- 43 minutes ago
John and Jenny dive deep into the psychology of obedience in high-control religious movements, focusing on the global ministry Youth With A Mission (YWAM). Drawing from lived experiences and professional trauma recovery work, they explore how enforced obedience suppresses consent, erases personal agency, and stunts emotional and cognitive development in children and young adults. Jenny explains how somatic trauma responses like “fawning” emerge from chronic obedience conditioning, while John connects these behaviors to the broader cultic systems within Pentecostal and Latter Rain movements.
Together they unpack the devastating effects of obedience-based discipleship, from the breaking of children’s wills to lifelong struggles with shame, identity, and self-trust. The conversation also exposes how spiritual manipulation can rewire developmental pathways, creating adults who fear mistakes and repress emotion. It’s an honest, insightful dialogue that challenges one of the most dangerous doctrines in modern evangelical missions—and calls for restoration of agency, growth, and healthy autonomy.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:00 Child obedience and developmental impact in cultic systems
00:06:00 Obedience vs consent and loss of agency
00:12:00 Fear of mistakes, punishment, and eternal consequences
00:17:00 Trauma, emotional suppression, and anger responses
00:23:00 Why people repeat abusive religious environments
00:29:00 Performance-based spirituality and chronic shame
00:35:00 Love-bombing, conformity, and control mechanisms
00:41:00 Carrot-on-a-stick recruitment and vocational manipulation
00:47:00 Hierarchies, patriarchy, and restricted identity development
00:53:00 Leaving high-control religion and lifelong deprogramming
______________________
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
Together they unpack the devastating effects of obedience-based discipleship, from the breaking of children’s wills to lifelong struggles with shame, identity, and self-trust. The conversation also exposes how spiritual manipulation can rewire developmental pathways, creating adults who fear mistakes and repress emotion. It’s an honest, insightful dialogue that challenges one of the most dangerous doctrines in modern evangelical missions—and calls for restoration of agency, growth, and healthy autonomy.
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:00 Child obedience and developmental impact in cultic systems
00:06:00 Obedience vs consent and loss of agency
00:12:00 Fear of mistakes, punishment, and eternal consequences
00:17:00 Trauma, emotional suppression, and anger responses
00:23:00 Why people repeat abusive religious environments
00:29:00 Performance-based spirituality and chronic shame
00:35:00 Love-bombing, conformity, and control mechanisms
00:41:00 Carrot-on-a-stick recruitment and vocational manipulation
00:47:00 Hierarchies, patriarchy, and restricted identity development
00:53:00 Leaving high-control religion and lifelong deprogramming
______________________
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
📚
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 co-host and friend, Jenny McGrath, founder of Indwell Movement and
00:48Somatic Experiencing Practitioner.
00:51Jenny, it's good to be back and to talk about all things YWAM, Youth with a Mission.
00:56The last time we were talking, I randomly mentioned, as I'm writing down all of these
01:02thoughts that I wanted to explore with you, the effect that the child obedience laws, I'm
01:10using the word laws loosely, but these rules that are in place in many of these cults that
01:15demand child obedience, the effect that it has on development.
01:19And this is a subject that I've wanted to get into.
01:23I wasn't sure actually which host that I would go with, but I have been studying the formation
01:28of Joel's army.
01:30And for a background to you, I know you probably haven't listened to it.
01:33They haven't come out yet at the time of this recording.
01:37But as Joel's army was forming, you had a lot of political things that were happening in
01:43the world.
01:43You had the Hitler Youth Movement.
01:45You had the Billy Graham Youth Movement.
01:47You had all of these different things that were forming, and it was a sort of a political
01:52move rather than a religious move to train the children on the ideology of the nationality.
01:59That's really what this became.
02:01And the Sharon Orphanage, because of Pentecostalism, Pentecostalism focused on the passage from Joel
02:082.
02:08And specifically, I'll pour out my spirit on all flesh.
02:13That was the Pentecostal thing.
02:15Well, when Joel's army began to form and Latourine began to form, they focused heavily on a phrase
02:21within that passage, and your sons and daughters will stream dreams and see visions.
02:26So they wanted to build a youth army that is dreaming dreams and seeing visions.
02:29And this blew up into this bladder rain movement, this big thing that happened.
02:35All of that could have been good, could have been bad.
02:38There were some aspects that were probably good.
02:41But as it relates to the children, there were some very, very horrific things happening to
02:46their heads.
02:47And I can say that with some experience, because I grew up as a youth in a cult.
02:52I know how this works.
02:54I know the effects that it's had on me, my family, my friends.
02:58And this is a big topic to explore.
03:01I'm not even certain we can do it in one podcast.
03:03But thank you for coming on.
03:04Let's talk through it.
03:06Absolutely.
03:07Thank you so much for having me.
03:08I think it is such an important topic.
03:11And already, as you're setting it up, my mind's going to a million different places.
03:17So, yeah, we may have to talk about this for a few times.
03:21But one of the things that came to mind is, I think of obedience as the antithesis to consent.
03:32Because I see consent as centering agency and choice.
03:38And obedience removes that and says, no matter what you want, no matter what you decide,
03:44you will comply and you will do this.
03:48And in, you know, a typical world that really probably doesn't exist, ideally, children by
03:58the age of two-ish will learn their favorite word, which is no.
04:03And, or whatever language they speak, it will be the same idea.
04:09And many times, if you've spent any time with toddlers, you've maybe experienced this, where
04:15they might even say no, even if it's something they want.
04:19Because the idea of exercising their agency is actually more exciting and more fulfilling.
