YWAM’s Spiritual Warfare Game: When Christianity Becomes a Quest

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, researchers and friends, Jenny McGrath and Shelby Hoffer, former members of YWAM. Shelby, Jenny, it's good to be back and to talk about spiritual warfare. Both of you are unaware of this because they're recorded, pre-recorded and they're scheduled way out, but I have had multiple conversations with multiple people about exactly what we're going to be talking about here. And with the intention while talking with them about

spiritual warfare, how it really impacts the ministry from the perspective of the youth. And I'll be honest, this episode will come out before those, but this is the more important one because this is actually the focus of the movement. And just to give you some preview as to what's coming, I did some deep dives into research into spiritual warfare, the way it has developed in the deliverance ministries of today, eerily matches Hollywood and books and horror movies and horror films, or weird stuff. I'll just say it like that. In that, yes, the Bible did have deliverance, it had demons, it had possession, it had all of these

things. But what they have done is they've added details and gamification to it. And all of that comes from things that aren't in the Bible. For example, I had a conversation with Franny recently, she was talking about this lady, I get actually got an audio clip of it. The lady went to a deliverance seminar and then said, the power of God was so insane, and I'm paraphrasing, the power of God was so insane, I went back to my Airbnb and a coven of witches circled around my Airbnb. And you can't even find coven of witches in the Bible. That's something

that comes from Hollywood. And it's just the history is kind of odd. But here's where it gets problematic for me. In something that my grandfather told me, and he expressed this when he resigned from the Brannum Tabernacle, he says, I have figured this thing out. He and the entire staff of the Brannum Tabernacle resigned and walked out and said, we want no part of this. Grandpa said, I've figured it out what they're doing. If you can get to the children, you can get to the parents.

And if you can get to the parents, you can get to their pocketbooks. And that was in his resignation speech. And honestly, that theme has driven me into the Y-Wam research because think of it all of the gamification that in this, all of the you two have the power to be a Harry Potter in your wizardry world of Christianity.

All of this stuff, I'll just, I'll let you introduce it, Shelby, but this really is important and significant. Yeah, thank you so much, John. It really is. And I think one of the most common challenges that we face or we're common pushbacks that we get are trying to address things, there's the theological side, right, where you can get lots of people who will just disagree theologically around, well, that's fine. I also agree with the YM theology that doesn't seem weird to me, but then there's the other side of the impact and the consequences of the theology

or of simply how practically the foundational values or the belief, the core beliefs or things like that actually get lived out on the ground. I know we've talked about that in previous episodes, so it's something that we certainly are trying to highlight. I am studying theology right now, and that's something that's been very, very interesting coming out of 20 years, almost 20 years in YWAM, but what we really want to be talking about is looking at how this impacts people's lives, right? So there is the theological side, which you can agree to disagree, but it does touch people's

lives, and so for myself and Jenny having worked in the mental health space and Jenny is currently working in the mental health space, we see the effects of that. So one of the core values as the foundational values as we've been talking about in YWAM is to practice worship and intercessory prayer. Now I thought it was really interesting, John, that you mentioned this thing about your grandfather being like, well, they get to the kids, they get to the parents, they get to the parents, they get to the pocketbooks, and obviously youth with the mission is youth targeted, right? And

there's a whole foundational value about championing young people and things like that, and I don't know if you guys know this, Jenny probably does, but YWAM also has a whole arm, a whole ministry called Kings kids, and this is aimed, this is a ministry that's aimed at young, young children.

So we are talking about when you join YWAM to do your detaster to your staff, every once in a while you can get someone in who's 16 or 17, usually they have to be 18 or more, which is a whole thing on its own, but there is, in my time, my 18 years in YWAM, there's often been this conversation of if we can get to the kids, we can get to the parents. Now the pocket book part was not explicitly said so often, but it was, you know, how we can transform families, how we can transform society, we get to the children first, and then that open stores to the parents.

So I can certainly attest to that being a part of the strategy that I have seen. I don't know, Jenny, if you've seen that as well in your time? Absolutely, yeah, and I think the...

