- 5 months ago
John invites Jon Dugan to share his story about growing up in a high-control religious community and spending four decades in Japan helping families escape controlling belief systems. They reflect on the psychological patterns and authoritarian structures common across a wide range of fringe and mainstream religious groups. Dugan describes how cultural dynamics, especially in postwar Japan, created fertile ground for high-control organizations, and how his work intersected with a number of well-known movements, both religious and sociopolitical.
Throughout the conversation, they explore the underlying motivations that draw people into such groups, the consequences of rigid spiritual frameworks, and the parallels between different global expressions of control-based faith systems. From his own childhood inside a religious commune in Minnesota to his firsthand work with families affected by destructive teachings in Japan, Dugan offers a rare inside view into how authoritarian structures thrive across cultures. The discussion includes surprising intersections with global figures, well-known theological trends, and the lasting impact of unchallenged groupthink.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 John Dugan’s life in Japan and post-war encounters
03:02 Family history and kamikaze connection
04:52 Arrival as missionary and rise of cults in Japan
06:20 Growth of Jehovah’s Witnesses after WWII
08:04 Steven Hassan’s visit and cult spectrum in Japan
09:56 Aum Shinrikyo and 1995 nerve gas attack
12:58 Shift to Korean cults and authoritarian culture
17:17 Truth pyramid and cult architecture
19:00 Doctrinal vs. structural control in cults
21:20 Japanese FBI surveillance and cult executions
22:25 Legal risks and interventions against Watchtower
24:59 Extreme examples of shunning and information control
27:25 “Spiritual fornication” and parallels with Branhamism
29:10 Noah’s ark as organization and loyalty to the group
31:10 Us-versus-them mentality across movements
33:49 Motivations for cult involvement
35:28 Growing up in Bethany Fellowship commune
39:00 Financial control and communal life
43:28 Guilt, altar calls, and death to self doctrine
45:26 Fellowship rules above all others
46:29 Restricting outside information
47:25 Cults creating visible “Satan” figures
48:05 Unification Church, finances, and Japanese court rulings
50:18 Charismatic groups and us-versus-them thinking
51:20 Dominionism, seven mountains, and Japan’s weak church immune system
53:36 Spiritual mapping in Japan and comparisons to Pentecostal practices
55:57 Positive confession and failures of faith healing
57:11 William Branham’s visit to Minneapolis and its impact
59:12 Bethany Fellowship’s eclectic mix of doctrines
1:01:10 YWAM, IHOP, and manipulative prophetic practices
1:03:23 Church splits, collapse, and scandals
1:04:26 Ted Haggard visit and failures of discernment
1:05:33 The spiderweb of apostolic networks and systemic flaws
______________________
Jon's Counter-Cult Organization: https://c
Throughout the conversation, they explore the underlying motivations that draw people into such groups, the consequences of rigid spiritual frameworks, and the parallels between different global expressions of control-based faith systems. From his own childhood inside a religious commune in Minnesota to his firsthand work with families affected by destructive teachings in Japan, Dugan offers a rare inside view into how authoritarian structures thrive across cultures. The discussion includes surprising intersections with global figures, well-known theological trends, and the lasting impact of unchallenged groupthink.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 John Dugan’s life in Japan and post-war encounters
03:02 Family history and kamikaze connection
04:52 Arrival as missionary and rise of cults in Japan
06:20 Growth of Jehovah’s Witnesses after WWII
08:04 Steven Hassan’s visit and cult spectrum in Japan
09:56 Aum Shinrikyo and 1995 nerve gas attack
12:58 Shift to Korean cults and authoritarian culture
17:17 Truth pyramid and cult architecture
19:00 Doctrinal vs. structural control in cults
21:20 Japanese FBI surveillance and cult executions
22:25 Legal risks and interventions against Watchtower
24:59 Extreme examples of shunning and information control
27:25 “Spiritual fornication” and parallels with Branhamism
29:10 Noah’s ark as organization and loyalty to the group
31:10 Us-versus-them mentality across movements
33:49 Motivations for cult involvement
35:28 Growing up in Bethany Fellowship commune
39:00 Financial control and communal life
43:28 Guilt, altar calls, and death to self doctrine
45:26 Fellowship rules above all others
46:29 Restricting outside information
47:25 Cults creating visible “Satan” figures
48:05 Unification Church, finances, and Japanese court rulings
50:18 Charismatic groups and us-versus-them thinking
51:20 Dominionism, seven mountains, and Japan’s weak church immune system
53:36 Spiritual mapping in Japan and comparisons to Pentecostal practices
55:57 Positive confession and failures of faith healing
57:11 William Branham’s visit to Minneapolis and its impact
59:12 Bethany Fellowship’s eclectic mix of doctrines
1:01:10 YWAM, IHOP, and manipulative prophetic practices
1:03:23 Church splits, collapse, and scandals
1:04:26 Ted Haggard visit and failures of discernment
1:05:33 The spiderweb of apostolic networks and systemic flaws
______________________
Jon's Counter-Cult Organization: https://c
Category
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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 at william-branham.org.
00:00:43And with me, I have my very special guest, John Dugan, cult expert and former member of Bethany Fellowship.
00:00:50John, it's good to connect with you and finally to tell your story on the podcast.
00:00:54We were chatting right before this, and you have a fascinating story and live in a fascinating environment.
00:01:01So I'll let you tell that story.
00:01:03But a lot of people don't realize this about me because I'm such a sci-fi fan.
00:01:08I am an old Western fan.
00:01:10I've mentioned that.
00:01:10But one of my other interests is I love old Japanese movies, and one of my favorites is Zatoichi, the blind samurai who could walk into a, I don't know what they're called in Japan, but it's like a saloon in America.
00:01:24But walks in, can't see a thing, and then you see all of the guys running or, you know, he's taking out the whole crowd while he's walking in there blind.
00:01:33Fascinating stuff.
00:01:34I'll let you tell your story, but thank you for coming.
00:01:36Yeah, thanks for having me.
00:01:38It's interesting that Americans often, when they refer to Japanese old movies, they think of the Seven Samurai.
00:01:45I don't know if you're familiar with that one.
00:01:47I am.
00:01:47That was probably one of the most famous older films.
00:01:49I remember when I was studying Japanese at the University of Minnesota, they had a movie night, and they would air old black and white Japanese films.
00:01:59And because I was working on the language, I remember watching some of those.
00:02:05Arriving in Japan, though, however, of course, things move on, and it's very modern culture, and now everything is manga.
00:02:12So a lot of people that are fascinated with Japan, they come and see the manga.
00:02:16I arrived on August 29th, 1985, exactly 40 years after World War II ended.
00:02:24And just at that point in time, as I mentioned to you personally, there were many survivors of the war.
00:02:33Of course, anybody who was 50 years or older would have remembered the war.
00:02:37And I remember one day, a lady came up to me, and she said, you killed my friend.
00:02:43Your country killed my friend.
00:02:45And because she and her friend were coming home from school, and apparently some American fighters had strafed that area, and her friend had gotten shot and died.
00:02:54And that was, you don't really know what to say when somebody says that to you.
00:02:59I married my wife.
00:03:01My wife is Japanese.
00:03:02She's from Okinawa.
00:03:04And as I mentioned, her father during the war was, I believe, a captain in what they would call the special forces.
00:03:13The Air Force branch was called Kamikaze, or as Americans say, Kamakaze.
00:03:19It's Kamikaze.
00:03:21But he was in the Navy branch, and he was a suicide torpedo pilot.
00:03:25Fortunately, the war ended before he was used, but they would put them in this little cockpit,
00:03:31a torpedo that was kind of improvised to be like a small submarine.
00:03:35And, you know, the bulk of the thing was a bomb, and they'd bolt them in so that they couldn't get out,
00:03:43and they would be shot towards allied ships.
00:03:47And then either they hit the ship and exploded, or they sunk to the bottom of the ocean.
00:03:51They were asphyxiated and died.
00:03:53Fortunately, the war ended before he had to be used, so I was able to talk to my father-in-law.
00:03:59In fact, in his later years, when he was in his 80s, he'd had a couple strokes, and I was visiting in Okinawa.
00:04:06And I held his hand, and I said, thank you for raising Hiromi.
