- yesterday
John invites Chris to share his story about his experience in the charismatic movement and his time working with a prominent international missions organization. Chris recounts his journey from conversion in 2012 to his involvement in emotionally-driven revivalism and controversial teachings within charismatic circles. The conversation explores how emotionally manipulative practices, doctrinal distortions, and revival marketing tactics affected both personal faith and psychological stability. John and Chris compare experiences from the U.S. and Germany, highlighting the global spread of charismatic doctrines and their psychological and theological implications.
They delve into historical roots of modern revivalism, tracing them to figures like John G. Lake, Alexander Dowie, and Charles Fox Parham. The conversation highlights troubling teachings on blood transfusions, spiritual elitism, and Word of Faith theology. Chris emphasizes how radicalization becomes embedded in personal identity, making recovery more difficult. The conversation concludes with a sobering discussion of the emotional aftermath many face after leaving such movements, especially young adults who invested financially and emotionally into mission work with little long-term support or healing.
00:00 Introduction
01:07 Chris’s Entry into Charismatic Christianity
03:37 Early Red Flags and Absurd Teachings
06:05 Bloodline Theology and Historical Parallels
08:31 Word of Faith and John G. Lake’s Influence
11:13 Roots in Dowie’s Fraudulent Healing Empire
13:02 Prophetic Claims and the Rise of Revivalism
15:03 Deliverance, Violence, and Mental Harm
18:28 Identity, Indoctrination, and Radicalization
21:50 Positive Confession and Detachment from Reality
24:04 Deprogramming Through Scripture and History
27:27 Gnosticism, Mystery Religions, and Special Knowledge
30:07 Marketing, Secrecy, and the Cult Mindset
34:17 Identity-Based Religion and Worship of Leaders
38:30 Christian Identity and Lifestyle Branding
41:55 Revivalism, Urgency, and Manufactured Emotion
44:02 Seeking Healthy Faith Communities
45:56 Revival vs. Emotional Hype
48:22 False Revivals and Youth Recruitment
50:24 Manufactured Miracles and Revival Optics
52:03 Introduction to YWAM Experience
52:47 Financial Exploitation and Emotional Damage
56:02 Emotional Crash After the Hype
58:51 Dominion Language and Spiritual Manipulation
1:00:01 Cycles of Trauma and Unresolved Wounds
1:01:13 Closing Thoughts and Thank You
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
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They delve into historical roots of modern revivalism, tracing them to figures like John G. Lake, Alexander Dowie, and Charles Fox Parham. The conversation highlights troubling teachings on blood transfusions, spiritual elitism, and Word of Faith theology. Chris emphasizes how radicalization becomes embedded in personal identity, making recovery more difficult. The conversation concludes with a sobering discussion of the emotional aftermath many face after leaving such movements, especially young adults who invested financially and emotionally into mission work with little long-term support or healing.
00:00 Introduction
01:07 Chris’s Entry into Charismatic Christianity
03:37 Early Red Flags and Absurd Teachings
06:05 Bloodline Theology and Historical Parallels
08:31 Word of Faith and John G. Lake’s Influence
11:13 Roots in Dowie’s Fraudulent Healing Empire
13:02 Prophetic Claims and the Rise of Revivalism
15:03 Deliverance, Violence, and Mental Harm
18:28 Identity, Indoctrination, and Radicalization
21:50 Positive Confession and Detachment from Reality
24:04 Deprogramming Through Scripture and History
27:27 Gnosticism, Mystery Religions, and Special Knowledge
30:07 Marketing, Secrecy, and the Cult Mindset
34:17 Identity-Based Religion and Worship of Leaders
38:30 Christian Identity and Lifestyle Branding
41:55 Revivalism, Urgency, and Manufactured Emotion
44:02 Seeking Healthy Faith Communities
45:56 Revival vs. Emotional Hype
48:22 False Revivals and Youth Recruitment
50:24 Manufactured Miracles and Revival Optics
52:03 Introduction to YWAM Experience
52:47 Financial Exploitation and Emotional Damage
56:02 Emotional Crash After the Hype
58:51 Dominion Language and Spiritual Manipulation
1:00:01 Cycles of Trauma and Unresolved Wounds
1:01:13 Closing Thoughts and Thank You
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Chris Thomason, former
00:00:47member of the Charismatic Movement.
00:00:50Chris, it's good to be talking to you and telling your story on the podcast.
00:00:54We've exchanged several emails and life circumstances, et cetera, has gotten in the way, but we finally,
00:01:01finally connected, and I'm very interested to hear your story, especially parts of your
00:01:07story lead towards something that really interests me.
00:01:10I'm wanting to learn more about youth with a mission, which is just one small part of
00:01:15your story.
00:01:16But anyway, very glad to have you.
00:01:18Maybe if you could just tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
00:01:22Yeah, my name is Chris.
00:01:23I'm 38 years old.
00:01:25I'm in the faith now for around 15 years.
00:01:29I came to faith in 2012, got baptized in 2014.
00:01:36Yeah, and started my journey in a charismatic church.
00:01:40And that's when I was connected to YWAM, to some friends I had at the time.
00:01:47Excellent.
00:01:48So you were converted to the charismatic movement, and I'm trying to understand what that would
00:01:54have been like.
00:01:55So for a person who had not experienced this, I was born and raised in not charismania, but
00:02:01in something that was the precursor to it.
00:02:04So my entire worldview, my life experience, I was molded and shaped to be like this.
00:02:11What was it like for somebody who wasn't, who just came in contact with this?
00:02:15How much of a shock to your system was it to become charismatic?
00:02:19At first, it created some distance between me and the congregation itself.
00:02:24I had no language to describe what's going on.
00:02:27I was not Christian educated, you could say.
00:02:30And as soon as I saw things like people shivering in the background, falling all over the place
00:02:38and other very weird stuff, I distanced myself from my friends and from the congregation and
00:02:46started.
00:02:46It was a huge motivation for me to start my own Bible study.
00:02:51And that's when I first bought my first Bible.
00:02:54Um, it's some kind of funny because, uh, the first Bible I ever bought was a Schlachter 2000.
00:03:01Uh, you could translate that into Terminator or Slayer 2000.
00:03:05That's very funny.
00:03:06And that was the reason why I bought the Bible.
00:03:08And in fact, it was a John MacArthur study Bible.
00:03:12That was my first Bible.
00:03:14And, um, yeah, I realized that most of the things that was, were taught in my congregation
00:03:20were not biblically at all.
00:03:23Um, they couldn't justify what they were teaching, um, in some kind of ways.
00:03:28It was extreme.
00:03:29Let me make two examples that really drove me off.
00:03:34Um, we had a, uh, weekends, a special where we were talking about some kind of, um, demonic
00:03:46possession via, uh, via blood.
00:03:50One of the mothers from, from, from one of my friends of the congregation, uh, was, um,
00:03:57in a, uh, blood giving charity.
00:03:59I don't know.
00:04:00How, how do you say it in, in English?
00:04:03What's the word?
00:04:04Blood charity.