The rhetoric and the idea of spiritual warfare is so powerful, you know, it's not uncommon, at least in my experiences, where there'll be these like 24-7 prayer rallies for specific countries or where God's moving or where there's a lot of spiritual warfare and you'll sign up for a time at like one in the morning or three in the morning and you'll hear people up all night screaming and yelling and rebuking demons and it is just from a therapist and a physiological standpoint, it's really distressing. You're talking about sleep deprivation, you're talking about working yourself up into an emotional frenzy. There was, am I thinking right about like

fire and fragrance? Yes, and so there's these like this this brand within the brand of these like they're known as like kind of the radical intercessors and spiritual warfare people and they will just be like screaming at demons or things like that in the room and it's a very upsetting and mobilizing experience where I think I don't want to I don't think you can overstate the importance of talking about this invisible realm and using that to propel kids and youth and parents and pocketbooks into movements of dominionism really. What's interesting is fire and fragrance actually

has just separated from Y-WAM at sort of Y-WAM Global's like request like they were like I you know the details have not been made public the fact that they no longer are meant to be associated with Y-WAM is you know sort of out there because they sort of got a bit too cuckoo from what I understand so if someone else knows about that you put it in the comments but it's the the sort of regular stuff that we would experience in Y-WAM fire and fragrance was that times 100 and that it's it's followers are so loyal to the cause of fire and fragrance and that like you said that invisible

realm and the way in which they engage with it and interact with it and express themselves with it so I love even the name it sounds like marketing and it goes further to the point that I'm researching this is part of a broader subset of research that I'm doing actually there were several different youth missions and when I say youth missions I'm not talking about just Y-WAM there were I mean you can go from Hitler youth to Billy Graham's youth you had all of these different youth missions and what they were trying to do was establish a platform in which children could be indoctrinated and

indoctrinated in the ideologies that you subscribe to, and there were different divisions of these. Jim Jones was part of Youth Missions, and that's part of how he started to develop his ministry, believe it or not. So you have all of these different youth ministries, but when you hear the marketing terms that are in the modern versions of these, it's a little bit scary, especially take a step back and think what's happening with Facebook right now. Facebook has a very unique problem in that. They created a system that once you get into the system, it gets a little bit addictive.

You have the endless scroll, you have ways that you can light things up, and it's called in the tech world, it's called gamification. You gamify it, and then people get interested in the game, and they feel part of it. It's actually not unethical and it's not illegal, but they're suffering huge consequences because the youth are being impacted negatively, and it's having severe mental health issue problems with all of this. So in the gamified version of Facebook, you have legal ramifications. Now go to the Christian side of this. You have really technically the same thing. I've done this comparison before, I probably overused

it, but in the game Dungeons and Dragons, you have this invisible realm that you're fighting these invisible demons, and you have this spiritual mapping where you're mapping out all the demons and the territories and all of the players. If you've watched Stranger Things, you've seen this game in action. Well, it's a gamified system of the invisible realm, and you get part of it. It is so addictive to people who got in that system. I knew friends who did. I was not allowed to, obviously, but I knew how it worked because they're all talking about it in

school. Well, then, fast forward to today, I leave the Branemism thing, and I start researching what developed after Branemism, and they literally have every aspect of Dungeons and Dragons. It is a gamified system, and they all argue that it's biblical, yet there are only key elements that are vague building blocks that are biblical, and all of the details they have built upon it in a gamified way. Yeah, and I think that that's why when you see something like King's Kids, that is targeting the very young, with this sort of formulaic way to hear God's voice or to

pray, to do sort of what's called intercessory prayers, standing in the gap for a person or a nation,

and you see these sort of principles, if you will, or sometimes there are literally called steps to intercession being taught from such a young age. It is in this sense of like, okay, let's, we're going to pray, and just say whatever comes into your head, and then we're going to see, so I think I hear something about green apples, and I said, I don't know, I saw the color green, and I saw an apple.

And then Jenny's like, oh my gosh, like I was thinking about how I need to be healthier or you know, we should be healthy and eating good food So that must go together. And then someone else is like, oh, I got this thing and we start to make these connections that Don't exist And and it's in that sense you get that hit of like I've done it rights Okay, I've done it correctly. I am hearing from God because you know all of these pieces fit together We can make them fit together And you get approval, you know from the people around you. So there's just this whole sort of

process that happens and this is foundational value number four. So it's very high up is one of the first or Sort of important pieces to be a Y-Wammer And to be part of the organization and from the very beginning with Joy Dawson and our husband John Dawson Teaching about intercessory prayer This is actually a very very foundational piece of youth with a mission