00:04:11And he started to tear up, and he started to weep, and that was shortly before he died.
00:04:16So, to me, the war was very, the idea that I would be living in Japan as a child, you know, it was,
00:04:25I had never even thought of that.
00:04:27In fact, I remember one of the first books I read was, I think it was called Five Minutes Over Tokyo,
00:04:32and I was about to do the little raids.
00:04:34And I was in third grade at the time, and I was laying in my bed with the nightlight,
00:04:39and I was reading this book about Japan.
00:04:40And I think back to that quite often, because who would have ever known that I would have spent two-thirds of my life?
00:04:46It's been 40 years now since I've been in Japan.
00:04:48Wow.
00:04:49Anyway, arriving, I came originally, I am a missionary, and I came as a missionary.
00:04:56And shortly after arriving, I discovered that Japan is a country that is filled with cults.
00:05:02It's probably, I don't know on comparing it with other countries worldwide, but it is,
00:05:09there are hundreds, if not thousands of cults in Japan, and Japanese are extremely susceptible to cults.
00:05:16Now, when I say cults, I often distinguish between heresy and cults, because heresy is a doctrinal issue.
00:05:26You know, when we think of anti-Trinitarian or, you know, in the Christian, you know,
00:05:33people, works righteousness or additional revelation beyond the Bible or things like that,
00:05:39I differentiate between heresy and cults.
00:05:43Cults is more of a method, a way of doing things.
00:05:47And the cult world is a spectrum.
00:05:50And so I've been dealing with cults for over 35 years in Japan, and I'm a, I hate to use the term,
00:05:56but in Japan, I'm an expert.
00:05:58You know, people call me.
00:06:00In fact, just about eight hours ago, I got a call from a lady in Okinawa who is in,
00:06:06came out of a cult, and she's very distressed, and wants my help.
00:06:10And that kind of communication and that kind of inquiry happens on a regular basis.
00:06:17In the 1990s, the early 2000s, I want to say maybe two times a week, I get calls, and sometimes people would talk, you know, three, four hours.
00:06:27In the 1990s, the, one of the major cults in Japan was the Jehovah's Witnesses.
00:06:36They took off right after the war.
00:06:39There were about 49 Jehovah's Witnesses, and by the year 2000, there were 220,000.
00:06:45So they just, there was, there was, there's much, there's a lot of reasons why, I won't get into the weeds on that,
00:06:51but that particular cult fit the Japanese culture and psyche and hit, and hit Japan at a time when the family was changing rapidly.
00:07:05Post-war, there was massive urbanization, and so Japanese were leaving the countryside where they were living three, four generations together.
00:07:14They were moving into the cities.
00:07:16They were taking up residence in small apartments, and men were working incredibly long hours.
00:07:22And so women were cut off from their, their family unit, and their, and they were kind of isolated because their father, their husband was working all the time.
00:07:33So they didn't know how to raise children, and the Jehovah's Witnesses would come to the door and say, you know, we'll help you raise children.
00:07:40And so that was how they got their foot in the door, and gradually they, they started to, you know, basically mind control.
00:07:52And I'm sure you've, you've done a lot of investigation on the, on the, I know you've talked to Stephen Hassan.
00:08:00Stephen Hassan was in Japan, and I, I was with him when he did a seminar at a cult called Tendi.
00:08:07There's a cult called Tendi in Japan that invited Stephen Hassan to come and do a seminar on cults.
00:08:15And I remember in intermission time, you know, everybody else around were, were Japanese, and, and they put him up in this, in their headquarters, and it's like a five-star hotel.
00:08:26And I remember I was walking with him to his room, and he looked at me, and he said, do you think that this group is a cult?
00:08:33And I said, yeah, they are a cult.
00:08:34So here he was doing a seminar on cults at a cult.
00:08:40It was kind of like if the Mormons, the Salt Lake City, invited him to come and do a seminar because the Mormons were losing their believers to the Munis or to the Jehovah's Witnesses.
00:08:51And that's kind of what's happened here in Japan.
00:08:52And the, uh, the Tendi cult was losing a lot of their believers to the Munis, the Unification Church or the Jehovah's Witnesses.
00:09:03And more recently, there's another group called Setsuri, which in America I think is called Providence.
00:09:07And it's a, it's an offshoot of, um, of the Munis.
00:09:12So that was an interesting episode.
00:09:14And, and he talks about the bite model.
00:09:17Uh, you know, if you read books, you talk about the five control mechanisms, behavior control, emotional control, also known as love bombing, uh, thought control, environmental control, and information control.
00:09:31And these five work together to get people in a place where they refuse to listen to contradictory information.
00:09:39And I know, talking to you, you've already experienced that on a personal level.
00:09:44Of course, the ultimate, the cult spectrum runs from soft, soft cultic groups to extreme cultic groups.
00:09:53Uh, the extreme would, would cover, I don't know if you are familiar with Omushindi?
00:09:58No.
00:09:59Supreme Truth.
00:10:00Uh, do you remember the nerve gas attack that took place in 1995?
00:10:05Yes.
00:10:05March 20th, 1995.
00:10:07Yes.
00:10:08So, I was already involved in countercult work at that time.
00:10:12And then, I remember one morning, we were going to go as a family to, uh, camp out, turned on the TV.
00:10:20I think it was a Monday morning.
00:10:22And saw all these emergency vehicles outside the, uh, metro, the subway in Tokyo.
00:10:28And then found out that, uh, Omu, uh, we call it Omu.
00:10:33It's, I believe in America, they call it the Supreme Truth.
00:10:36And it's Omu Shindikyo is, is the name in, in English.
00:10:41And there was a guy, his name, his religious name is Asahara.
00:10:44His real name is Matsumoto.
00:10:46And, uh, he had ginned up all his believers.
00:10:50They all wore these, uh, these white or saffron kind of clothes.
00:10:54And, uh, at the peak, there were 10,000 believers.
00:10:58And, uh, he created, as cults do, you know, as create a, a Satan in his group, the, the
00:11:03politics and the police were the Satan that he created.
00:11:06And so, um, he, he, he, he started to kill off, uh, people who were in opposition, which
00:11:14meant, for example, a lawyer, um, and other people who opposed him.
00:11:19And then the ultimate one was to, uh, put his, his, his man, it, it kind of ties in with
00:11:26my father-in-law who was a suicide torpedo pilot.
00:11:29And it's the same thing, you know, it's this mindset that you're giving your life for the
00:11:34sake of, in, in the World War II case, for the sake of the emperor, um, for them, you're
00:11:40giving your life for the sake of truth.
00:11:43And they had a, they had a term that they use.
00:11:45It's a, it's a Sanskrit term called poor and poor was their term that they use for, um,
00:11:53uh, releasing people from their body, basically killing people.
00:11:57And so they, that justified the, putting the sarin gas, they had it in liquid form and
00:12:05they put it in like, uh, baggies, sealed baggies, and then they got on the, the trains.
00:12:10And then right before they got off, they used a, uh, umbrella and they poke a hole in it.
00:12:14And then the liquid, uh, would, would turn into gas.
00:12:17And basically, I think they killed, they directly killed about 17 people and something like 6,000
00:12:23people were, had nerve damage.
00:12:26Uh, so that, when that happened in, uh, 1995, so I'd been, uh, you know, by that point in
00:12:33time, I'd been working, uh, help taking family consultations and helping rescue people for
00:12:39about five years.
00:12:40That's, that hit and my, and my phone started ringing off the hook because people started
00:12:46to connect the dots and whether it was a Buddhist cult or a Bible-based cult, a cult is a cult.
00:12:52And so they, they, um, families were desperate to get people out.
00:12:57And so I got extremely busy from 95 up through the mid 2000s.
00:13:02Um, at first it was mostly Jehovah's Witnesses and then it kind of expanded to cultic churches
00:13:10churches and then also, uh, Korean cults.
00:13:13There's a lot of Korean cults in Japan.
00:13:15Uh, the most famous, of course, being the, uh, the Moonies or the Unification Church.
00:13:21So anyway, that's kind of how I, uh, cut my teeth on it.
00:13:25And in the, in the background of all this was, I was starting to analyze the way I was raised.
00:13:32And, um, I, I, I don't want to use a broad brush and say, you know, I just presented an
00:13:41extreme example.