04:27It's like, wow, I am a sovereign being who can say no.
04:32And in these worlds where that no is not listened to, or worse, it's punished, we can learn really,
04:40really, really young to actually hide even our no from ourselves.
04:45And so, we may be complying, and it's actually more out of a survival response.
04:52And so, there's this lovely book called From Surviving to Thriving.
04:57And it talks about the traditional fight-flight-freeze.
05:01And then it also adds this category of fawn.
05:05And for many folks who've lived in long-term, chronic, developmental, complex trauma, they've
05:13needed to fawn, and they've needed to acquiesce, and they've needed to say yes.
05:18So, at the end of the day, the end of a year, the end of a decade, that psyche, that body,
05:24actually has a really hard time distinguishing what they want, what they desire, what they
05:30choose, because they've been so used to abdicating their agency to whatever the leader or the
05:38voice of God was telling them to do.
05:41There's so much that I want to get into with this.
05:44Whenever I've, and I've given this example, I think, before, whenever I'm training my children,
05:50I let them experience what they're doing, good or bad.
05:55Sometimes I will let them make a mistake so that they can learn from that mistake.
05:58We, as humans, learn from our mistakes.
06:02And it is so backwards in these groups because a lot of times they will focus on the negative
06:07more than they will the positive, the scolding rather than the praise.
06:12And I don't even train a dog like this.
06:14I've mentioned this before.
06:15You train a dog with a treat.
06:17You say, good boy, here's a treat, and the dog will do what you say.
06:21If you try to scold or punish the dog, they never learn.
06:26It just never works.
06:27The problem is, so many people have been indoctrinated in these movements that whenever you talk about
06:35obedience, they think it's a good thing.
06:37If you're a Christian and you're in one of these movements, you have been indoctrinated
06:41with every single passage that talks about obedience.
06:44But you've never taken the time to understand the culture of growth that is actually embedded
06:53in the text.
06:54There are passages that talk about growth through mistakes.
06:57And quite honestly, I can't remember the passage.
07:00Somebody listening can put it into the comments.
07:02But there is a passage that talks about a good portion of the Old Testament was learning.
07:09People were learning by making mistakes.
07:11They were growing.
07:11They were falling into idolatry, coming back out of it, etc.
07:14Whenever I train my children to walk, if you train them to walk by saying, no, you will never
07:22fall.
07:22You're not allowed to fall.
07:24They will never walk.
07:25That's just not how it works.
07:27You let them walk.
07:28You let them fall.
07:29You let them experience the fall.
07:30They get back up and they walk again.
07:32But the problem is, in these cults that train with such intense obedience, they're not letting
07:40the people fall.
07:41But worse than that, the people are literally scared to make a mistake.
07:46They develop this mentality that, I can't make a mistake because if I do, I've watched
07:51what happens to the other people in the group.
07:53They get chastised.
07:54Some people get excommunicated if they make a mistake or they're eternally damned.
07:58So, this culture that is created of obedience to the adults, it is painful.
08:06But now take it to the mindset of the children.
08:09In the children's mind, they are developing and at ages where they need to be asking questions,
08:15they need to learn from their mistakes, their experiences, they feel like they're not allowed
08:19to.
08:20So, the normal progress of development that happens in the minds is completely shut off in
08:26these groups.
08:27I think so.
08:28And there's a phrase in the somatic world called hedonic tone.
08:38And our hedonic tone is our sense of what we like and what we don't like.
08:44And so, over the years, I've done a lot of trainings and workshops with former missionaries
08:49and people that were in ministry.
08:51And I do this exercise with them where I say, I'm just going to list off 20 things.
08:58And if you like it, I would love for you to shake your head yes.
09:02If you don't like it, I'd love for you to shake your head no.
09:05And if you're not sure or you've never tried it, give a big shrug.
09:08And the most common response I've gotten is, I don't know.
09:15I don't know what I like and what I don't like.
09:19And there's this phrase called anhodenia, which is, I don't have access to my hedonic tone.
09:27I don't have access to what I like and what I don't like because those developmental cues for learning and not even learning.
09:37Like, I actually think infants are the best teacher about being a body because they are very clear.
09:42Like, I want to be warm.
09:44I want to be fed.
09:45I want to be dry.
09:46I want to be held or not.
09:48And hopefully, they live in a supportive environment where they can cry, they can coo, they can let us know what they like and what they don't like.
09:57But by the age of one, we can learn if certain emotions have an adverse reaction to our primary caregivers.
10:06And so, if we're reading, wow, if I feel angry and mom gets mad or if I feel angry and dad gets sad or fill in the blank, then I'm just going to hide those emotions.
10:18And I'm just going to ignore them.
10:20And so, a lot of these, if someone is growing up in these high-control worlds, it's actually probably a pre-verbal trauma.
10:30It's part of the blueprint of how they've learned to come into the experience of their world.
10:36Absolutely.
10:37It's traumatic.
10:38And some of the more destructive groups, they'll even take it a step further.
10:43They have these doctrines where they intentionally want to break the will of the people.
10:48And they reverse the roles that I've just described by saying the children, they need to have their will broken so that they can become obedient when they're adult.
10:58They can practice having their will broken.
11:02In Branhamism, Branham gave this example of how the perfect shepherd will break the legs of the sheep so that they don't leave the fold, if they keep leaving the fold.
11:11Which, you know, growing up, I heard this, and I'm not a sheep herder.
11:15I have no idea.
11:16But afterward, as an adult, and I'm thinking about this, this is terrible, man.
