- 5 months ago
This powerful conversation between John and Simone explores the long-term psychological, emotional, and spiritual effects of growing up in a controlling religious movement centered on William Branham. Simone recounts her journey from childhood indoctrination in South Africa to personal liberation, while John reflects on his parallel experience and ongoing process of deconstructing the harmful teachings. Both express the deep impact that empathy, critical thinking, and authentic spirituality had on their paths out of a restrictive belief system.
The conversation touches on themes such as gender roles, the silencing of women’s voices, the emotional suppression required by the cult, and the fear-based theology that overshadowed genuine love and charity. Together, they share how rediscovering basic human decency, compassion, and spiritual freedom helped them heal. The dialogue offers support and encouragement to others who may be on similar journeys, reinforcing that there is life and community beyond religious control.
00:00 Introduction
01:03 Simone's early life in the message and strict upbringing
06:32 Questions about miracles, logic, and personal worth
10:29 The fear-driven environment and policing culture
13:04 Gender roles, spiritual abuse, and loss of self
20:26 Discovering hypocrisy and covering for abuse
28:01 Childhood dreams and spiritual sensitivity
33:02 Exposure of predator pastors and family fallout
41:39 Finding community and charity outside the movement
46:01 Leaving home and starting over in Cape Town
52:25 Final reflections and advice to their younger selves
57:02 Closing encouragement and next steps
______________________
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 Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
The conversation touches on themes such as gender roles, the silencing of women’s voices, the emotional suppression required by the cult, and the fear-based theology that overshadowed genuine love and charity. Together, they share how rediscovering basic human decency, compassion, and spiritual freedom helped them heal. The dialogue offers support and encouragement to others who may be on similar journeys, reinforcing that there is life and community beyond religious control.
00:00 Introduction
01:03 Simone's early life in the message and strict upbringing
06:32 Questions about miracles, logic, and personal worth
10:29 The fear-driven environment and policing culture
13:04 Gender roles, spiritual abuse, and loss of self
20:26 Discovering hypocrisy and covering for abuse
28:01 Childhood dreams and spiritual sensitivity
33:02 Exposure of predator pastors and family fallout
41:39 Finding community and charity outside the movement
46:01 Leaving home and starting over in Cape Town
52:25 Final reflections and advice to their younger selves
57:02 Closing encouragement and next steps
______________________
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 Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:41at william-branham.org.
00:43And with me, I have my very special guest, Simone Eiman, former member of William Branham's
00:48Message Cult.
00:50Simone, it's good to have you and to talk through your experience in William Branham's message.
00:55I understand that you were raised in it for a very long time, and I'm interested to hear
01:01your story.
01:02And maybe if you could just start by introducing yourself.
01:05Great.
01:06Thanks for that introduction, John.
01:07It's lovely to be here.
01:10Yes, I'm all the way in South Africa.
01:13That's where I grew up.
01:15And at a very young age, in primary school, I think you'd call it junior school, my parents
01:25found the message and we started, I think I was about eight.
01:32My siblings were much younger than that.
01:35And that has pretty much been our psychological formation, you know, and mental basis for our
01:47childhood.
01:50Very strict.
01:52Very strict.
01:55And I say that in bold and capital letters.
01:59And I think anybody who, or everybody who's in this religion, can identify with that.
02:10So, it's been a long journey for me to undo all that.
02:18Undo the programming.
02:20Undo the conditioning.
02:22And it's taken me most of my life.
02:24And that's why I wanted to share my story with you, because your podcast has been the
02:30catalyst for my letting go.
02:33Because since childhood, I've been, I've always wondered, and I've always had this feeling
02:39within, this is not right.
02:43If I am a creation of God, why is this man beating up on me?
02:48And why am I such a bad thing or a bad person just because I'm a woman?
02:56I could never, never understand that.
02:59And it just, I never got revelations and I never got, you know, filled with the Holy Spirit
03:05and all that kind of stuff because I never got it.
03:08And so, I eventually stumbled upon, I literally stumbled upon the podcast and thought, oh my
03:19God, all the stuff that I've been thinking and feeling, yeah, they're talking about it
03:23now.
03:23Wow.
03:24And yeah, I thought, oh my word.
03:28And, you know, I would always ask myself, what are they saying, you know, when they're preaching
03:35and they weren't saying anything.
03:40It was just loud voices and, you know, lots of prayer and all of that.
03:46And don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-religion or, you know, I'm not an atheist or anything
03:52like that, but the theatrics and the drama just never got, it just didn't do me.
04:00So, I want to acknowledge the work that you are doing with very deep gratitude, you know,
04:09that you do it in a very methodical manner and there's no malice and I appreciate that
04:18and thank you.
04:19I want to publicly acknowledge that and thank you.
04:22Well, thank you and thank you for joining to share your story.
04:25You know, for people like you and I, it's a little bit different than other people.
04:30I do have emotions.
04:32I have very, very heightened emotions.
04:35However, when I was in the church setting, my emotions are the type of sympathy and empathy.
04:41That's my type of emotions.
04:43Whenever something happens, I cry like a baby if something happens that is very emotional,
04:48even still today as a grown adult.
04:50But in those settings, I never got into the hype.
04:54I never got into, like you said, theatrics.
04:57I never really understood those types of emotions because my personality, it doesn't work with
05:03my personality.
05:04And you mentioned before recording that you were a coach.
05:10I sat down with a personality coach for one of my clients and they had this big contract
05:16that the client required personality tests because they would join people with compatible
05:21teams.
05:23And this was a wonderful thing.
05:24I mean, this is phenomenal what they were doing.
