Witches, Warlocks, and the Spiritual Warfare Feedback Loop

Music 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, Franny Nance, former member of Kerasmania.

Franny, it's so good to be back and to talk about this crazy thing that you have sent me this week. Yeah, I'm not going to lie. I was a little bit taken back. There are things that shock me whenever I'm examining all of this stuff.

And then there are things that really shock me. And I don't know, we'll talk about that. What we're actually talking about today, I don't know if you've seen the show Stranger Things. My favorite show is it's crazy good. But it would be like Stranger Things told from the other side.

And not many people think about the other side. So here's this group of kids there in this town. All of these bad things are happening every season to this town totally destroying parts of the city.

And traumatizing the people in it. Well, the kids come out as heroes and you're looking forward to the next season of the heroes. But what about the other side? What about the people that are left traumatized?

Nobody's ever thought about what it would be like to live in the city where these things are coming up out of the ground and snagging people. You'd be terrified. You would not want to stay in it. And the sad truth is that's kind of like the religion that we came out of.

It was Stranger Things and they were terrorizing us. But yet we wanted to stay in it, which is really, really weird. Yeah, no. What John is referencing was a Instagram video I came across by a creator named April Joy.

And she was recreating a pastor or not pastor. I don't even know a possible self-appointed apostle prophet Katie Susa, who I was not very familiar with. One time I fought with a warlock who asked to project it as a light being into the room I was in.

And I physically fought with him. It was a knife fight. He had this crooked blade like this. It was actually made of light. This is so how do you even explain these things? And I actually snagged it from him and buried it in his chest and said, And he popped out. There was actually witches that were flying around the house that were setting up a perimeter or a grid for him to be able to do that.

And when I woke up in the morning, I had physical bruises all over my body. So this was not just a fight in the spirit. Wow. This stuff is real. And it was comedic, and it caught my attention because I thought it was so funny, but it's also I've lived that, not lived where I'm battling a witch, but lived in that environment where people tell these stories.

So basically, it's an interview that Katie Suza is doing on a podcast, and she's talking about telling this guy about her battle with a warlock, that the warlock astral projects into her house, and you know, she's fighting him, and he has a dagger, and she has to turn and stab the dagger into him, and yells dominion, and while this is happening, there's a coven of witches that are setting up a perimeter, these are her words, around her house, so the warlock can, you know, attack her.

It's funny because in the real, this creator is jokingly re-enacting it, to make it, it really does, it seems so absurd, but I ended up, I watched that, and then she did another part where Katie Suza talks about how that same warlock appeared and got in bed with her, and was trying to recruit her to his side.

And it's reading the comments, you know, people, some people are like, this is insane, and it just seems so ridiculous, but I actually have real stories from people that were, had positions of authority in my life, my family, that told those stories as truth to me as a young person, a kid, and I was traumatized, so I appreciated this creator because it actually, you know, brought some light to that trauma that I experienced, but I think I just sort of got me thinking on just the system itself, the fact that there are people out there, like a Katie Suza, who by the way is being promoted by Charisma Magazine that's

coming out with a book, the Royce Report was just talking about it where, you know, we can talk about it more, but she gets into the fact that she said that an alien took her eggs in the middle of the night and it's now created alien, I mean, I couldn't even read the articles, I was like, this is insane, but these, in this system, these are people that are, you know, set up and given positions of authority and no one really challenge, no one really actually challenges it because I think some of the stories are so insane

and how you can't prove that, and so you're taking these people on their word, but this Charismaania Deliverance System, just you give over your authority, agency, whatever to these people, and we just give them, we allow them to tell whatever stories, and so anyway, I just thought we could get into that and sort of spend some time talking about the that system itself, it's not just like, oh, that one weird person and we kind of move on, but it's why does this movement, we attract that, we platform them and then wonder why these abuses continue or why people stay stuck or what?

And it's, we all play a role in that, but it's this system that's set up to attract that. It's such a crazy system. What's funny is, whenever I was in randomism, we looked at all of this mess and this chaos as chaos and we would correctly brand it as something that just did not make any sense and was quite absurd.

Yet we were doing many of the same things. That's the really, really crazy part of all of this. I have sitting on my desk a little sword that somebody gave me because I did a podcast talking about William Brandham who claimed he had a magic sword.

I grew up as a teenager listening to these recordings of this magic sword and even as an adult, I'm believing that the man had a magic sword. And yet, I'm in IT, there's no way I should believe this, but you shut off all critical thinking and even people who are highly intelligent, you fall for this stuff.

It's really, really difficult. The thing that I'll say about the Katie Sears of Video, I listened to both of those and whenever she started talking about the creature that got in bed with her, she made some comment and said something to the fact, I know how good you are as he lifted up the covers.

The way she said it made me question a lot of things. We had the last meeting, everything was great. We go back to our Airbnb. I lay down, I'm thinking, hey, victory, we took out this warlock for the meeting, the meeting's great.

I'm starting to go to sleep, I'm worshiping and all of a sudden, he comes sliding in from the side and he's now in the bed next to me. And he goes like this, he taps the bed and basically said to me, you have mad skills, you need to get in bed with me.