00:04:05Yeah, we have, I think it's called, in fact, I think it might be the red cross that does
00:04:10the big blood drives here, but we have blood donations.
00:04:12I think is how we say it.
00:04:14Blood donation.
00:04:14Yeah, right.
00:04:16One of the main topics at the weekend were blood donations because one of the mothers
00:04:20of the congregation were doing blood donations on a regular basis.
00:04:24And the topic was, if your blood enters the body of a different person, then you get possessed
00:04:30by that person.
00:04:31Um, and we, we started to talk about the mother, like she was demonic possessed.
00:04:39That was very weird.
00:04:40And in the evening of the same day, uh, they started to talk about Harry Potter, um, fiction
00:04:49stories.
00:04:49Yeah.
00:04:50We had, and she's, she's one of the main characters in this story in regards to YWAM.
00:04:55Um, we talked about her because she reads Harry Potter fiction novels and they started to,
00:05:02uh, exercise Harry Potter demons on her.
00:05:05They circled around her, laid on hands until she vomited into a basket.
00:05:10And that was exercising the Harry Potter demon out of her.
00:05:14So it was demonic to read, um, fantastic novels or sci-fi novels or any witchcraft, uh,
00:05:22stuff like that.
00:05:23Yeah.
00:05:23That was Star Wars fan.
00:05:25And I, I can imagine them trying to exercise Chewbacca out of me and Chewbacca is much,
00:05:30much larger, right?
00:05:32Yeah.
00:05:32You know, it's funny.
00:05:33We had the same kind of thing here, um, in the Branhamite cult, the sex that I was a
00:05:40part of, we weren't allowed to watch TV or movies by and large.
00:05:43And so they did, they did not have the Harry Potter craze, but we did in America have people
00:05:49that were doing this.
00:05:50And we, as the Branhamites were looking at charismatics thinking, this is such nonsense.
00:05:56Do you not know that this is a fictional character created by a book, but there's something else
00:06:01that you said.
00:06:02I want to drive, drive closer to home because this hit me like a brick wall.
00:06:07You're talking about the blood transfusions and the transference of blood and demons through
00:06:12blood.
00:06:13All of that comes back to Christian identity.
00:06:17Whenever Branhamism spread throughout the globe and he strongly influenced key figures
00:06:22in charismatic movement, they were teaching through Christian identity.
00:06:26They were teaching that there were two bloodlines in the United, in the world.
00:06:31There are two bloodlines.
00:06:32One was good.
00:06:33One was evil.
00:06:34And it came into the world through a sexual union between Eve and the serpent.
00:06:39And this is what fueled the hate riots.
00:06:42I don't know if you've seen them from the sixties in the United States.
00:06:45Well, take a step way forward to my childhood.
00:06:50We, we had ministers that were saying the same thing.
00:06:53If you take a blood transfusion and you, you're donating blood, the, the people who receive
00:07:00the transfusion might have that evil seed in the blood.
00:07:04So there were people who could have survived and died because they refused to take a blood
00:07:09transfusion in the hospital.
00:07:11And what's interesting is in my podcast series with Charles, I think we covered this, but this,
00:07:17this heavily fueled the race hate that was in the United States.
00:07:22And we found one speech by the Imperial wizard of the Klan, which if you're familiar with
00:07:28this in your country, it is a, so this was a domestic terrorist organization that was
00:07:34widely popular in the twenties.
00:07:36They had marches on Washington.
00:07:38You've seen the white robes, the white hoods.
00:07:41That's what in the movies, when you see this, that is the Klan, the Ku Klux Klan is what it's
00:07:46called.
00:07:46Oh, okay.
00:07:48Yes.
00:07:48So I may, the reason I use the word Klan instead is because it gets past the YouTube filters.
00:07:54If I say the whole thing, it's such a nasty terrorist organization that YouTube will usually
00:08:00block it.
00:08:01So if you're listening and you hear a weird sentence, it's because I had to cut that out
00:08:05before YouTube would release it.
00:08:07But anyway, the leader of this group was saying the same exact thing.
00:08:12You cannot receive blood because you might get, and they called it mongrel blood, which
00:08:17is an offensive term for somebody who is a mixed race, I think is, is the best way to say it.
00:08:24But we had the same doctrine.
00:08:26So it's very interesting that you had it there too.
00:08:28There is a connection in the person of John G. Lake.
00:08:37One, one of the, when I came to faith, two of my childhood friends came to faith in different
00:08:47parts of the city.
00:08:49And years later we met when I was born again, they were born again, but they were like two
00:08:55or three years ahead of me.
00:08:57So they were educated already, invited me into the congregation.
00:09:01And one of my childhood friends was married to a girl named Katharina, and she was consummating
00:09:10American made charismania stuff on a regular basis.
00:09:17And John G. Lake was one of the guys I remember the most because when she started to read his
00:09:23books, her, her entire language changed.
00:09:27She started to say things like, I declare in the name of Jesus, the specific word of
00:09:33declare to declare was something that she started to use, or I declared dominion over
00:09:39the school in the name of Jesus.
00:09:41Her entire language changed.
00:09:44Now I know it's, it's the word of faith teaching that leads to that.
00:09:48That's a very specific part and very important part for them to use this kind of language.
00:09:55And through this language, this entire worldview that comes with the word of faith movement
00:10:02took place in my church, in my congregation.
00:10:06And from there on, it's...
00:10:09Yeah, it's such a weird tangled history.
00:10:12People, there are people who, like me, they're studying this mass and trying to understand what
00:10:17it is.
00:10:18And some of them go back to John G.
00:10:20Lake simply because he was such a scoundrel, a con artist, basically.
00:10:26And there are, there are papers out there you can find where he's clearly, this is a gimmick
00:10:32that he's using as a means to make money.
00:10:34All throughout Africa, he, he takes his apostolic faith missions and he has family members appointed
00:10:41to pretend to be sick in other states.
00:10:43And so you'll have the meetings and then they did like telegrams, I guess it was, and
00:10:48they would write back through the telegram and say, yes, I'm healed, praise God.
00:10:52And this was a family member who, I think the, I think the example that the author gave,
00:10:58he said one, one of his family members got healed like 17 times that they could count through
00:11:02all of these revivals and was never sick.
00:11:05So that's, you know, there's that too.
00:11:07But what people don't understand, because until you take, you mentioned word of faith and
00:11:14it's, it's deeper than just word of faith, but it displays itself in word of faith.
00:11:19So you could say word of faith is the fruit produced by this tree.
00:11:22You can also say the new apostolic reformation, charismatic, the prosperity, all of it traces
00:11:29its roots and not many people go back far enough is the problem.
00:11:34You have to go back to the scene in Zion city with John Alexander Dowie, who was also a con
00:11:41artist, who also John G Lake helped, helped Dowie do the same types of cons.
00:11:48And what they were doing is they were pretending that they could heal the sick.
00:11:52And we, I have a book, um, it's called, um, uh, critical examination of John Alexander
00:11:59Dowie, which I go through some of the newspapers of this, but what they were doing is they would
00:12:04pretend to heal the sick and many people were dying and they were slipping them out to the
00:12:08morgue under the cover of night.