05:26But the personality coach actually called me aside and said, John, your empathy is so off
05:32the scale that you will literally kill yourself for another person.
05:36You need to be careful of this.
05:37And I said, yes.
05:38And she went on to tell me different things about myself that I guess I knew, but I never
05:45really thought about them until she said this.
05:47But one of the things that she said, there is a category that people have in the old psychological
05:55days.
05:55They used to call this category religion and they can't call it this anymore because of
06:00all of the politics around that.
06:02But there is a category in which you believe something without having any evidence.
06:10And there are people that go into this and it was categorized falsely as religion.
06:15They've recategorized it as basically logic.
06:18And my logic side is really high.
06:20My empathy is really high.
06:22But taking blind leaps of faith is not.
06:24And so, like you, I was in this world.
06:27What is this world?
06:28How do people do this?
06:30But I'm very interested to hear your story because the things that we were told in the
06:35United States about what happened in Africa, I'm learning from other people like you that
06:41it really doesn't match the story that we had here.
06:45William Branham goes to Africa and we were told that all of these miraculous healings were
06:50undeniable.
06:51And then we come across this book.
06:53I think it's 1955 by Wayman Dwayne Miller.
06:58And he visited.
06:59He was right there in the front of the platform and saw people that he knew and went home and
07:04watched the same people die.
07:06And so, this was a big deal back then.
07:09It never really, that information never made it to the States.
07:12So, had the revivals been what they were advertised, you would expect all of Africa would be converted
07:19to this.
07:20Why would you not?
07:22And yet, logically, my brain is, I did think about this in the message.
07:26My brain is thinking, now wait a minute.
07:28If the miracles were as they described and everybody could not deny them, this would be this massive
07:35movement that would overtake the whole continent.
07:37And yet, it did not.
07:39So, and I'll let you talk in just a second.
07:43But I combined that thought recently with a podcast I'm doing by Bob Scott, something
07:48that I never really thought about.
07:49So, in the developing nations and even in South Africa during some of the early years, you
07:57could hold a revival and you could invite everybody to come with free food and you'd
08:02have people coming by the truckloads from miles and miles around.
08:06Bob said that he witnessed this.
08:08And so, what happens is you get these revivalists that go and they take these pictures of 100,000
08:13saved and they're not telling you it's more like 100,000 fed.
08:17Yeah, I can't talk much to the doctrines and, you know, the intellectual side of things because
08:29it never made sense to me and I can't tell you.
08:32I never understood it.
08:34I never understood Serpent Seed and Thunder and I never did.
08:39And my dad used to be the front man for all my questions.
08:50He never shut me down.
08:52He was very tolerant and he always, and I think the questions I used to ask him made him think.
09:02And I mentioned earlier, I asked him, you know, if I was so useless as a woman, why did God
09:14give me a fully functioning brain?
09:17And he just sat there looking at me.
09:19I think I was like 13 or 14 years old because you were always told, you know, you must be
09:25quiet and you must be, you know, do this and don't do that.
09:29Just sit and play the piano when I ask you to and do what you must do and go and study
09:34and, you know, all of that.
09:37And I never understood that.
09:40And he just sat looking at me and probably thought, you know, I hope he thought, well,
09:46she's got a point.
09:49He goes, why?
09:50You know, why?
09:52And if my form, my female form was so wrong, why do I have this form?
10:06And why do men not take responsibility for their own thoughts and their own actions?
10:11Why am I being held responsible for their thoughts and their actions and feelings?
10:16And that's just logical thinking.
10:21It wasn't being anything else.
10:24It was just logical thinking.
10:26So I was thinking earlier about, you know, just getting myself into the zone for our conversation
10:35around what was the environment like when I was growing up?
10:39And it was like a policing environment.
10:41And apart from, you know, the pastors and the deacons and all the officials in the church,
10:48the congregation themselves were like pseudo policemen.
10:53Because there you be seen by someone doing something that you were not supposed to.
10:59You know, you're going to hear about it tonight.
11:01Whether it was right or wrong.
11:05And just living in that fear, it was so fear-driven.
11:12And one of the parts that really, that I struggled with to let go of was that fear.
11:22Fear that, what if it is right?
11:25You know, there's this one story that they tell about, Branham had spoken to someone and
11:32the lady said she wouldn't even feed this to her cow or something like that.
11:37There was a story like that.
11:38I don't know if it was manufactured by our leaders or if it's true.
11:42And I thought, well, if that can happen to the cow, then what can happen to me?
11:47You know, if I say anything wrong or dare, I go, you know, against this.
11:53And I struggled with that for a long time.
11:56I mean, I'm in my 50s now.
11:58And it's taken me, I left home when I was 21.
12:06So the best part of two decades plus, I've been trying to release this and trying to shake.
12:14And finally reaching a point where I can say, I don't follow that anymore because I believe
12:24that it's the truth.
12:26And I have a different relationship with God.
12:33I'm not religious.
12:34I don't follow institutionalized religion because I don't believe in it.
12:37It's just a method to control people.
12:39But I am spiritual, you know.
12:45I do take care of my spirituality and compassion for others.
12:52You know, you talk about empathy.
12:55That was something that I never saw in the church, you know, compassion and empathy for
12:59others because it was them and us.
13:03And if I saw someone outside who, outside of the circle who was struggling, who needed
13:11something to eat, who, you know, needed some money, I would give that.
13:18It's just humanity.
13:19It wasn't about religion.
13:20So that charity and that heartfelt, just basic human love, I didn't experience that.
13:31And it bothered me.
13:35Yeah.
13:36So I can talk about this for hours.
