- 1 day ago
John and Jenny unpack how indoctrinated obedience in high-control Christianity breaks a person’s will, replaces self-trust with leader-trust, and creates lifelong patterns of shame, fear, and decision paralysis. They dig into Jenny’s time in Youth With A Mission and John’s years in Branhamism, exploring how “hearing the voice of God” often meant obeying leaders, how loaded language around the Great Commission and urgency fueled constant pressure to perform, and how people learn to see themselves as spiritually infantile and incapable of making their own choices.
Together they talk about what happens after you leave—racing thoughts, agonizing over small decisions, and the grief of realizing how much life was missed—while naming practical pathways toward healing. Jenny offers nervous-system tools like slow breathing and visual scanning, shares why movement and improv have been so powerful in her own recovery, and John describes small “rebellious” experiments in choice that helped him rebuild basic self-trust. The conversation holds both the weight of what was lost and a grounded hope that it is possible to heal, think clearly again, and build a life that actually fits you.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:17 Indoctrinated obedience and spiritual authority
05:31 Leaders claiming divine revelation and control
09:12 Submission, breaking the will, and infantilization
14:35 Shame, self-erasure, and loss of self-actualization
17:54 Anxiety, spiraling thoughts, and post-exit trauma
21:18 Music, control, and reclaiming personal choice
24:07 Grief, loss, and the cost of leaving high-control religion
26:12 Manufactured urgency and end-times pressure
32:17 Loaded language, dominionism, and the Great Commission
37:27 Obedience, separation from family, and youth control
43:40 Recovery tools, grounding, and rebuilding agency
49:02 Learning to make decisions again after control
______________________
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 talk about what happens after you leave—racing thoughts, agonizing over small decisions, and the grief of realizing how much life was missed—while naming practical pathways toward healing. Jenny offers nervous-system tools like slow breathing and visual scanning, shares why movement and improv have been so powerful in her own recovery, and John describes small “rebellious” experiments in choice that helped him rebuild basic self-trust. The conversation holds both the weight of what was lost and a grounded hope that it is possible to heal, think clearly again, and build a life that actually fits you.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:17 Indoctrinated obedience and spiritual authority
05:31 Leaders claiming divine revelation and control
09:12 Submission, breaking the will, and infantilization
14:35 Shame, self-erasure, and loss of self-actualization
17:54 Anxiety, spiraling thoughts, and post-exit trauma
21:18 Music, control, and reclaiming personal choice
24:07 Grief, loss, and the cost of leaving high-control religion
26:12 Manufactured urgency and end-times pressure
32:17 Loaded language, dominionism, and the Great Commission
37:27 Obedience, separation from family, and youth control
43:40 Recovery tools, grounding, and rebuilding agency
49:02 Learning to make decisions again after control
______________________
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, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jenny McGrath, founder
00:46of Indwell Movement.
00:48Jenny, it's good to be back and to go through talking about all of the psychological issues
00:54that you and I kind of grew up with and the things that plague our minds.
00:59I get so excited when I talk to you because it's almost like therapy for me, which is
01:04helpful in a way.
01:06But there's so many things that are happening right now.
01:09I don't know if you've seen it.
01:10Your first podcast has now come out, and it's got excellent feedback.
01:15In fact, I've got emails in my inbox that I'm still going through to digest and answer.
01:19People who are wanting to be anonymous, but from YWAM, and they're wanting to hear more.
01:25So just like me, they're excited to hear more, and I'm excited to record with you.
01:29But this is great.
01:31This is turning out really good.
01:33And feedback, like I said, it's mostly positive.
01:36We have a few haters out there, but for the most part, it's positive.
01:40And good to be back.
01:42Thank you for coming back.
01:43Thank you so much for having me.
01:45I know I was at a conference last week, and I really felt the absence of our conversation.
01:51I was really looking forward to being back today.
01:53So as you talk, and the way this works for everybody who is not familiar with me, I'm very impromptu with everything that I do.
02:02Most conversations I never prepare for because they never turn out really good if you do.
02:08So I literally come up with a topic, I hand it to Jenny, and she says, okay, that sounds great.
02:14And today I come up with the things that I have written down in the past conversations we've had.
02:19But the big one for me is the consequences of indoctrinated obedience.
02:25There are many things that as an adult, whenever I became a parent, I never really thought about how difficult it was for myself.
02:36And then that cascades forward to my children because I'm programmed like this.
02:41I think this is the way it should be.
02:43I do the same thing to my children.
02:44And it turns into a nightmare, especially after you escape, because after you escape, you're in this weird world where you want to do it because that's the way I was raised.
02:55And by golly, my parents did it to me.
02:57I'm going to do it to you.
02:58But on the other hand, it really limits growth.
03:02And there's a lot of consequences.
03:05So I wanted to talk through those consequences.
03:07But first, I wanted to ask, is this something that is related to your experience in YWAM, Youth with a Mission?
03:15Absolutely.
03:16Yeah.
03:16I think there was this really big influence in YWAM.
03:20It's one of the values of YWAM is hearing the voice of God.