And again, we have said in previous episodes talking about the how formulaic things can be can't become In Y-Wam and what that leads to the consequences that can lead to and This is Joy Dawson wrote nine steps to intercession Uh intercessory prayer the principles for effective intercession is what it's called and You know, it's sort of praising God for who he is and for the privilege of engaging in the same wonderful ministry as the Lord Jesus Making sure your heart is clean having given the Holy Spirit time to convict. Should there be any unconfessed sin

Acknowledge you can't really pray without the direction and energy of the Holy Spirit Deal aggressively with the enemy come against him in the all-powerful name of Jesus Christ with the sort of the spirit and her quotes The word of God die to your own imaginations desires and burdens for what you feel you should pray Uh, and the verse is quoted for that of like don't lean on your own understanding he who trusts in his own mind is a fool Uh, you know my thoughts are not your thoughts and I'd love to hear Jenny's thoughts about that

and the effects of that but um number six is praising God now in faith for the remarkable prayer meeting You're going to have he's a remarkable God and you will do something consistent with his character And then you wait before God in silent expectancy listening for his direction Uh, you know, obedience and faith utter what God brings to your mind believing Okay, so it's just this make sure you don't move on to the next subject until you've given you know God time to do it Uh, and then number nine if possible have your Bible with you should go on you to give you direction or confirmation

Oh, and then she's got ten on here when God ceases to bring things to your mind to pray for finished by praising and thanking him for what he's done um, you know, sort of sort of things. So, uh, the, the, she lists the warning at the end.

And the warning says, God knows the weakness of the human heart towards pride. And if we speak of what God has revealed and done in intercession, it may lead to committing this sin. God shares his secrets with those who are able to keep him. There may come a time when he definitely prompts us to share, but unless this happens, we should remain silent. So many thoughts. One, as you were talking, um, about sort of the, the grooming process of like, if you see a flower or if you, you know, this process, I'm thinking about a word that came out of neuroscience that is called

confabulation. And it was based on this study where they actually had patients because of a medical necessity, they severed their right and left hemispheres of their brain. So the emotional center of the right brain was not able to communicate to the literal logical left brain. And what they did was they actually put like a, um, like a blinder between their eyes. And so the part of their eye, the eye that takes in emotional stimuli, they would show kind of like scary images. Um, and then they would ask the person what they're feeling. And they would say, I'm scared. And they

would go, why are you scared? And not one time did someone go, I don't know. 100% of the time people made up a reason. They might say the researcher is looking at me funny or they might say, you know, whatever it was. And they did this with different emotional experiences and different questions. And what they realized was we are beings who confabulate. It is way more distressing for us to not know than to make a story about what is true. And I'm thinking about all of this grooming in intercession and how it's just bolstering confabulation and the stories that we're telling. And

that produces a sense of both grandiosity and terror. And like we've talked about in other episodes, when you're like, I don't know if this is the devil, if this is me, if this is God, who decides it becomes such a form of self-surveillance and terror. And I think it's just really, really psychologically distressing and has consequences in the world. I actually want to read just a short clip from a book called American Evangelicals for Trump that goes through the history of the NIR and Y-WAM. But there's a section on mapping demonic activity, like you were talking

about in Dungeons and Dragons, John, like that happens. There is literally like these spiritual warfare demonology. maps that are drawn. And the author says, if one thinks that these ideas regarding demonology have no impact on daily life, that they are nothing more than abstract concepts from old biblical stories, think again. For proponents of spiritual warfare, these evil spirits play a role in the political, social, and cultural life of a nation. And so again, like we're talking on an individual level of what this is doing in the psyche of kids and youths. But we're also then talking about the implications. If we are practicing this on mass scale and trying

to evangelize and convert people into these worlds, the impact that then has, you know, I remember in YM there was a woman telling me that she saw someone grab a Coca-Cola or something like that, and she saw a demon attach itself to the Coca-Cola. And I was like, well, I've never seen something like that. But like, what in my life, what in my world are demons attaching themselves to? And am I ingesting? And yeah, it's, it is a, it creates terror really.

And I hate to say it. I'm getting excited because terror is part of the game. If you really think about how dungeons and dragons work or any of those games that are like this, there are several.

Terror is part of the game. You get involved in the game and then something really scary or something eventful happens. Well, then it makes you aggressively want to try harder and that's part of gamification. And think about this. As you were both talking and I was listening to the way the emotional response from the youth that happens whenever you get involved in this, whenever you are telling the youth that if you do these things and you feel these things, you're going to get special abilities. Think of how that relates to the gamification.

