leading you to the Bible But just to the way they do things There's a difference Between somebody guiding you to do things in a godly way and Somebody guiding you to do things in their own way the problem that With disgust previously as well is that the boundaries of

things that God wants and the things that church does, sometimes get blurry because of generations and generations of people encountering an explanatory system that will provide answers for them.

In some way functional because they are finding an answer, the problem is that they're not having the right answer. The problem again is, you are based on a grooming environment most of the time of people trying to give you love and care, but in the end it's just manipulation disguised as love and care. As we were discussing before again, the issue with an explanatory system like the one we see in church today and the vast majority of church today is that it's the product of generations and generations of things that are not biblical, they're not coming

from the Bible. And as you said in one of our episodes, it's surely not the God of the Bible. But we as new converts, new believers go to church thinking that they know how to do it, they know how it's done. And in reality it's just a personal relationship with God that will lead you to all the answers that you may need. And again, the relationship with God for any believer is based on the will of God manifesting in every area of your life. That's pretty much the fruit of the spirit and its essence. But if you go to church nowadays, you don't see the fruit of the

spirit really. In any part of the church nowadays, especially when you have so many issues with morality and money and views and spiritual and sexual views and any kind of the things that are we that we're seeing today. Now, what in essence that is? It's a faulty explanatory system that went through generations and generations of people trying to find answers.

So it's a toxic environment. It will create dependency on the leaders and not dependency on God in his word. So it's a really ugly situation for many people that are honestly looking for God's ways on their lives, but are finding people's way or ways manipulating their life at the end.

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. For me, this is a conversation really about trust, because in the end that's really what all paths of research lead into when you're thinking about should you leave the high control group or are you even in a high control group? Trust is a big

issue because of this. You go to one of these movements, they bring you in, they toy with your emotions, and suddenly you trust the leader because of their charismatic style. And over time, if it's a high control group, that leader is misrepresenting what trust means. And at the same time, he or she is manipulating your trust. And so in the end, trust becomes something that's devalued.

I remember whenever I left the Brandham movement, everybody looked to Brandham as the prophet of the age or the prophet of the end time. And we trusted this. We trusted that he was the prophet and that the things that he said about his prophecies were true. Because almost nobody looked to see that these prophecies even come to pass, which is really odd if you think about it.

But it's because our trust was manipulated so that we didn't have to go look into these things because many of them did not come to pass, as he said. He had manipulated our trust. Well, because of this, when I began looking at the prophecies, there were members who were devout members of Brandhamism and some of the splinter groups of Brandhamism that came later who would say, yes, that may be John, but we know he's a prophet because he could heal people. I can't tell you how many times I've got this explanation from members and former members and people who are loosely

connected to say he was a prophet because he healed people. Now, to the person outside looking in, logically, that doesn't make sense. You evaluate a prophecy by whether or not it came true, not by, can you do this other thing? I've mentioned this, it might have been a near podcast, that's like evaluating a picture in a baseball game by, can he row a boat? It's just, those two don't make sense, it doesn't go together, but that's how it was, and the reason why is because they manipulated your trust. They taught you, they devalued trust and they taught you to trust in something else. Well, that's really

what's happening here. This is, this is a problem because once you develop that framework of understanding life and the way that they want you to understand it, once they change the way that your beliefs and your experiences link to what you call truth, then you start to look at the experience as the value of the truth. And those two, like everything else that I've just said, don't really go together. You have to say, is, is the thing that he's teaching us correct?

Is the doctrine correct? If this is a preacher and you're listening to the preacher and he's giving you an explanation on the Bible, is that explanation on the Bible correct? But sadly because it is a movement that values experience over doctrine, they will instead say, well, you had the experience, right? Did you not feel this? It must be of God. We can kind of trust that what he's saying is of God. And that is a misrepresentation of what trust should be. And in the end, you have devalued trust to the extent that you trust the emotion over actual trust. The problem relies on the fact that

the explanatory system that you find is man-made. So what happened over time is, again, going back to what we have just discussed, let me give you an example.

Maybe I'm having situations with my relationship with my wife. I go to church, I go to some pastor or a leader or whatnot. And they say, well, here's what you have to do in order for you to get a better relationship with your wife. I follow those steps and nothing changes. Things are going the same. So I go back again and say, hey, well, nothing's changing. The answer might be, well, if you're doing what God wants, and if you really have a heart that is looking to do God's will and nothing's changing, then you're not the problem. You should start to seek if the problem is maybe your wife.