Wow, he tried to recruit me. And I'm just gonna put that off to the side because I'm gonna give her the benefit of the doubt that she truly believes this, but I will say this, I have family who have mental health issues and I understand the complexities of what happens when you have mental health issues.

There is a chance that she truly believes that this thing happens and this creature got in bed with her and said she was the best thing since sliced bread. That may exist in her brain as being real, but I understand what happens when people are suffering.

I wanna focus instead, at least for my part of this podcast, I wanna focus on what happens to the people who sit through that. Say there is some mental health issues or whatever, when people aren't shutting off critical thinking and they're believing everything that is said as though it is a mythology about the movement.

Then that mythology starts to enter their brain as reality and so somebody who's struggling with mental health might actually impact the entire congregation through a mythological standpoint and then the mythology grows and what happens is when you have a sort of mental health disorder, you may feed on the people that you're telling it to and then it grows worse and worse and worse.

Now I'm not saying that she has anything wrong, I don't know, I don't know her, like I said, I do have some questions about what she said but in the end it comes out to this.

If it were painted as a stranger things fictional show that I can turn on Hulu and I can watch or Netflix and I can watch, it might make an interesting show but as part of a Christian church what in the world is she thinking?

This is not something that you really talk about in Christian churches unless you want the focus to be on you and not on Christ or the Bible. One thing with that real and Katie Susa's story really stood out to me because people are like, well this lady is crazy and I'm like there are plenty more like her and there is a family friend of ours that we grew up with and shed a lot of influence in our family and I've mentioned her before just she has a lot of trauma in her background, was in a concentration camp in Eastern Europe during World War II, a lot of that.

So the reason the video stood out to me is because so my parents would host her often and you'd advertise like, hey come to our house, she's going to be here and we're going to have like a time of healing, she's so anointed.

Again, none of these things, I don't, she didn't have proof of her at the healings or the manifestations or whatever, we just went off of the story she told us and so one time when she came to our house my parents hosted people over at her home and they did a night of ministry and I gave up my room when she came to stay with us and she would stay in my room.

This is pertinent to the story. So the next day she's after the ministry night, I get up, she's breakfast, we're talking and she's packing up and getting ready to leave, so I'm going to get my room back and she just proceeds to tell this story where she will say, oh this one man that was there, who I knew and was pretty beloved in the community and she's like, when I prayed for him, he had a weird manifestation, there was a weird, you know, sexual spirit that came off of him and you know we're all like, well what? And she said, well yeah,

so that night I went to bed and as I'm laying in bed, this asexual being just shows up in my room and it comes towards me and this whining and wants to snuggle with me and I'm just cast trying to cast it out and it won't listen and It crawls into bed with me and trying to snuggle with me.

I'm, okay, I'm a child. I'm hearing this like a teenager. I'm like, what? And I'm thinking, she's sleeping in my bed. It looks like she's telling the story. And she said the only thing that made it go away, well, she had to take her Bible and wrap it around the being's head and squeeze it and it disappeared.

What? So I, okay, so think about like, you're raised like this, you're a kid. This is a person that you trust. And I'm around this my entire life. And so I'm thinking, it is thinking critically in a sense of, wait a second, we're told that, you know, Jesus came to feed a death.

He has authority over the devil that you just have to cast out demons and, you know, speak his name and the devil will flee. Well, this one's not fleeing, you know? And so there's always, the bar is always moving.

It's always changing. So I heard multiple stories like that growing up. And those things stay with you. So they implant in you and, you know, no one's challenging this woman. It's someone that we trust.

And she's been given a position of authority in our family, but also in various churches where she speaks and in this, you know, charismatic movement. So that is why a person like a Katy Susa is in my mind, it's not just her being dangerous, but it's also just people platforming her and then the system that perpetuates that.

And my, again, I don't know Katy Susa's mental state. However, I have read there's trauma in her background. And so there seems to me where I'm identifying there's a pattern of people that don't receive, you know, the mental help or the help, the physical, whatever it is, the help that they need, help.

And so they just map this like spiritual warfare, deliverance, language onto what they experienced. And then we platform them and then they perpetuate that onto other people instead of, you know, the same person was like, if I'm experiencing anxiety, well, you know, it's back to the same thing we've talked about, we'll open the door to the devil or you're so anointed, the devil's coming at you.

And that's kind of the language that I see a Katy Susa use where it's like, look how anointed and powerful I am. And it continues to bolster her platform, you know, the devil's coming after me.

And I was, I did a little, just to read it, search them eyes curious what people are saying. And it's interesting because there's a lot of defenders defenders of her online. And this is what I heard about many people in ministry and the deliverance or charismatic ministry growing up where it's like, well, they're a demon slayer.

They're on another level, like they, they're really anointed. So they deal in things that we just don't know. Oh, and I'm just, who says, and what's the evidence that supports that? You know, that's just it.

What is the evidence? Usually on the podcast, I cover the historical aspects of the ministries because you can look to the histories and you can plainly see that there's a problem here. But whenever these groups take it into the so-called spiritual realm and they're talking about witches and warlocks and demons and all kinds of nutty stuff, Brannum said, I should mention this.

Brannum claimed that one of the demons that plagued him looked exactly like Ali Oop from the funny papers. And if you know that cartoon, you're like, what in the world did that man just say?