03:26And that is very precarious.
03:27If you don't have a very solid relationship with yourself or if you're in these situations that are based on hierarchy.
03:38And so a lot of times it was not that I was supposed to hear the voice of God, but I was supposed to listen to my leaders who were hearing the voice of God on my behalf.
03:48So if a leader said, I had a dream and this is what you were doing, it really was unquestioned for me, whether or not it was actually something I wanted to do or not.
03:59I think I mentioned in one of our episodes, I had a stint working in the preschool at YWAM, which I never wanted to do.
04:08But I had a leader that said, I had a dream and you were leading our preschool.
04:14And that was that.
04:15Like there was no, well, I don't want you to do that because consent and what I wanted to do was not part of the equation.
04:24It was what does God want to do, which more often translated to what do your leaders need you to do and what do they need from you in this moment?
04:34That's such a good point.
04:35And actually, when I was thinking through this topic, that's something that I didn't think of.
04:40And I'm like shocked that I didn't because that's so indoctrinated.
04:43It should be at the top because we were indoctrinated like this.
04:48I can already foresee because I'm a prophet.
04:51I can foresee the comments that will come into the feed.
04:54Obedience is a Christian thing.
04:55You can't be blasting this.
04:57Are you are they go with all of these insults and comments.
05:00But the problem is they have been indoctrinated to the extent that they mistakenly think that the leadership is also God in the way that it is presented.
05:11It's much like if you study the ancient religions, the ancient pharaohs, they were seen as the God to the people and the people worship God through the Pharaoh.
05:20So, ironically, when you look at the types of movements that have sprung from all of this mess, it's the same thing.
05:27The leadership is God.
05:29And whenever they want you to do something, they will say, I had a dream.
05:32I had a vision or even simply I had this feeling.
05:36It felt like God was telling me that you need to go do X, Y and Z.
05:40And that's that's literally how it works.
05:42They're playing the God card.
05:44And so you think it's God and you think, well, I must be obedient to God.
05:48But in many cases, it's not there.
05:51They're misusing their authority.
05:53So it creates this multifaceted problem that, like I said, I just am fascinated to explore it.
05:59On one hand, you're being spiritually abused and you're thinking that God is is controlling you through this person.
06:06But on the other hand, that cascades down.
06:09If you're a parent, it cascades down to your children.
06:11Now you actually start to do things like this.
06:15I know I never did with my kids that I remember, but I know that my parents did with me and they would play the God card.
06:23And I know other families who their parents would do that.
06:26You start to mimic the cult leaders when you're in this type of environment.
06:30And so you, too, are doing it.
06:32The irony is if you're a Christian, it's pure blasphemy.
06:35I mean, it is.
06:37It really is creating a sense of idolatry of people.
06:42And these people become what you think you're listening to.
06:48And I'm thinking about there's a band I really love called Bird Talker.
06:54And they have come from a world of unpacking a lot of high control religion.
06:59And in one of their songs, they say, tell me again how you can talk to God and how he tells you what to do and how you know it's not your own thoughts disguised as something absolute.
07:10And I think it can be this very dangerous thing when we create these systems of authoritarianism and those that are on the top just so happen to somehow have special ears tuned to the frequency of God.
07:29When, you know, I am a firm believer that if we are people who believe in a spirit or a God, that we may also have communion and some way of connecting to that God that doesn't require us to go through a third party to get there.
07:50And I think that that's a really dangerous place.
07:52And I think that's how a lot of these high control spaces get formed, because we may not feel the confidence to trust our own relationship to ourself or what we may consider a higher power.
08:06Absolutely.
08:07And it really breaks down trust.
08:09If somebody is manipulating you like this, sometimes whenever you are being threatened with this thought that God is telling you to do something,
08:20and then you find out that you're doing the wrong thing, well, then you're faced with the question suddenly, well, did God tell me to do the wrong thing?
08:26Is God an imbecile?
08:28I've seen this happen in certain situations.
08:32So your views of what is God and your views of what is obedience changes significantly.
08:39And from a, you know, from an indoctrinated perspective, whenever you're in this type of movement, you're being taught that you must yield, you must submit.
08:50And I'm saying that very delicately, because there are passages in the Bible that talk about submission to God.
08:58But people in the movement have associated that submission to the leadership, not to God.
09:04So they've been taught that by submitting to the leader, you are also submitting to God.
09:09By submitting to your pastor, you are all submitting to God.
09:13But there's nowhere in the Bible that says you must submit to the human authorities.
09:16In fact, there are many passages that completely overturn that idea.
09:20But when you're trained in this, manipulated in this type of environment, and you're doing this, now your submission is basically breaking your will.
09:28And that's a thought that really hit me hard after I left.
09:32I went back through, we had all of the recordings of our central figure, so it made it really easy to do.
09:37But I went through all of the statements talking about breaking the will.
09:41I think one of them I told you, there was this pseudo parable that he would tell how a good shepherd will break the legs of his sheep so that they don't wander astray.
09:51That's submission to whole new levels, man.
09:54It's horrific that they would say something like that.