11:20This is not how you would herd your sheep, by no means.
11:24But that was the mentality of the movement.
11:26Break the will of the people.
11:28Break the will of the children.
11:30And they will stay in the cult.
11:32That's essentially the doctrine.
11:33It all comes down to obedience not to God, but it's obedience to the group.
11:40And what this does as a dynamic for people, you'll find that people will – even the conversations are different.
11:47As they get together and they're talking and learning what other people perceive to be sinful or not sinful, some of the words or phrases might be offensive to one person.
11:59And they're taught that these are spirits when they feel offended.
12:03So, though, that hurt my spirit.
12:06That must be sinful.
12:07I'm going to condemn what they said.
12:09So, as adults, you see this dynamic happening in the group.
12:13Well, I remember this dynamic as a child because I would watch the adults talking, and I would be wondering myself, well, what words can I say?
12:21What phrases can I say?
12:23And some of the children, because they don't have as strong of willpower, they may actually bottle up their words.
12:31They may not actually start talking.
12:33So, the development of social skills is completely limited in that frame.
12:38So, when you're going down that pathway where people are trained to be obedient, trained to question each other, point fingers at each other as to where the demon's coming from, often the child starts to think, well, I must have this demon because I'm saying many of the things they condemn.
12:56Which I think is existentially terrifying when you are preaching a doctrine of demonology and saying that children can have it or an ideology of hell, as we talked about last time, where, you know, the consequences for disobedience may be a spanking or a beating, which is horrible in and of itself.
13:25But you also have this sense that disobedience could lead to eternity in hell.
13:32And, you know, I grew up pretty much in the shadow of focus on the family.
13:38And James Dobson was very big on harping on the verse, spare the rod, spoil the child, and believed adamantly in corporal punishment and using, I would use the language of child abuse to conform children to the will of the parents.
13:58And I think it's also, you know, so, there's so many different dangerous connotations to it.
14:06And one is obedient to who?
14:09Like, who gets to decide what's the right way to move or what's the right way to make a decision?
14:15And when you have these hierarchies and these systems where no matter what you're supposed to obey the leader, well, what if the leader doesn't actually have your best interest in mind?
14:27Or, you know, who is to say who they are obeying when they're saying they're listening to something?
14:33And I think in a lot of ways, it actually also becomes a way of people not taking responsibility for their actions.
14:43When I've seen people in the missionary world or the development world, including myself, it was often, I'm not doing this because I want to.
14:53I'm doing this because I am following the will of God.
14:56And if I'm just being obedient, then I don't have to bear responsibility for the harm that I'm causing in these communities where I'm implementing various things, and especially systems that are continuing to oppress populations that I'm working with.
15:16And that really, as it relates to youth with a mission, that really bothers me because looking back at my own childhood and my own manipulation, as you're coming of age, before you reach a teenager, all of this doesn't really hurt that bad.
15:34You're just learning and you're kind of exploring the world and you find your boundaries and your boundaries are very limited.
15:40But now when you reach the teenage years, whenever you're becoming basically your developmental skills of how to interact with people, how to survive in the world, take that forward into your late teens, early 20s, this is when you're learning how to be an adult, how you should act.
15:59And what happens when you're under this level of obedience training, there's probably a better term for this, but I call it basically developmental damage.
16:08You're actually doing damage to the children who are raised under these teachings, and the effects are very obvious.
16:15The children who are under this type of training, you can sense that they have blunted emotional expressions.
16:23I've talked to children who had, their family had escaped a cult.
16:28They've come into the support groups and I've watched the children, and you can see that they're just in this trauma that they don't understand.
16:34And their emotions, they're afraid to express them, the family has just escaped, they will evolve and they will become better.
16:41But had they stayed in the cult, remained in the cult, that blunted expression sticks with them.
16:48That's part of their development.
16:50So you have something that's literally development from trauma that gets embedded into the person's identity, and now that is shaping their identity.
16:58So as they develop into adults, that trauma that they build all of their world around is now deeply inside of their, in their being.
17:09And it comes out in other expressions, usually anger.
17:14One of the things that I've, when I've talked to people who had been outside of the cult, who were watching what was happening within,
17:22they would say it was weird because you could say something and they would just suddenly snap.
17:26They would be angry at you.
17:28And we don't know why.
17:29Why did they do this?
17:30I've been asked this question.
17:33And they often mistake it for, I said something that offended them, I said something wrong or against the group.
17:39But it isn't so much that.
17:41Once you have that trauma embedded in your personality, you don't know how to express yourself.
17:47So sometimes the wrong emotions start to come out.
17:51I felt this growing up.
17:52I know that other people have.
17:54Is that something that you experienced?
17:57Yeah.
17:58Yes.
17:59And, you know, many, many, many years of my life, people complimented me or praised me for my permagrin.
18:08And everyone was like, you're always so happy.
18:11And you just, you must have the light of God in you.
18:15And internally, I was seething, but I knew I couldn't express my anger.
18:23And Peter Levine, who founded Somatic Experiencing, has this helpful spectrum that I think about where, ideally, a system is able to express healthy aggression.
18:35So if you say something I don't like and I go, hey, I didn't like that you said that, then we can kind of move on and it's okay.
18:41If a system is not able to express healthy aggression, they might start to experience anger and they might get really pissed and like, well, why did they say that?
18:50Why can't I say anything back?
18:52And if a system can't express anger, they will express rage.
18:57And rage can often be the last resort to trying to be heard or trying to express that healthy aggression that couldn't be expressed.