And we believed that hookline and sinker. I grew up believing that Ali Oop was plaguing William Brannum. It's crazy. But when you're growing up in this world where they're throwing everything into the spiritual side, you can't critically think.

There is no way to critically examine this. You basically left either you believe it or you don't. It's only one of those two things. But what it gives you, whether you believe it or whether you don't, it trains you in this worldview where you're constantly scanning for danger.

Everywhere you look, there is danger. You, it's an invisible danger that you can't see. And for the people like people I knew who really didn't believe in that spiritual warfare stuff, I didn't believe it in the way that you did.

I still looked for it because they were trying to battle me. And I was trying to fight the invisible demon. And that's what you're doing. You're looking under every rock. You get in bad at the hotel.

Granted, I don't believe that any's going to get in bad and say, John, you're really, really good as they lift up the covers. But you're looking for things that aren't there. And that type of worldview, it plagues your mind until literally people go crazy over this stuff.

Yeah, also with, and again, not a mental health therapist, I don't, I just can only go off with my own personal experience, but a lot of times two people try to map on the spiritual, and I get it, like if you've suffered some deep trauma and really looking into complex PTSD and really borderline personality disorder kind of understanding that a little bit more, where you have suffered a lot of deep childhood trauma.

And you do look for ways to map. You do feel crazy. So you try to find significance in it, or you try to map language onto it. And so I think that this woman in her life definitely, I know she suffered a lot, but there was always a spiritual language mapped onto it.

I'm depressed, or this person's rejecting me. I'm perceiving this person is rejecting me. So therefore they must be a witch, and they sense the Jesus in me. So I know. eat to whatever prey against them or instead of just like, I don't think this person's rejecting you, they could be in a bad mood, they might not have seen you.

There's just, it's always instead of a, let's look at this rationally and it doesn't, it causes torment for the person themselves who thinks, well, instead of maybe that a bad day, I'm gonna move on with my life, it's like, oh, there's witches everywhere and I'm receiving this rejection.

It's this grandiosity where it's, you know, it all revolves around you and like you're saying, you are looking for a demon under, under every rock and it's dangerous in a sense because it also, if people don't challenge that, it just keeps you in a really dangerous feedback loop too because if you, and when I saw people's comments on Reddit and the same thing with my own life, if you even asked the question, like, did that really happen, you know, did, come on.

Then it's like, well, that's a religious spirit and that's a religious demon that is now, like warfare against me or, you know, the God's anointed because you're questioning them or you don't have faith or that's a spirit of doubt.

And so people like me growing up in it, then you're just like, I don't wanna open the door to the devil because doubting is an open door. So I, you know, I wanna, you know, I'm not gonna doubt that.

And, you know, this woman in our life and I see this in ministry too, they have a lot of power over you and these people because you put them, you think, okay, well, they're so anointed, they're on this level that I'm not on, they're saying they see demons, they're saying there's manifestations around them.

I'm not seeing it, but I guess they're just more spiritual than me because they use the Bible, they use scripture, they can at times function normally. So there is that slow silencing of your own discernment and critical thinking and you allow, you substitute their authority or their discernment.

And I will say, I'm not trying to harp on this woman, this one I'm not using her name, but she just had such an outsized influence on her family and I see that in these movements with a lot of these ministers like a Katie Susa or a Catherine Crick that we haven't really talked about but she's another one that's out there.

And I wanna say that because they also use the term, I use the term discernment but they use that against you as well. I do remember whenever this woman would come visit us, we would all be on edge like, what is she gonna discern on us?

We're not doing anything wrong but I don't know. Like she might sense something that I've been into that I didn't realize I was into so there was this fear of being falsely accused. There's this fear of what door did I open because she's so anointed.

And then my sisters and I were always terrified because we're thinking like, Please I don't want to I don't want to hear anything. I don't want to see anything. I just I want to go to sleep And I will say to this day, you know, my sister would share this one of them just struggles with her sleep because it's We could watch a true crime movie Documentary all day long That doesn't scare us anything super natural You know, I've had to to work through that that and so honestly watching stuff like stranger things It's like this is an entertaining show. This is not real. You know, like this is a show

You know, we can I can remove that versus a lot of times with anything spiritual It's it's terrifying as as a child and you kind of grow up and it's it's embedded there and it has it's takes a lot of work to have to Speak to yourself in a critically thinking way of You know, let's challenge that what's the evidence? What are we seeing and and instead of just Going with it and staying stuck in that cycle one that cycle is Dehabilitating to people who are in that cycle fear and anxiety actually turns into discernment

I knew this guy went into this office for an interview and he came out saying I could just sense the spirits in that place I'm not sure if I want to work there or not and this is an office building where guys are like sitting at a computer doing boring stuff Right, there's no Territorial spirits of plaguing this office. I can assure you But what he felt was anxiety and when you're in that mindset you anything that is fear you feel it's a spirit What it trains you to do is to Re-evaluate your own emotions and try to put it also in the spiritual realm and by doing that

I mean, there's there's a reason why we have our emotions There's a reason God gave us the instinct for fear. It's to protect us, right? Well if we Shove that into the spiritual realm and we're not even thinking about our own fears I give it to God give the glory to God and he's going to take away this demon that's infesting me Well, what if there's a real reason for your fear and you need to turn and run?