09:57But that was a common doctrine.
09:59The leadership can actually break you, and they wanted to break you.
10:04And being on the side where I saw, I knew the leadership a lot better than most of the rank and file members, I would see situations where if somebody was really headstrong, they would focus their doctrines on that person to try to break their will.
10:18Because that mindset flows from the leadership.
10:21We must break the will of the people.
10:22Because if we do, and they submit to us, then they're submitting to God.
10:27When I was in YWAM, I think I had a cleaner break than a lot of people did.
10:35I sort of just disappeared.
10:37But I'm thinking about this quote I love from Rosa Luxemburg that says,
10:43those who do not move do not notice their chains.
10:46And I think I didn't even notice how authoritarian or manipulative it was because I was so hungry for a sense of, like, God being proud of me and doing what I thought would make God proud.
11:04And so, that was just the easiest thing, the easiest carrot for people to say, like, if you do this, it's going to make God really happy.
11:13Or if you do this, God's going to get, like, really excited that you're doing this.
11:17And so, it was really, quote-unquote, easy.
11:19Of course, it was so taxing and so harmful to my body.
11:24But my will was so conditioned to go, okay, you tell me to jump five feet, I'll jump ten feet.
11:30You tell me to run a mile, I'll run three.
11:34And it's more from folks who then are those movers or those resistors or why are you telling me to do this, that those chains become really loud and the ways in which YWAM tends to try to pressure people into not leaving.
11:54You know, a lot of people end up kind of taking a discipleship training school as sort of like a gap year.
12:02It's like, I'm going to go do this school for five months and then I'll go to college.
12:06But there is a lot of not so subtle pressure of, why would you go to college?
12:12God can teach you everything you need.
12:14Oh, you're interested in that.
12:15We have a school for that.
12:17And so, it becomes like you have all these tendrils on you and you don't even know that you're necessarily being manipulated.
12:25Because it's not presented in this very aggressive way.
12:30It's often presented in this like shiny, happy people way that I think in some ways can be a little bit more insidious.
12:39It does, and as an adult, unfortunately, I was, I think, age 37, if I remember correctly, when I left my group.
12:47As an adult, when you're being trained in that obedience mindset that you must submit, you must break your will, and it does eventually break your will, it almost puts your brain into an infant state.
13:00You start to look at the ministers or the prophets, apostles, et cetera, as though they're the father and mother figures.
13:08You are the infant figure.
13:09So, you start to basically bottle up.
13:13You don't trust your own judgment.
13:15You instead have to trust their judgment.
13:17And in the worst cases, I've actually been to, I've not been in the churches, but I've been with the people from the churches where that progressed to the level that they were not able to even purchase a car.
13:30Unless they go ask the leader.
13:31That's how bad this got.
13:33They were literally controlling everything.
13:35I actually have one of my best friends was not able to get married until they got the approval of the pastor, and the pastor had to approve the person.
13:45They couldn't choose the person.
13:47And the person chosen for this person, my friend, didn't work out, so he ended up with the person he really wanted.
13:55The whole thing is just such a mess.
13:57So, in its extreme levels, it can go that far.
14:00But even at the early stages, before it becomes that destructive, you are submitting to the level that you want to ask the leader these things.
14:10Inwardly, you're an infant, basically.
14:12And that's one of the problems with this type of obedience.
14:15When it is hyper-obedient, you become hyper-vigilant to try to obey, to try to please the person who is giving you the commands, which is the pastor, the prophet, the apostle, etc.
14:27It's making me think this is a little sad tangent, but it's making me think about many people may be familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
14:40And the idea that after we have our, quote-unquote, basic needs met, the final thing is self-actualization and coming into who we are.
14:51But what I have recently learned is that that was actually a misappropriation from his time working with the Blackfoot Nation.
15:02And what he observed was that in the Blackfoot Nation, they actually believed we actually come into the world as self-actualizing beings.
15:12And it is the community's job to help steward this self-actualizing being and give them their needs so that they can continue growing into their truest self.
15:25And I can't think of a more antithetical way of looking at a human being than a lot of these high-control religions that are so, you know, if you are conditioned to think that at your core, you are dark and dirty and sinful,
15:41and everything of you needs to be expunged so that you can somehow only have something that's not of you, then that creates this pattern of shame and self-deprecation that will really, I think, force you into doing terrible things to your own body.
16:04And it will, I think, you know, I think of a lot of things fractally, so what we do on a smaller scale will always grow to a larger scale.
16:13So then we end up infantilizing the people that we're going to serve as well and saying, well, you know, I know that I don't know your culture or anything about your situation, but I'm still going to tell you what you should do.
16:25And I think that that begets this, the opposite of self-actualization, whatever that word might be.
16:34Absolutely.
16:35It changes your frame of mind such that if you can't trust your own instincts, if you can't make your decisions for yourself, you must submit, you must be obedient.
16:47Literally, you can't trust yourself.
16:49And so people, so when people leave this type of environment, I face this too, and I'm embarrassed to say this, but it is, it's quite common.