In spiritual warfare systems, you are basically, you're told that you're being a Christian, but you're more than a Christian. You are a special, unique soldier because you're going to have these special abilities. Some of them may be biblical, yes. But what they do is they add all of these details that are extra biblical. And again, if you go to those extra biblical details and then map out where those came from, they did not come from biblical sources. You're going to find them in movies and games and horror fiction, all kinds of different extra biblical sources. Some of them

even go back to Greek and Roman mythologies, which is crazy interesting. You have all of the powers in the sky that you can't see and these people who are demigods or apostles or prophets are your intercessor between this heavenly realm and your realm, but you as the spiritual warrior, you can go on a journey. And it turns into the hero's quest. So what we're talking about here is a gamification system that is more matching of the ancient mythologies than it is actually Christianity.

When you think about, I don't know if you've ever read the book, Pilgrims Progress. And the My idea, and this was very common through, again, my 18 years in Y-Wam and the many parts of the world that I lived and worked in with Y-Wam, was sort of this idea that if you are, if a lot of bad things are happening to you, like if you're not getting your money or you're not getting your visa or something's happened to your family back home or your sick or whatever, then that could be spiritual warfare. And that can be a lot of the ways

that people try to encourage you in that moment is, oh, well, you must be doing such good work for the Lord that Satan is attacking you so much. And I remember thinking, well, I don't want to then do work for the Lord, quote-unquote, because then I'm going to get just all of this attack.

And then I felt really guilty about that. Maybe I'm not being spiritual enough or I'm not doing enough, quote-unquote, for God. Like you said, John, is this warrior, you know, out there and you're the suffering that you experience, the hardships that you experience are congratulated.

They are, you know, just said like, wow, that's, you must be doing such good work if you are experiencing suffering and hardship because the enemy wouldn't be attacking you if you weren't doing such good work for Christ. Now, obviously, not every single person in Y-Wam would believe that about someone's suffering and hardship, but it was common enough and common, I think, common enough from the stage, if you will, from the people up front, the people with power who had voice into the larger sort of spaces, that was certainly the vibe that you were given.

If you're suffering a lot, it must be that because you're doing something right, which then makes you want to keep suffering and then you keep suffering. I mean, there's so many reasons, psychological reasons why people stay in unhealthy and even abusive systems or relationships.

Obviously, we're talking about a system right now, but that is one of the reasons. Is that sort of gamification, as you said, of I can get more points if I keep suffering? It also makes me think, and I'm curious if you would agree with this, Shelby. Like, I agree with everything you've said and based on kind of our other conversations, it feels like that's true to a threshold. And then those who hold the most power, you don't see them struggling to get their finances. Or, you know, and so there's, there's almost this sense of like, if you're

one of the minions, then you are exposed to these hardships. But I was thinking about that, similarly, with the, like, the warning that you named at the end of the intercession. And I thought that was very rich about, like, pride because I think that those who are in leadership in Y-Wam, in my experience, have like the epitome...

of the humble brag. And it's like, oh, I don't, you know, I didn't actually want to be a leader. I just fought it and everyone else made me a leader. And it's like its own language and rhetoric where there's so much grandiosity in that. And I was actually thinking, um, in, it was sort of been like 2010, 2011-ish. I was actually invited to go with my YM team to North Carolina. We went to YWAM's North American Leadership Conference. And I was a field worker and sort of rogue in Uganda, most of the time. And so I think a lot of the things in YWAM I sort of sidestepped just because

I was by myself a lot of the time. But we were having breakfast at this conference and I sat next to this guy and was just talking with him. He was asking me what I was doing. I was telling him about my work in Uganda. And I was like, where are you from? What do you do? What base are you coming from? And I could tell he was perturbed that I was asking. And I couldn't exactly read it. I was like, maybe he, whatever, I don't know. And then afterwards one of my co-workers from the base,

I was at was like, wow Jenny, you're really hanging with the big leagues. And I was like, what do you mean? And she's like, you went and sat next to John Dawson. And I didn't know it was John Dawson.

And I could tell he was very upset that I didn't know he was John Dawson. And I didn't know all of the YWAM cred that I was supposed to know. And that left such a big impression where I was like, oh, wow, like you're, you're supposed to be humble. But that's also, I don't know, it's very, very complicated. How and who actually is supposed to be humble.