13:40I can talk about it now.
13:42I'm not afraid.
13:43Well, and it's funny talking to you because it's like I'm talking to a mirror image of
13:50myself.
13:51What you just described is your thought process.
13:54So whenever I was leaving the cult, I went through several very severely traumatic events,
14:00life-changing events that happened that really shook me.
14:03And it was very difficult.
14:05But I'm a songwriter.
14:07I'm a musician, if you can't tell by my background.
14:10And I kept getting songs, song after song coming to me.
14:14I've mentioned this, I think, before.
14:15But one of the themes that kept coming was, why are we preaching to save the saved?
14:21Why are we not preaching to save the lost?
14:23Because it was exactly like you described.
14:25It's always a preaching at.
14:27It's a preaching, you don't do this.
14:29You don't do this.
14:30And look at the outside world.
14:32They're doing this.
14:33We're different than them.
14:34It's us versus them.
14:36It wasn't a, I feel so sad and sorry for these people who are not going to make it to heaven
14:42with us.
14:43Let's try to help them.
14:44Let's try to change them.
14:46And that thought just, it was killing me.
14:48It was burning me.
14:49Because, like I said, I'm filled with empathy.
14:51And I'm sad for this, you know, the sins of the world, like the Bible says to be.
14:56And I'm hearing sermons where, no, I have to be this rude and arrogant and, you know,
15:01judgmental person, and it really was outside of my personality to be that.
15:07And then after I left, it wasn't until early versions.
15:13I started the support groups, and I'm working with people who have escaped.
15:17And some of the females, everybody's talking with each other, and they're talking about
15:21what they suffered through in the cult.
15:23And some of the females, I was watching their conversations, and they were saying,
15:26yeah, it was so hard for me.
15:27And they're explaining all the reasons why it's hard, and suddenly it hit me.
15:32Not only was I arrogant and a jerk to the people who were outside of the message, we
15:36were arrogant and completely in the wrong to the females in the cult.
15:42And I felt guilty for this.
15:44So this led me down a journey where I'm studying, I'm reading the Bible over and over and over
15:50to wash all this out of my head.
15:51And one passed through – what I did, I made these mental lists of things that I would
15:58pay attention to as I read from cover to cover.
16:00One of the things was, okay, what are the women's role in the Bible?
16:04And I find great women like Deborah, who led the whole nation, well-respected by Israel.
16:09And I'm thinking, how does that apply and fit with this thing that we call the message?
16:14It just can't fit.
16:16And like you said, the version of God that they have versus the version we have now, I
16:22started studying the ancient cults and mythologies and how they worshipped, and I noticed it
16:27was always this God of fear.
16:29And you may have to sacrifice your child.
16:31You may have to give up everything that you – you may die because of this God if he
16:35hates you.
16:36And that's the God we had.
16:37We had a God that hated us, not a God of love.
16:41And as you're reading through the New Testament, it says, perfect love casts out all of this
16:45fear.
16:46Yet we were in a message that the perfect love caused more fear, and we were told, quote,
16:51unquote, perfect love.
16:53So many of the things that you described, like, that was my journey almost exactly.
16:58Yeah, and, you know, in sharing this and talking about it, it's been such a freeing and liberating
17:09process for me, and that is why I reached out to you to connect and talk about this and let
17:16others know that you have worth just because you are.
17:23You have worth, regardless, female, male, in between, whatever, you have worth just because
17:31you are.
17:32And that's something that I've had to embody for myself, because it was taken away from
17:37me, it was coded out of my normal functioning.
17:43And I have worth, regardless of my gender.
17:48I have a fully functioning brain that I can use, and that I've been given, and that thinks
17:54differently, and that, you know, can do things.
17:58And everybody has that.
18:01And there is life after fear.
18:07But you have to be brave enough to hold the hand of those who are offering it to you to
18:14take that step if you can't do it on your own.
18:17And sometimes we sit in a corner and we think, oh, nobody understands.
18:22Nobody knows what I've gone through.
18:23They just won't get it.
18:25Oh, we get it.
18:26We get it.
18:27You know?
18:28And there are so many groups out there and so many people out there who are supporting.
18:36You know, I follow several podcasters.
18:42The one, you know, quite a few.
18:44I can't really get the names now.
18:45And it's not just, you know, this cult that people are trapped in and that have such severe
18:54damage to their psyche and to themselves.
18:57But this has been, you know, put as it's the one true message.
19:06And if you don't follow this, you know, you are eternally lost.
19:10And our families are broken because, you know, you are judging them because they are now in
19:19the message.
19:20And it happened in my family.
19:23We wouldn't see our cousins and aunts and uncles because they didn't believe it.
19:29And I'm like, but we are family.
19:31Don't we just, you know, can't we just all get along?
19:35But as a child, you're not allowed to challenge, you know, I would challenge my dad when we were
19:44alone together.
19:45I was daddy's girl, as you could probably have made up, you know, gathered.
19:50So I would challenge him when we were alone, but I did not challenge my mom or any of the
19:55other elders in the family or in the church.
19:58And so, yeah, it is.
20:04And I see with my siblings, you know, the scars are still there, but it's not a journey that
20:09I can take for them.
20:11I can just hold up my hand for them to reach out if they need to.
20:16But the damage, it breaks my heart.
20:20It really breaks my heart.
20:22It's difficult.
20:23And whenever I first started doing this, I don't know if you know this history or not,
20:27but I had a different YouTube site and the YouTube site name matched my website.
20:32The cult attacked it and brought it down because they did not want all this information to be
20:36out.