Well that type of mentality puts us actually in physical danger if you think that through But more to the point it turns people into Basically zombies. I hate to say it But you go into a building and you're afraid to go to a job interview because a territorial spirit might infest a building Well, how are you even going to get a job? Every job interview is going to give you some some form of some level of anxiety I came out of that mindset because I did have that to an extent I came out of that mindset because when I began my business

I was kind of forced into that anxiety when you go try to get new clients You're gonna be anxious no matter what and the only way it works is if you conquer those demons Right, so I I kind of forced myself through it But there are people who just bottle up and they do nothing because of it and you only have the ministers to blame who are projecting this type of fear on your being.

Yes, I love that you said that about discernment. And sometimes it's you're discerning an evil spirit, but it's normal anxiety for starting something new or going somewhere and it does keep you trapped. It's interesting.

One thing with like a childhood trauma, people develop something called hypervigilance. And sometimes it can be a real superpower. You can read the room like you can be kind of intuitive and sort of know.

And I think that a lot of times people take that hypervigilance and substitute it as like it's a spiritual gift. I mean, I did that. But it's interesting because I'm, you know, 44. That hypervigilance does not serve me anymore.

In fact, it's a hindrance. Like, I've noticed that in my own professional life where I'm thinking, I'm over reading this. You know, I need to relax and just roll with it. You know, I'm trying too hard to over read this and so that I'm getting in my own way.

And so that's actually something I've been working through in therapies. Not just, you don't shit, like you were saying, your emotions are there for a reason. But is this rooted in a past, you know, pattern that isn't serving me anymore, you know, what is this data giving me?

And I think with a lot of times that people are saying hypervigilance, but it's, you know, oh, this is discernment, but it is, it's, it's hypervigilance and it's paranoia. There is, you know, same person growing up too, you know, this woman was very obsessed with her looks and her weight just a tormented, you know, I don't wanna get fat, I don't wanna be whatever.

And again, grew up around someone with a needing disorder. Anyway, point being, she would tell the story about a woman who was from Eastern Europe where she was that came over to the US and so they met and she was trying to help her settle in.

And she said, I had to cut this woman out of my life and we were like, well, what happened? Well, she just kept, you know, bringing me baked goods and stuff that she was making.

And she said it was a thank you for all the help I've given her, but it's a spirit of jealousy on her because she's trying to make me fat. And so she just kept bringing me all the stuff and the more you, and you have to look out for that.

Women are jealous and so, and they've got that spirit on them and so they will try to make you fat by bringing you, and I'm thinking, looking back on that, I'm like, the woman didn't probably have any other way to think her other than like making her be a food and bringing her, showing her gratitude for her help.

But there was that too with, do you have acne? Well, then someone's probably cursing you, you know, or you open the door to the devil or... Well, okay, so you prayed against the devil.

You've prayed against curses. Well, maybe now it's a health issue. I mean, it was just, you are just constantly going back to that person that you think is anointed to give you more answers to have like a deeper insight.

Well, maybe if I can get to this next level, I'll understand. But there's always with this deliverance ministry and discernment and healing, all of that, there's always some, they always come up with a new name.

Like, there's a spirit of blah, blah, blah over this area, principality, or whatever. And when I would push back and say, like, why don't we see that in the Bible? It's, you know, they give you some word salad where it's just like, well, in the scripture and, you know, and they go into this Leviticus where this principality did this to Israel.

So this is over here and I don't, it's so tiring and they kind of talk around it. So you just sort of believe them, especially if you grow up and you're primed. And I think why some of this is so insidious too is because the spiritual abuse of it all is that it is your beliefs or religious beliefs or it's, you're vulnerable.

It's a sacred, it's, I believe this. Like, and then there's someone who is using that and twisting it for their own purposes. And whether you think that this person knows what they're doing and they're doing it on purpose or what not, I mean, I think sometimes these people believe their own delusions.

And they will be held accountable for that as well because, you know, you can't claim ignorance. 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?

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There's another risk too, and that is that sometimes when you're cut up in that mindset, you can have a totally normal experience and your mindset is such that you're in the spiritual warfare realm.

And so you want to take your normal experience and put it into that spiritual realm so that you too can be just like the kids and stranger things who's actually behind the pulpit preaching stranger things.

Take, for instance, nightmares. There are many people who have nightmares, and in many instances, the dreams are just simply your brain processing something that happened. That's why if you go to counseling, usually you'll find out that you have this recurring dream about somebody that you really have this deep-rooted issue with, and if you get rid of the deep-rooted issue, then the dreams kind of correct themselves.

So you may have a normal issue, but take the person who's been indoctrinated in the spiritual warfare, I'm getting nightmares because the demon is now plaguing me. And you start to believe this. Well then, there is a problem that exists with some people. They get so caught up in that cycle that the nightmares turn into the spiritual warfare. The spiritual warfare turn into bigger nightmares, because that's now rooting in your psyche. And then eventually it cascades into this sleep paralysis. So there are people who are literally paralyzed in fear because they're caught up in this mindset. And it all stems from a person who may be either a suffering mental

delusions behind the pulpit or be just lying through their teeth. And you don't know which it is. But in the end, I'm of the opinion that none of it should really be behind the pulpit anyway, because that's not talking about Christianity. This is talking about spiritual warfare that is in a fantasy world that has nothing to do with the Bible. Christians aren't allowed to have anything bad happen to you or have any, you know, suffering or whatever, which I see in the Bible often.