00:13:42The place I was raised was not an extreme example like that, but, uh, there, there are, there
00:13:48are the operating system, there are similarities in the operating system.
00:13:54And so maybe I can get into that, but perhaps you have some questions about.
00:13:58It's so fascinating.
00:13:59Everything that you have just said, and we went a few different directions there, it,
00:14:05it repeats conversations for podcasts that I have recorded that are about to come out.
00:14:10One of the, one of the things that Bob Scott and I talked about is the big shift that happened
00:14:15about the same time in the United States where rural areas were diminishing and people were
00:14:21becoming urbanites.
00:14:22And that shift and transition opened the door for all kinds of different change in religion.
00:14:27And many, many of which turned into destructive cults.
00:14:31And like you said, there's this wide spectrum.
00:14:33They, the word cult isn't necessarily bad, but it has gained a notoriety based off of what
00:14:41happened at Jonestown.
00:14:42Basically, that was the shift and change.
00:14:44But the term I use is destructive cult is, is it, is it a cult and are they just people
00:14:50who are, it's maybe benign, they, they have an agenda or as a destructive cult.
00:14:55And are they ruining lives?
00:14:56That's the shift and change that, that seems to happen.
00:15:00It's very interesting that it's happening in Japan though, at the same, about the same
00:15:04time, the United States is exploding.
00:15:06Right.
00:15:07Um, did you, and you mentioned Jehovah's Witness, did you notice any other, um, similar forms
00:15:14of Pentecostal cults or charismatic cults?
00:15:17Right.
00:15:18So if you want to, yes, uh, the Korean, the Korean component is, is pretty huge here.
00:15:24Uh, Korea and Japan have a very, um, stressed relationship, but the Korean influence in Japan
00:15:33Japan is, is quite large in part because the Korean population is large.
00:15:38There are, uh, more than a million Koreans in Japan who still maintain Korean citizenship.
00:15:44Plus there's probably an equal number or twice as many that have naturalized and become Japanese.
00:15:49So, um, and Korea, you know, people in, in Christian circles, they hear about large churches
00:15:58in Korea and they think everything is rosy.
00:16:00Well, it's not, uh, a lot of the Korean, uh, churches, they, uh, one guy who I met on,
00:16:07uh, on the bullet train one time, he was, he was not a Christian, but, uh, he had lived
00:16:12in Korea a long time.
00:16:12I said, I said, well, what do you think about Christians in Korea?
00:16:15And he kind of chuckled and he said, yeah, well, you scratch a Korean Christian and underneath
00:16:19there's a Taoist and a Buddhist, you know?
00:16:22So, um, it's a, it's a mixed bag.
00:16:25And I don't mean that all Korean, certainly there are many solid Korean Christians.
00:16:30I don't mean it, uh, to be too disparaging, but the fact of the matter is the operating
00:16:35system, which is, uh, very authoritarian.
00:16:38And that's what they share with Japan.
00:16:41Uh, authoritarianism is something that's part and parcel of the culture.
00:16:46And so when you have an absolute, you know, person, that's the authority, uh, people buy
00:16:54into that and, and they don't have the, the American, um, you know, resistance to that,
00:17:00where we would say, you know, we live in a democracy.
00:17:04Well, Japan is a democracy kind of in name only, uh, actually they're very, uh, wired to
00:17:10be very authoritarian.
00:17:11And so that sets it up.
00:17:13You know, I mean, when I talk about, I teach in a Japanese, I've been teaching a Japanese
00:17:18Bible school for 23 years and I teach apologetics and I talk a lot about cults and I always say,
00:17:24if you want to make a cult, what do you need for ingredients?
00:17:26Well, you need an absolute, you know, a person or individual who has the absolute truth.
00:17:33And I talk about, I talk about the truth pyramid and I say, everybody in a, in a religion, you
00:17:39know, the, the first level is we are, we are, we are right.
00:17:43The second level is we are more right than other people.
00:17:47The third level is we are the most right.
00:17:49And the, and the tip is we are the only right.
00:17:53And a lot of people in groups, maybe they don't think about it, but they're on the, the more
00:17:58right or the most right.
00:18:00And the most right is, you know, whatever it is, we speak in tongues or we don't speak
00:18:04in tongues, uh, we have miracles or we don't have miracles, uh, we're growing or we're not
00:18:10growing.
00:18:11Um, we, we, we study the Bible more than other groups.
00:18:14You know, there's all kinds of reasons why people, they use that because people want to
00:18:19be special and they want to feel like they're part of this, this special group.
00:18:24And so I, when I talk about cults, I, when people, families come for consultations and the
00:18:30first thing we do is we do motivation assessment.
00:18:33Like, why is the person involved?
00:18:37We don't talk about the, what do they believe?
00:18:40I mean, cults, you know, it's just like people, my wife's Japanese and there's, there's people
00:18:47with darker skin and there's people with whiter skin and all that.
00:18:50But if you peel off the skin, everybody's the same underneath.
00:18:53And in the same way, you have all these variety of cults, but if you peel off the surface, really
00:18:58the structure is the same.
00:19:01Absolutely.
00:19:02When I began my website, I started focusing on the doctrine and the heresy.
00:19:07And what I realized is that I hit a brick wall because for many people who are in the cults
00:19:12and I was focusing then only on the Branham cult, you hit this brick wall because it doesn't
00:19:17matter if you can find and prove your doctrine according to the Bible.
00:19:22If the person at the top of that pyramid, the central figure has said something different,
00:19:27they will choose the central figure over the Bible.
00:19:29And eventually I just, I started avoiding theology altogether and instead focusing on the history,
00:19:36the facts, the makeup, the structure, the architecture.
00:19:39And what I began to realize is that architecture, it spread like a virus throughout the world,
00:19:45especially through the latter rain movement.
00:19:46Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:19:49And getting back to the nerve gas attack in 1995, in Japan, they have two calendars.
00:19:59They use the Western calendar, so the year right now is 2025, but they also use the Japanese
00:20:07calendar.
00:20:08And the Japanese calendar runs according to the emperor.
00:20:11And our current emperor is called Deiwa.
00:20:13Emperor is Tenno, so it's a Deiwa Tenno.
00:20:16And before, we're in, we are now in the seventh year of Deiwa Tenno.
00:20:22And before that was the Heisei period.
00:20:26And the Heisei period went for 31 years.
00:20:28And before that was the Showa.
00:20:29The Showa was what Americans know as Hirohito.
00:20:34The emperor that was in charge during the war.
00:20:37He was still the emperor when I came to Japan.
00:20:38So he died about four years later.
00:20:42But they had the Heisei period, this nerve gas attack happened during the Heisei period.
00:20:48And they wanted to basically close the book on that before the end of the Heisei, when
00:20:56they went into the Reiwa period.
00:20:58And so closing the book on it meant performing the execution of the 13 or so members of that
00:21:07group that had had a death sentence.
00:21:09They were sentenced to death.
00:21:11And in Japan, they still hang people.
00:21:15And so when, after the nerve gas attack happened, the Japanese version of the FBI, it's called
00:21:21the Koan, they started visiting me.
00:21:25And they still do to this day.
00:21:28So I get about four visits from the Japanese FBI every year.
00:21:32And they try to keep tabs on cults because they don't want to have another incident like
00:21:37that.
00:21:38And so when they visited me at the end of the Heisei period, they told me that they were
00:21:45going to take these, I think it was 13, might have been 15 members that were on death
00:21:52row.
00:21:52And they were going to spread them throughout Japan so that they could execute them all
00:21:56on the same day.
00:21:57And so they went to Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, Sapporo, and so on.
00:22:04And they spread them out.
00:22:05And then bang, on one day, they executed all of them.
00:22:07Because they can only execute like three a day at one place or something.
00:22:12And so they wanted to close the chapter on that so that they could welcome in the new
00:22:17emperor without any of that carryover from the nerve gas attack.
00:22:22Wow, that's insane.
00:22:24I can't even imagine.
00:22:25And the level of risk that it must put you under if the FBI, the equivalent of the FBI
00:22:30is coming to visit you.
00:22:32Now you're at risk because what if you were to expose one of the cults?
00:22:36Well, that cult then places you as public enemy number one.