20:37But as I was going through this journey and I'm, you know, reading the Bible, I'm trying
20:41to make sense of it.
20:42I was finding differences between what we were taught and what I was reading.
20:46And I would, you know, put these little 15 to 30 minute clips of me talking about, I found
20:54this difference.
20:54This is interesting.
20:55And I was just putting these things out there.
20:57They weren't anything significant.
20:59It wasn't until I put out the information about Jim Jones and People's Temple of the
21:04People's Temple Massacre.
21:05That's when they really got heavy, you know, attacking me.
21:09But as we're going through that journey, I lost a lot of those videos.
21:12So much of this doesn't exist.
21:14But it was funny because I'm going through that thought process thinking about, I'm just
21:20deeply troubled by how we treated women, myself included.
21:24We treated women horrifically and we treated people with black skin of different varieties
21:30of black skin.
21:31We treated them very poorly.
21:33And I'm feeling really guilty for this.
21:35I'm going through the Bible.
21:36I'm reading.
21:37And things were hitting me that there, you know, we have the cult's loaded language,
21:41but we also have the cult's loaded and pre-programmed Bible verses.
21:48We would read this verse and you didn't even have to say all of the cult loaded language.
21:52You just said the verse name, book and name and, you know, verse number.
21:56And one of those verses said that I will pour my spirit out on all flesh.
22:03Your sons and daughters will see visions.
22:06You probably know the passage.
22:08And I got to thinking, what would happen if a daughter were to have actually prophesied
22:14or said that she saw a vision in this movement?
22:17They would shut her down immediately.
22:19And that's what the Bible is saying is going to happen, right?
22:22So I'm scratching my head thinking, how does that work?
22:25How does that matter?
22:27And then I got to thinking about the cult's hierarchy, the five-fold ministry hierarchy.
22:33There's all of the rank and file members at this bottom tier.
22:37And then you had the pastors who were like governors.
22:41They were more like policemen, like you said.
22:43They wanted to govern and make sure that you kept the standards of the cult.
22:47And at the very top of our cult was either was a prophet who we kind of combined prophet
22:53and apostle in the message call.
22:56But the funny part about that is then I got to thinking about the five-fold ministry.
23:01If Ephesians is correct, and these are the five types of people that will be helping the
23:06church grow and learn more about Jesus, what happened to the five?
23:11And why is it a hierarchy?
23:13Why is it a tiered structure with authoritarian control?
23:16And then I'm studying Branhamism and how, you know, in the beginning he was kind of supportive
23:22of this.
23:23But then towards the end, can you imagine if some young man were to say, I have the gift
23:27of teaching and I want to be a teacher in this movement?
23:31No, you must listen to how the prophet taught.
23:34I want to be an evangelist.
23:36I want to go to the, well, you need to go to the cult headquarters because they're going
23:41to instruct you of what the prophet taught.
23:43So, it's like they have no leading of the Holy Spirit.
23:46You have to go to the prophet as your Holy Spirit.
23:49So, this led me down crazy paths, but it got to the point where I was thinking, in essence,
23:55this movement had taken the role of the Holy Spirit that's in the scriptures and they'd
24:01applied that entire role to this dead guy from 1965.
24:04You've just triggered a memory for me earlier on in that segment where you spoke about, you
24:20know, precognitive or prophesying or whatever.
24:22When I was a child, about my second or third year of school, I was about nine or ten, eight
24:31or nine or somewhere around there, I used to have dreams.
24:36Now, for an eight or nine-year-old child in this kind of religious environment, you know,
24:43I would dream things and it would happen.
24:46And for an eight or nine-year-old, like, I would, it started off with my grandparents,
24:53one of my grandparents, I dreamt my granny had passed.
24:58And it hurt me because, you know, she was in Namibia and we were in South Africa and it's
25:04so far and we only see her once a year.
25:06And so, a few days later, we got the news that my gran had passed and I didn't tell anybody
25:15about it.
25:16I just kept quiet because I thought, the fact that I'd dreamt it before means that I caused
25:23this.
25:25And I just kept, mum, I didn't say anything.
25:29And then a while after, same thing happened.
25:33My father's brother.
25:34And a few days later, we got the news, cousin came to town and I got really scared.
25:44And then I was, and then it started being in my conscious state as well.
25:51I would almost like see like little movies and I, I didn't know what to do.
25:57I was afraid.
25:58I was, I was so petrified.
26:00I couldn't tell anybody because they're going to blame me.
26:04They're going to say, I'm causing these people death and these are my family.
26:09And I shut it down.
26:11Somehow I shut it down.
26:13I was able to shut it down.
26:14And I never, you know, had, I would dream a lot, but I would just ignore it.
26:20And only now in my adult life, that started coming up again, where I'm very sensitive and
26:28and I can pick up on people's emotions and I can, I'm dreaming again.
26:33And it's not wrong.
26:35It's not something that I'm, you know, cooking up at night and, and, and stuff like that.
26:40And I'm quite comfortable talking about it now because it's, it's not manufactured.
26:44It's something that, that just happened.
26:46But that fear, you know, from childhood, I'm a girl.
26:53Now, if, if I had to come up with this and say, oh, well, I saw that, that accident was
26:59going to happen.
27:00They'd be like, oh, shush, man.
27:02What, you know, just hush.
27:03You don't know anything.
27:04But I saw it, um, someone in, in, we had gone out for a family picnic and I saw the accident
27:13and she died.
27:16Um, that's scary stuff, you know, for, for a young child and with, with nobody to talk
27:25to.
27:26Um, I see your supervisor just walk in there.
27:29My dog is walking around.