00:12:10So people had no idea.
00:12:12So many people were dying.
00:12:14They weren't allowed to, to go to doctors, to meet doctors, to get medical advice, right?
00:12:18Exactly.
00:12:19Well, he made $10 million in 10 years, which in today's money, this is a half a billion
00:12:25dollars.
00:12:27And so it's a massive amount of money towards the end of his life.
00:12:31And right before the birth of modern Pentecostalism, he lost his mind and everybody wanted to gain
00:12:39control of his empire.
00:12:40And so you had all this influx of, I found one newspaper article that said Zion city is flooded
00:12:46with prophets pretending to be, uh, they claim that they were Elijah, the manifestation of
00:12:52Elijah.
00:12:53Yeah.
00:12:53One of those people was Charles Fox Parham, who was the, he's basically.
00:12:58That's, that's a name that's even, even known in Germany.
00:13:00That's the only name that you can approach to when you try to explain the history of the
00:13:06charismatic movement to the people here in Germany.
00:13:08Um, it's a huge problem.
00:13:11There's, there's no connection to the historicity of the entire movement.
00:13:17They, they take all the books, all the culture, the entire language through, um, guys like, uh,
00:13:24uh, uh, uh, Joyce Mayer.
00:13:26Yeah.
00:13:28Yeah.
00:13:28But they don't know what they're talking about.
00:13:31They don't trace it back.
00:13:33Absolutely.
00:13:33And we have the same problem here.
00:13:35People, the problem is history keeps repeating itself, but people are unfamiliar with this
00:13:40history.
00:13:40The Elijah thing.
00:13:41Yeah.
00:13:42The Elijah thing you, you just talked about.
00:13:44It, it happens a few times over the course of history, right?
00:13:47Oh, several times.
00:13:48Like if as far back as you want to go, I also found a newspaper article that said the world
00:13:54is inundated with people claiming to be Elijah's or Moses's or David's or they're all, it was
00:14:00a gimmick that they were doing, but the point I'm trying to drive at is there was a moment
00:14:04in time when the, in today's world, a billionaire loses his mind and he, his empire is at risk.
00:14:12All of these people come.
00:14:13Well, Charles Fox Parham creates this sect within Zion city and John G Lake was a member of his
00:14:20sect as was Fred Francis Bosworth, who mentored William Branham and the healing revivals.
00:14:26And they were doing this thing that you described where they very much like Harry Potter.
00:14:32They, they could take control of the demons in the heads.
00:14:36What happened was they became overzealous in doing so.
00:14:39And they were killing people.
00:14:41There were people with crippled backs.
00:14:44They were trying to straighten and they would physically torture the people.
00:14:47So one lady, the, I can't even tell it on the podcast because it will get blocked, but
00:14:54simply put, several of her bones were snapped as they tried to exercise the demon from her.
00:15:01Well, this is the very epicenter of what is known as the deliverance movement.
00:15:06This became popularized through latter rain.
00:15:09And then in Charismania, Branham and Gordon Lindsay of Christ for the Nation started holding
00:15:14deliverance seminars to teach people how to do this magical thing and made lots and lots
00:15:21of money from it.
00:15:22Yeah.
00:15:23It's the same pattern show here in Germany.
00:15:26They try to sell it.
00:15:28They, one of the central things that come up here in Germany is hear the voice of God,
00:15:34how to hear the voice of God.
00:15:36There was a central teaching in my congregation back then that drove many of the people into
00:15:44sometimes even into psychosis, because at some point, some people can't make a difference
00:15:55between their own inner dialogue and God's voice.
00:15:59What allows you to make a difference there?
00:16:02There's no biblical ground for that.
00:16:04So, what allows you to make a difference there?
00:16:07They have schemes and like they try to teach you how to make the difference, but there's
00:16:13really no difference between your inner dialogue and what maybe is God's voice in you.
00:16:18So, yeah, that was a huge problem to people.
00:16:23Yeah.
00:16:24What do you call it when people leave the faith?
00:16:27Is there a word for it?
00:16:28Well, I use the word escape because usually people, what you're describing is a, it's
00:16:34a mental condition that is a pattern of this movement.
00:16:37People get, I use the word assimilated.
00:16:40They, they become part of the movement.
00:16:42Sometimes it is by their own will, but not fully by their will because their will gets
00:16:48hijacked in their head.
00:16:49So, they get sucked into this cult mindset and then you really have to break through the
00:16:54barriers and escape.
00:16:56And they, the word that we use for people who leave, if you're on the inside, they're
00:17:02excommunicated.
00:17:03We are no longer in communication with these people.
00:17:06We've excommunicated them.
00:17:07And, um, it's, it's a huge, huge problem.
00:17:10We have examples also dating back to John Alexander Dowie where people, they're so caught up in
00:17:17this hype.
00:17:18They believe that God is there and they're trying because very much like the Harry Potter
00:17:24mindset, they're trying to enter into this fantasy world that does not really exist, but
00:17:30their mind separates from reality.
00:17:32And at that is the point psychosis hits and there are, I won't go into details, but there
00:17:38are clear examples of this all throughout the history of this movement.
00:17:42Yeah.
00:17:42We had people that right away escaped, as you said, from the congregation.
00:17:46Uh, we have people that were on the brink of going into a psychiatry, uh, because they
00:17:52could no longer make a difference between reality and their own, uh, perception of reality.
00:17:58Um, other people, um, kept going, but in the end were very unfortunate to stay in that movement
00:18:07and, and, and to stay connected to the, uh, the people in the center.
00:18:12Um, some of them, um, yeah, destroyed their lives by, by sticking to this circle of people
00:18:20to the circle of, um, uh, yeah, charismania.
00:18:23Yeah, I've been trying to put into words.
00:18:28So most of my research was focused on Branhamism until I began to realize that Branhamism was
00:18:33the foundation that many of these things grew from.
00:18:37And I've been trying to phrase the words in such a way that can help people in the charismatic
00:18:42movement.
00:18:43And one of the struggles that I have is because people, it seems to me in the charismatic
00:18:49movement, people have been radicalized.
00:18:52And when you're radicalized, you can't understand your radicalization.
00:18:57So it can't be explained in the same way.
00:19:00And people understand it, but there's even, even, even more when that part of radicalness
00:19:07becomes part of your identity.
00:19:10For me, for me, in the end, it's all about identity.
00:19:13If you talk to those people and you're, let's say you're able to explain all of this to
00:19:18them, you open the Bible, you go verse by verse, story through story, you explain all
00:19:23of this to them.
00:19:24In the end, they have to make a decision between them and their, let's say, congregation, their
00:19:31older life.
00:19:32And at some point, that's a part of their identity.
00:19:36People want to be special.
00:19:38People want to be recognized.
00:19:39And when it comes to that point where they have to make, to make a cut, that means they
00:19:45have to, um, question themselves and their identity.
00:19:49And that's the hardest part.
00:19:51You have to like, uh, say to yourselves, uh, I was wrong.