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On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. We've talked about this in previous podcasts, but there are severe consequences with a religious movement that is built upon the framework of hearing God's voice.

I know that there are biblical passages that talk about- hearing God's voice, my sheep hear my voice, etc. But when you flip it on its head where an authoritarian figure is saying that you too can hear God's voice and you can have divine special revelation, this turns into something entirely different and dangerous. Combine that theme from all those past episodes that we have done with the gamification process and think about people like me.

I was never ever good at these role-playing games because I'm too analytical. I could never really dive into it as deeply as some of my friends. I never even got excited. So had I even been able and allowed to play this dungeon in dragons game, I probably wouldn't have liked it because I'm too analytical. This just doesn't work. So I'm the loser in these games. Well, the loser is going to try harder and they're going to try to see things that aren't there. And mentally what happens when you do this in a framework where you're hearing God's voice will suddenly your anxiety

becomes God's voice. Your fears become God's voice. All of the different things that make you feel uncomfortable becomes God's voice. I have talked to people who are like this. They... I don't know if it was with you or somebody else I mentioned. This person was telling me that they had went to a job interview and I didn't take that job because I just felt God was telling me I shouldn't be there.

Well, they were feeling anxiety of the interview. That's really what they were feeling, right? So they apparently lost a job that maybe could have had. But that's the way it works. And if you're in a gamified system where you have this anxiety to become the spiritual warrior that they're telling you you can be, what about the people who aren't this? What about the people who feel nothing? Well, then they start to feel the anxiety and God starts speaking to them and it starts to spiral.

And in mental health, if you understand how spiraling out of control, how dangerous this can be, it makes everything that we've talked about so far become really, really scary. Yeah, certainly when you're isolated from outside community as well. So because YM takes up so much of your time and energy, relationally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, everything, you often, especially if you're in it long enough, you stop having community outside of the YM base because you simply don't have time. You don't have time, you don't have energy. So when it comes to needing to make a decision, personally or corporately, and there's prayer that's happening and you're supposed

to be hearing God's voice, the biggest moment that the meter, the standard is, do I have peace, quote, unquote, peace about this or not? And like you said, John, that your anxiety is maybe speaking, but you're taught not to listen to your instincts, you're taught not to listen to, you know, to doubt everything. Is it, is it my anxiety? Is it my own brokenness? Is it my sinfulness?

Is it the devil? So you're really taught that you shouldn't be listening to anything inside, and that really messes with you when you're supposed to be hearing God's voice. voice for your own life from small decisions to really big decisions, where should you go next?

Who should you be in a relationship with? What should you be doing with your life? And then to even bigger corporate decisions, where should we sell the base and close it down because we don't have enough people to keep it up? What do we do?

And it becomes this, well, do I have peace about it? Do I not have peace about it? Does my leader have peace about it? Or do they not? You know, if I have peace about it, but my leader doesn't have peace about it, I have to go back and pray again. And see, it must be my anxiety, it must be my fear, it must be my fear of suffering, I don't want to do that thing. And so I probably should do that thing. And this idea of quote unquote having peace about it is what leads people

in all sorts of crazy directions and all sorts of crazy relationships and things because that's the only standard that they're using. They don't have other people outside of their YOM community so often to be able to bounce off, you know, questions, hey, I'm really unhappy here because if you say, I'm really unhappy in this community, I'd like to leave. You face shunning, you face a complete rejection and isolation, you face your reputation perhaps being you face an immense amount of grief and loss in relationship in potentially your own power as well, like you will be potentially taken out of, you know, leadership positions that you have or whatever,

but if you say I prayed about it and I have peace, God gave me peace to leave this, you know, place because I'm going to go to another place, I'm going to go to another YOM base. And I really prayed about it and I really felt like God was saying, it's just a new season for me, you know, he has new things for me coming, I'm going to pioneer something new, I'm trying to be visionary, which is also one of our foundational values, then that is celebrated, and that is encouraged, that is supported. And so it's yeah, you have to play those cards in order to be safe.

Yeah, I'm seeing the badass you name be visionary and it feels so intertwined with the spiritual warfare piece and with the confabulation piece of the, what it takes to have unquestioned vision, or to tell people you have unquestioned vision and the lack of nuance and complexity and humanity to be like, I'm not really sure, but I'm going to try this, like there is such a sense of urgency that often, you know, I think peace maybe is confused with dissociation and people not being in their bodies and not actually feeling the terror that we've been talking about or these other

things. And so it's like, well, if I'm not feeling anything, then that must be peace. But the He sympathetically charged system, I think, requires most bodies within it to be disembodied and to be dissociated.