19:05And I think this also, it can also fall along how people are socialized in these worlds, where for me as a woman, it was not permissible for me to be angry.
19:19I could cry, I could be sad, but I had to find other ways to express my anger.
19:25Whereas most of YWAM is very, very patriarchal.
19:30And I think that males in this world have more permission to have those angry outbursts and everyone else has to deal with it.
19:38And it's not to say women don't in that world, but generally speaking, I would say that it's partly biological and what's happening in our system.
19:48And it's partly what the external system of the missions organization is saying is permissible for certain bodies.
19:58So, let's talk a little bit about the cult itself.
20:00What would it benefit a cult to do this to the people?
20:04One of the things that I have thought through is as I was developing and turning off my questions, suppressing the critical thought, I had no idea that this was a cult indoctrinated mechanism.
20:17I just, I, you know, developing, I thought this is how people were supposed to be.
20:22You weren't supposed to question, especially question the authority.
20:25But now as I'm coming out of this, I'm starting to understand that, well, that was the intention.
20:30They do not want you to question the authority.
20:32And so by starting at an early age, when you manipulate the children, if they are trained never to question authority, then they develop in, they will develop their skills as adults to believe that this is something that we just don't do as an adult.
20:49And it becomes condemned and it isolates the problem.
20:53Essentially, you have several adults who are also trained in the same manner.
20:57Whenever somebody does start to question, all of the adults can pounce on the person who is asking the question.
21:05So establishing that at an early age makes the group mold to the cult leaders, not only his personality, but his entire will.
21:15The cult leader can say whatever he wants, the people will do whatever he says, believe whatever he says.
21:22And the ideologies that he is creating, the cult group will adapt to that ideology.
21:27Again, by shutting off the developmental skills of asking basic questions, people who might be not aligned with the ideology, who may choose a different ideology, they will align to it because that's how they've been trained.
21:43Yeah, there's a quote, something Hebb, maybe Donald Hebb, I can't remember, he was a brain scientist and he said, what fires together, wires together.
21:56And so if you've had a lifetime of your questions, your desires, your curiosities, firing together with corporal punishment or shame or fear of damnation, then you're going to probably develop a tripwire in your own system that's like, don't even go there because that is too scary.
22:19And conversely, in the trauma world, we have this idea that we call trauma mastery.
22:27Our nervous systems don't like to be stuck in a state of fawn or a state of freeze.
22:32And so what can happen is that we actually end up chronically ending up in cycles of abuse with abusive people because our nervous system is going, well, maybe this time I can get out.
22:47Maybe this time will be different.
22:48Maybe this time.
22:49And so, you know, even when I left YWAM, I moved to Seattle for graduate school.
22:55Surprise, surprise, I ended up at Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill Church because I'm like, well, this is familiar.
23:02And it took me kind of working out from my nervous system, why do I keep finding myself in these places, even though I like could not stand that man?
23:15And I was like, I don't agree with anything he's saying, but this is, he's preaching biblically, so I have to stay here.
23:22And I had learned to try to stay within the confines of the world that I lived.
23:28And so, I think sometimes it's, even when people leave a certain cult or a certain high-control religion, they might end up finding themselves in a domestic violence situation, in another community of exploitation.
23:45And I want to say that because I think there can be a lot of shame around that, of like, why do I keep doing this?
23:51Why do I keep getting myself in this situation?
23:53And there's many reasons, but one is that your body is probably trying to figure out how to master this type of a dynamic and trying to figure out how to make this time different.
24:06I recently did a podcast with my cousin, Jesse Collins, who's a psychotherapist.
24:11And we were discussing the dark places that people go to because of trauma, cult-related trauma, cult PTSD, these kind of things.
24:20And he had just been a participant in creating a documentary on self-harm, where people are hurting themselves and worse.
24:30And many of the things that we're talking about here have some overlap.
24:34People who are limited in their ability to make decisions, who are trained, they must be obedient.
24:42They can't decide for themselves what is obedience.
24:45We're dictated what is obedience, basically.
24:48And what this does, eventually, over time, it develops into low self-esteem.
24:53You have no self-trust.
24:55You have to trust the leadership.
24:56You have to trust the group.
24:58And with the low self-esteem comes high shame.
25:02If you're thinking, especially for people like me who have an analytical mind, if you're thinking outside the box, where you're thinking outside the group, if you're thinking outside the group, well, that's sinful.
25:11And so there's this cascade of events that happens in your head, and that cascade of events explodes eventually into a mess.
25:20So people who have this, they develop low self-esteem, but essentially they're developing in their being, in their psyche, this dark place that they're trying to conceal.
25:35Some people can live with it, and they can overcome.
25:37Other people, they can't live with it.
25:40And it turns into a very, very, very bad thing.
25:44I worry, again, when I'm thinking through Youth With A Mission, that dark inner being that is being formed.
25:54And in the years that I was starting to feel my most depression was about the years that you're talking about is the target group for Youth With A Mission.
26:06Would you say that people in Youth With A Mission are experiencing any of this?
26:10This feels fresh.
26:12I can't remember if I've shared this yet or not.
26:15A few months ago, my husband and I were passing through Montana, and it was community night at YWAM.
26:23And I actually went with him to experience the community night.
26:28My husband was not part of that world.
26:30It's open to the public, and so I was like, hey, let's go.
26:34I'm curious.
26:35I'm hoping I can get some closure.
26:40And it was so tragic to me to really see the level of manipulation in the service,
26:48and to see throughout the worship music, throughout the sermon, throughout the worship music at the end,
26:56how many people around the room would just, like, fall to the ground and crumble and be sobbing.