00:19:56I was misled.
00:19:57Um, I'm a loser.
00:19:59So that's, that's the feeling.
00:20:01It is.
00:20:01It's very hard.
00:20:02And even scholarly people, when they try to examine this movement, unfortunately, it's usually
00:20:08examined by Christian scholars, and it should be examined by both Christian and psychological
00:20:15scholars.
00:20:15Because what happens is a Christian scholar will often overlook the psychological aspects,
00:20:21and they try to trace the lineage through doctrine.
00:20:25And when you do this, it never works.
00:20:27Because what happens is when somebody becomes radicalized, then they believe they've, they've
00:20:32entered this realm where they believe that they are in a spiritual realm.
00:20:36They're talking directly with God, but they're actually in psychosis.
00:20:40Those people start to produce new doctrines and the doctrines shift.
00:20:45And so what happens is something else emerge, emerges that is not the same scriptural or doctrinal
00:20:51foundation.
00:20:52It's something new, but the structure psychologically is the same.
00:20:56They have separated themselves from reality.
00:20:59Yeah, you never, you never get to the root of the problem.
00:21:03You're always on the outside.
00:21:05Things start to get encapsulated.
00:21:08Yeah, more and more shells around, around the root of the problem, right?
00:21:12Absolutely.
00:21:13And it's a huge problem, right?
00:21:15So as you're trying to explain this to somebody who's charismatic, I get the comment often,
00:21:20I don't know if you've seen on the YouTube site.
00:21:22John is trying to trace every single thread of religion through William Branham.
00:21:26And it's not that, it's that Branham created this recipe for indoctrinating people.
00:21:32And so I'll use the example.
00:21:34The characters, the persons, they are interchangeably.
00:21:40Right, doesn't matter at all.
00:21:42One of the things that Branham, and he did this through Bosworth, Bosworth learned it from
00:21:47Dowie.
00:21:48But one of the things that they had was positive confession.
00:21:50And Charles and I just went deep into a discussion on radicalization.
00:21:56Positive confession is the recipe for brainwashing.
00:21:59Because if you have something that you know is wrong with your body, but you're indoctrinated
00:22:06to say the opposite of what is happening to your body.
00:22:10So I have cancer.
00:22:12I have a growth.
00:22:13I'm sick.
00:22:13I can barely move.
00:22:14But I have to confess positively that I don't have any of this.
00:22:18Well, as I'm walking around from my day-to-day life, I'm sick.
00:22:22I'm dying if I have this cancer.
00:22:24I know something's wrong, but I have to lie about it.
00:22:28The difference is, it's actually to the person who's doing this, it's not a lie.
00:22:32They have entered into this fantasy world, this Harry Potter world, where they're trying
00:22:36to believe that something, they're trying to believe in something that doesn't exist.
00:22:41And their mind separates at that point.
00:22:43So they've actually entered into mild psychosis.
00:22:47That's the point at which you can fully indoctrinate a head whenever the head has left reality and
00:22:53they're in this state of mind where they will believe anything that you say into that fantasy
00:22:59world.
00:22:59And I would say there are two layers upon that.
00:23:05One layer would be you're into this kind of group dynamic and you want to be part of that.
00:23:15They have it.
00:23:16Why don't I have it?
00:23:18All this, I can hear him.
00:23:19I can feel how the Holy Ghost is touching me, all this stuff.
00:23:23You're standing there.
00:23:24You don't get touched.
00:23:25You don't have the same feelings.
00:23:26You start questioning yourself.
00:23:28Why can't I share this with them?
00:23:30Why don't I experience all of this?
00:23:33And one other layer, and for me, that's the most important layer is, again, the, I would
00:23:41say, identity crisis.
00:23:43In the moment, when you think through it, and maybe I'm just sick, maybe this all doesn't
00:23:50work out.
00:23:51At one point, you have to admit that you were wrong and that you got fooled.
00:23:55And that's the hardest part for most of the people, to admit that they were fooled.
00:24:00I'm actually glad you brought that one up because in my journey of deprogramming my
00:24:06head, I've mentioned this a few times, I read the Bible over and over and over again.
00:24:11And each time I would read through, I would read from a different, looking at the Bible
00:24:16from a different perspective.
00:24:18So the first time I read cover to cover, I'm just reading to try to read it for what it
00:24:22says and not for what I have been told that it says.
00:24:25But then I would do other exercises, like I would read and try to understand the culture
00:24:29of the Bible.
00:24:31What were the cultures that the passages were referring to?
00:24:35What did they believe, et cetera?
00:24:37One of them, I took very close attention to the way in which the New Testament described
00:24:44sin.
00:24:45Because in the latter rain movement, we were taught that unbelief is sin, and anything
00:24:50that is sinful is the attributes of unbelief.
00:24:53That's the trap, right?
00:24:53That's the trap.
00:24:55That was a way to indoctrinate heads.
00:24:57And I began to realize that.
00:24:58Well, the interesting part is I wish I still had it because I had no idea I would be doing
00:25:03any of this that I'm doing today.
00:25:04I did not keep any of this.
00:25:06But I kept a spreadsheet just lining up.
00:25:09As I'm reading through, I would take note of what was the sin being mentioned.
00:25:13And I had the spreadsheet of sins because we were very legalistic.
00:25:18We wanted to know, well, what are the things?
00:25:20It was a rule of don'ts, a religion of don'ts.
00:25:23Don't do this.
00:25:23Don't do that.
00:25:24Then you can go to heaven, which is the opposite of grace.
00:25:27And so, I'm reading it from this very skewed perspective.
00:25:32There's always a very strong dynamic, a strong power behind works righteousness.
00:25:38Absolutely.
00:25:39Right?
00:25:39Absolutely.
00:25:39Well, the interesting part is as I'm going through and I'm tallying these things, pride
00:25:45was the thing that was most mentioned.
00:25:48And as you read through and if you really understand what all of the sins being described
00:25:53are portraying, if you read it in its context, many of the other sins go back to the root
00:26:01of pride.
00:26:02So, pride became this tree of sin, right?
00:26:05Whereas we were taught we were supposed to be prideful in this movement.
00:26:08And all of these movements have been flipped upside down, where pride is the backbone to
00:26:13the religion.
00:26:14So, then I began to realize that pride itself can be interpreted as sin.
00:26:21I'm so blessed.
00:26:22I'm so anointed.
00:26:23Absolutely.
00:26:24Absolutely.
00:26:25Look at my fortune.
00:26:27God really loves me.
00:26:28Absolutely.
00:26:28And if you're not rich, if you're not fortunate, then God doesn't love you or you haven't believed
00:26:34enough.
00:26:34Right?
00:26:35Yeah.
00:26:35Like I said, it's flipped upside down.
00:26:37And I began to realize that it wasn't just that they were teaching us false doctrine.
00:26:43It's that the foundation of doctrine from which everything was built upon was also false.
00:26:50And that false doctrine, even though I grew up in the Branhamism side of things, as I began
00:26:57to understand all of the movements that emerged from it, charismatic movement, word of faith,
00:27:03prosperity gospel, shepherding, all of those can be traced back to a sense of pride.