And so then it feels like it's kind of grasping at straws to figure out what visions you're supposed to do and you kind of become like these floating heads making decisions as part of the system and not from the sense of agency and responsibility.

A long time ago, when I had first left the Brannem movement, I started studying different ancient religions and near ancient religions and I got enthralled with studying the vision quests of the ancient religions.

Each one had a similar progression into a quest and it was all about the quest. Really the quest was what drew the person deeper into their belief set. It wasn't that there was a goal in the end that changed their lives forever.

It was literally about the quest itself, the journey. It's all about the journey. And whenever I started investigating the different movements that built upon Brannemism, they each developed some weird, similar thing. If you do this thing, if you deny yourself these pleasures of life, then you can have this thing that may either be spiritual warfare or something else.

It's all about that journey and that submission to the belief set. Then I encountered youth with a mission and it's unbelievable because the entire system is the quest. You are literally going on the mission because you're part of the quest.

So when you think back to the Dungeons and Dragons gamification thing, every good role-playing game has a quest. In fact, the modern games that are like this are nothing but quests and you can get side quests and main quests and multiple quests.

And I hear people going to my DTS quest and my other DTS quest and multiple quests. So the whole thing becomes about the mission and that's why early on in this journey, I was asking you, well, what is the purpose of it?

What is this thing for? Why do you, why do people do this? We've came to the conclusion that there is not a really good answer for that question. Other than it's all about the mission.

The mission is self-serving in that you had a mission. Yeah, it's something I was speaking with a friend about today because of our current situation and our connection with the farm and Y-Wam. And my friend who's not been a part of Y-Wam or anything pointed out that seems that the people are so reliant on Y-Wam continuing to exist because in certain situations around the world, people perhaps lack any sort of formal education or any sort of work experience.

They can't afford any more to leave Y-Wam. all of their safety and their security resides in remaining part of the organization and therefore keeping the organization going and turning over on itself forever because they need that in order to live and in order to live out their quest because without it the quest dies and they're lost, they're anchorless without the quest and it's something that I have seen for years with clients, former clients who have, you know, in the end chose to leave the organization to leave Y-WAM where they experienced that anchorlessness and that great fear about what am I gonna do with my life?

I have nothing that functions in the real world. I don't have education. I don't have work experience. I don't, you know, have any savings. I don't have property. I don't, you know, there's no sort of hope to build what they would establish as a life outside of Y-WAM, they have no connections, they have no friendships, they have no community outside of that Y-WAM community and, you know, those people they had to get to the point where their bodies were giving out on them where they were incredibly burnt out, incredibly ill to sort of come to the point of saying,

it's worse to stay, so I'm going to leave. But that's the standard that they had to get to to say, like, I feel so bad, I'm actually gonna have to leave because this feels like the thing that I need to do versus staying, and it's just so sad because it takes years to rebuild.

I mean, not only the practical side of it, right, like, I gotta get a job and I gotta find a way to earn money and I have to maybe go back to school or go to school for the first time as someone in my 30s or 40s,

but then there's the psychological aspects as well, unpacking, you know, all of the things that we've talked about in all of the episodes, all of the consequences that land from this sort of needing to stay in the quest because there are all of these points you can earn and lives you can earn and like Jenny said, if you can sort of get to the top, if you can get to a higher leadership position, then maybe it won't be so hard and you can say that you're speaking at all of these schools and all of these bases and you need money to travel

because everybody wants you to talk on their stuff and so you maybe earn more money because you have more kids and people feel bad for you and they want to keep your kids from being in poverty and so people give to this or you get the people who are genuine believers, right?

Like, we really believe in... what you're doing. But until you get to that place, which is for the few, the privileged few, like Jenny said, sort of the minions, the people who are under that stay in the quest. They stay in the cycle forever and ever, never achieving anything.

As you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, being a therapist. And if someone came in and told me that they were in a relationship, and this relationship didn't let them get a job, this relationship was taxing on their body. This was a relationship that was making them feel like they were never enough. And essentially kind of battering them, maybe without the physical violence. But, you know, in all purposes of really doing that, I would say, this is a very abusive relationship. This is a very alarming relationship.