It's like there's a lot of suffering and things that happen that we don't have answers for. It's funny, I had a friend send me the Bible project, I don't know if you're aware of that, the video about Ecclesiastes. And I've just been watching it or whatever, but thinking about there is wisdom in that of the, you know, we're all vapor. It's not like we're all terrible, but just it's there's sometimes there's things that we don't have answers for. It's, you know, pointless and we don't know, we won't know. And that's part of being human. And you have to be okay

with that. And this type of Christianity, I mean, I think all of it does, but really this NAR extreme cares mania, they love to have an answer for everything and everything is wrapped up in a bow and that's kind of how, you know, throwing Bethel out there too, they are like that too. You know, we're no sick, no Christian should be, you know, sick, no, no Christian should be suffering. We're here to bring heaven on earth, you know, and then there's no answer for, you know, Bill Johnson's wife passed of cancer, you know, and I'm not trying to throw that in their face, but, you know,

she wasn't miraculously healed. But a lot of times these people too, I've noticed they just kind of move on by, you know, and it's pretty typical, I think of these leaders who get a platform if they don't have an answer for it, they just sort of talk over you and move on and try to distract you with something else.

So we mentioned how the spiritual leader, whenever they're talking about this mythological experience they have, people get caught up in it. I don't think we've talked yet about what happens to children. And this is the part that really bothers me the most.

Take the stories that she's talking about. We went to an Airbnb. So this is a unfamiliar place if you're a child, many children are scared of these places, right? It's somebody's house. So we're scared of this initially as a child.

And now we've just heard the story that a person is saying where, oh my gosh, there was a demon in the bed. And think of the small child who gets in the bed alone, usually in an Airbnb, you've got your own rooms.

It's large, large as a house. Well, they go in the room and the lights are off and it's dark in there, oh my gosh. What if that demon gets in my bed with me?

And what it does, it causes children to grow up in such a level of fear that they don't, they can't be raised in a healthy way. I'll just say it like that. The child's experience is not only framed by the mythological supernatural thing, but it's also shaped by their developing mentality of just simply the world around them.

They're already struggling with trying to cope with the fact that they're developing their mental skills as they're growing and you're actually hindering them when you talk about these things. Again, there are places to talk about such things if you really believe them, behind a Christian setting in a pulpit or in a Christian book, it's just simply not the place to have it.

And part of the reason that I do what I do is I remember watching, as I was leaving the cult, I was coming to terms with the fact that this is wrong, but I was watching the sad eyes of the children whenever we were coming to make that decision and looking around the room at them, I wanted every single child in there to escape this place.

I can't do it, I can't talk to parents into making their children leave it, but hopefully something we say can make somebody realize, if you're gonna talk about this, if you're gonna believe this stuff, even though I say it's out there, it's like a Harry Potter world.

If you're gonna do this, don't talk about it in front of your children, let them grow up healthy. Yes, 100%. I would say, I do, I have a tender heart towards any child

being raised at all in any of this carismania because it has taken so many years of unlearning and undoing for me. And I am grateful that I have three kids and I look at them and again, I'm not saying I'm this awesome parent, but the same time I'm thinking, you have no idea.

I was like, oh, that was your age. I was terrified, and I had to know what spiritual warfare was and the sort of the spirit. And at any moment, a demon could appear in my room.

And I had to be ready. Or I do not remember people talking about seeing angels. I'm like, I don't wanna see that. I don't, I mean, my sister told me she's like, I used to pray, please God.

Please don't let me see angels. And then we would be ashamed for that. Like why don't you want to see the glory of God? It's so powerful. But there's this, it's like this movement loves, they love to talk about these crazy stories, spiritual warfare, these ghost stories.

And it bolsters their position, that they're these like very anointed, powerful people. And it builds into their own grandiosity of like, I'm this special anointed person. And then they are spewing their own trauma and mess onto to other people.

Again, these are things that aren't confirmed. Like I, you can tell me all day long, this is another story I've been told, you know, someone shows up at the door and all of a sudden their face starts contorting and they start screaming, what's going on?

And this quote, minister is like, well, it's the power of God that's transforming you. Repent, you know, and I'm thinking, I don't, I don't want that to happen to me. I don't want to see that.

Those are all things I would hear as a kid. And I'm like, and then it was like, well, why? Why, why don't you want? It's the power of God is so amazing. Like you, you should want people to be set free.

And why are you afraid? Like you have, you know, the power of God in you. And I'm thinking, but then I'm hearing stories where people are having to have literal battles with the devil.

And there's just stuff that I'm, you know, I don't need to know about astral projection when I'm 10, you know, or about all these weird things. Meanwhile, this is the same crew of people that are freaking out in the 90s about kids reading Harry Potter because it's going to get them into witchcraft.

And I'm thinking, you all are, you're doing the same thing and actually way worse than something like, and I know people get triggered by Harry Potter. But honestly, like I said, as an adult, I went back and read them.