27:30He, he hears my son who's out getting ready to mow the lawn.
27:34Uh, you and I are so much alike.
27:38It's unbelievable.
27:39And I want to, I want to emphasize something you said because there's a aspect to what you
27:44said that I also experienced that people don't understand who don't have this type of thing.
27:51So I too, I've mentioned this briefly.
27:54I don't want to talk about it too much because in these types of movement, people start worshiping
27:58you if they sense that you can have any kind of spiritual thing.
28:03I had the same thing.
28:04I had dreams and I would watch things happen after my dreams.
28:08Not all of them, but sometimes.
28:11And I think I have mentioned this.
28:13This is the only one that I have mentioned.
28:15I had this dream.
28:16We were sort of estranged from my grandfather, the pastor of the Branham Tabernacle for years.
28:23And I had this dream about him.
28:25And as a child, I'm thinking, why am I having this dream?
28:28This, I don't know.
28:30I really don't know my grandfather.
28:31We moved kind of from coast to coast and I just hadn't seen him for a long time.
28:36But I had this dream and I walked into his house and I turned to the right and I walked
28:41into this room and I saw my grandfather watching television.
28:45Which, in the cult, if you know, the cult is different now.
28:49But if you know back then, this would be unbelievable.
28:52There's no way that the pastor of the Branham Tabernacle is watching television.
28:56And he preached, he scolded people who did this.
29:00Every Sunday, it was like a, like you said, it was the fear.
29:03Don't do this.
29:04Don't do this.
29:05Don't watch the television.
29:06That's a hell in a box.
29:08You know, he had all these terms.
29:10So, as a child, I had this dream and I thought, well, that's kind of silly.
29:14And not much longer after that, my dad announces, we're going to go visit grandfather for the
29:20first time in a while.
29:22I go to his house.
29:24The first thing I did, when he welcomed me, everybody else went to the kitchen to talk
29:29and I darted over to that room.
29:30And what did I see but a television?
29:33It wasn't like a television with antennas, but he had a VCR and movies galore.
29:40And I'm like, I'm looking around thinking, no, this can't be.
29:43This just can't be.
29:45And I later learned that William Branham had not just one television in his house, but many
29:50televisions in his house.
29:51His children had televisions.
29:53Pretty much everything that the Branham family condemned, they were doing.
29:57They had a swimming pool in their backyard.
29:59We were told, swimming, you can't have these swimming parties.
30:02And I have family that attended his swimming parties.
30:06And so that was the first time I kind of experienced that.
30:09But I wanted to say all of that to say this.
30:13Number one, that doesn't make me special in any way.
30:16Number two, the difference between what happens when people really have something like this
30:22and what you see with these stage acts like William Branham, it's always, I did this.
30:29I had this happen.
30:30Come follow me because I had this thing.
30:33But when it happened to me, it was more like, this is very personal.
30:37This isn't for other people.
30:39I don't even think I told my parents.
30:41I think all of these years, the first time I mentioned that was probably a year ago on
30:45the podcast.
30:46I've kept it to myself because this is for me.
30:49This is between God and me.
30:51If this is God speaking, which I, to this day, I don't know if that was God speaking to
30:56me or if it was this weird coincidence.
30:59Because what do I do with this information?
31:01My grandpa has a television.
31:04But in either case, it was a personal thing.
31:07It wasn't so that people would come and follow me and worship me.
31:11So I kept it to myself and years later, now that I'm going through all of these different
31:17ministries and watching, I'm reading through the Voice of Healing magazine, which is basically
31:23a generator of stage acts.
31:25And they're all doing the same things that I did as a child or saying that they are, but
31:32they're using it and saying, come follow me.
31:34I did this.
31:35I did this thing.
31:35And it's so backwards from the way it is, if it's real, it is backwards what they're
31:40doing.
31:42Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of
31:46modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe
31:51movements into the new apostolic reformation?
31:55You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
32:01On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles
32:07Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio,
32:14and digital versions of each book.
32:16You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
32:22movements.
32:23If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute
32:28button at the top.
32:29And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
32:34to or watching.
32:36On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
32:41You know, to latch on to that about being real and authenticity, the other thing that
32:48really, really struck me as a young adult and as a child was the hypocrisy as well.
32:56And, you know, the leaders, the so-called leaders and the senior people in the following or in the
33:05religion around the country, you know, you have these celebrity preachers who visit and everybody
33:11attends because so-and-so is preaching today.
33:15Same stuff.
33:16I never got it.
33:17You know, I would always make an excuse not to go to church because I never understood.
33:25And my dad would always just give me that look and he was like, come on, you got to go.
33:29And I don't feel well, like you were fine yesterday.
33:34And anyway, I'd go.
33:37And, you know, I'd hear about, when we were much older now, I'd hear about, you know,
33:52oh, so-and-so was indecent with his daughter or with his, the, the, the child, foster child.
34:00So, what are they going to do about it, you know?
34:05What are the repercussions?
34:07Because that's wrong.
34:09That's what's been done to her.
34:13And it's just always swept under the carpet.
34:17And my dad used to get very angry about it and he would, when we were much older, not
34:22when we were very young, but when we were older, you know, late teens, early, you know,
34:27young adulthood, he would tell us.
34:32And, and, and, and he, he was starting to get very, I could see him starting to pull
34:40away in, in, in late teens.
34:44And, um, because so-and-so did this, that so-and-so, you know, did this, and this child
34:50was abused and that child was abused.
34:52And, um, I know of very many, of, of a few people who were abused, who I only learned
35:01about later, but didn't know at the time.