00:27:09And once I began to understand that structure, I realized that you can't really look at doctrines
00:27:16and try to understand how this movement grew and evolved.
00:27:19You have to instead look at its architectural framework.
00:27:22Is it built on something that is biblical or has it been flipped upside down and built on something
00:27:29that's actually anti-biblical?
00:27:30Maybe that's a huge leap, but agnosticism is based on the same feeling of pride because
00:27:37of the special knowledge only certain people have.
00:27:41It's the root of everything.
00:27:42Just recently, I came across a quote from Martin Luther, and he identified one of those roots.
00:27:50It was, I have it here on my left.
00:27:53Wait.
00:27:56Enthusiasm inheres in Adam and his children from the beginning and is the origin, power, and
00:28:02strength of all heresy.
00:28:05So what he meant by that is the inner dialogue.
00:28:09You're in a dialogue, and you are like, my thoughts are right.
00:28:15My thoughts are like given by God, and that's, you cannot be humble about it.
00:28:24I'm glad, actually, that you went to Gnosticism because in my, as I said, I read through the
00:28:30Bible several times, in my studying of the ancient cultures, you begin to understand how the ancient
00:28:37religions work, and you start to understand the difference between the God of Israel and
00:28:44the pagan gods.
00:28:45And then as you enter into the New Testament, you can see clearly a difference between Christianity,
00:28:50the gods of Rome, the pantheons, etc.
00:28:52And I stumbled onto Gnosticism, and it led me down this rabbit trail for, I'll bet I spent
00:28:58a year just studying how Gnostics viewed life.
00:29:04And I went back to, I read the book, what is it, Against Heresies by Irenaeus.
00:29:11I read it probably five times and very carefully because it's a difficult book to read in today's
00:29:18language, but you have to read each section and then go try to find what is the culture
00:29:23he's referring to.
00:29:25But he's referring to Gnosticism, and this led me, that path led me to the mystery religions.
00:29:32And this was a concept that was foreign to me.
00:29:34I had no idea what is a mystery religion.
00:29:36And what it is, it's a group of people who have formed a cult, and they believe they have
00:29:42the secret knowledge.
00:29:43And the secret knowledge makes them different from other Christians or other people who
00:29:48are believers of whatever is the mystery religion.
00:29:52When Christianity, that is how this thing became birth.
00:29:55They had this secret knowledge of how you can get healed, and they would mix positive confession,
00:30:01different things, and their witches brew as they're trying to create a religion.
00:30:05And then they would say, we're different from all other Christians because we have this
00:30:09special knowledge on how to do these things.
00:30:11If you take Pentecostalism, we have this special knowledge on how to speak in tongues.
00:30:16That makes us different.
00:30:17This was the foundation for many different things that I began to study.
00:30:22Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of
00:30:27modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
00:30:33movements into the new apostolic reformation?
00:30:36You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:30:43On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles
00:30:49Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and
00:30:55digital versions of each book.
00:30:57You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
00:31:03movements.
00:31:04If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the
00:31:09Contribute button at the top.
00:31:10And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
00:31:16to or watching.
00:31:17On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:31:21I'm not used to speak in English.
00:31:26Most of all of my books are in English.
00:31:31Most of the content I watch or consume is in English, but I rarely have the opportunity
00:31:38to speak in English.
00:31:38So I'm really sad I can't explain all of the things I'm thinking right now.
00:31:44That's very hard for me.
00:31:45But it's exactly what you're saying, like people pretend to be already on a higher plane
00:31:52of humanity with their special knowledge.
00:31:56And that's a huge problem because there's no objective truth anymore in that.
00:32:02You're already left the ground of objective truth.
00:32:05And that's the core of Christian identity.
00:32:07When you acknowledge God, then you, in the same sentence or in the same knowledge, him
00:32:14as the only source of objective truth.
00:32:17And that's the missing point there.
00:32:20So if you leave that ground, you can do whatever you want and declare it objective truth or your
00:32:28truth or whatever truth or whatever mystery.
00:32:30Sometimes it's even more useful for these kind of people to leave other peoples in their
00:32:38tension of mysteries.
00:32:40You can't explain it.
00:32:41You can't know it fully.
00:32:43You can't understand it fully.
00:32:44Sometimes that's even useful for them, for their schemes.
00:32:48You know, in doing what I'm doing, I get all kinds of feedback from people.
00:32:51I get emails talking about their cult.
00:32:53Many of the people are afraid to speak out publicly, but they write me in privately of what's
00:32:59going on.
00:33:00One of the emails that I received recently, the person was talking about, and it wasn't
00:33:06unique to them.
00:33:07I've heard this before.
00:33:08They were talking about their group was centered on this weird mystery wherein there was this
00:33:13prophecy that they had sealed in an envelope, and anybody who opens this envelope and reads
00:33:18this prophecy will die.
00:33:21So there was a curse on the envelope.
00:33:22I mean, when we're talking Harry Potter religion, this is the epitome of it.
00:33:27But they were saying basically –
00:33:29Fantastic stories.
00:33:30Yeah, fantastic stories.
00:33:31So basically, this might even be an empty envelope.
00:33:34You don't know.
00:33:35It could be a blank paper in there.
00:33:36We don't know because nobody's opened it.
00:33:38But what they're describing is the essence of a mystery religion.
00:33:43We have the special prophecy from God that nobody can know.
00:33:46And it's so backwards that when I say it's a false foundation, it's also a good representation
00:33:53of that, because if God is speaking through a prophet, he's speaking for ears to hear the
00:33:58prophecy.
00:33:59And in this case, it's a letter that's written that's sealed in an envelope.
00:34:03What do you do with this?
00:34:05What kind of God talks to the people but doesn't let them listen?
00:34:09That's kind of the opposite of what Christian or revelation in a Christian sense means.
00:34:17That's God revealing himself to us through Jesus in truth, in his word.
00:34:24And the picture of him and his character and his holiness is all written down for us there
00:34:32to find him through his word.
00:34:34It's so easy.
00:34:36And for most of the people that are kind of attracted to these kind of movements, to mystery
00:34:43movements, esoteric movements, new age stuff, that's too simple or even too narrow because
00:34:52it restricts their freedom, their freedom of identity, their freedom of self-expression.
00:34:58That's a huge problem that's growing.
00:35:00I see the same kind of fighting between denominations.
00:35:06Oftentimes, I hear Catholics defend their position of faith.
00:35:12And I recognize in the end, they are just talking about something that's important for
00:35:18them to identify themselves as Catholics.
00:35:22For them, it's not about truth.
00:35:24For them, it's about some particular ingredient of their personality that they can't let go
00:35:33of.
00:35:33So in the end, it's all about identification with some special movement.
00:35:37I am special because I am part of that movement.
00:35:40I'm special because I'm Catholic.
00:35:41I'm special because I'm charismatic.
00:35:44These kind of games that people are playing.
00:35:46And the gospel, Jesus Christ, God's revelation to us in the end is far more simpler than the
00:35:53games they are playing or the world who they create to justify themselves.