27:03And, of course, this was projection from my own experience, but knowing how much shame I had when my body was falling apart,
27:11I was working 17 hours a day, and one thing went wrong in my ministry.
27:16And I'd be in a worship service, like, I'm sorry, Lord, I'm not obedient enough to you.
27:21I should have fasted more.
27:23Like, it was never, ever enough.
27:24And we ended up going to a lake nearby, and I saw a member from the base come and just pound some beers and then go back to the base.
27:38And I feel like it is often those folks who are, I don't want to say people aren't brilliant,
27:45but I think people that are, tend to be brilliant or cerebral or think a lot, tend to be more tortured in these environments,
27:53because you have to strain extra hard to try to conform.
27:59I feel like I'm coming up with so many books today, but the book Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame,
28:06I think, is so helpful for understanding, because Pat DeYoung talks about how chronic shame develops in a world that is based on performance,
28:17and your true, authentic self cannot be seen, because you have to always do what you're supposed to do.
28:26And one of the experiences of shame is annihilation.
28:31Like, I just, I need to annihilate myself, or I feel like I'm being annihilated.
28:36And so, that can often lead to self-harm and other behaviors that are trying to externalize what feels so real.
28:47Like, I, nobody gets me because I'm the problem.
28:51And it's really hard when that's your whole world to say, nobody gets me because the system is the problem.
28:57And the system is not actually designed to see people and care for people.
29:03It's designed to be a system of performance.
29:06And I feel like it's important, I think, to specify and talk about why we are, and I think we're talking about so many of these religious systems that are able to thrive in the U.S.
29:21because of the atmosphere that we've been moving through as the nation that we are for hundreds of years.
29:28That it can breed these performances based on how we are socialized, based on what communities we're in.
29:36And so, if we don't have these true, authentic, communal experiences, I think it makes us that much more susceptible to end up in communities of, like, pseudo-connection.
29:51It's like, well, at least if I comply, and at least if I follow the rules, I'll have some semblance of connection, rather than feeling that sense of annihilation.
29:59Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
30:13You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
30:21On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
30:35You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
30:41If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
30:48And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
30:54On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
30:59Whenever you're trained in this obedience world, you start to place virtue on the obedience, and it basically replaces other virtues.
31:10So if you're a Christian and you understand all of the virtues, all of the gifts of the Spirit that peace, love, joy, happiness, those are decreased or diminished while the virtue of obedience is increased, and it shapes the way that people think about life itself.
31:30Whenever you're trained like this, I remember after I had left the group, we weren't allowed to listen to most music.
31:40I was only allowed to listen to the 1950s-style gospel music.
31:44And the first time that I heard Bon Jovi, I was like, wow, this is great music.
31:49And I ran upstairs, my son, who is in his teenage years at this time, he was experiencing new music at the same time I was.
31:58So we were like sharing, living on a prayer and all of these wonderful songs.
32:05And it's because I was exploring as an adult things that other children explore as a child.
32:10Do I like this music?
32:11Do I not?
32:12As a child, I was afraid.
32:14I was afraid to know, well, what if I do like it?
32:17What if the devil's in that music?
32:19And I'm certain that there are listeners who are in the cult who say, yes, the devil's in that music.
32:24But you don't get to make that choice is what I'm driving at.
32:29You aren't allowed to make the choice.
32:31And so what happens is as you mature and you're not allowed to make your choices, well, you really haven't made any of your decisions.
32:39And you don't even know if you agree with the group.
32:42So you're basically there just simply because you're there.
32:45That's the interesting part of this.
32:46You're not there because you want to.
32:48You're not there because you even believe it.
32:50You haven't even come to the decision of what it is that you believe because you're not allowed to.
32:56Definitely.
32:57I know I've said this quote already on here, but I tend to think in quotes.
33:02And Angela Chen says, if someone cannot say no, any yes that's given is meaningless.
33:08And if you have someone that their entire life, they were never free to give a no, as you're saying, you know, they're not going to really know what their yes is.
33:20And that was really, really, really, and probably still is really, really, really confusing for family members of mine that still abide by these more fundamentalist views of Christianity.
33:34Where when I started to leave and say, this doesn't feel good to me, this doesn't feel right.
33:39They're like, but you've always been so happy.
33:42And it just, it could not make sense because I had honestly been really, really good at performing my role as a good Christian woman.
33:52And as soon as I started to learn I have a body that has opinions and would literally probably not make it if I kept going at the rate I was going,
34:02And that caused a lot of disruption because I think it's really hard to grow like an emotional capacity to feel and to tolerate emotions when you've never had permission to feel them.
34:21Absolutely.
34:21And so, building upon that, whenever you are trained to be obedient and trained that obedience is a virtue,
34:29as you become an adult and you start to interact with other adults, if they are adults in the group,
34:36everything is a cohesive, we do not question, we must be obedient.
34:41It's that weird mindset.
34:43But now, take that into a church setting.
34:46You're in a church, you're wanting to spread the gospel to the lost and dying world.
34:51Well, what happens when somebody from outside who's never been indoctrinated in this way,
34:56who doesn't have the obedience training, they come in and they join the group.
35:02What's interesting is watching it play out, because I have seen this.
35:06Somebody comes in, they get instantly their love bombed.
35:10They're excited, they're happy, they see all the shiny happy people.
35:14And the moment that they say something that is thinking outside of the cult's box,
35:20they start to see all of the vicious attacks at them.
35:23And then they leave.