35:06And I thought, these are Christian men, why are they doing this, you know?
35:11Um, but if you think about how they've been programmed around women, a girl child or a
35:22female child means nothing, because that's still a woman.
35:28Um, and then I wonder, you know, what about your own children?
35:34How do you feel?
35:35Do you think that about your daughters?
35:37Um, those were really difficult conversations to have alone in your head, because it was
35:51wrong on every level, religious, ethically, morally, right across the board, it was just
35:58wrong.
35:59And the sad part of it is the general population of the cult had no idea of many of these things.
36:08Only those people who were directly connected to them.
36:12And I would watch some of these people, they would get quote unquote restored to their ministry
36:17or however they called it.
36:18So they continued and they're predators.
36:21They're still continuing as a predator.
36:23And the way that the message works, people, you know, William Branham is dead.
36:28So they'll sit so long and under one pastor and they'll get tired of this because there
36:33is no pastor that can reconcile all of the different contradictions in doctrine.
36:39And so they'll go on their one doctrinal path and they'll try to be consistent with
36:43this.
36:44Well, some of the listeners will recognize, well, wait a minute, William Branham said the
36:47total opposite of what he said, fully unaware that William Branham said both things.
36:52So the minister thinks he's preaching Branhamism.
36:55They think they're preaching against him and then they migrate to another church.
36:59Well, some of the churches that they migrate to might have one of these predators.
37:03And I remember thinking not long before we started to leave, I started thinking about the
37:11way that they attacked the Catholic church.
37:13They really didn't attack it based off of doctrine or anything of substance.
37:18They attacked it simply because they're covering up sex scandals.
37:23We would hear this often.
37:24Watch what the Catholic church does.
37:26Look at the skeletons in their closet.
37:29We would hear these sermons like this.
37:31So I'm sitting there and I know some of the same things are happening in the cult that
37:36we were in.
37:37So I'm thinking, well, wait a minute.
37:39How is that right?
37:40How can we condemn them when we're doing the same exact thing?
37:43And then it was interesting because I'll never forget after I left, I started paying a little
37:50bit closer attention to world politics and religion in general.
37:54And I started watching the Catholic church started reforming in many areas.
37:59And this was one of the areas that largely they started reforming.
38:03It still exists.
38:04It is a problem that will exist in any denomination of faith, message, Catholic or not.
38:09But they're making an attempt to correct this.
38:14And I'm watching the cult that we left.
38:16There is no attempt.
38:17They're not even acknowledging that it exists.
38:21And the problem is when you enable predators and you keep restoring them to their ministries
38:27and then they continue with their predatory nature, you're going to always have victims.
38:32So after I went through all of this journey, I'm thinking, I'm so glad I pulled my children
38:38out of this.
38:39Not for just the sake of my children, but my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren.
38:43What if they were to accidentally migrate to one of these places?
38:46It's horrific.
38:47And, you know, added to that, there's the, you know, in the society that I grew up in, there
38:56was this classism, if that's the right word to use.
39:02And you had the elite.
39:07You had the national elite.
39:09And then you had the local elite.
39:11And then you had, you know, the middle sort of layer.
39:17And then you had the not middle layer.
39:22And it wasn't a very overt thing.
39:28It was very subtle.
39:30But I used to pick up on it.
39:32And my mom was, is a very compassionate human, very, very generous spiritually.
39:44And she used to be that champion for the forgotten.
39:52And often, you know, we'd have to be, instead of being out with our friends on a Saturday,
40:01we'd have to be making grocery parcels because we need to, you know, take it to the sisters
40:07and to, you know, whomever.
40:11But there weren't active drives, charity drives for, you know, bring an extra tin of beans
40:21or an extra loaf of bread or for those who were struggling.
40:25There was none of that.
40:26There was individuals who would do that.
40:29And I always used to wonder, look at, you know, the churches.
40:32I used to attend a Catholic school because they had a music school.
40:39So I used to do piano and I used to attend the Catholic school.
40:43And the charity drive there used to embarrass me because I called myself a Christian, but
40:50we never used to do that.
40:53As a family, we would, you know, we would do that.
40:56And I'm not saying that nobody in the church or in the community wasn't charitable, but it
41:01wasn't an active thing.
41:03And for me, if I have a plate of food every night, I would like to think about somebody
41:10else as well and share my plate of food with somebody else because there are those people
41:17in society who don't have, you know, enough.
41:22And I wondered about that, you know, and people would be driving flashy cars and living in fancy
41:28houses and justifying why that was okay.
41:33But the charity wasn't there.
41:35Charity wasn't there.
41:37And like I said, I did this process of self-examination after leaving.
41:42I wanted to make myself better.
41:44I realized that I was in this thing that was making me worse.
41:46I wanted to be better.
41:48And we tried many different denominations after leaving.
41:52I don't know that we'll ever settle on anything.
41:55I'm kind of like you.
41:56I'm more, it's more of a personal thing.
41:58It's not about an organization or anything like this.
42:01But one of the ones that we tried, simply because it was one that was so strongly condemned,
42:08was the Methodist Church.
42:10If you know the history, the Methodists were strongly condemned because they were, quote,
42:14cold and formal.
42:15That was the cold and formal church, right?
42:18So we went.
42:19And the first thing that hit me was they were so far less cold and formal than the Message
42:26Church was that we were in.
42:28The Message Church, you had to be rigid and structured and you couldn't, you go into the
42:33church service.
42:34It was like a bunch of robots.
42:35That's what it felt like.
42:37And then I go to this place and they were respectful, yet they were not cold towards you.
42:44And anybody's welcome.