You see, and I've seen this before. I can, of course, I'm not going to say any names, but I remember one time when this person was telling me, well, the answer I got from my pastor was, well, you have to divorce your husband.

There's no positive outcome that you can find if you want to do God's will and he does not. It may sound godly, yet they decided to keep their marriage and change the church that they were attending to.

And surprise, surprise, they're still together, they're still a great family, they are really happy. Again, the issue is not the fact that you find an explanatory system, the issues that you find the wrong one.

And as humans, we don't like to think that we have found the wrong one. You don't like to believe that you've been misguided or misled. That's part of it. You try to defend what it is that you became a part of.

It all comes back, like I said, to trust, but also critical thinking. If you have devalued trust and misguided trust, then there's no need for critical thinking because you trust and you've gone in head first without really thinking.

That's the sad truth of this. And nothing against the people who do this, I know that there are vulnerabilities that cause people to go into the movement. I was born into it, so I'm not a good person to talk about this.

However, from the people that I've spoken with, they came in because they fully trusted the person who was leading them in and that person abused their trust and made them not critically think. And that's a big problem.

Because of this, when you are engaging in critical thought and somebody gives you an answer like we're talking about here, it isn't that that's the end all answer. You need to think about the answer because your understanding of that answer may change when you get more details.

In other words, whatever advice is given to you must remain open to examination forever. If I give you advice on the podcast, you need to keep it open to examination because I might be wrong in the way that I said it, or I might not even understand the situation.

So my advice might be bad advice and it doesn't that I'm trying to give you bad advice, but I gave you advice that didn't fit the situation. You can't just blindly accept it. You have to critically think about what John said.

Well, in the charismatic movement or any movement that you're in, you need to critically think about the advice that's given to you by the leadership. Sadly, in the charismatic movement and a lot of the Pentecostal movement as well, when the spiritual leader gives you advice, you mistakenly think that that advice came from God. And in some cases, especially in the higher control groups, they will tell you that that advice came from God. But the problem is, what if it didn't? You have to stop and think about that because if you're not critically thinking and critically examining, or if you're

a Christian, if you're not praying to God yourself to see you did that advice actually come from God, you have devalued trust and you're blindly trusting a leader. And it goes back to the scripture, the blind can lead the blind. You don't want to be caught in that situation.

You're right. 100%. And there's something else that I would like to add. The easiest way to find out if the explanatory system that you find is faulty or is manmade is examining the results of the decisions that you've been making in the last years. If you're a better person, if you feel closer to God, if you don't think you need a leader to have a relationship with God, if you don't feel in any way, shape or form obligated to be a church seven days a week, if you don't feel like this worry, constant worry of, I should be doing this or I should be doing that. Or what's X,

Y or C going to say if I don't do this? Maybe your explanatory system is based on the Bible. And maybe your community of believers, it's fine. But again, the problem is that I've seen this before. I've heard this before. It's like, well, I've been doing everything that I was supposed to do yet. I'm still having the same issues. Or I'm still not finding any good results on this specific area of my life. I remember very vividly this example that I'm going to give you. And it's a, what happens if you take a mother and say to her, okay, if you pray and fast

and and die this amount or give this amount to the church, your son will leave the drugs and have this drug addiction substance abuse gone. Well, what's going to happen to them probably this person will pray more and fast more and give more, get more involved in church. Ultimately, I know prayer is powerful and I can not deny that.

I'm not willing to do that by any way, but ultimately the decision for that son or daughter to do quit drugs or any substance abuse is a personal thing. So you can end up with a person that's been giving money and, you know, sowing the seed and trying to sow the seed and trying to give money in this system, weird stuff that you have to give in order to receive.

You're going to have a person that's going to spend many years of her life seeing no results believing that they're not good enough or they're not doing enough because the same problems keep happening again.

Again, that's an explanatory system that will provide an answer that's not the correct one. At the end of the day, it's a personal thing. If that person decides to quit the substance abuse, it's a personal decision, right?

You should pray for that person. If you want to fast just for looking for answers or anything, it's okay. I mean, you can do that, but ultimately the decision is a person one yet you can spend many, many, many years trying to get a result doing things in a Bible way when what you're actually doing is doing things in somebody else's way, expecting God to manifest in that specific situation when that's not God's will.