00:22:39It makes, I go through risks too, but it makes the risk that I have seem minimal compared
00:22:44to what you have.
00:22:44Well, I faced two potential lawsuits from the Watchtower organization.
00:22:50Because in the 90s, we did a lot of, together with the family, we did a lot of strategic
00:22:56interventions.
00:22:58And so the family would gather together and they'd have the son, the daughter, the wife,
00:23:01or whatever.
00:23:02And they would want them to listen to information.
00:23:04Because as you know, the biggest barrier to getting people out of a cult is information.
00:23:11And that's why they shun people.
00:23:12They cut them off because they don't want information from people who've left the group
00:23:17to make its way back into the group.
00:23:18So they have to shun people.
00:23:21And that's the commonality with all, you know, full-blown cults, whether it's Jehovah's
00:23:26Witnesses, the Moonies, the Mormons, the group that you were in, they shun.
00:23:32And so in order to get information and the family has to come together and say, hey, we're
00:23:37really concerned about this.
00:23:39We're really concerned about you and we want to have a talk.
00:23:43Because we've tried and you always, you know, get up and leave.
00:23:47Or sometimes people would actually, they'll take paper and they'll roll it up and plug
00:23:52their ears.
00:23:52And they'll go like this and they'll hum so they don't have to hear.
00:23:56And I've had people that will like go into the bathroom and refuse to come out so that
00:24:01they wouldn't have to hear.
00:24:02And then, then you'd have runaways.
00:24:06I had a guy who jumped off the balcony of the third floor in order to run away because
00:24:10he didn't want to listen.
00:24:12So, I mean, there's, oh, that had a, this is, it's almost humorous.
00:24:18But there was a guy who fully clothed went into the bathroom and filled up the bath with
00:24:24water and, and fully clothed.
00:24:28He submerged himself in the bath water so that, so that he, covering his ears, they didn't
00:24:33have to listen.
00:24:35Wow.
00:24:35And that was his show of, that was his show of loyalty to Jehovah.
00:24:42And then I had a late, a lady in her forties who curled up underneath the sink and turned
00:24:48on the water.
00:24:49So the water was running in the sink and started humming so that you wouldn't have to listen.
00:24:55So people will go to great extremes to just avoid listening, which means the family, I
00:25:00mean, they have to get, if they, the fam, you know, the family unit is super important
00:25:04in Japan.
00:25:05And so I've had as many as 17 family members, parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, and everybody
00:25:12getting together specifically for the purpose of having this one individual listen to truth
00:25:19because they wouldn't, they wouldn't, they refused to read anything, hear anything.
00:25:24There was a lady, her, her husband was a company president and they asked me to come and talk
00:25:32to her.
00:25:32And when I went, this was in Northern Japan in the 17th floor of a resort condominium.
00:25:38And I, and she refused to listen to me.
00:25:41So I said, well, your husband, you know, he has information he wants you to, so why don't
00:25:45you just listen to him?
00:25:47You don't have to listen to me, you know, he's your husband.
00:25:50And I said to the husband, so why are you so concerned about, you know, your wife's involvement?
00:25:56And he pulled out a book and it was a book written by a person whose wife was in that group.
00:26:03And I handed her the book and I said, you just read the book, you don't have to listen
00:26:06to me.
00:26:07I left, I came back the next day and she had stayed up all night tearing the book into small
00:26:12pieces of paper and she'd spread it all over the condominium.
00:26:16And it was her way of showing that she wasn't going to be involved with Satan.
00:26:21It's so odd.
00:26:21I've been involved with these types of interventions and the way the, the cult mind works because
00:26:27they don't specifically teach you or train you that you need to shut everything off.
00:26:32But the way the mind works, they, once you're indoctrinated, you want to shut it off.
00:26:37You don't want people to engage.
00:26:40And there is the shunning.
00:26:41Whenever we, whenever I asked questions, my grandfather had this big ceremony in the
00:26:47church and he said, I wasn't there, but he said something to the effect, I'm told that
00:26:52referencing Janice and Jambres of the Bible, that these two have gone astray.
00:26:57And he, he included my wife in this.
00:26:59My wife had not even asked a question and my children were included in this.
00:27:04Nobody from the church was to talk to us because we were demon possessed.
00:27:08Right.
00:27:08And that's, that's quite common in the Branham circles, but you have the leadership that wants
00:27:14to cut you off so you can't get the information.
00:27:16But then you have the people that are manipulated to not want the information because it might
00:27:21challenge what's inside of them.
00:27:22Yeah, the Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, they're, they're very, um, study oriented and
00:27:27they have a lot of, they, they trim back on their publications now for financial reasons,
00:27:33but they, they put out, I mean, their, their whole compared to other cults, the, the amount
00:27:38of literature was just off the charts.
00:27:40So I, in my room, my study room, I have probably 500 pieces of literature that the Watchtower
00:27:48has produced.
00:27:49I used to have more, but it was taking up so much room.
00:27:51I threw a bunch of it away.
00:27:53Um, but, uh, they have this into these internal ones that are for, uh, believers eyes only.
00:28:01And in those ones, they, they connect, uh, critical information with pornography.
00:28:08So re listening, they call it spiritual pornography.
00:28:13And then they say that, um, if you listen to opposers or critical people, uh, you will
00:28:20lose your life and they mean spiritual death.
00:28:24So it, it becomes a survival.
00:28:26They switch into survival mode.
00:28:28Yeah, we have this in the, in the Branham framework, which that would have developed.
00:28:32I'm assuming that that developed before latter rain, but it was called spiritual fornication.
00:28:37If you engage this, you were committing spiritual fornication.
00:28:41Yeah.
00:28:41There's certain buzzwords.
00:28:42It's interesting.
00:28:42You said Janice and Jambri.
00:28:44Is that a common one?
00:28:46Yeah.
00:28:46There's Dathan and Cora.
00:28:47Basically, if they can find a bad guy in the Bible, you're that bad guy.
00:28:51Right.
00:28:52The, the Watchtower, they, they, uh, Eve is, is her name and Lot's wife.
00:28:58Uh, and of course, uh, Ananian, Sapphira, Sapphira.
00:29:03Yeah.
00:29:04And, and then, you know, for them, the organization is Noah's Ark.
00:29:09They called Noah's Ark the organization.
00:29:12And so either you're in the Ark or you're not in the Ark.
00:29:15I remember one time I was talking to a guy in his twenties who was, uh, by, by anybody's
00:29:21measurement, he was a really, uh, lousy Jehovah's witness.
00:29:27What he was doing, his lifestyle, his lack of involvement and so on.
00:29:32And, um, his father was a higher up in a, in a well-known Japanese company.
00:29:37If I mentioned the name, you'd probably know it.
00:29:39And his father was so busy with work that he didn't have time for his son.
00:29:43And his son had this strained relationship with his father.
00:29:48And so he joined the Jehovah's witnesses and his mother was kind of the quintessential
00:29:52doting, uh, overprotective mother.
00:29:55And so the mother got a, um, a kind of an upscale place in Kyoto and asked me to come
00:30:02one summer.
00:30:03And so I spent a week talking to her son and the father showed up for about two hours.
00:30:09And, you know, he, he treated it like a business meeting talking to his son and the son was
00:30:14nervous and you could see him sitting up, you know, and then his father left and the
00:30:18son relaxed.
00:30:19And, uh, the mother had a room, you know, she was in one room in this, in this resort.
00:30:24And I, and I was in the room with her son, which is kind of unusual because I'm the counselor
00:30:29and he's the counselee.
00:30:31You don't usually put them in the same room.
00:30:33And I remember saying to the son, you know, uh, what's going to happen to me at Armageddon?
00:30:38He says, well, you're going to get destroyed.
00:30:41I said, why?
00:30:42Well, because you're not in the truth.
00:30:45And I said, what's going to happen to you?
00:30:46And he says, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm fine.
00:30:48I'll be fine because I'm in the truth.
00:30:50I thought he said, absolutely lousy Jehovah's witness.
00:30:55But the fact that he was in the group, that made him okay.
00:31:00And regardless of my lifestyle or how much Bible I knew I wasn't in the group, therefore
00:31:05I was going to be destroyed.
00:31:07So that, that's it.
00:31:09You know, it's, it's loyalty to the group.