35:25I've watched this happen, and the quote that was used by the minister at the platform is,
35:31they went out from us because they were not of us.
35:36And simply saying that they're not of the same mindset.
35:42But how can you bring somebody to that mindset if they weren't trained and manipulated from a child?
35:47So what happened in the Branhamism cult, basically your growth came from within the cult.
35:54You had parents who had offspring, and those offspring became cult members.
35:58The cult grew internally.
36:01Was that the same?
36:02When you're thinking youth with a mission, I'm looking at all of the different networks that it's connected to.
36:08And while you couldn't say it was growing internally from YWAM itself, I wouldn't think.
36:14But because they're in the New Apostolic Reformation, this network of apostolic churches,
36:19I would think that to some extent it is growing internally just from the network.
36:24Would you say that's the case?
36:26For sure.
36:27I, you know, I think, I don't know how much pressure there is for leaders to have children or not.
36:38But it sure seems like it's very common for folks to get married and have multiple children and that that is celebrated.
36:48And as I mentioned, there's what's called a crossroads DTS, which it brings in parents who have children.
36:58And usually, there are subtle, not so subtle messages that those families should join YWAM.
37:06And, you know, I led a crossroads discipleship training school to Uganda and had multiple families with children on the trip,
37:16like young, young, young children.
37:17And we were going out to villages in Uganda and having these experiences that, again, feel and are so out of the norm
37:29that I think once families do this, it becomes really, really hard to go back to normal.
37:37And when those children who are coming in from other worlds are being introduced to certain types of indoctrination,
37:47you know, I saw kids have a lot of tantrums and normal things that children have.
37:55But it was this emphasis on, like, we just need to give them time to be able to kind of comply.
38:01And I didn't personally witness, like, corporal punishment or I have no doubt that probably exists, but I can't say for sure.
38:11But it was more of this kind of subtle manipulation of hive mind.
38:19And, like, we all just need to keep moving in this direction.
38:22And if you don't fit in this, life's going to be really difficult for you around here.
38:28And so, I think that there became this way of children becoming more docile and more obedient over time of just a few months.
38:39And I think that's also partly why youth with a mission targets 17, 18, 19-year-olds.
38:48You know, it's not quite the same as children.
38:50And yet we don't have fully formed frontal cortexes at this age.
38:54We often haven't had a lot of our own independent experiences.
38:58And so, there's this sense of just, like, come in here.
39:02We'll just take you in.
39:04And then it's, like, Hotel California.
39:06You're like, okay, now I just can't leave, I guess, apparently.
39:10And I don't know that I realized that.
39:12And, you know, I had a passion for Uganda, which is a whole other story,
39:20because of this documentary-style film, Invisible Children, that became huge in the early 2000s among white Christian audiences.
39:31And it was like a pandemic.
39:34Every young white woman came down with a heart for Uganda.
39:37Like, it was the flu, basically.
39:40And so, that's a lot of what I study is how our socialization led to that in the first place.
39:46But I say that because I knew that Uganda is where I wanted to go.
39:51And before I graduated high school, I went to a missions event with my mom at my church.
39:59And it was all these different missions organizations.
40:02And there was one booth with a man from YWAM.
40:05And he was like, hey, we're going to China this summer.
40:08And I was like, no, that's okay.
40:10I'm called to Uganda.
40:11That's where I'm going to go.
40:12And something happened in that meeting that by the end, my mom and I were both like, we're going to China this summer.
40:20And it became this, like, kind of tendril thing where it was like, well, now that you're coming to China, you should start coming to our community nights.
40:30And now that you're coming to our community nights, you should do your discipleship training school.
40:34And then you should join staff.
40:35And then as soon as I got back from my discipleship training school, I was asked, do you want to take a team to Uganda?
40:42And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is what I've always wanted.
40:46And so, it was actually using those desires, complex as they were.
40:51And it was like these little carrots.
40:53And I don't know how much of that was thought out in advance, how much of that unfolded.
40:59But I was really in a particular moment where I was susceptible to just following, okay, you're a Christian male authority.
41:08I'll probably do what you think I should do, especially if it's in alignment with this heart I feel that I have for Uganda.
41:15And so, that was my experience.
41:18I have to wonder how many of people's desires that didn't grow up in YWAM, you know, because of New Apostolic Reformation and the Seven Mountains Mandate, like, YWAM has media schools.
41:33It has journalism schools.
41:35It has dance schools.
41:36It has outside, like, rock climbing schools.
41:40You think about a thing, I can probably bet you that there is a YWAM school designed for it, whether that's a discipleship training school or a secondary school.
41:52And so, it becomes such a way of drawing in people who might not have an opportunity to say, hey, I want to make documentaries.
42:00Wow, there's a YWAM school to make documentaries?
42:04And it's just, it never ceases to amaze me how broad the tendrils are.
42:09That's pretty amazing.
42:11And interestingly, we didn't compare notes or anything before this podcast, but that's really where I was headed with this.
42:18You described it like the carrot on the stick of leading you into what you want to be.
42:24When you're in this mindset, when you're raised in this obedience culture, often the child will develop into an adult and choose a pathway in life that they would have not normally chosen.
42:37I have seen this time and time again.
42:40I, myself, it's interesting, I can't remember what the test was called in high school, but you took this test, basically, that would tell you what is your skill set, what you should become.
42:52My mindset in the cult, because of the cult way in which it viewed education, etc., I was to operate heavy equipment, believe it or not.
43:04And that was my, that was my, was it aptitude test or something like this.
43:08Anyway, as I matured and became an adult, I actually went down those pathways.