16:58When you start to have racing thoughts, you start to have things that will spiral out of control in your mind because you can't trust your own mind.
17:05Is the devil planting that thought in my head?
17:08I don't know.
17:08Is that of the devil or is that God?
17:10And it's always this good or evil.
17:13There's not really a, well, I just simply had a thought and that's what came into my brain.
17:17It must be God or it must be the devil.
17:20It must be one or the other when you're indoctrinated like this.
17:22So you can't trust your own mind, you can't trust your own body, and when you make mistakes, now those mistakes in your head, they will spiral even further out of control.
17:32And I've seen in the worst cases, when it spirals out of control to a certain level, people just suddenly give up and they will go do things that they would never do had they not spiraled out of control.
17:45And it creates a lot of problems in the family, the marriage, sometimes people actually get in real trouble over it.
17:53And it all comes back to the fact that if you manipulate people to be hyper-obedient and basically you're misusing your authority to make another person submit to your will so that they don't have their own will.
18:11When you do this, you're essentially breaking a person and the consequences for that breakage continues long.
18:18Even after they leave the group, people will suffer with this for a long time.
18:23What's coming to mind is, you know, I was, when I was in YWAM, I was back for a few months and I went into a store and I wanted to get a CD.
18:33And I had this, this like flailing thought that's like, I don't want you to get that.
18:39And I was like, wait, is that God telling me?
18:42God doesn't want me to get that?
18:43Is that me saying I shouldn't spend money on this?
18:46And I got the CD and I sat in the car in the parking lot sobbing and agonizing.
18:52Like, should I take this back?
18:53Should I not?
18:55And it was like that with so many things.
18:58And it was this idea that God was somehow micromanaging every single decision that I was doing and it was going to have dire consequences if I wasn't 100% obedient, whether I knew what it was or not.
19:13And so, I think that's where I keep using this word precarious because it's like, I don't personally think God probably cared if I got a CD or not, you know, but I was so, so, so afraid of it.
19:28And when you, when you don't have a solid relationship with yourself and you have all of these influences, it becomes, I would liken it almost to, and I don't mean this diagnostically, but there almost can be a schizophrenic aspect to it.
19:47Where you start to feel that there's so many different voices, there's so many different people inside your head, and that can feel really disorienting and really scary.
20:00And I think that that's a really common issue for a lot of folks in these worlds because it's talked about from the pulpit as if your leaders have a very easy time deciphering what the voice of God is.
20:16So, if you have any struggle or you're not really sure, then it just starts to spiral in on itself.
20:24Absolutely.
20:24You reminded me, I'm a music lover, and it's really odd because growing up, I could only play a certain genre of music, not even just simply gospel like you would think.
20:35It had to be a subset of gospel.
20:38So, as a musician, as an artist, it was like if I was a painter, I was being told I could only paint with the color green.
20:44And then after I left, it was a lot to explore, and I realized after I left that I had put myself in this musician's box that everybody else around me had grown, and they were so much better at music than I was.
20:58It took me a long time to catch up, and I'll never probably catch up.
21:02But whenever you're in that box and you're trying to be told that that is obedience, that is obedience to God, it has consequences that go far beyond even just human makeup.
21:13But the other thought that hit me is, once I did start to experience new music, one of the songs that shocked me so much because the band Kiss, everybody has put this weird label, Knights in Satan's Service, and all of this weird stuff.
21:29The band Kiss has a song called Beth, and the first time I heard it, I was like, this is so beautiful music.
21:36This is awesome, and it's not what you would expect from Kiss.
21:40And so I heard this music, and I realized at that moment that not only was I putting everything into this weird box, they had literally trained my brain to believe that it must be good or evil.
21:54It can't be just because it is.
21:57In other words, Kiss can't be of God, so it must be of the devil.
22:01Kiss can't, you know, they put all of these frames of reference, it's either black or white, good or bad, good or evil, angels or demons, and Kiss were the demons.
22:10And I started to realize that I don't like all of the Kiss songs, but there were a handful of songs I just really, really liked, and I started to listen to those in my playlist.
22:19Well, then I explored other music and other artists, and I realized that it's much the same.
22:24I was being told that it's like this gate that you can't open if they don't match your criteria that you are being trained to obedient for.
22:35And again, as an adult, I can't trust my own decisions on the music.
22:39I like, do I like this?
22:40I'm not supposed to like this.
22:42All of those thoughts are going through your head.
22:44And what's interesting is those were going through my head after I left, because when I was in it, I never even, I was so obedient, I never even wanted to explore that music.
22:54So I'm facing this as an adult, and out of the cult, post-cult, I was experiencing it at work in one of my clients, and they were listening to music, and I just got really excited.
23:07So they asked me, have you never heard this?
23:10We've heard this all of our lives.
23:11What's wrong with you?
23:13And I explained a little bit, you know, I didn't go too far, and they started giving me lists.
23:17Well, you've got to hear this song.
23:18You've got to hear this band.
23:19You've got to hear this.
23:19And so I was coming home with pages and pages and pages of music that I had to learn.