And that's just it. What if it's not from God? That's the point that you have to really think through and the question you have to ask yourself because you're in a movement. If you're in this charismatic movement, New Apostolic Reformation, large parts of Pentecostal ism, if you're in a movement where the leader is claiming that his authority came from God, is it?

That's one of the real questions that you have to ask because does God require somebody who is intending to manipulate people using emotions, using your senses, using things that he's telling you came from God, which may or may not?

Is he using that as a manipulation tool or is it actually from God? And the bigger question is, does God really require a person like this to do it? Whenever the Bible says, I will send you the Holy Spirit.

Does that include the Holy Spirit coming through an individual on the platform? I think if you're a Christian, that's the bigger question that you have to ask here. Does the Holy Spirit need this person?

Can God do it without this person? And what does that look like? If I'm in a movement that's telling me, I must have the covering. and I must have the minister who's my spiritual at the wordy.

Where does that fit within this? I will send you the Holy Spirit. Can it fit? For me, that's a huge question. And the thing to think through also is this, the movement is not new.

It is something that has developed over time. And what happens is people can inherit controlling practices that never have even that personality. A leader might repeat what they were taught because they associate it with God or the Holy Spirit.

But what if it's not the Holy Spirit? That's the thing to really think through because control can be understood as care, as we've talked about. And if you're going to this leadership and he's caring for you, sometimes your trust in that care can be greater than the trust in the Holy Spirit to lead and guide you.

So it's a thing where we need to hold the leaders accountable, but we also have a responsibility to critically think about what the leader is saying, to evaluate what they're saying. And then say, if this is a Christian movement, is that really from God?

Most of the time what I've seen, at least in Latin America, Costa Rica specifically, is that those things have been, you know, repeated over generations and generations so they become normal. Nobody is actually trying to do or at least not the majority of people.

They're not trying to create an explanatory system in order to get a direct benefit from the people. It's just how they do things because it's how has been done over generations. On the other hand, you're coming from a totally different group where things were clearly done to benefit from the people.

Now, in my case, nobody questions a lot of those things because this is how you should be a Christian. This is how you should obey your leaders. This is how you should do things.

You learn something, you replicate that and eventually over time, it will create the mindset you based your life on and how you behave is derived precisely from that. Again, many generations of people being wrong.

On your specific case, it was different because you come from a very extreme group that we know that there were people trying to benefit from others. Yeah, and I try not to let that skew.

my way of thinking because when you start to see that there were people who were doing it literally to gain the money, the fame, the power, etc. It's hard not to look at the whole movement like this, but I did over time come to realize that it's not just simply that there were people in it who were out to get money, fame, power, sex. It was literally that it was a movement that had a framework that allowed that and once you have that framework that allows it and you're showing this type of leadership as leadership from God, well

what about the people who are raised in it? They are raised to believe that this is how leadership is supposed to be and so you have really good people that sometimes get caught up into really bad things. Totally, 100%. Okay, my friend. I have a couple of things here. Now how do you know if what you're listening in church, the general ideas that you're getting from your leadership are coming from an explanatory system that's based on the Bible or not? The first thing that we have to be clear on is that critical thinking should never go away. You should never lose the ability to question everything. If you're

not receiving clear honest answers, Bible-based answers, not manipulated ones, well there's a red flag right there. You should be able to ask anything to anyone. It doesn't matter if you're a newcomer and you just came to church on Sunday and all of a sudden you need to do some questions to anyone. You can go ahead and do it. And actually, if your leadership is unapproachable and various trekked with those things, just a good chance that you're in a unhealthy group. You should be able to ask this question, why do you believe this?

Most of the time, they will tell you, well, that's what the Bible says. That's the will of God for us. But if you go and say, well, can you show me where it is in the Bible? They have no idea or you feel that the verse is like out of context or the verse is talking about something else.

Go ahead yourself and do the research. Go ahead yourself and pray about it. Never believe something just because somebody else did. That's my first method of understanding this. If you believe something just because somebody else says that thing is what they believe and that's how it's been done, that's not good.

And along with that, the sad truth of it is, most Christians, and I repeat, most Christians have not read the Bible, but yet you need to know what's in it because you need to know is the person who is preaching a person who understands what is in it.

So you must read it for yourself and think of it like this, if this is the movement that is leading you into heaven, if this is your worldview, your everything, as most Christians would say and claim to believe, then why would you not want to read it?