43:14I have done roofing, I've done plumbing, I've done all kinds of constructive work.
43:18But mentally, my, my mind was just so numbed, because that, doing that type of labor, it wasn't suiting for me, it wasn't what I was suited for.
43:29So, as I become an adult, I started to break away, but it was difficult, especially because of the education thing.
43:36In, in the Branhamism, education was frowned upon, especially higher education.
43:42When I married, my wife was not, their family was apparently not aware that education was a thing.
43:49So, she convinced me I did start going to college, and that's how I became a, got into the software career, higher level consulting, executive level consulting.
44:00But where I ended up was so far different from what I would have become, based on my aptitude.
44:06And it's the carrot on the stick thing.
44:08We give you these pieces, and then you follow it.
44:11And so, the buildup that I'm heading to is the pyramid structure that is created.
44:17And if you've been indoctrinated in one of these movements, everything that I say is going to just go right over your head, because you don't understand.
44:25I did not understand until after I broke free, and I started, I'm raising my children without the cult mindset.
44:32When I'm raising my children, after leaving the cult, my children are my equal.
44:40They, I train them as though they are, they're a miniature adult.
44:44They're my equal.
44:45They just don't have the same knowledge that I do.
44:48I have to give them this knowledge.
44:49So, in the hierarchy that exists in my house, it is everybody's equal, but you might need a little bit of help learning.
44:58In the hierarchies that is created in this cult mindset, it is a, it's a pyramid.
45:03The cult leader's at the top, all the way down to the father, then the mother, which is interesting.
45:08The mother is lower, then the child.
45:10And when you think of this hierarchy, you can never traverse up it.
45:16And there gets to be some nuances of this.
45:18If you're a female child, now you're slightly lower in some cases.
45:22So, with this pyramid scheme, the carrot on the stick doesn't even work, because there are places you can't even go in your hierarchy.
45:31And think of the development structures that are broken by this.
45:36It is a, it is a development mess.
45:38I look back, and I'm so glad that I was able to escape so that my, my younger two children experience equality.
45:46My oldest child, unfortunately, he was like age seven when we left, or maybe a little bit older than that.
45:53So, he experienced both sides of it, which was also interesting.
45:57I look at all of the children who are young adults who are in Youth with a Mission, and I think of that carrot on the stick.
46:05What happens when they leave it?
46:08Do they, so you escaped this.
46:10What happened to you after you escaped?
46:12Did you feel limited by this?
46:15I had a very, very particular experience, which is not the norm.
46:21So, I, and before I get there, I'd love to just say, I feel like that is, that hierarchy and that pyramid is so important.
46:33And it's one of the things that I think is important for engaging whiteness and white privilege, because I grew up as a dancer and a performer.
46:44You might notice I like talking, and so, you know, in one world, I actually probably would have become a pastor.
46:51It's probably a very good thing I did not.
46:53But I knew I couldn't because I was a woman.
46:56And so, the next best thing was to be a missionary.
47:01And the church, the missions organization, had no problem with me going into places that were full of black and brown bodies and preaching.
47:11But I would never have that same level of privilege in that pyramid and that hierarchy as I did in the United States.
47:20And I think that that, I know that that was a conscious decision for me in understanding my place in that pyramid, is that I'm not as high as white men, but in that sort of caste system, I am still above men and women of color.
47:35So, I can go export being a pastor and using those skills that I have, that I love, in a way that's still condonable in this world.
47:45So, I'm embarrassing myself a little bit talking about the developmental problems of having children, especially one who experienced both.
47:54But now, I'm going to get a little bit more personal because this is something that I struggle with still.
48:00I have, as I'm going through deprogramming myself for the past several years, I try to rewire my brain for things that were wired incorrectly.
48:11But there are some things that are more difficult than others.
48:15And the ones that are the most difficult were the ones that were trained in my being from a youth.
48:22Again, going back to youth with a mission, this scares me tremendously.
48:27Whenever you are under this type of obedience training in this environment, this cult environment, once you become an adult, there is a chronic guilt for any normal mistakes that you make.
48:42And so, people who are indoctrinated like this, they'll have a conversation with a friend or a guest who's over.
48:50They will actually replay that conversation in their head four days after the guest has left.
48:56I've done this.
48:58And then just kick yourself days on end because you might have said something that might have offended them.
49:05And I'm using the word might delicately because I don't even know in some cases that I did offend them.
49:12And often, if it ever comes up in conversation, they're like, well, I didn't think anything of it.
49:17It was just a normal conversation.
49:19So, to somebody who wasn't indoctrinated like this, they don't understand what you're going through.
49:25But to the people who's in the obedience training that these groups have, you struggle.
49:31You struggle with normal things that other people just take for granted.
49:36Two people can have a conversation.
49:38Another example of this is differences of opinion.
49:42If you have a difference of opinion, because of the obedience training, you're not really allowed to have a difference of opinion.
49:49When you do have a difference, that difference is sometimes thought of as sinful.
49:54So, people are scared to have differences of opinion.
49:57They've been trained to be obedient.
50:00Now, take somebody who was never in this and you get into a healthy conversation.
50:05You can have what's called a healthy argument over opinion.
50:09But to the cult member who's been indoctrinated, there is no such thing as a healthy argument.
50:14There is only an argument.
50:15So, this is something that, again, there's many things I have in my notes that I want to talk to you about youth with a mission.
50:22But this one pains me because it affects every aspect of my life after having left.
50:28Yeah, I think, again, I had a very unique experience in leaving.