23:25Yeah, and I think about how stifling it can be for brains and for self-actualizing beings,
23:34especially when you have this special interest that you really love, and you're only able to do, like, 1% of it, or engage 1% of it,
23:44and how much of our human experience we don't get to have when we're in that world.
23:50And so I do think also that one of the impacts can be, if someone has been in that world for a very long time,
23:58and they start to question, or they start to doubt, or they start to think a different way,
24:04the amount of grief that they may end up going through or needing to go through
24:09to feel and move through the cost of being stifled for so many years,
24:18I think that some people reach a point where consciously or unconsciously,
24:23they actually decide not to question or not to challenge or not to leave.
24:29And I think one of the reasons is because they don't want to have to feel the grief that they will feel
24:37for the years, decades that they have missed when they've been living in these environments.
24:43And so it's almost like it would be more painful for me to know what I've been missing out on
24:48than to just keep burying my head in the sand.
24:51And for me, that is just, I can honor and respect someone making that choice,
24:57and it's such a devastating choice for me when someone decides to do that
25:01and not go through the grief of what it is to leave these worlds.
25:08Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started,
25:11or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,
25:17charismatic, and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?
25:21You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
25:26william-branham.org.
25:29On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
25:34Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,
25:38with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
25:43You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
25:49If you want to contribute to the cause,
25:52you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
25:56And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
26:02On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
26:07So let's talk a little bit about urgency.
26:11One of the things, one of the reasons why I was so excited for you to come on and talk about Youth with a Mission
26:16is that I received, long before you even contacted me,
26:21I've been receiving emails constantly about YWAM asking,
26:25is it a cult? Is it a cult?
26:26And it's really hard to put a label on something that is so diverse.
26:32Even for the Branhamites, for the Branham message,
26:35it was really difficult for me to come to terms that it was a cult.
26:38It was a destructive cult because there are so many different units within Branhamism,
26:43different branches, different sects.
26:45Some of the sects are somewhat benign.
26:48Some of them are very destructive.
26:50And so how do you label something like this?
26:52But one of the things that made me come to terms with the fact that it was a highly destructive cult
26:59was the manufactured sense of urgency.
27:02It was a doomsday cult.
27:03We had different doomsday dates that was being pushed out, like kicking a can.
27:09And then what happened is when the last one failed and our cult leader died,
27:13the leaders would say things like,
27:15we're living on borrowed time.
27:16We were supposed to have died back then.
27:19The rapture could come any day.
27:21God could come any day.
27:22You must be obedient because if you're not,
27:26you're going to be one of the ones that's doomed.
27:28And we're going to actually walk out on your ashes.
27:31And they had all of these insulting words,
27:33like in phrases like cannon fodder,
27:35different things that we would say to the people who we were going to either kill
27:39or who would be killed.
27:41So there was this manufactured sense of urgency.
27:43And I look back after leaving,
27:47and I mentioned I talked to a few different people and gave them basic details.
27:50The first question always asked is,
27:53well,
27:53why did you submit to that?
27:54That's nonsense.
27:56And you really can't fathom how difficult it was not to submit to it while under that urgency.
28:02Did they have a similar manufactured urgency in youth with a mission?
28:07Yeah.
28:08I find myself first just like taking a moment and being like,
28:11oh,
28:12just,
28:13oh,
28:14it never ceases to amaze me when we wade into these territories,
28:18what these worlds will create for our minds and our bodies.
28:23And that just sounds horrifying.
28:25And so I would say similar to the idea of obedience,
28:35there was a spin on it.
28:37So it wasn't doomsday necessarily,
28:40but one of the primary quote unquote reasons that YWAM exists is to fulfill the Great Commission,
28:49which was Jesus saying to his disciples,
28:52go and create disciples of all nations,
28:56baptizing me.
28:57And so we took that to say Jesus was talking to us.
29:01We were supposed to go and make disciples of all nations.
29:05And the idea was that as soon as the Great Commission was fulfilled,
29:10Jesus would be coming back.
29:12And so there was constantly this sense of like,
29:15what if this village is the last village that's never heard of Jesus,
29:19even though we were in places where people had heard of Jesus for centuries,
29:22you know?
29:23But the idea and the frenzy around it was,
29:29you know,
29:29and I remember I would be on airplanes and I would just sit there like with my Bible open,
29:36maybe reading it,
29:37but mostly just hoping that the person next to me would ask me about it,
29:41or maybe I would bring up a conversation with them.
29:43And any time I left any interaction and I hadn't quote unquote preached to the gospel to someone,
29:51I felt immense shame and immense guilt.
29:55And I was like,
29:55what if that was the person that needed to accept Jesus and then he was going to come back?
30:00And so there really was this sense of,
30:03you need to go and make disciples of all people.
30:06And you always need to be hypervigilant about who the people around you are that are lost.
30:11And so,
30:13you know,
30:13I could never be around family or friends and just be,
30:18you know,
30:19I always had the sense of how do I manipulate this into them asking me about missions and me telling them how great Jesus is.
30:28And it was just,
30:28and people always became a project.