00:36:00Absolutely.
00:36:01I've thought through that process quite a bit because in the Branhamite sect, we were identified
00:36:08with Branham.
00:36:09That's what made us different than other Christians.
00:36:10And after I left this, I began to find out there are people who identify with Kenneth
00:36:15Hagen because their word of faith or T.L. Osborne, Joel Osteen.
00:36:19And what they're doing essentially is they're creating, even though they claim they're not
00:36:25worshiping these figures, they're creating them as a deity or at minimum, a mediator between
00:36:30God and man.
00:36:31And when you read the New Testament, Jesus said, I will send the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit
00:36:36will send, will guide you into all truth.
00:36:38But these people believe that they have to go to this human vessel to guide them into
00:36:43all truth.
00:36:44So what they have essentially done is they've replaced the need for a Holy Spirit and exchanged
00:36:50it for a human being.
00:36:52And in many cases, we're seeing that these human beings are not just incredibly flawed,
00:36:57but they're teaching, they're leading them away from truth.
00:36:59They're teaching false doctrines.
00:37:01So this, this turns into a huge problem.
00:37:03That grows over time.
00:37:04You get more and more disconnected to the source.
00:37:08If I may say so, it's, yeah, it's a huge problem.
00:37:12I mean, for, I hope I don't sound, it doesn't sound strange when I say this, but for, for
00:37:20most lay people, it's hard enough to stick to the Bible, to read it every day through,
00:37:26to ask questions, to, yeah, to, to, to, to stay in that kind of relationship between them
00:37:35and God.
00:37:36It's still a personal relationship between them and God and his word, his word as a
00:37:42mediator, you can say.
00:37:43So if you, if there's a charismatic person, um, that seems to have all proof, um, he's
00:37:53good looking, he has a, uh, a great kind of language.
00:37:58Yeah.
00:37:59Um, that's very attracting for, for many people who maybe are too lazy, um, to read the Bible.
00:38:05That's another problem or, um, that, uh, what's, what's the word, um, responsibility.
00:38:14Yeah.
00:38:15That's, uh, that's another, um, yeah.
00:38:19Often people don't want to take this kind of responsibility for their own faith.
00:38:25It's not.
00:38:26And you're mentioning of identity.
00:38:29That's something that's really hard for people to grasp.
00:38:32So I do this huge study and I'm still studying, trying to understand the, the direction that
00:38:39Christian identity doctrine in the United States swayed the people.
00:38:43And it's more, it's deeper than just the Eve and the serpent and the bad blood race.
00:38:49They wanted to identify as the lost 10 tribes of Israel because this emerged from British
00:38:56Israelism and they were taking on the identity, right?
00:39:00And it's an identity shift because it's not just good enough to be a Christian and to believe
00:39:06in Christ.
00:39:07Yeah.
00:39:07You must identify with something.
00:39:10So structurally, even though the doctrines of Christian identity are far different from
00:39:14what you see in charismatics, the foundation, the very foundation of it is the same.
00:39:19We want to identify and that makes us different than other Christians.
00:39:22You can make easy examples.
00:39:25If you look into like Hillsong or Bethel, what they sell to people is not the gospel.
00:39:33It's the entire lifestyle wrapped around the gospel.
00:39:36And then they put Jesus like a, like a trademark on it and sell it to the people.
00:39:41So if you criticize the movement, people feel like you are criticizing their identity.
00:39:48And even if you're right, and even if they some kind understand that you're right, that
00:39:53they are in the wrong, for them, it feels like they must leave back all the music, all
00:39:59the lifestyle, the clothes that they wear.
00:40:02They, their entire identity is based, is a, a, is saturated.
00:40:09Yeah.
00:40:09Um, so there's like, yeah, I, my English isn't, isn't good enough to describe that, that kind
00:40:17of, um, yeah, tension there.
00:40:22Yeah.
00:40:22It is a cult indoctrinated programmed mindset of authoritarian control.
00:40:27And what, you know, people who are in this, like I said, they're radicalized.
00:40:31They do not understand radicalization.
00:40:34So even, even if you try to explain to them an example, I could give of this.
00:40:38I'm a big fan of comedy.
00:40:40I love Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry, Jerry Seinfeld for me is the king of comedy.
00:40:46However, I love comedy.
00:40:48If you were looking at it in terms of it's not religion, but say that I'm looking at it
00:40:53in the same way that I look at religion.
00:40:56Jerry Seinfeld is my hero of the faith of comedy.
00:41:00So when he says something, it's funny to me.
00:41:03However, if he said something that I disagreed with or that I did not think was funny, I would
00:41:09have no problem saying, well, Jerry Seinfeld is a funny guy, but I really didn't like the
00:41:14skit and I found it quite offensive.
00:41:15I have separated Jerry Seinfeld from the realm of comedy.
00:41:19Good points.
00:41:20He's just a person in comedy.
00:41:23In these religions, they take these central figures of authoritarian control and they do
00:41:28the opposite.
00:41:29If the guy says some doctrine that's false, they will unfortunately attack the person
00:41:35who points out the false nature of it rather than try to examine the false statement.
00:41:40I mean, that's a thing that you have that in your working environment as well.
00:41:46People feel if you criticize what they are doing, they feel like you're criticizing themselves
00:41:51or criticizing the person.
00:41:53So, yeah.
00:41:54So what's the solution to all of this?
00:41:56We have this massive mess all throughout the world.
00:42:00I'm a little surprised to hear when you're talking through some of the things that you're
00:42:03experiencing in Germany in different ways.
00:42:06It's odd to me because I did know that this crossed all throughout the world.
00:42:11I knew that there were people, different flavors of this.
00:42:14But you're talking about the bloodlines and the blood transfusions.
00:42:18Some of those doctrines in the United States kind of dissipated and are forgotten.
00:42:23Even though in Branhamism we had this thing, most of the charismatic movement are unfamiliar
00:42:27with the blood transfusion doctrines that was in Latter Rain.
00:42:31So, when you see that this big of a mess has been created, what do you think is the solution
00:42:37to the mess?
00:42:38I thought a lot about that problem.
00:42:40And one main problem I identified was that there are no Bible schools that offer something
00:42:51different than, let's go through the Bible for one year.
00:42:55That's basically what every basic Bible school is doing.
00:42:59Let's go through the Bible for a whole year.
00:43:02Some details here, some details there.
00:43:05But there is no Bible school I recognize that starts with topics like day one of your faith.
00:43:15What do you need to do?
00:43:17And the first thing that I would recommend is look for a healthy congregation.
00:43:23Look for, and then I would explain what that means basically, okay?
00:43:29And take your time to do that.
00:43:31You don't have to look for a congregation within the next months or so.
00:43:36Sometimes it takes a year or two or three even.
00:43:40For me and my wife here where we live, we took more than two years to find a congregation.
00:43:47We are in now for five years.
00:43:49So it's not easy to find a good and healthy congregation.
00:43:53So what does that mean, healthy congregation?
00:43:56So start to read a Bible like this and this and this.