42:45You can come in.
42:46But here locally, they support the homeless.
42:50There's a large homeless community in this area.
42:52And that was one of their primary initiatives, is to go help the homeless.
42:56And they would go try to get other churches to donate and help the people who have no food,
43:03who have no shelter.
43:04And, you know, it's right here in the heart of this area.
43:08You can't get anybody who's in the Message cult to acknowledge that this exists because
43:14they're in the cold and formal church.
43:16And then it really sunk in whenever we had this series of tornadoes that hit this area.
43:23And it just tore through.
43:25My brother-in-law lost everything.
43:27They just happened to be hunkered down into the, I think, the bathtub.
43:31And the whole house was ripped around away from them as they're in the bathtub.
43:35That's how bad this was.
43:37There were people who died.
43:38And the cult headquarters put out this statement, not a single believer was killed in this thing.
43:47And I'm reading this while reading the news.
43:48Wait a minute.
43:49There were Christians who were killed.
43:51This hit the community.
43:53There were Christians who lost everything.
43:55And they did have an initiative to help and support.
43:59But it was centralized only to the people who believed in William Branham.
44:03If you believe Branham, we'll help you rebuild your house.
44:06If you don't, we won't.
44:08That was basically what it was.
44:09And that really hit me hard because I recognized that when I was in it, my mindset was the same way.
44:18And I would have not seen any problem with this.
44:20I would have thought that I was doing God a service.
44:22But in effect, I'm denying everything that Jesus said about how to treat people and how to treat others.
44:29And I realized that this is just, this is not me.
44:32I cannot be like this.
44:33You know, they talk about the ABCs.
44:36I don't know if it's the general thing or if it was just, you know, the lexicon in our community.
44:42The ABCs of Christianity and whatever.
44:44That's ABC of Christianity is charity.
44:47And it's just acknowledgement or acknowledging another human being without race, without religion, without dogma, anything.
44:59It's just fellow human.
45:02Brotherly love, they call it.
45:03That's it.
45:04That's it.
45:08And it is, these are the basics that I used to question.
45:17I never questioned the dogma or the beliefs and the doctrines and all because I never understood it.
45:28It never made sense to me, so I never understood it.
45:30I never questioned it, but the basics are what I question.
45:38And when I was about 19 or 20 years old, my father decided to leave.
45:51And, you know, the father, the head of the house, and if the father says, we don't go, we don't go.
46:00So there was a thing between, I don't know what happened between them, him and the pastor and the upper echelons of the management team.
46:11There was lies about my sister and I.
46:19I mean, I don't want to go into the details of it.
46:23And it was said, we got to say it, the Lord.
46:26It wasn't the truth.
46:28But it was said that it was true.
46:31And that was the turning point for me, that I'm done.
46:40If my dad kicks me out of the house now, that's okay.
46:44I'm going to find a job.
46:45I'll go somewhere.
46:46You know, but I'm not going back because it's not true.
46:52But my father decided that, no, he's also had enough.
46:58We don't know the full story.
47:01My father's now passed away a long time ago.
47:05My mom won't tell us.
47:08And it's okay because I don't really need to know.
47:13But that was the turning point, you know.
47:16And then I decided, well, I'm going to leave because we lived in a small town in the northern part of Natal.
47:23Which is near Durban.
47:24Just to give you some context, if you know the South African geography.
47:29And I decided to leave home.
47:33And I moved to Cape Town.
47:36And I've been here for the past 35, 32, 33 years.
47:39And I've never regretted it.
47:42And this is where I've been through my cleansing process, my deconditioning and unprogramming process.
47:50Away from, because I didn't move from Newcastle to Cape Town to a message community.
47:58I didn't move to a message community.
48:01And you know what I noticed when I got here was these non-message people are so kind to me.
48:09They are so generous.
48:12And it's through them that I made it.
48:16Their support.
48:18And we were taught that they don't have your best interest at heart.
48:22You can't trust them.
48:23You know, they're not people of the Lord.
48:25And yet these non-people of the Lord that helped me, you know, get to eventually stand on my own two feet.
48:33And because leaving home as a 21-year-old, I was still very naive, very immature, because we had been raised in such a protected community.
48:47So I had to learn how to be an adult on my own, you know, with all these worldly people.
48:55And I turned out all right, you know.
49:01Yeah, that feeling was overwhelming for me, because I'll never forget we were in one of the churches that we attended.
49:09I won't give the names, but we were in a Sunday school.
49:13And Sunday school for me growing up was we're going to sit and listen to a man who's telling us stories of how blessed he was to be near the prophet during the days when the prophet was alive.
49:24That was Sunday school.
49:26You might hear a Bible verse.
49:28I think most of the cult churches did open with reading of the Psalms.
49:32They would read a verse, then the congregation would read.
49:34It would do this sort of thing.
49:36But then the whole rest of Sunday school wasn't learning the Bible.
49:40It wasn't what is actually Sunday school.
49:42It was literally stories that – and if you go to a church long enough, you hear the same stories like five times.
49:49And I wanted to hear more.
49:51Well, we're attending this church, and they're having Sunday school.
49:56And I'll never forget it.
49:57It was like a classroom.
49:59They had this board up.
50:01It wasn't a chalkboard.
50:02It was one with the pens where you could write.
50:04And they would say, no, we're going through this passage in this book from the Old Testament.
50:09And now Egypt is right here.
50:11And he would draw like a map.
50:12And over here you have all – he's describing all the nations, and he's talking about these people believed and worshipped this pagan god, and these people worshipped this other – I mean, it was making it come alive to me.