30:31And so it was a really hard time to have just genuine authentic relationships because I saw everyone as sort of an ends to,
30:40a means to an end for their salvation,
30:43but really it boiled down to my salvation.
30:45And if I just did the right things and said the right things,
30:49then I would have a bigger crown in heaven or God would give me a more special place.
30:54And so there was so much of this energy around eternity.
31:01And,
31:01you know,
31:02the often what got quoted was Paul saying,
31:05our light and momentary suffering is nothing compared to the glory that awaits us.
31:09And so there was always this sense of,
31:13you know,
31:13I would be in worship services most often,
31:17like in a puddle on the ground because I was so exhausted.
31:21I was so overwhelmed.
31:21I was not doing well.
31:23And everyone would just say like,
31:25you're doing good.
31:26You're doing God's will.
31:27This is exactly where you need to be.
31:29And so it just was this kind of happy spin on a sense of urgency.
31:38And,
31:38and I do think,
31:39you know,
31:39it's maybe part of the complexity is that it is a lot of different things,
31:47you know,
31:48and I do think that there are people who go do their gap year and then go to college and maybe had a good experience and liked the countries they went to.
31:55But I do think it is different as soon as you maybe join staff on a place or as soon as you kind of find yourself in more of these inner circles,
32:06that there becomes more and more of a control around your life and the decisions that you have.
32:13Absolutely.
32:14At some point,
32:16and I have this in my long list of things I want to ask you,
32:19but at some point I want to go through some of the loaded language that Youth with a Mission had.
32:23I get all of these emails from all different kinds of cults.
32:28And so when people send me these phrases,
32:30I can sometimes detect when they use the phrase,
32:33if the,
32:34if it's not used in a natural flow of words,
32:37I can sometimes detect it's loaded language.
32:40And one of the questions I had with youth with a mission in particular,
32:44when they mentioned the great commission,
32:46it's almost as though that that phrase has been overloaded to mean far more than what it means in the Bible.
32:52And if I remember correctly,
32:54somebody said that there was,
32:55there was a date that it was supposed to happen by like,
32:59was it 2030 or something like this is all of that.
33:03Is this loaded language?
33:04Is there some sort of a date that they're looking for?
33:07I don't remember a date.
33:08I would not be surprised if there were certain people in YWAM and certain bases that said there was a date,
33:15but it,
33:16it was,
33:18it was all encompassing.
33:21And my sense is that if you looked at probably any random YWAM bases website,
33:26it would probably have the great commission on the first page that you look,
33:31because it is so much a part of what the founder,
33:36Lauren Cunningham,
33:37and then subsequent people said that they were,
33:40they were fulfilling,
33:41they were fulfilling the great commission,
33:43even though,
33:44you know,
33:45that was said in a very specific context to very specific people.
33:49And yet that verse was taken to mean Jesus was talking to us.
33:55And so 2000 years later,
33:57we're going to listen to him and do what,
33:59you know,
34:00the 11 men who were around him didn't do.
34:04And that goes back to something I've been,
34:06I've been trying to unpack so that people can understand it.
34:09When British Israelism came into the movement and people were trying to take specific passages from the Old Testament and say that this applies to us today,
34:19they would call it prophetic scriptures.
34:21This is a prophetic scripture.
34:22They're writing about who knows Russia or whatever in today's world,
34:27which isn't at all the truth.
34:29It was written to an ancient people.
34:32Well,
34:33over time,
34:33what happened is because if you can do that to the Old Testament,
34:36why can't you do the same thing to the new?
34:38And people would do that.
34:40They would take the New Testament passages out of context,
34:43apply it to certain things.
34:44And to some extent,
34:46it's legitimate because if Paul is given an instruction that you need to be kind to the widows,
34:52for example,
34:53well,
34:53that's something that you carry forward.
34:55But there were specific things like you're talking about that it's kind of a,
34:59gray area,
35:00go,
35:00go and make disciples of all nations.
35:02Does that really mean everybody who becomes a disciple should also make disciples of all nations?
35:08So that's that gray area where I'm not going to get into that debate.
35:12Some Christians believe it.
35:13Some Christians don't.
35:14But within the realm of that is the problem that what happens in these movements when they start to use one of those phrases over and over again,
35:24they'll start packing new things into what is the Great Commission.
35:27So the Great Commission itself becomes much broader than what it was simply stated in Scripture.
35:32Is that the case with Youth with a Mission?
35:34Yeah,
35:36because I don't think you can separate Youth with a Mission without dominionism.
35:42And so,
35:43the Great Commission isn't just make disciples,
35:46it is make leaders in the seven mountain mandates of society.
35:52And I do think it is sort of an all roads lead to Christofascism in a sense that what we're ultimately looking for is having our ideals as what we think people should live like in these very specific interpretations of Scripture.
36:15And we should be applying them to all people in all contexts.
36:20And so,
36:21you know,
36:22when I was on my DTS outreach in Thailand and Malaysia,
36:26we spent many days like prayer walking around Buddhist temples and like proclaiming spiritual warfare to these lands and saying like,
36:38we're going to tear down the spirit of Buddhism in Thailand and Malaysia.