And what do we need to do to help you get the psychological, emotional, financial, social support so that you can leave this relationship? And I can't speak to the interiority of the leaders and the founders of how intentional that is. But the function of it really is. I would liken it to an abusive relationship. And if anyone has ever been in or known someone who is in an abusive relationship, the psychological toll alone that that takes and the amount of shame and self-contempt and self-blame that you have to work through, regardless of even just the tangible things of not having savings. Like it's, I don't

want to understate how difficult of a journey it is to break free and to get out of those types of abusive systems and relationships. So I'm about to nerd out on you both. I'm in IT. I began as a developer. And I love video games. I always have love video games. And my favorite is Ms. Pac-Man, especially the fast one at the arcade. You know, not many people realize this, but the algorithms of Ms. Pac-Man are quite intense. I actually wrote my own Ms. Pac-Man game early on in my career just to see if I could do it because it is very complicated. There are four ghosts.

And each of the four ghosts have different levels of intelligence. There's one of them that's completely dumb and it's going to go a different direction. So there's one that will chase you to no end. But what happens is as you're going through the maze and you make a turn, they will re-evaluate and reconsider their plan of attack to get you. And it's really, really complicated stuff. That algorithm now in today's world that seems simplistic. Now you have entire legions of people who are fighting you in these quest games, I have Xbox, and I get involved in some of these quests. They're quite intense.

Well, what you both have just described is actually one of the most, if not the most significant part of the gamification. When you have difficulty in your quest, something is happening to prevent you from succeeding in your quest, and therefore you have to reconsider your plan, like the ghosts reconsidering where they go. So if you have spiritual difficulties, if things are going wrong, well, the devil is out to get me. What am I doing wrong that the devil is being allowed to do this?

Let's adjust the plan a different way, in a different way, in a different way, and in the end, you're constantly trying to reevaluate how to make it to the end of your quest, not realizing that the quest itself is actually the thing that is the problem. And so when you're deeply involved in that type of mentality, you'd never look beyond the quest. So you can get stuck in this thing, and the whole world can be crashing down around you. You can go to the levels where you're, I know you experienced this, Jenny, where you're actually self-mardering to survive the quest,

and it's all because of the way it's gamified. You know, I saw comments on one of our episodes where someone was saying that like, there's literally a saying that you can't judge based on its abuses, which like, thank you for the engagement. We appreciate it. And they don't know who said that.

You can quote your source. That would be great. But also, that's absolutely bonkers. And like Jenny said, you know, we can't speak to perhaps with the intention of the founders or were, now that learning coming out of his past, you know, the rest of the founders, many of the founders are still very much alive and active. And I just want to reiterate again, intent does not equate impact.

So you can have all of the best intentions, and your impact can still be extremely damaging. And while we are very well aware of both me and Jenny has stated before, you know, the lovely relationships and great things that have experiences that we've had, both of us, in our time in Y-Wam, it does not race the fact that so much abuse is happening. And if you want to talk about, you know, knowing an organization by, it's don't know an organization by its abuses, you have to know an organization by how it responds to the abuse allegations, to people speaking up, to people asking

questions about saying, hey, I think this isn't right. Hey, I think something is going on.

And Y-Wam, in all of my experience, and the hundreds of stories, hundreds and hundreds of stories, I have read, people I've talked to, from around the world, across the deck. AIDS. This is not a fluke. This is a part of the system. And this is why we talk about this because the abuse needs to be addressed. It's, it's, it's not a bug. It's a future.

And until why I'm actually begins to take these things seriously and until people who want to come into the comments and say, Oh, but I had a great experience, want to take these seriously, then it will continue. And we will continue to be here talking about this.

Yeah, I so agree. And I think going back to even the spiritual warfare and how that can abdicate responsibility and how, you know, it can be blamed of you're just struggling because of you're not committed or maybe you have a spirit of contempt, maybe you have a spirit of criticism, maybe you have a spirit of cynicism and your issues that you're having with the way that you're being harmed are actually your fault. And they're actually demonic and they have nothing to do with us. And I was thinking about, you know, if I accidentally spilled a hot

cup of coffee on my husband and it scalded him. And he was like, Oh my gosh, you poured hot coffee my response shouldn't be, well, I didn't intend to do that. You know, it'd be like, Oh my gosh, are you so, I'm so sorry, are you okay? What do you need? This is how I'm going to be more careful next time to not spill my coffee. And it shouldn't be as hard as it is to confront the ways in which harm are done, especially if it isn't intentional, then there should be that much more emphasis on

repair and acknowledgement and responsibility for how the organization moves forward. We are two people who are in it talking about it, but there are plethora of people behind us who have been in our experiences, who we know, who we've talked to. We're not just a couple of upset apples.