00:31:12Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern
00:31:17Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements
00:31:23into the new apostolic reformation?
00:31:25You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
00:31:30william-branham.org.
00:31:32On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
00:31:37Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio,
00:31:44and digital versions of each book.
00:31:47You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
00:31:52movements.
00:31:53If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the
00:31:58Contribute button at the top.
00:31:59And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
00:32:05to or watching.
00:32:06On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:32:11When you were talking about the us versus them mentality, it brought back so many memories.
00:32:17When you're in one of these groups, you don't realize that you're like this.
00:32:20Right.
00:32:20But the way a destructive cult gradually moves you towards destruction, people who ordinarily
00:32:28wouldn't be, you know, think evil of others, they will gradually get to that level.
00:32:35Right.
00:32:35And the memory that really hit me the hardest, whenever we, when my wife and I left the cult,
00:32:41we're sitting in a restaurant, same restaurant we had gone to forever, you know, many years
00:32:46in the cult.
00:32:47But then, one Sunday, we went outside of the cult.
00:32:51We just started a new church.
00:32:53We watched all the people coming in from their other churches.
00:32:57And we looked around, and both of us had the same thought at the same time.
00:33:01We both said something to the effect, you know, it's like the kingdom of God has expanded
00:33:06by a million people.
00:33:07Right.
00:33:08Because it was us versus them.
00:33:10Right.
00:33:10We had always sat in that same restaurant and looked around at all the people coming in
00:33:14from the other churches, and it was them.
00:33:16They weren't of us.
00:33:18We, I can't remember the word that you used, but we used the term bride.
00:33:21We're the bride.
00:33:22They're not the bride.
00:33:24Right.
00:33:24And what has been so interesting and fascinating to me about all of this, as I'm expanding
00:33:30from branimism into these other cults, that framework exists among all of them.
00:33:36It's always us versus them.
00:33:38And the people who are in it don't realize until after suddenly they come into contact
00:33:44with information that defies what they've believed.
00:33:47And then suddenly they realize, wait a minute, I'm in an us versus them mentality.
00:33:51How do I get out of this?
00:33:53Yeah.
00:33:54I wrote a, the short essay I sent you, I kind of expanded on it.
00:33:59That's 14 pages.
00:34:00I started writing it 10 years ago.
00:34:02And then I, I made an extent, kind of a disjointed, expanded version, 40 pages long.
00:34:09And one of the things that I've always, from the beginning, it's always been in my mind,
00:34:15not what people believe, but why do they believe?
00:34:17And I thought I'd call it motivation assessment.
00:34:19And I came up with about five or six motivations that drive people to be attached to a cult.
00:34:27And the first one is everybody wants to be special.
00:34:30They want to feel like they're special.
00:34:33And then they want to sacrifice for something bigger than themselves.
00:34:39And they want to, I believe people have a desire to do penance.
00:34:43And some people have a, a, they, they wallow in a low grade sense of guilt.
00:34:49And the cult always tells them that they're quite, not quite enough.
00:34:53They're not quite doing enough.
00:34:56And that us, that us, them mentality, I mean, that's part of the, we, we are the peer.
00:35:02We are the, the select group, the chosen ones.
00:35:05And they're not.
00:35:06And I don't, I don't, I use the, as I said at the beginning of this, this cult thing is a, it's a, it's a spectrum.
00:35:15And there's, there's very low grade cults.
00:35:17And then there's very intense cults.
00:35:19But I grew up in, I don't know if I would use the C word, but I grew up in a very unusual place.
00:35:25I grew up in a commune.
00:35:28Started in 1948.
00:35:30It was, it was birthed out of a small, independent Lutheran church in Minneapolis.
00:35:39And every group, they have what they call, what I call a legend.
00:35:44Like the story of why we began something that made us special.
00:35:48And the legend in, in this group was the, the five families.
00:35:52And the five families were these people who did something exceptional.
00:36:00They quit their jobs.
00:36:01They sold all their possessions and they lived communally.
00:36:05And so they were kind of New Testament-ish in that they were living like the, like the early church.
00:36:13There's a couple of dirty little secrets.
00:36:16One is it was actually six families to begin with, but one family backed out.
00:36:20And so it became the five families, you know, there's a little bit of revisionism going on there.
00:36:28And the five families, they did this for the sake of world, of global missions.
00:36:36So they're in Minneapolis, they're in their thirties.
00:36:38I think the founder was maybe in his early forties.
00:36:41And they quit their jobs and they sold their houses and they had everything in common.
00:36:47And they bought a large mansion in, in downtown Minneapolis.
00:36:51And they lived there for a while.
00:36:53And the story goes that they did that because they wanted to become missionaries.
00:36:58But then no mission agents, agency would accept them.
00:37:02Like, surprise, surprise, here's people in their thirties.
00:37:06They haven't, they have no theological training.
00:37:08They're not part of any particular denomination.
00:37:12And they present themselves to a mission and say, send us.
00:37:14And the mission is like, no, we won't do that.
00:37:17So then they had to change their, they had to change their vision.
00:37:21And they changed their vision to, we will now train and send out 100 missionaries.
00:37:25So they themselves originally wanted to be missionaries, but they didn't jump through the right hoops.
00:37:34And so now they feel like God is telling them to train and send out 100 missionaries.
00:37:38Now, never mind that none of them had ever been missionaries.
00:37:41They knew nothing about missions.
00:37:44And so they bought a tract of land in suburban, what became suburban Minneapolis at the time,
00:37:50was farmland.
00:37:52And they started a commune, basically.
00:37:55They never called it a commune.
00:37:56They called it the fellowship, but it was a commune.
00:38:00And it metastasized as time went on and became extremely controlling.
00:38:06So the legend was the five families.
00:38:08And then there's another component, I call it the sacred doctrine.
00:38:12Every group has a certain doctrine that they really emphasize.
00:38:15And in this group, the sacred doctrine was Wesleyan, Christ of sanctification, and Christian perfection.
00:38:25So the idea that you could come to a point where you no longer sinned.
00:38:31And in order to get there, you had to have a Christ of sanctification experience.
00:38:35And so they took Romans 6, 7, and 8, and they worked this theology into Romans 6, 7, and 8.
00:38:43And Romans 7 was the unsanctified person, and Romans 8 was the, you know how in the NAR,
00:38:50the Pentecostal branch of this, you have the second work of grace is you're filled with the spirit for power.
00:38:56Well, the holiness branch is you're filled with the spirit for purification, to become more like Christ.
00:39:03And so that became the central doctrine of the organization.
00:39:09And the term was death to self.
00:39:12So you need to die to self.
00:39:15And so here you were in this very controlled environment where children started working.
00:39:21I started working from third grade.
00:39:24Everybody worked.
00:39:25Nobody got a salary.
00:39:27It was all unpaid labor.
00:39:30And the roots of the five families was business.
00:39:32And so they started, the idea was to start businesses to support, send and support missionaries.
00:39:39Seemed like a good idea.
00:39:41And it worked for a while.
00:39:43And so they, you are probably familiar with some of the businesses.
00:39:47They made Bethany camping trailers.
00:39:49Yeah.
00:39:49It was later on sold.
00:39:52And I don't know, some company in Iowa, I think, continued it.
00:39:56But it started at Bethany.
00:39:58In fact, the early Bethany camping trailer was designed by my father.
00:40:01And then they also made, they started printing.
00:40:05And then they, they birthed, they birthed a publishing house called Bethany House Publishers, which still exists.
00:40:13Maybe you've heard of it.
00:40:14It's now a division of Baker Books because they sold it to Baker Books.
00:40:17So they had these businesses and the communal living setup was all the staff families and all the people who came to the Bible school worked for free.
00:40:28For the Bible school students, it was their way of working through school without having to pay tuition.
00:40:33For the staff, you received a stipend.
00:40:36When I was in high school, our family monthly stipend was $240.
00:40:40And everybody worked.
00:40:44So dad worked, mom worked, any kid in, from third grade on worked and they increased the working hours as time went on.
00:40:52And you were not allowed to make money.
00:40:56You couldn't have a sidekick and make money.
00:40:58So my father, who was a preacher, he would get asked to speak at other churches.
00:41:01And if they gave him an honorarium, he'd have to turn that into the commune.