36:43And it was always this sense of so that Christians can take their rightful place as leaders of these countries where it was illegal to be proselytizing and doing what we were doing.
37:00And yet there was no sense of respect for other nations' laws.
37:05Yeah.
37:06And that's the gray area where obedience,
37:11now what do you do?
37:12If it's violating a law,
37:14but the God figure is saying,
37:16I must be obedient,
37:17or I should say the proxy to God says,
37:20I must be obedient,
37:21then what do you do with this,
37:22right?
37:23And again,
37:24it comes back to the fact that when you do this,
37:26it breaks the will.
37:27And now you have the more complicated problem.
37:31We're talking about youth,
37:32youth with a mission.
37:33They are being raised in an environment where their will is continually being broken,
37:39much like mine was,
37:41maybe to some additional extent,
37:43because they're also separated from their parents.
37:45Whenever you're separated from your parents,
37:47now you must submit to the will because you must to survive.
37:51You must be with the people who are leading you.
37:53And what happens is over time,
37:56when you're in that type of environment,
37:58you stop making decisions for yourself.
38:01When we left the Branham cult,
38:05my wife will kill me for telling this,
38:07but there was a point of time in which we almost couldn't make a decision.
38:12Every decision that faces was just heavy.
38:15We were struggling with it.
38:17Even to the extent we would have long sessions trying to even figure out what meal are we going to fix for dinner.
38:23And I wrote this software program where my wife would come in and push a button on the keyboard and it would spin through and it would randomly generate the main course,
38:32the side dishes,
38:32et cetera.
38:33And it would come up with crazy things like let's eat spaghetti and okra or something like this,
38:38you know?
38:39So that's how bad it got.
38:42And that's just me in an environment where I was mostly self-brainwashed.
38:48I would go to the religion.
38:50I would go to the services.
38:52But then at home,
38:53I was listening to the recordings.
38:55I was reading the propaganda.
38:56I was brainwashing myself.
38:59I wasn't a child or a young teenager who's going off to a remote area away from their parents submitting to the people.
39:07I can't even imagine how many levels worse it would be for children that this is happening to.
39:14This is awful when I think through it.
39:17Yeah.
39:17And this is,
39:18it's interesting because I think it's also very complicated in that you have children leading children.
39:27And so there's also people who manipulate it in the other way.
39:32Like, I'm thinking about, I was 21, probably, leading a team of parents and their young, young children.
39:43Like, from one years old to six years old to a remote area in northern Uganda.
39:53And there was a couple on the team who didn't have kids that wanted to go out to this, like, party.
40:00And it was not a safe environment.
40:04And I was a 21-year-old.
40:05They were both older than I was.
40:07And I was like, no, you can't go to this party.
40:10Like, it is my responsibility to try to keep this team safe.
40:14And I remember the husband being like, well, God gives us free will.
40:18So we should be able to do what we want.
40:20And it was this weird thing where it was like, that's true.
40:25And, like, we are in such a precarious position.
40:29And I think that that's also kind of intentional, where it then kind of put me in a position to be authoritarian.
40:37And I was like, yes.
40:39And you can either choose to listen to me or you can go home back to the United States.
40:43Because I'm not going to have you on my team and not be listening to me.
40:48And I didn't love that.
40:51But at the same time, I was like, things have happened.
40:54Really horrible things have happened.
40:56And that's one of the things that YWAM doesn't talk about.
41:00Like, people have died on outreaches.
41:03People have gotten kidnapped.
41:05People have lost limbs.
41:07Like, people have gotten deathly ill.
41:08People have gotten lifelong diseases.
41:11Like, really horrible things happen.
41:14I think more common than people even think.
41:19Because it all gets kind of wrapped into a testimony.
41:24And like, wow, this is what happened.
41:25So look at how much God wants to use you because he let you go through this.
41:29And all of this gaslighting that I think, I think I've used this analogy before.
41:36That it really did feel like the Stanford Prison Experiment.
41:38Where it's like, even if I didn't want to be an authoritarian person.
41:41And all of a sudden, I'm like, no, you better listen to me.
41:45Because you're not going to go out in the middle of the night.
41:49In like, you know.
41:51And so it's just, it feels like it's such an impossible situation.
41:54And I think whether that is intentionally designed or not, I think it continues to foster this slipperiness of what is safety.
42:08How can I trust myself?
42:09How can I trust the people that I'm with?
42:11Yeah, absolutely.
42:13I know kids that that would just go straight to their head.
42:15And immediately, it would be a, there would be a problem child.
42:18So hopefully, there's some kind of a strategy to weed out the problem childs from leadership.
42:24But the whole thing is still, in my mind, it's still problematic.
42:28Because you're enabling this to happen.
42:32And yet, at the same time, there's a level of obedience that occurs just simply because they're away from their parents.
42:38And that gets added on top of all of the other obedience from the religious standpoint.
42:43Whenever I do podcasts talking about the complex problems within Christian environments, pseudo-Christian cults and environments, I get all of this negative feedback.