The shocking thing to me is after I left, I did not know until after I left my movement that most Christians didn't read their Bibles. Now, along with that sadness was learning that I had misread it and misunderstood it because I was mistold what was in it.

I poured myself into it, I wanted to know every aspect of it because I never wanted somebody to do this to me again. And I would say whether you're in the high control group and maybe you believe that it's a movement of God or not, maybe you've left it.

In both cases, you need to know what's in the Bible because you don't know whenever somebody starts to say something that is leading you away from it. And if you're a Christian, you don't want to be led away from the Bible.

If you be a God, if you have the perspective of God in the correct, biblical way, you're not going to have a lot of the issues that I had. But if you filter the will of God for you through what your leaders and your church and your group has to say, well, that's effectively saying, well, this is God's will for me, but it's better if I know my leadership, my leadership's will for me.

So any leadership, they're not above God. So God should be governing every area of your life. That is the explanatory system that we want and we should get away from all the burden of this ways on which modern church, high control groups or high control church does things because eventually again, they're going to change your behavior based on their convictions because you could be having an explanation.

That's not coming from the Bible, but their own ways of doing things. Absolutely. And think about this. It's called a high control group for a reason. They have a high level of control. There are people who want to control you.

I was never more shocked when I. where I left the group and started realizing that level of control and the difference between that control and what Christianity should have been. For us, control was the rules that we must do in order to save ourselves, but more specifically, the things we must not do to dam ourselves.

So whereas most of Christianity, who's not in a high control group, looks to Jesus and what he has done so that he has saved you, by grace, you're saved through faith in Jesus Christ, we were looking to the things we must not do in order to save ourselves.

Then on my website, I think it's called cult rules or something like this, you can find this list of rules that we had that are absolutely absurd. People have written in, I think it made one of the reddit top threads one day, because people were just shocked that this can exist in Christianity.

We had things like do not watch television. And for those of you who say that's a biblical thing, tell me in the Bible where it mentions a television. It did not exist. This is a technology that came much, much later.

You can't preach against television and say that you are preaching a biblical thing when TVs did not exist. We were taught that you could not drink alcohol, including wine. And it's so shocking. Paul told Timothy, drink a little wine for your stomach.

And the greatest, one of the greatest miracles in the Bible mentioned is Jesus turned the water into wine. How can you say that there is a biblical precedent against drinking wine? Now there are passages I understand about getting drunk.

I'm not talking about that. Just simply drinking of wine for us was a rule that we had. And what it ends up, you have all of these weights on your shoulder that they have placed on your shoulders for you.

You have all of these weights of rules of things that you must not do in order to be saved. And a handful of things that you must do to be saved, none of which are pointing to Jesus Christ who has already saved you according to Christian doctrine.

So for me, it was eye-opening to realize that they had done this to me. And once you start to lift those weights off, suddenly you realize you were just so burdened down that everything about you that you thought you were getting emotionally from the group, they were taking away from you in other ways.

So you had this balance scale of emotions. Yes, they're giving you the shiny happy people thing, but they're also giving you so many weights that you're just so burdened down that you're almost ready to break.

And sadly, it does break some people. And we have worked through situations where people have gone through deep depression, trauma, complex trauma, simply because of all of the weights that was added to their shoulders.

So I'm very thankful that you and I can talk through this and hopefully somebody can find a way to release these weights because once you do, you start to experience what freedom truly is.

You were burdened down with the things that man had given as their ideas, man or women, depending on, if you have a female or male, they were giving you their ideas and they're more specifically their opinions of what was right and wrong. And it's a thing where you need to critically think about those opinions. Yes, some of them may be biblical, but many of them, in the case that I had growing up, many of them just simply weren't, you have the freedom to engage your critical thinking and to decide for yourself, is this thing that I'm in correct? And do they have a biblical precedent for controlling

me? Usually, I would say 99.9% of the time, the answer is no. They should not biblically have any sort of control over you. There are cases I understand where somebody is really, really desperately needing help and the only help they can have is if somebody does kind of take charge of their life, but that's just this little small percentage of people. The vast majority of people did not need this. So hopefully we said something that can help people that are burdened down like this. And thank you so much for doing it. Wonderful to have this

conversation. And again, very happy to help. I hope this is useful and helpful for everyone watching. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.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 Automore.