When you think about it, the gamified process has consequences. I mentioned earlier Facebook, and that's one of the consequences. But long before this, you would read these news stories of somebody in some internet cafe who's playing a video game for hours and hours, like 48 hours until they died. They literally were deprived of sleep and played so long that they actually died. And I can't tell you how many people have counted like this in the news. It's unbelievable how many people actually die. But what happens is they get sucked into the game and they get into this loop that

they can't break out of. Well, think about the way that deliverance ministry, spiritual warfare, all of these things. Think of that loop. It's all built around first the experience. Once you have the experience, there's an interpretation of what that experience was that is not quite based on fact, but it's based on what the leader wants you to believe as is the interpretation of that experience.

And so whenever the leader interprets it like this, now you have a testimony. And you share the testimony that goes to the social validation, all the people agree I had a similar testimony because the leader interpreted my experience much the same way.

And then what that builds up to is an anticipation of a new experience and now you've entered the loop. It just continues to cycle and cycle. And then whenever somebody outside of your game starts to challenge that loop, where you're going to fight them off. No, I'm playing the game. Get back. I don't want you to invade my gaming process.

And sadly, it has led to people dying in internet cafes. I'm a little concerned at what's happening within youth with a mission. I don't know how far that this is taken. I'm not saying that they're gameifying on purpose or anything like this.

But it matches all of the similarities that I see in some of the other non-Christian things. And when you take a step back and realize that these are youth and they're being trained for a mission that really doesn't seem to have much of a purpose.

When you look at it like that, what else is there other than this is a game you're in the game. How do you get out of the game? I recently read a book called Auto Immunity and the Good Girls.

And it was based on a study of over a thousand women with an autoimmune disease. And looking at the correlations between trying to be good often, it was only or oldest daughters. And I'm thinking about that with why I am.

Where people might not be as dramatic as some of the gaming situations you're describing John where people fall down dead. But there is, as you named my own experience, like there is a martyrdom and an effort to be good and to continue winning the game, the mission, achieving.

And I would love for someday there to be a study of the correlations between people who have been in Y-Wam and autoimmune disorders and diseases because I, myself, no money, I myself struggle with them.

And I'd be curious to see the health difficulties that people have to engage because of part of this gamifying system. And ultimately, when all of your choices are offloaded to a intangible spiritual realm, whether that is hearing the voice of God or whether that's being attacked by the devil, when any circumstance that happens in your life, when any sort of thing that happens to you or around you is sort of offloaded into that intangible realm, where does accountability lie?

And where does responsibility for your choices, for your actions towards your self, for your family, or the people around you, if you're you're leading others? Where does that lie and how do you as a person ever hold that? Unfortunately, I think the answer is you don't. And why why I'm certainly doesn't hold responsibility for the abuses that have occurred in it because it's able to use plausible deniability because of its decentralization, but it's it's able to offload those abuses and those choices by others into an intangible realm. And until they're able to pull that back down into the tangible and someone is

able to take responsibility and take accountability. Unfortunately, I think we're going to keep seeing this happen. Well, there's actually so much more that I could have talked about. We didn't even make it to the NPCs. And for those who don't know, that's a non-playable character. In every spiritual warfare game, you have the NPCs, right? The demons. You have all these things that you can't control. But in the end for me, it's a problem in that Christianity is not supposed to be gamified. It's supposed to be simply Christ came. It is finished. And if you understand the gospel, that's really all it is.

There's no need for gamification. There's need. There was no training manual on how to fight spiritual demons given to the disciples. Yes, there was deliverance. I understand that there was a biblical version of deliverance, but they didn't turn it into this thing where you have details of spiritual mapping and spiritual realms and territorial demons, all of this weird stuff that they've invented today. If you go back to the Hollywood version and the fictional book version, you can actually identify some of the sourcing. They were robbing from fiction, whenever this weird idea was invented. But in the end for me, you can't gamify Christianity.

And so the quest itself, the biggest question that I have that I'll end with is this. If the quest isn't based on Christianity, what is it actually based on? And I'll leave that for the audience. And thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for having us. 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-Brandom.org. From 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.