00:44:00And then what I often find very problematic is a disconnect from history.
00:44:08Sometimes for these people it feels, I don't want to talk about feelings, but they are disconnected from history.
00:44:19We had a case here in our city where one of the congregations we found initially was very healthy.
00:44:29Everything was good.
00:44:30We were there for a few months.
00:44:33And then the church started to split because some of the people in the congregation wanted to start to get more charismatic.
00:44:42So you had one part that wasn't about that.
00:44:45One part wanted to get charismatic.
00:44:47And there was a podium discussion about it where I took part.
00:44:51And I explained to these people like how God created revival in the past.
00:44:59Let's take a Luther, Martin Luther, for example, I told him what he did was not about miracles and people raising from the dead and your leg grows and all this kind of stuff.
00:45:12He led people to the world.
00:45:14That's reformation.
00:45:15Let's go back to the basics.
00:45:17If we get lost in the woods, let's go back to the basics.
00:45:21Every real revival was always about the word.
00:45:25And that's what I described to them.
00:45:26And the more these people get disconnected from our Christian history, the harder it's for them to recognize bad teaching.
00:45:39It's simple as that.
00:45:41A good knowledge of history prevents you from getting fooled.
00:45:47So that's what I do.
00:45:50Yeah, absolutely.
00:45:53You know, it's odd because whenever I look at the charismatic movement and what it accepts as its foundation, revival is the constant theme.
00:46:04In fact, many of the groups have emerged into the New Apostolic Reformation believing that revival is so important that there has to be an end of days revival.
00:46:14And this is what is going to bring down Jesus Christ to earth, much like the Gnostics or many of the pagan religions.
00:46:20They believe that if they chanted enough, if they whatever they did, they could bring God down through what they did instead of Christ's promise in the Bible.
00:46:29And so the revival is centered on having to bring yourself into a level of emotion.
00:46:38And what you're describing as true revival is much different than the emotional aspects.
00:46:43And that's why whenever I look at the charismatic movement and I try to say that this all stems from the same foundational root, these revivals that happened in what was called the post-World War II healing revival, it was largely built upon the notion that if you captivated the emotions of the people, it would bring them into the spiritual state where they could heal themselves.
00:47:07That in its essence, that in its essence, that's what it was, what emerged from this is the notion that it goes beyond just the healing.
00:47:15Now we need to have this revival in order to bring God down to earth.
00:47:19And so, again, they're eliminating the need for the Holy Spirit whenever they do this.
00:47:25But insidiously, they have said they have associated this with the Holy Spirit.
00:47:30So if you bring yourself into this hype, that is what you're what you're feeling is the Holy Spirit is.
00:47:35It is a hype.
00:47:36But one thing that you said that's most important when you consider all of this is the urgency.
00:47:42They have indoctrinated people to think it is so urgent.
00:47:45And so when people escape this, they often get re-victimized because they go to something else that has the same level of urgency.
00:47:55And they see that as Christianity rather than going back to the basics.
00:48:00Yeah, I think taking your time to be with God, to read the Bible, take part in different kind of congregations.
00:48:14Yeah, that's very important.
00:48:15Yeah, there is no real urgency.
00:48:17Take your time.
00:48:18Take your time.
00:48:19Take your time.
00:48:21Most, many, many of the revivals are even fake.
00:48:28Maybe that's another topic.
00:48:30But I often experience that one of the cities I was living before I got married got a new ICF church.
00:48:41It's one of the biggest charismatic movements here in Germany that's originating from Switzerland.
00:48:49So they're all about, yeah, they're all about money.
00:48:54And they opened some kind of coffee shop in that town.
00:48:59They wanted to attract teens.
00:49:01It was very obvious, like cinematic atmosphere, coffee, et cetera, et cetera, very casual, clothing, tattoos, all over the place.
00:49:11I don't condemn that.
00:49:12I'm just saying that was their look and feel, okay?
00:49:19And when they opened their coffee shop, they attracted youth from all of the other churches.
00:49:26And I knew those persons.
00:49:28I knew the teens because I was, for a certain time span, I was around all of the churches, around the teens, and I met them there again.
00:49:41And in the internet, they would say, whoa, huge revival, 20 new persons, blah, blah, blah.
00:49:47But these kids were all Christians beforehand, and they just got bored in their old churches, old congregations,
00:49:54and happened to be there because it was cooler.
00:49:58That's it.
00:49:59There was no revival.
00:50:00They just drained teens and kids from other churches and called it revival.
00:50:07And that's not the only time I experienced something like that.
00:50:12They just, yeah, like brain drain.
00:50:15Brain drain, they drained kids and teens from other churches and then called it revival.
00:50:20You know, I just had this conversation yesterday with Bob Scott.
00:50:23I think that podcast may come out after this one.
00:50:27But what they do also on top of this is they heavily market.
00:50:32They use advertising schemes from business.
00:50:35They use marketing strategies.
00:50:37One of the strategies is what you described.
00:50:39They would take a photograph.
00:50:41Here's all these teens.
00:50:42We've had this wonderful revival.
00:50:44This is because the teens are, it's a picture of teens.
00:50:47Now this becomes a youth revival.
00:50:49We have now youth ministries.
00:50:51Bob was talking about, and this is a problem that I have thought through, but not to the level that he has.
00:50:58In Africa, if you were to start advertising around the cities that come, we're going to have free food, you'll have Africans by the thousands in some areas because they, you know, that's a very poor country.
00:51:13In some cases, they don't have much food.
00:51:16Well, what has happened is many of the revivalists will come into a town, they'll set up a tent, they'll offer free food, and they'll get 100,000 people from various cities and, you know, walking by bus, by bicycle.
00:51:30Well, then they take a photograph.
00:51:31We had this massive revival of 100,000 people, and nothing changes after the revivalist leaves.
00:51:37There is no, some of the people aren't even Christian any longer.
00:51:41They just show up and, I'm Christian, well, I can get good food.
00:51:44But the marketing works.
00:51:46You take that photograph back into the United States, people don't understand this philosophy, and, oh my gosh, they just had a massive revival.
00:51:54God has moved.
00:51:55And it's not really that the spirit has moved, it's that the food has moved under the tent.
00:52:00You may know Reinhard Bonke?
00:52:03No, I don't think I do.
00:52:04He's like the spiritual father of Daniel Kolenda.
00:52:07He's like the German Benny Hinn.
00:52:11Okay.
00:52:12He did the exact same schemes you are just describing.
00:52:16Reinhard Bonke, he has like a huge magical tent to his tent crusade or something like that.
00:52:22He was like Benny Hinn in Germany, and his spiritual son, Daniel Kolenda, is doing the same scheme in Africa again and again.
00:52:32We've, in the beginning of this, we were talking about all of the things that interested me, the charismatic movement, everything we've talked about really has.
00:52:40But I really specifically want to get into discussing YWAM, and you have some interesting connections.
00:52:46So, can you tell us a little bit more about that?
00:52:48I knew a girl that I met around the time I got into Charismania, and she was basically a very broken person.
00:53:01Her relationship with her father wasn't that good.