And it's, it's actually a really amazing story of good versus evil. There, it's not what people think it is. And I would say more of these deliverance, spiritual warfare, charismatic healing people

are way more dangerous than exposing you to that world than a Harry Potter book. But something else that's interesting is you're saying like what you expose kids to. These people don't realize what they're exposing children to.

And I was thinking too, again, I see these things pop up on social media where that Catherine Crick, who's a church in LA, who's like the next sensational deliverance minister where she's at a book signing in Barnes and Noble and people look like they're being electrocuted and it's like, oh, look at this, it's the power of God.

That is disturbing. Like one, that's not fair to the person that's manifesting. That's embarrassing. Like of what you're doing to yourself. And then they get special notoriety because look at me, I'm being touched by God and heal.

How do you prove that? She's walking around saying this person was delivered and God's healing this person right now of autism. And it's like, how do you know? You just have to take the person's word for it.

And if this person's like, oh no, I went to her and they get very defensive. I was there at her church and I was set free and or I went to a Katie Susan meeting and they set me free of this.

And then I was on the next level where I can see, snakes manifesting and whatnot. This is not healthy. It's not healthy behavior. It's not healthy thinking and it is keeping you stuck in that loop, but we're also keeping that system going by platforming these people and allowing them unchallenged to do this, but you know, and then when you do challenge these people, you're told that you're jealous or it's a religious spirit coming after them.

And it's the same playbook because I see, she saw an interview with Katie Sousa where someone, not Katie, excuse me, I'm getting these people mixed up with Catherine Crick where someone was saying, you know, these people are criticizing you and she's like, well, you know, they're just, I'm not going to speak to that.

You know, it's grievous and whatever, but the Lord told me not to defend myself that he's my defender. And I was like, that is a Mike Bickle straight out of the IOP KC Mike Bickle.

And I'm like, you all are all the same. And it's the same thing, you know, with other, I've been in, you know, work environments where there's been a boss that's very, you know, narcissistic in that way where it's like, I'm, you know, I'm not going to speak, those are, I'm not even going to speak to that.

That is, the Lord is my defender. And it's like, you know, that's another abusive way that people, you know, keep their power and try to shut down criticism. And in this system, we allow it.

We go along with it. We allow them. And to me, a sort of looking at, it's, I love the videos that, you know, make fun of it, expose it. I think it's funny. I like it when people point out, you know, hey, this person's unhealthy.

But I think what really needs to happen is, yes, there's this one weird person, but it's a system. There's a, this system is made up of unhealthy, unchecked people who haven't dealt, whatever it is with their own mental health issues or trot, whatever, you know, or maybe they're truly nefarious and just continuing it because they want power and money.

And we just keep it going, sort of like, oh, well, you know, Todd Bentley had a huge ministry and then he fell. And so we discard him and throw him off to the wayside again.

I'm not saying Todd Bentley wasn't an abuser. But it's, you know, and then we find another person to platform and it's just the cycle keeps going. Whereas it's like, we need to start questioning.

And John, I feel like you've said this before in one of your podcasts as well. I was listening to where you're not blaming us, like the people who have suffered at the hands of these leaders, but at the same time at what point are we responsible and need to step out of that system and call out the system itself?

Well, think of it like this. It's a system that produces different worlds with different meanings to different people. Take the Harry Potter thing. So when I was in the movement, we were in this weird world where we saw outside Charismatics as evil and corrupt and didn't believe anything that they said.

At the same time, many of the people in our group was not allowed to watch television or movies. I was in a special category because my family was up higher than this and the cult leader and his children watched television and we knew it.

So I'm watching television and movies and I'm watching Harry Potter. I loved it. It was great and I did not think anything about spiritual warfare or anything like this. This is a children's story written for children.

That's the way I looked at it. And then I was telling somebody that I watched it and their jaw dropped. Do you not know that the devil can come through your TV and get into your house if you watch this kind of stuff because it's so filled with demons and the demon realm and I'm like, are you kidding me?

This is greater fantasy than even rolling was writing, right? So I grew up in that mindset that I could recognize that the children's story was written for the children, but there were adults that didn't.

So you have two different worlds, two different competing worlds. Now take all of the spiritual warfare that's being told from the person behind the pulpit and all of the adults in there are cheering it on.

Yes, you fought a demon, yes, this demon came into your bed and said, you're really good at what you do while they lift it up the covers. Well the adults are cheering this on and the children are thinking, oh my gosh, this is a scary thing.

I can't believe this happened. So everybody's viewing the story differently and yet at the same time it's creating it as a mythology where people are supposed to believe it in the same way. No people, no two groups of people do.

They're all different. So what is happening to the children's head, the parents are not even seeing because their head, their mind is in a completely different place. Yeah, that's a good point. I do think about that.

I would say that's how being a kid and raising it, that's so interesting you say that with the mindset, because my parents, they became Christians when in their adult life. So they were not raised that way, very secular or whatever, us.

And so for them they had a different mindset, oh thank God, God saved us like, we're going to make sure our children know the Lord and there's a earnestness and sincerity in that. But I'm just thinking, we, this is different.