00:41:05And if I mowed lawns at our neighbor's, you know, place and got $10, I'd walk out to the treasury and I'd hand it over to the treasurer and say, use this for missions.
00:41:17So there was complete control over finances to the extent that it changed midway.
00:41:22But when my mother's mother died and she received an inheritance, the inheritance had to be turned over to the commune.
00:41:29And so basically, there was zero financial autonomy.
00:41:37And so when you're in your 20s and 30s and you're very ideologically driven, you think, wow, this is great.
00:41:42We're sacrificing for the greater cause of world missions.
00:41:46But as time goes on, basically, you have no other options.
00:41:50So my parents, they lived out their days in that group.
00:41:55My dad died at age 88.
00:41:57My mom, 87.
00:41:57And basically, they had nothing when they died.
00:42:01My inheritance was $300.
00:42:05So anyway, that was the way it was.
00:42:07And that was extremely controlling.
00:42:09So the terminology about if you ever had an opinion and you got assigned a job and you didn't like the job, if you didn't like the job, that was you hadn't died to yourself.
00:42:20You know, the flesh was there and you had this problem with pride.
00:42:24And so there was always this constant phobia of being proud or not dead to self.
00:42:30And they would have the deeper life seminar and the founder would sit up there with it.
00:42:35In those days, it was an OHP.
00:42:37And he'd have, like, the vine with the two sides and the deeds of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit.
00:42:43And he'd write it.
00:42:44And then he'd say, well, which is you?
00:42:47And if you were a sensitive soul, you'd say, well, I have anger and I have jealousy.
00:42:52And I must still be fleshly.
00:42:54I must not have died to self.
00:42:56And so there would be an altar call and everybody would go forward.
00:42:58And, of course, I was a tender soul.
00:43:00So I would go forward multiple times, get prayed for that I might die to self.
00:43:06And so you constantly were checking your motivations.
00:43:10If you said something or did something, it was always like, what were my motivations?
00:43:15Were they fleshly?
00:43:15Was it self-centered?
00:43:16And it kept you in a kind of hostage to, you know, there's no freedom there.
00:43:22There was no grace.
00:43:23There was this sense of, I call it a low-grade sense of guilt and a feeling of, what's the word, lack of confidence.
00:43:35And there were no options.
00:43:37When you were growing up, there was a mantra that was said quite often that said,
00:43:42if God has called you to be a missionary, don't stoop and become a king.
00:43:46So, in my case, I had a very unique experience where I knew that I was supposed to be a missionary.
00:43:54But all of my kids that grew up with me, pretty much 95, 98% of them never became missionaries.
00:44:02They carried this low-grade guilt throughout their life that they had, you know, chosen a worldly path and they weren't missionaries.
00:44:10I have been to many, many of those altar calls.
00:44:13In the Branhamite religion, it was – and like you said, there's levels of destruction.
00:44:19I went to some that were quite benign and others that were very destructive.
00:44:23But they would call it putting off the old man and taking on the new one.
00:44:28And there would be these songs that you would sing about – I can't remember the lyrics – but it's something to the effect of you're taking off your old clothes and you're putting on your new holy clothes, I guess.
00:44:38And so, you'd have these altar calls where you're – every kid is going to have emotions.
00:44:43So, every kid – every teenager is up in front of the altar.
00:44:47That's the way this worked.
00:44:48Well, as I got older and we got married, we went to one of the more destructive ones.
00:44:53And the – for a period of time, I had some sort of an issue with my knees and I couldn't bend my knees like other people.
00:45:00So, I literally couldn't bow down like they were doing.
00:45:04Well, they had an entire church forced altar call at this one destructive sect that I went to.
00:45:11I couldn't do it.
00:45:11So, I was like the only person who's sitting in the pew.
00:45:14The whole rest of the building is on the floor.
00:45:17And then I got to listen to a 45-minute sermon about those who wouldn't go on the floor.
00:45:21Yeah, it was – I mean, I think part of it was, you know, our group was Midwestern.
00:45:29Everything was low-key.
00:45:31So, there wasn't – it was very passive-aggressive.
00:45:36And because you lived in this – my sister always said growing up in the fellowship, there were three sets of rules.
00:45:42There were God's rules, there were your parents' rules, and there were the fellowship's rules.
00:45:47And they weren't in that order.
00:45:49The fellowship's rules were – took precedence over everything.
00:45:54Then God's rules, and lastly, your parents' rules.
00:45:57So, very – things like, for example, you weren't supposed to go to movies.
00:46:00My dad loved movies.
00:46:03But he had to relegate his preference to the fellowship rules.
00:46:06So, when my sister at school, she got tickets to some Disney movies, she couldn't go.
00:46:12And my dad was put in the position where he had to enforce the fellowship's rules, even though he didn't believe them.
00:46:21You know, he was forced to do that.
00:46:24Otherwise, it would create doubt in his children about the legitimacy of the group.
00:46:29Yeah, we had – we shared some of the same things.
00:46:32By and large, most of the Branamite cults are not allowed television.
00:46:36Some aren't allowed radios.
00:46:37Some aren't allowed newspapers.
00:46:39And some of the same thing.
00:46:41I sometimes wonder if it wasn't limiting the information from the outside getting in.
00:46:46Because when you watch TV, you see other cultures, and you see – you can glean that something's wrong with the group that you're in.
00:46:54So, I think, by and large, it was just blocking it entirely.
00:46:57But I did some studies, which – I won't go too deep into this, but I did some studies and found that also this was a movement that was spawned during the height of the white supremacy groups and Christian identity.
00:47:10And there was this attack on movies and television at that time.
00:47:13So, they were blocking a lot of the interracial culture, you know, things that were happening on TV.
00:47:20So, such a big, wide array of manipulation, control, authoritarianism.
00:47:28And like you said, it's on the spectrum.
00:47:29So, how do you brand it?
00:47:30How do you label it?
00:47:32Well, I think every group, every cult has a Satan.
00:47:34As I mentioned earlier, you know, for the Supreme Truth, for the Omu, it was the police.
00:47:39For the Jehovah's Witnesses, it's Christendom, they called it.
00:47:43Back in the day, Christendom is Satan, basically.
00:47:46You can't see Satan, so they have to put Satan in kind of a visible form.
00:47:51And for the Munis in Japan, the Unification Churches now had a court decision where they have to disband.
00:48:01And so, because, I don't know if you followed it, but three years ago, a former prime minister was assassinated.
00:48:10And the person who assassinated it, his mother was Amuni.
00:48:15And he was angry with the organization, and that's why he assassinated him.
00:48:18And a lot has come to light in Japan about second-generation cultists, specifically the Unification Church and the Jehovah's Witnesses.
00:48:28There's a lot in the media about that.
00:48:30And so, prior to that, they have, the Munis have a teaching.
00:48:36I don't know, unfortunately, I've done most of my counterpart work in Japanese, so I know the Japanese terms real well.
00:48:43It's called Bambutsu Fuki in Japanese.
00:48:46But it means getting back all of God's, all of God's material wealth.
00:48:55They have to get back from Satan and bring it back to God.
00:48:57In the States, basically, this is the Kingdom Now theology, the Dominionism theology.
00:49:03Yes, yes, that's what I was going to segue to that, exactly.
00:49:06It's the same mentality.
00:49:09And so, what the Munis would do is they'd lie, cheat, and steal, basically.
00:49:13So, they'd be selling these innocuous things that had supposedly special power, and they'd sell them for $5,000, $10,000, and they basically were scamming people.
00:49:25And that was a huge problem.
00:49:28And, you know, they use ancestors, like your ancestors are suffering, and the way you can help them get out of suffering is to give X amount of money.
00:49:37So, they'll give $5,000, $10,000, and it will help their ancestors who are suffering.
00:49:43So, there was always these court cases from former members saying, you know, basically, give me back the money that you scammed for me.
00:49:53And so, now that the court has said that they have to disband, they lose their non-profit organization, religious organization status.
00:50:04And so, now what the Munis are doing is they're trying, they got these shell companies, and they're trying to get their money into different places so that the government can't clamp down on it.
00:50:12But that all came to light, came to a head three years ago when their assassination took place.
00:50:17So, they all have their Satan.
00:50:20And I've run into the same thing in charismatic groups.