50:26And I was sitting there just in complete awe that how did I miss this growing up?
50:31All we heard were these stories of this dead guy.
50:33And so I'm listening to this, and towards the end they would always have somebody pray.
50:39Well, one time they called in this lady to pray who just happened to be wearing shorts.
50:45And I looked over at her, and I'm out of this mindset.
50:48I no longer even have a problem with women wearing shorts at that point in time.
50:53But when I saw it in a church setting, I was like, oh, my gosh, what do I do?
50:59Do I listen?
51:01What's the protocol here?
51:03Because I was raised that way, right?
51:04And then she prayed this prayer.
51:08She started crying in the middle of it, praying for the sins of the city and how she wished that every single person could know the god that she knows and be saved.
51:18And how can we help these people?
51:21How can we reach them?
51:22What can we do?
51:23Show us the way to help more people.
51:26That was her prayer.
51:28And I felt so little in that moment.
51:32I'm trying not to get emotional now, but I realized what a bigot I was, what a fool I was.
51:39My entire life, 37 years I was in this, and I was so arrogant.
51:43I thought others were lesser than me.
51:46We were the elite, like you said.
51:48And here's a person who I'm taught to condemn, and a church that I'm taught is cold and formal and I should condemn, and yet they're the opposite of cold and formal.
51:59These are really, really good people.
52:01What do I do with this information, right?
52:03And we tried multiple churches.
52:05We tried, you know, still, like I said, I don't think we'll ever land anywhere, but we tried several after this, and every one that we tried, it was the same way.
52:15Not a single one was as cold and formal as the cult we had left.
52:20So, it is a life-changing difference, and I'm so glad that you went through it.
52:25If you could go back in time and give some encouragement to your younger self who's struggling with this analytical mind like I had, and all of these thoughts, what advice would you give yourself?
52:39What encouragement would you give yourself?
52:40Keep pushing through.
52:43What you see is what you see, and it's not wrong.
52:49Keep pushing through, and listen to yourself.
52:54Listen.
52:56Because we all have that little voice within us, and you can call it whatever you want to call it, the Holy Spirit or your whatever.
53:07Listen to it.
53:08Because I do believe that we go through our life journey for a reason.
53:19If my life journey had been cushy and soft and marshmallowy and no issues, then I would not have been forged into who I am today.
53:30And none of us would be forged into who we are today because of what we've come through.
53:38And I see this pathway as a forge.
53:44Because now I can sit and have a conversation with you with very little emotion in terms of anger or resentment or anything like that towards the people that I've been referring to or that I've been talking about.
54:01And it's about honoring the forge that has brought you to where you are today.
54:12And I believe that there's a reason why you and I are having this conversation today.
54:24Why you and I forget your colleague, Charles, why you are doing the work that you are doing to bring to light what's been going on.
54:38And you had to go through that in order to be able to bring this to light and to be able to understand when somebody has a conversation with you, say, I'm afraid.
54:53I'm afraid I'm going to lose my entire community.
54:56I'm afraid I'm going to lose everything I know if I need.
55:02You understand that because you've gone through that.
55:07There's purpose in it.
55:08It was difficult.
55:10And, you know, at times it's still difficult.
55:12We recently lost my mother-in-law.
55:15And when my family cut me off, my mother-in-law became my new mother.
55:19So, for the past, you know, since 2012, I have leaned very strongly.
55:25She was my support pillar.
55:27She, too, was able to escape the message.
55:29And it's very difficult at times.
55:32But at the same time, in many ways, it's less difficult.
55:36Even through all of the pain that we went through and all of the people cutting us off.
55:42What I tell people whenever they leave this is, yes, it's going to hurt.
55:45It's going to be the hardest thing that you've ever, ever done.
55:48But if you work hard and build a new community of people, you'll find that there are people who will stick by you no matter what happens.
55:57You could do something that even offends them.
56:00And they will still stick with you.
56:01We never had this in the cult.
56:03And it was very evident by how quickly we were cut off.
56:06So, it was difficult.
56:09And I'm glad that you were able to come through.
56:11I'm glad that myself, my family, my children were able to escape this and learn how good life can be.
56:19If you don't live, like I'm speaking on my behalf, not yours, but if you don't live as an arrogant person, how good life can be.
56:26It's so much better.
56:27So, thank you so much for doing this.
56:29Yeah, it's really been lovely chatting to you.
56:31And I just want to say one thing, though.
56:36Don't beat yourself up about, you know, how you were programmed to be.
56:44You had no control over that.
56:46You now have control over the choices that you make.
56:50And when people, when I'm coaching or when I speak to people and I talk to them about, or they talk to me about, well, how could he be so cruel?
57:01And how could he be this?
57:03And he did this and he did that.
57:04And I said, okay, let's look at it from a different perspective.
57:08Look at it from the perspective of, he was taught to be that way.
57:12He was taught to be dominant.
57:14To be dominant, he was taught that he was to dominate and to be the head of the household.
57:21And what does that mean to him?
57:24And when you look at it from that perspective, you as much, the man, is as much a victim of the programming as we, the women, and the receiving end are.
57:36You know, you didn't know better.
57:39Now you do.
57:39Now that you do know better, I might judge you if you do something differently now.
57:49Hopefully I won't be arrogant to you now.
57:52No.
57:53No, you're nothing.
57:55Arrogance is not a word I would use.
57:57Well, thank you so much.
57:59If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
58:02You can find us at william-branham.org.
58:05For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
58:12Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
58:35Have a l 1914 coma.
58:51We'll be, you know, about the dark side of the USE video every day.
58:52I'll see you next time.
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