You didn't grow up with this fear of, if I can... turn on the radio in a certain song might come on that will influence me. The demon's gonna jump on me. And all like I said for many years, I really believe that maybe some of these outlandish prophetic words that were spoken over my family or my parents or whatever weren't coming to pass because I have unbelief or I have some open door that I'm letting the enemy come into attack my family to hinder the blessings of the Lord.

And so maybe God will bless my family, my parents once I move out. I mean, no one said those words, that's the thing. It's like no one's saying those exact words, but when you're immersing it for long enough and you see, you go hop from revival, ministry to revival and all these like crazy people that come in and you just take them at their word.

Like I, you know, I was, I mean there's a man that my father was friends with named, his name is Isaiah Reed. I've tried to look him up to see if he's still around, but he walks around claiming that he was, he has an, and maybe he does have an autopsy scar.

I don't know. He claims that he was revived while they were doing an autopsy on him or whatever. And that's his stick. And so it's like, well, I don't, I have tried to actually honestly like, are there, are there doctors records?

Are there legal records saying like confirmed history and I haven't been able to find it? But it's, these, the system primes you, especially if you're raised in it. You either think you're crazy and you're a sinner and God must really hate you.

So you walk around with this like shame, which I would say I had a lot of that that I'm like, well, this prophecy isn't coming to pass and like why isn't it being fulfilled or I must have opened the door to the devil or you just, you're primed to take people's word at it.

The more charismatic and the more outlandish the story and the more intensely they tell it with, you know, scripture sprinkled in, you just, you believe it. And if you don't believe it, you have a religious spirit.

And that's impossible, you can't argue against that. Like it, you know, if you, like you just can't. And so I think it does, I feel deeply for children because it does keep them trapped.

And I'll say, you know, one more thing. I remember when we first moved out here to California, we really tried to, we're like, okay, we're gonna try to find a church. And there's a lot more like non-denom mega churches out here because we came from like a Presbyterian, whatever.

Boring, which people would say, boring church, but it was great, a wonderful church, very intellectual or whatever. Anyway, when we came out here, we tried a non-denominational church that did not say they're charismatic or anything like that.

And, you know, they had a big youth groups or like, all right, we'll go. And we did not like, pass along. Because one, the pastor had a guest speaker and she was from a pastor from Jesus culture, which the connection to their Bethel, whatever I like lost it. I was like, what? But my son came home because he sent him to the youth group and I picked him up and I'm driving home. And he goes, mom, what's the rapture? And almost like, what? What do you mean? How do you know? Who's talking about the rapture? You know, what is it? And he

was like, oh, I don't, you know, I was like, are they teaching you that? I mean, I was just live it. And he was like, no, no, no, no. He said, there's a guy, a boy in my prayer group. And this is me, my son's 12. And he asked for prayer because he's so worried.

He's having trouble sleeping because his dad is in a Christian and he's terrified that his dad is going to miss the rapture. And I'm like, my heart broke for that boy. I'm just, well, what you have to live with that that you're somehow responsive like your dad's not a Christian. So, yeah, he's going to suffer in hell and he's not going to get raptured with you. And I'm like, that is, it really, we've left after that. Just, I just can't.

The theology that you are teaching and in the critical thinking skills needed, they're so important. And when it is cloaked with this intense emotion and carismania and, you know, charismatic people telling you this and it's fun. And here's this emotional music and whatever. And it's not challenged. It's, it, you are setting up your child, like a child for a very like paranoid torment of life. I mean, no 12 year old should carry that the weight of that fear of, you know, my father, my parent that is a caregiver is going to somehow suffer an eternal damnation because they aren't Christians. And, and

that's this weightiness that he is, is caring. And I'm like, and that made me angry because that brought me back to being a child. And just, it's not just the deliverance, the spiritual warfare, the healing, the scary, like crazy stuff. It's also that heavy pressure of you have to save the people around you. God has given you a gift. Therefore, if you are discerning something on them, you need to go lay hands on them and pray for them. You need to tell them about Jesus because you're not going to feel very good when you're going to heaven

and you see these people burning in hell and you could have told them. So it's just, I, it is not healthy for children. The more I'm like talking to you about it and see, it's not healthy for anyone to be raised in that. It's an environment of fear, shame in paranoia and does lay the groundwork.

for an emotionally unhealthy adult. You're talking about rapture and it brings up all of these memories, most of which are triggering in my head. But one of the memories it brought up is I had a family member.

I may have mentioned this on the podcast, but I have a family member who believed in the rapture like we all did. We were taught the Doomsday rapture was coming and we were going to be part of this special little group that's going to be caught away.

This person would cry uncontrollably before getting on the bus to go to school because they would be separated from their parents and what if the rapture comes whenever their parents are away from them?

How will they find their parents in heaven? All of those thoughts that a normal child is going to have, the adults aren't even thinking through. When they're preaching about it, they're preaching, yes this is a good thing and they're talking about this really, really scary thing that is about to happen if you believe that mindset.

The children are thinking of the scary thing and the adults are thinking of the happy thing. So again, two different worlds, two different views of what is being said. The rapture theology itself, most people are unaware that that theology is only like 200 years old.

It's not that new and that's part of the reason why it was eventually replaced in the same movement that this developed from, but we believed it and I believe that we were going to be part of the chosen fruit, few that's taken away.