00:50:26And we had an incident, or if I want to say it that way, a former teacher, I'm also the head of a small international school, I'm the chairman of the board.
00:50:36And we had a teacher, a former teacher, who was disgruntled, who was with a charismatic group that if I said the name of it, you'd know it right away.
00:50:46And she came and she said that Jesus has left the school and Satan now runs it.
00:50:53So, she made that pronouncement.
00:50:55It's interesting.
00:50:56Whenever you watch the charismatic groups, like on any group, you're going to have a spectrum.
00:51:01You're going to have some that are benign, some that aren't.
00:51:03But the ones that are on the spectrum towards destructiveness, they are in the us-versus-them mentality.
00:51:10Those are the ones from which developed the Dominion, Seven Mountains mandate, all of the things that are wanting to take back control and take control for the cult, basically.
00:51:21Right.
00:51:21Yeah, the Bible school that I teach at is what I call Low-Key Pentecostal Bible School.
00:51:28And they have, they're pretty solid, but they do have, I would say, a weak immune system to heresy, to problems.
00:51:39And they have me on staff partly to call that out.
00:51:43And so, at a recent faculty meeting, they asked me to talk about the NAR.
00:51:48And some parts of the NAR are evident in some of the groups.
00:51:55Not completely, but some parts, like prophetic ministry or something, like an overemphasis on healing.
00:52:07I believe in healing.
00:52:09I asked my students, how many have experienced a genuine healing?
00:52:12And then I asked them, what do you think the batting average is for prayer for healing?
00:52:18I say it's about 5%.
00:52:21In baseball, if you're hitting 30%, you're doing well.
00:52:25I think in healing, if you pray for 20, if one person gets healed, that's pretty good.
00:52:31That's my take on it.
00:52:33Nobody's batting 100, regardless of what Kenneth Copeland or Kenneth Hagin would say.
00:52:38Nobody's batting 100.
00:52:39Come on.
00:52:40Everybody dies.
00:52:41Lazarus died for pity's sakes.
00:52:43And all of the big names claim that they've got miracles galore 100% every time.
00:52:50Come forward and you'll get healed.
00:52:52You knew that Kenneth Hagin died of cancer.
00:52:54Yeah.
00:52:55Yeah.
00:52:56So, we don't talk about that, right?
00:52:59So, anyway, those things are there.
00:53:02And so, this NAR teaching has gradually, it's creeping into Japan.
00:53:09And especially because Japanese churches are small, weak.
00:53:13They have a kind of a minority complex.
00:53:16The average size of a Japanese church is about 28 people.
00:53:19The Christian population in Japan, they say 1%.
00:53:23It's more like half of 1%.
00:53:25So, there's a desperate, sincere desire for something to happen.
00:53:33And so, they look for magic ways to make it happen.
00:53:37One thing that became popular for a while here was what they call spiritual mapping, where they'd go and they'd, you know, Japan is filled with temples and shrines.
00:53:48And so, they would get a map and they'd talk about PowerPoints, you know, demonic PowerPoints.
00:53:54And then they'd draw lines.
00:53:56And then they'd go to where the lines intersect and they'd break the power of Satan there, you know, as if Satan is somehow geographically, you know, that's going to do it.
00:54:05And so, there were literally people running all over Japan doing these, what I call incantations, you know, declaring victory over Satan here and there and every player.
00:54:15And nothing's changing, but they have a great sense of accomplishment that they've done it.
00:54:20And that's part of that Dominion, you know, kingdom theology.
00:54:24Yeah, the spiritual warfare.
00:54:26I remember reading about that and I got to thinking, you know, it's like the adult version of the Pokemon Go thing for your phone.
00:54:33Yeah, people, the thing is, because it's in the, there's a group in Japan called Mahikari, which probably in English is the true light.
00:54:44And their thing is called Teikazashi, where they put their hand out and they express some kind of a power from their hand.
00:54:51And so, when they were aggressively proselytized and they wait outside of stations and when you came out of the train, they'd say, can I pray for you?
00:54:58You know, you know, just kind of cold calls.
00:55:01I mean, you know, out of nowhere, they'd come up and say, can I pray for you?
00:55:05And, you know, obviously I would say no, but people would say, yeah, you know, I've got a little back pain.
00:55:09And so, they'd do this Teikazashi where they'd put their hand out on your knees or your back, whatever.
00:55:17And they said there was some power coming out of it.
00:55:20And they borrowed heavily from the Bible.
00:55:22They'd say, look, Jesus did this.
00:55:25Buddha did this.
00:55:26Basically, this is a method of bringing about, you know, healing or some kind of spiritual change.
00:55:36And it kind of segues with Scientology and the engrams.
00:55:40You know, Scientology has the engrams.
00:55:42It's something that you can't see.
00:55:45And so, you do it, but you're not, you don't know if you actually accomplished anything.
00:55:50But because you can't see it, you can tell yourself that you accomplished something.
00:55:53And Pentecostals have the positive confession.
00:55:56I'm going to claim that it happened even though I have every symptom that denies that it happened.
00:56:00Right.
00:56:01I'm healed in Jesus' name.
00:56:02And I had one of my best friends in high school, his parents got heavily involved with Kenneth Hagen.
00:56:09And he had a younger brother who was born with some mackerel degeneration in his eyes.
00:56:18And when I visit the house, I'd say, so how's Andy?
00:56:22And the mother would say, he's healed in Jesus' name.
00:56:25And she'd dare not say, you know, his eyes are getting worse or the doctor is saying this or that.
00:56:33The trigger reaction was always, he's healed in Jesus' name.
00:56:38It's so sad.
00:56:39I know people who have died from the diseases that they were healed in Jesus' name.
00:56:43And I look back at their lives, the suffering was greater because they went to their graves thinking that they were healed and they were not.
00:56:51So their suffering was intensified.
00:56:54And their relationships with people around them also struggled because everybody knew that they were sick.
00:56:59Everybody knew it.
00:57:01And in some cases, they died more quickly because they quit taking their medication.
00:57:06So I was raised in this group that started the way I mentioned, and it was kind of this hodgepodge of teaching.
00:57:16There was the sacred doctrine of death to self, but they also, in the 1950s, they had Branham come.
00:57:23And Branham visited our group mid-50s and using the term that he brought the Holy Spirit.
00:57:31And he was in the Minneapolis area, and all the staff gathered together because they'd heard all these stories about his words of knowledge and so on.
00:57:42And he said, Terry, until the Holy Spirit comes, and the first person in the commune to speak in tongues was my father.
00:57:50And it was in direct connection with Branham's visit.
00:57:52And then there was a time of, they described the revival in the 50s, where there were healings, where amazing things happened.
00:58:02And even in the 2000s, they would always reference back to the 1950s and the revival that happened.
00:58:09And they kind of bask in the afterglow of that time.
00:58:14What do you think about that?
00:58:15The moment you mentioned Branham, obviously my ears started to perk up.
00:58:21I've traced his trail through Minneapolis a few times.
00:58:25There's a lot of recordings that aren't on, they were definitely recorded, but they're not in the collection that we're allowed to have or see.
00:58:32And that's where it gets really interesting.
00:58:34We don't know what he said or what he was doing.
00:58:36I know that from the people he was working with, I know that there may be some words that were leaning towards white supremacy, etc.
00:58:45But Minneapolis is one of the regions that I focused intently through the newspapers trying to find out, what's he doing there?
00:58:51And if I remember correctly, it was in that same tour that he was going through Minneapolis, where he started to say that he had the power to, like a sorcerer,
00:59:00I could cast this man and he would fall down crippled if he opposed me or challenged me.
00:59:05And that was one of the beliefs, that Branham was basically this all-powerful wizard.
00:59:11Well, they didn't buy heavily into Branham.
00:59:14It was a one-off.
00:59:15But what it spoke to me is, I call it, Bethany was a doctrinal omnivore.
00:59:24And they would buy into what I would call a lot of fringe groups.
00:59:29So, because it wasn't founded or based in any denomination, and because they started in such an unusual way, they always had a penchant for being unique.
00:59:42So, they always wanted to be unique.
00:59:43So, you couldn't pin them down.
00:59:44So, people have asked me through the years, like, well, what denomination did you come from?
00:59:48And I'm always baffled.