00:53:04broken relationships with other young men and boys throughout her own childhood.
00:53:16And then she came to faith, and with all her enthusiasm she had at the time,
00:53:23she used the money that her father gave her to buy herself into so-called outreach of YWAM.
00:53:37And it was absurd.
00:53:39It was absurd.
00:53:40I can't find a better word to describe it.
00:53:43She paid around 10,000 euros to go to Africa to have poor children, et cetera, et cetera.
00:53:53And sometimes we even poked her because we said things like,
00:53:57are there no poor children in Germany that need help?
00:54:00Why do you have to go to Africa to have poor children?
00:54:03Aren't there enough poor children in Germany?
00:54:04Why do you have to pay thousands of euros to visit Africa?
00:54:09So she paid thousands of euros to work for YWAM there in Africa.
00:54:17It's absurd.
00:54:18Why would I pay to work?
00:54:21And after that, she was very excited about everything YWAM and booked another program
00:54:30that was called DTS, Disciple Training School.
00:54:33And about six months, she was learning the entire Gospel of Luke.
00:54:42Like she could...
00:54:44Memorization, right?
00:54:45Memorize.
00:54:46Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:54:47The goal was to memorize the entire Gospel of Luke.
00:54:51And when she came back, she was excited again, but it was all just...
00:54:58She was pumped.
00:54:59She was hyped.
00:55:00But all of her wounds in regards to her family, all of the wounds in regards to all the broken
00:55:07relationships to other boys, et cetera, weren't healed.
00:55:10And these people just pumped her up, took her money, sent her work to Germany, and she
00:55:15started to reach out to different congregations to present the Gospel of Luke.
00:55:20And it doesn't took long, like two or three months until she broke down again.
00:55:29So she had depression.
00:55:33I think that led her often to make such decisions to spend all her money on this kind of program
00:55:40twice, in and out, in and out.
00:55:46There was no stability in her life.
00:55:50It was all just hype and pump and...
00:55:53It's really sad because as you study the cults and how their internal structure works,
00:56:00it isn't just that a cult will recruit a person.
00:56:04If I was recruited into some cult and they had some agenda, I would be critically thinking
00:56:12about that agenda after I had been recruited.
00:56:15But what the cults do are insidious.
00:56:17They give somebody who is recruited an instant purpose.
00:56:21If you can give them a purpose, they're thinking of their purpose rather than the critical thought
00:56:25about the religion.
00:56:28And I've had a few conversations now with people who were involved with Youth with a Mission.
00:56:33Some people who are in favor of it, some people who are not.
00:56:37The ones who are in favor of it, they talk about the good things that the mission does,
00:56:43which I'll give it that.
00:56:45There are probably good intentions behind it.
00:56:47But the ones who leave, describe what you're saying.
00:56:51There is an emotional connection to the mission itself.
00:56:54And as soon as they get into that mission, they're in the mission mindset.
00:56:59And it's not even really that they came and they're in a Christian mindset.
00:57:03They're more thinking about the mission.
00:57:06But then when they leave, the problem is that mission is no longer a part of their lives.
00:57:11And especially when they leave YWAM itself, that mission is no longer a part of their lives.
00:57:16And it leads to depression.
00:57:18It leads to an array of problems.
00:57:20So for me, it's really scary when I think about what they're doing to children.
00:57:26Because as an adult, if you go through something like this, you just move on.
00:57:30But when you're a child, those years are what mold your internal being and your psyche.
00:57:36So when you leave, now you have an emotional anchor that you're going to carry for most of the rest of your life.
00:57:42Yeah, it's some kind of emotional abuse, I would say.
00:57:47There are other testimonies online from people who left YWAM.
00:57:52They could explain similar stories.
00:57:55As I'm thinking about it, and I remember all the details, we were there in Bad Blankenburg.
00:58:03There was a base in Bad Blankenburg.
00:58:05That's how I get connected to them.
00:58:07I helped to build the base in Bad Blankenburg.
00:58:11And that's when I started to ask questions.
00:58:14Because every evening, they got hyped.
00:58:18They went out into the streets.
00:58:19And it was the same kind of language, prayer language that the people used from my own congregation.
00:58:27Like, we take dominion over this school.
00:58:30We take dominion over this building in the name of Jesus.
00:58:33Yeah, stuff like that.
00:58:35And the girl I am talking about, she was involved in that and was led by all those emotions,
00:58:43by all the hype, time and time again, to spend all her money with YWAM.
00:58:51And as you said, like a drug, when the effect of the drug disappears,
00:58:58you are thrown back into your depression.
00:59:00You are thrown back into your old life.
00:59:04And that's her problem.
00:59:05Still, until, I mean, this goes back like 10 years ago.
00:59:14Yeah, most of that happened 10 years ago.
00:59:16And even after she got disconnected from YWAM,
00:59:22there was a time when every one of us was thinking like,
00:59:24okay, now she's in a stable position.
00:59:26Now she has a stable life.
00:59:28She went back to the US.
00:59:30She's made her DTS school on Hawaii.
00:59:37After some bad experience, she went back to the US.
00:59:41I got married to a young man.
00:59:43And this young man was, of course, a charismatic as well.
00:59:46He was a drug addict.
00:59:48I remember a time when she would write me messages asking me about how is it allowed
00:59:55that a Christian can smoke weed and stuff like that.
00:59:58And years later, even this marriage is broken.
01:00:02She's back now in Germany.
01:00:04It doesn't take long.
01:00:05And she's into a new relationship with the new boy.
01:00:09And so on and so on and so on and so on.
01:00:11It's always the same pattern.
01:00:12And you see all these promises from charismatic courts or from YWAM
01:00:19to be healed when you get involved and anointed and all of that.
01:00:25And she's one example for all the lies, all the money she spent.
01:00:31And in the end, she's the same broken person because she relied on YWAM instead of relying on Jesus.
01:00:40Let me say it simple like that.
01:00:42Yeah, I mean, that's that's really the underlying problem.
01:00:45And you can take the name Youth with a Mission or YWAM.
01:00:49You can take it out and literally replace what you said with each one of these movements.
01:00:54Once you join, you get into the emotion.
01:00:56The emotion is very draining.
01:00:58And then if you ever leave this, in many cases, you're the same.
01:01:03But in a lot of cases, you're actually worse off than before you joined them,
01:01:06because now they have taken this emotion and they have manipulated that emotion and made it even worse.
01:01:13So very glad that you joined me today to talk through all of this.
01:01:16Thank you for telling your story.
01:01:18This has been fascinating to me.
01:01:20Yeah, thanks for inviting me.
01:01:22Thanks for your time.
01:01:23Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:01:27You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:01:30For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation,
01:01:33you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:01:38Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:01:53Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:02:23Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:02:25Weaponized Religion by J.R.
01:02:31Oh, it's not.
01:02:35Weaponized gift deduction for the NAR.
01:02:40Weaponized Lilly Quantity to the NAR.
01:02:43Weaponized Religion from Christian Milpeng episode.
01:02:46It's a relieving decision and an vendors line.
01:02:49Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.