As a child, I can't say that I was crippled by that fear, but I did have it. Now as an adult, having gone through therapy and understanding things like complex trauma, look at the complex trauma that has caused widespread in the movements because children are dealing with their normal struggles and their normal fears, complicated by these things that they're told is in the spiritual realm, that they can't put any sense at all to, so they just kind of disconnected in their mind and build trauma on top of trauma, on top of trauma.

And you end up with complex trauma and it takes years to overcome that. Yeah, and you have to, and it's hard too to even identify it. I would say like in my 20s, and again, from repeating myself, but where I'm crying all the time, you know, I told that story about it was actually a pastor at a church that was like, you need to go to therapy, but just crying out because I'm like, I was raised to Christian, I was raised to super Christian, I have the Holy Spirit, I know spiritual warfare, I know deliverance, I know all these things, I went to IHOP, I've done all this, why am

I distressed? You know, it's like, why am I tormented, why am I suffering with anxiety, why am I suffering with like paranoid thoughts and, you know, up one day down the next, what, what am I doing wrong?

It's always like, what door if I open, what am I doing wrong and they're, and I was exhausted because I was thinking, there's, I can't do any more, I don't, I have, I've read the Bible, I pray, I put on my armor, I listen to words, I don't, I don't, I don't music. I go to church. I am surrounded by people. Whatever. I break these curses and what not.

And I am still struggling mentally. And I am so grateful for the people in my life that love me enough to stick with me and not perpetuate these, you know, paranoid thoughts. But it's taken years, years to undo what was, you know, implanted as a child, really, in those patterns. And I've seen it, you know, with other people. And that's, you know, why I do appreciate people telling their stories and sharing. And I do feel defensive when they get criticism of, you know, like, quote, deconstructing or, you know, reconstruct whatever the term. But it's, it's like, this is

everyone needs to do that. Everyone needs to dismantle their beliefs. And it's a questioning. And then you can build a firm foundation as far as like, okay, now this is why I think this. This is why I believe that and allowing people to do that. But this movement doesn't allow for that because when you start asking questions, it honestly pulls the thread to many threads for the people who are in power for the leaders where they don't have answers, they don't for that. And so it threatens their ministry that they've grown, their position of power. And if they have to be held

accountable for that, like, it's, it's not going to be there. And I think, you know, some of us too, in that system, you have to be okay with saying it's the system itself. And this was the one thing when we were attending this church. And I will say, Europe, I just highly encourage people to go into the archives of your podcast as well, because that's something, you know, in the research you've compiled in your book and not, you didn't ask me to plug it. But that was something that has helped me as someone who loves history and loves, you know, where did this belief come from?

Where did it originate? And really, like you were saying, it's the rapture is a new-ish belief, you know, what, what do other, what are other theological views of these topics? And, you know, really looking at that and sort of starting to ask questions to the point where the church that we were attending briefly when we first moved out here, I had already been into your podcast and knew and also knew a lot of the players and knew what was going on. So I am always suspicious when we're out here, because we're in Northern California, so I'm just like looking for a Bethel

influence. And when they had the guest speaker, he opened his pulpit to the Jesus culture pastor, and I was just like, if I wanted to go to Jesus culture Sacramento, I would go to Jesus culture Sacramento. I don't want to go there, you know, and I did, I did. I absolutely...

Why are you having him? And you got very defensive. And I did, you know, like, oh, well, I'm really good friends with Banting Leapshirt. And so then I did ask. I said, well, do you support what he's doing with the Anaheim Vineyard Church?

And that whole mess, people can look that up if they want, there's a mess there. But again, that's another example of that Bethel honor culture trickling into, you know,

other churches in this area where if someone, if there's a leader that's being abusive and people call them out, they had the same line of, we're not speaking to that. And so, you know, I was asking them all about it and he was like, oh, well, I'm really good friends with Banting.

And let me just tell you, Banting says that Jesus' culture is not Bethel, you know, they're different. And I'm like, that is BS. I was like, it is the same. I was like, you know, I was like, Banting started, God has started Bethel, it was there for 20 years.

Jesus' culture came out of that and they're planning a church. And now you are platforming her at our church. And he didn't have a good answer for me. It was just bluster and, and I think this man of this, this pastor is very well beloved and I think he's a genuine Christian, whatever.

But he has his own agenda. He wants more of the charismatic movement at his church and I was like, I can't, like, I'm out. You weren't able to, and he won't take that further step to ask the questions.

So, and the final nail on the coffin was when the stuff was Sean Bowles was coming out, he wrote this blog post about how it's a net win for the kingdom and how it's like, this is great for the charismatic movement because Bethel's taking accountability and God's cleaning things up.

But don't throw the baby out with the bath water and I was like, goodbye. You know, like, people, and my point in telling this is that I get it, it's scary to pull the thread and start asking questions is dismantling your belief and maybe stuff that your life has been built on.

However, like, you can't keep perpetuating the system. Like, it's like, well, that was a bad actor. Let's keep this system going. There's something about it that we keep having these bad actors that keep popping up and showing up.

So, maybe we need to dig deeper into what we're believing in the system itself and then what, if we have children or what are we exposing our kids to generationally that will perpetuate this type of abuse?

Absolutely. Thank you so much for doing this. Yeah, thank you. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org.

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.