00:59:50I don't, it wasn't Wesleyan, although they were Armenian, and they did believe in Christ's sanctification.
00:59:58But it wasn't Lutheran, even though they baptized babies.
01:00:02And it wasn't Pentecostal, even though they believed in a lot of the same things as the Pentecostals.
01:00:08And so, it was this strange eclectic mix.
01:00:10And he got into the eschatology, it got really weird.
01:00:14They had a guy come in who had his own slant on what we would call pre-tribulation, rapture, dispensational teaching.
01:00:24But it was unique.
01:00:26It wasn't Dallas Theological Seminary.
01:00:28It wasn't any place.
01:00:29It was this guy's unique thing.
01:00:32And Bethany adopted that.
01:00:33And so, what happened is, all through the years, I always say they had this compromised spiritual immune system, where they were susceptible to a lot of movements.
01:00:49Ever since I can remember, Youth with a Mission leaders would come through.
01:00:54And so, they had Youth with a Mission.
01:00:55I sat under conferences with Lauren Cunningham or Joy Dawson.
01:00:59And one of my most unpleasant memories of Joy Dawson was, she was invited for a conference.
01:01:07There were probably 600, 700 people in the auditorium.
01:01:10And the time came.
01:01:12It was either 7 or 7 at night for the meeting.
01:01:14And the person who was emceeing it came out and said, you know, Joy Dawson is in back waiting for a word from God.
01:01:23And so, the meeting didn't start.
01:01:25And so, she made everybody wait about 30 minutes before she came out.
01:01:30I mean, that is so manipulative.
01:01:33As if God doesn't know the time the meeting's supposed to start.
01:01:38And so, then people who had drank the Kool-Aid, you know, they had this great anticipation.
01:01:43She's going to have a powerful word from God.
01:01:44Now she's received a word from God.
01:01:46And I remember, even though I was like 19 or 20 years old, I remember thinking, this is a scam.
01:01:51And then people were like in the aisles kind of, you know, prostrating themselves and praying and all that.
01:01:59And I was just like, this is ridiculous.
01:02:01I'm going to get out of here.
01:02:03And then they'd have YWAM teachers that would come through and they'd present a scripture.
01:02:07And then they'd sermonize it and make it say something that it didn't say.
01:02:13The exegesis was non-existent.
01:02:16And my father was teaching at the Bible school there.
01:02:20So, sometimes they would invite the speaker over.
01:02:23And I still remember, here I am, I'm, you know, 20-ish.
01:02:26They invited the speaker over and he talked about Amos and the snake that came out of the hole in the wall or whatever.
01:02:34And he'd made it say something that the Bible didn't say.
01:02:39And I remember saying, you said this, but I read that passage and it doesn't, how do you get that meaning out of that?
01:02:46And he was like, well, God revealed it to me.
01:02:50So, we had, and then as years went by, it got worse because they got in bed with IHOP.
01:02:55And they started traveling to IHOP and somebody came back with the Tabernacle of David teaching, you know, the praise revival.
01:03:05And basically, that split the church and the church never survived.
01:03:10You know, the church split and it was always in a weakened state.
01:03:13And this section of this half of the church that left, they formed a group called The Gathering.
01:03:19And they got heavily into prophecy and it turned out that one of the prophetesses was a full-blown lesbian.
01:03:27And they got weirder and weirder, you know.
01:03:30They were told to, like, dance with angels or give birth to spirit children.
01:03:36And people had enough common sense that they basically left and the whole thing collapsed.
01:03:44So, the gathering became the scattering.
01:03:45And then the church tried to regroup.
01:03:50And then a few years back, they started a branch group.
01:03:56They moved to another city.
01:03:57And the original church could no longer maintain.
01:04:01So, they basically disbanded.
01:04:03So, the church that I grew up in no longer exists.
01:04:06And the branch that they started was in the news recently.
01:04:10And I won't mention the name, but it was the place where the guy who assassinated the Minnesota legislature was a member of.
01:04:21So, that took a turn that I did not expect.
01:04:24When we first started talking, I kind of wondered if you were hinting at that we would get the connection to Branhamism to the group you came from.
01:04:31But I had no idea it would go to Vance Belter.
01:04:35Yeah, well, I just think that I always call Bethany's theology is like a whale shark.
01:04:42It opens up its mouth and kind of sucks in anything that seems spiritual.
01:04:46So, there was not a lot of discernment.
01:04:48Here's another one that might surprise you.
01:04:50Do you know Ted Haggard?
01:04:51Yeah.
01:04:52Ted Haggard, right?
01:04:53Ted Haggard, before he was outed with his meth and his male prostitute, he had come as a special speaker to Bethany just a few months prior to that.
01:05:03Really?
01:05:05Wow.
01:05:07I mean, to me, you know, maybe he was, you know, obviously a lot of, he had the wool pulled over a lot of people's eyes.
01:05:13So, I don't know that our leaders, those leaders at that time were particularly, you know, lack of discernment.
01:05:22But somebody couldn't see what was going on.
01:05:25So, he was a special speaker.
01:05:26And a couple months later, you know, he's all over CNN and whatnot for his behavior.
01:05:31So, yeah, I'm kind of glad that you brought all of this up because I've had many people ask me try to, how do you explain the spiderweb of all of these apostolic networks in the NAR?
01:05:44And this is a great example.
01:05:46You can't explain it because what happened is all of these groups kind of, many of them just left mainstream theology and they either turned into a very destructive cult or a benign cult.
01:05:57But they started taking in all these additional doctrines and people like Lauren Cunningham.
01:06:03You mentioned all of these NAR groups are going in these apostolic circles and you can't put a label on any of it.
01:06:09It's such a big spiderweb of mess.
01:06:11The thing that, I mean, if you want to talk about the systemic flaw, I've written a bit about this whole progression of missions in the organization I was with.
01:06:21But this is the major systemic flaw is lack of interaction with reality and no foundation of a network of churches.
01:06:30Churches where people are working nine to five jobs.
01:06:32They're interacting with the real world.
01:06:35So you have this humedically sealed commune, this group, and things get distorted.
01:06:41You lose, you know, equilibrium.
01:06:44You lose your balance because everything's in house.
01:06:47And I remember when I went in, when I actually, I got married when I was 23 and I left and I worked at a, at a, I was in the printing industry.
01:06:56So I worked at a printing shop in downtown Minneapolis.
01:06:59It was so refreshing to be surrounded by what we would call normal sinners.
01:07:03You know, just people who were living, earning, earning money, you know, paying bills, living.
01:07:10That was just so refreshing for me after being in this commune for, I was born there.
01:07:15So from the time I was born until the time I got married, I was in this, this group.
01:07:20And, and when, when I left, I left, I was actually in the Philippines in 1978, 79.
01:07:27And I saw what, what we were supposedly this wonderful work that we were doing as missions.
01:07:33And I saw it and it was not really very stellar.
01:07:36And I kind of had a wake up moment.
01:07:38And I thought, wow, we were trained to think that we were the most, uh, sacrificial, most involved, most effective mission in the world.
01:07:46And it's just not true.
01:07:48And that's, that was my wake up moment, really.
01:07:50Well, it's such an interesting story.
01:07:52I mean, this, this went directions that I had no idea that it would take from Zatoichi all the way to Vance Belter.
01:07:58So this, this has been crazy fun.
01:08:00Thank you so much for doing this.
01:08:02Yep.
01:08:02Thanks for having me.
01:08:03Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want to share your story, you can check us out on the web.
01:08:08You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:08:10For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion,
01:08:15From Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:08:33For more about the New Apostolic Reformation, you can find us at is that our Facebook is in our website, as well as it is the website, it's out there about our websites.
01:08:42So are you School of Waiting, hope for you, because we've locked up names online and you can see you online because youちょっと check us out as a uğtvرج tr stamp.
01:08:47So sometimes we didn't put them out.
01:08:50There's three sites in our downloads that we launched and set up, but the one's up to remains, we're not very comfortable.
01:08:54And I was able to get us out on the web.
01:08:56I'm going to get you every day.
01:08:57I'm going to get you all the time.
01:08:59View on the web.
01:09:00The dur�ng of the shortcasters that you just discovered, yeah.
01:09:02Mais off the light of the desert, and I'm going to get you.
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