50:36My body was shutting down.
50:40I had boils all over for months that wouldn't go away.
50:44My immune system just was not working.
50:47I went to the dentist and had like seven cavities.
50:50I had chunks of hair falling out in the shower.
50:53I was unwell.
50:55And still kept trucking along.
50:58And so, I went with YWAM to the YWAM North American Leadership Conference.
51:04This was back in 2011, 2010, in North Carolina.
51:10And there was a man there speaking named Dan Allender who founded the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology.
51:18And he was talking about longevity in serving professions.
51:23And I was like, oh my gosh, this is what I need to talk to him about this.
51:27And so, I went up to him and I was like, can you tell me what I need to know about vicarious trauma?
51:33And that was my introduction to the Seattle School.
51:37And I actually ended up getting accepted as a life experience equivalent to a bachelor's degree.
51:44I never went to college, but I was able to go to the Seattle School.
51:49And the idea was that I would be in Seattle for three years and then I would move back to Uganda.
51:55And I was just learning how to be a missionary sustainably.
51:59And I was given a lot of leeway that a lot of people in YWAM aren't, for whatever reason that is, whether I just took it or they knew, like, I was going to do it anyways.
52:12And then even when I was in Seattle, I would go back to Uganda during the summers.
52:18And through that time became more and more, I didn't have ease going back into Uganda anymore.
52:28And so, it was right when I graduated that I left staff with YWAM.
52:33And so, I was very fortunate.
52:35I had a master's in counseling psychology.
52:38And I love my clients, but I never actually intended to be a therapist.
52:43I always say I'm, like, a reluctant therapist.
52:46Like, I'm still always like, how can I figure out how to do dance?
52:50Or maybe I don't do that as a career because it would probably ruin it.
52:54And so, I had a very fortunate experience.
52:59But many, many, many people joined YWAM at 17, 18, 19, have no college experience, are in it for decades, leave with no savings, leave with no formal education.
53:14Even though they've been working for free for this organization for years, that's really hard to translate to a hireable resume.
53:23When you're like, I swear, I was actually, like, running IT for this base of 300 staff, you know?
53:30And so, yeah, and so, I think that in itself becomes a trap for people to leave.
53:37And there's just so many hurdles.
53:39And then, what you're speaking to, what I'm hearing is, like, even when we left, the organizations were still in us.
53:47And it takes a lot of time to deprogram and move through, I think, the rest of my life.
53:54I'll be like, oh, yeah, that's part of that indoctrination cropping up, or, oh, yeah, that's that, or some things I didn't even realize until I would just be telling my husband stories I thought were funny.
54:04And he'd be like, what?
54:06You did what?
54:08And you experienced what?
54:09And I'm like, wait, that's not just funny or normal?
54:12He's like, no, that's not okay.
54:17And I'm sure there's many more of those that I don't even know yet.
54:20I have a lot of those.
54:22You know, when you've gone through these experiences, you only can talk about it with other people who have gone through the same.
54:29Because people who have never experienced it, they think, this is the craziest thing I've ever heard.
54:33And you're thinking everything is normal, which is, again, it's related to everything we're talking about, the obedience training.
54:40You're trained to be obedient to something that really is not normal in the first place.
54:45So, your whole world is not normal.
54:48And I have, like I said, there are things that I struggle with.
54:52What I have learned to do, and this, I'm taking notes of all of the many things that I want to discuss with you in the future.
54:59One of the things is tools for reprogramming.
55:01Because one of the things that I have learned to do, and it's very helpful to other people who are listening if you're struggling with this,
55:09you're overwhelmed with this massive amount of things that are wrong.
55:13Everything, when you leave, you suddenly realize that my entire worldview, my faith, my religion, my belief set, my actions, how I train my children,
55:24I could name off a hundred different things.
55:27Everything is wrong.
55:28And you become instantly overwhelmed.
55:30How do you tackle this?
55:32And I can't remember the book, but I was reading a book of unrelated, just in research.
55:38I was researching something to do with the mind.
55:41And it was talking about when you feel overwhelmed like this, you focus on just one thing, take that one thing, and rewire it into a way that's helpful.
55:50And what I learned to do over time was I started with the traumatic things, things that were just making me come unglued.
55:59I would take a memory that is painful, and then I would try to associate that memory with something that wasn't painful.
56:06Was there anything that I could think of that happened in this experience that wasn't painful?
56:11Sadly, there are some experiences that there was nothing.
56:14I can't really rewire those, but I focus on the ones that I can and then move to the next one and to the next one.
56:22And the sad part about this is, and again, one of the main reasons really I was excited to get you for Youth with a Mission is because every single child and young adult that I see in this,
56:36the pains that I have and the lifetime of rewiring that I have,
56:40I'm looking at this and I'm seeing every single person is subject to the same problem.
56:46This scares me, and it's something that deep inside of me, I don't want this to happen.
56:52I don't know enough about it yet to know how bad this is, if what I'm saying is even applicable to the entire group.
57:02But I do know that from the limited number of people that I have spoken with from Youth with a Mission,
57:07it is at least applicable within some people that I've talked to.
57:11So I know that the problem does exist.
57:14So thank you so much.
57:17I'm taking notes, and my notes are growing quickly, so we've got a lot more to talk about.
57:22I look forward to it.
57:23Thank you so much.
57:25Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
57:28You can find us at william-branham.org and endwellmovement.com.
57:33For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation,
57:36you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR,
57:40available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
57:58For more information, you can find us at william-branham.com.
58:12And I thought you can find us at william-branham.com.
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