42:56Well, you've given all the problems.
42:57You haven't given any answers.
43:00And my answer is usually, well, go find a church.
43:03Go to a pastor and ask them.
43:05The interesting part about what we're doing is I get the same kind of feedback whenever we have conversations.
43:11In fact, I've got some from the last one we did.
43:13People are looking for answers, looking for help.
43:16But in many cases, they're indoctrinated such that if they go to a psychologist or a Christian counselor or even any kind of counselor,
43:26they're actually breaking out of the obedience training that they had.
43:31They can't go there.
43:32So I thought maybe I've mentioned a few things that are problematic that people suffer from in this.
43:37Maybe at the end of our conversation, we should probably talk about what do you do if you have thoughts that are spiraling out of control?
43:44Because this is one of the most common things for people who leave a cult.
43:49They have runaway thoughts.
43:51And for me, learning how to ground myself, and there are techniques that you can do, it really changed my life.
43:59Whenever you're spiraling out of control, you almost can't function.
44:02What are your thoughts on talking through just some helpful tips?
44:05Absolutely.
44:07Yeah, I think that's a great point.
44:09Very valid.
44:12I use this phrase a lot with my clients that we are feeling beings who think, not thinking beings who feel.
44:21And the idea of that is that most of what we think is based on the messages we're receiving from our nervous system and from our body.
44:30And so another way to say that is we can't often think ourselves into a state of rest.
44:38But we can do things in our bodies that can hopefully allow us to feel a little bit safer.
44:45And so one of my favorites is low and slow breathing.
44:53And so it's sending your breath all the way down through your nose, seeing if you can breathe into your belly.
44:59And then breathing out through your mouth as though you're breathing through a tiny coffee straw.
45:06And so you're letting your breath take as long as possible.
45:10And the reason for this is that our exhale triggers our parasympathetic nervous system, which is our rest and digest system.
45:18So we actually want to try to have a longer exhale and then inhale.
45:24And then if we breathe in all the way down to our belly, we're telling our enteric nervous system in our gut and we're telling our vagus nerve,
45:34I'm not being chased by a lion.
45:36I'm not needing to run away from something.
45:38It's okay for me to settle.
45:40But what I like to tell people is that this might take time.
45:43Like this is a practice.
45:45You know, I have been out of YWAM for over a decade now.
45:49And I still use these techniques to help myself calm down, to learn how to become in the present moment.
45:58And so I would say taking 10 low and slow breaths could be a really good place to start.
46:05I'm also a huge fan of using, if you are a seeing person, using your eyes to just roam around your space.
46:14And I like to imagine that, you know, my eyes are like a little kite and my head is like the string of the kite.
46:24So a lot of times we might be used to moving our eyes in our head.
46:29But if we let our eyes take the lead and start to kind of roam around, that can also start to settle our nervous system.
46:38And if we use our eyes to look around where we are, it actually inhibits our default mode network, which is the part of our brain that ruminates.
46:50And so research has shown that that part of our brain actually gets quieted down when we kind of, I like to say, imagine you're a toddler in a room for the first time.
47:01And your eyes are just like, what's that?
47:03What's that?
47:04What's that?
47:06And if I could give a shameless plug, this is also partly why I've created my online movement studio,
47:15where I literally have hundreds of hours of movement and mindfulness practices and breathing exercises.
47:22Because I think our bodies have suffered the most in these systems.
47:27So if you are listening and you're like, I need more of this, I can't just listen to this and do this.
47:32Come check out the Indwell Online Movement Studio.
47:35Because I think that that, I know that that has been a support for a lot of people coming out of these religious systems.
47:42That's who I mostly created it for.
47:45Absolutely.
47:46I've not done yours, obviously, but whenever I started, I struggled with this.
47:51I struggled heavily.
47:53And I just started reading because I'm a researcher.
47:55I wanted to know, okay, this is a problem.
47:57It can't be a unique problem.
47:59How do I conquer it?
48:01And I can assure the people who are listening that the breathing techniques, it's one of the many tools that you can use.
48:07And it is great, especially for those who struggle with sleep.
48:11When you struggle with sleep, the breathing techniques, essentially what you're doing is you're telling your brain to stop thinking about the thing that's spiraling out of control.
48:20Let's think about something else.
48:21Let's think about your breathing.
48:23And usually there are other techniques for me I would also focus on, as I was breathing, I would try to focus on some other thought that is, you know, brings me to a happy place.
48:33The other thing that we've mentioned is the decision-making problem with – it is the biggest consequence of this obedience type of indoctrination.
48:43People cannot make decisions for themselves after leaving it.
48:47And one of – you'll have your techniques, I'm certain, and I'll let you get there.
48:51But the thing that works for me is quite funny.
48:54Whenever I started trying to break free from that way of thinking, I would just take the most absurd thing that I would never do, something – obviously pick something that's legal and it's not going to harm you.
49:06But pick something that you would just never, ever do and force yourself to go do it.
49:11Because then you're showing yourself that you can make a decision.
49:14You can – I can choose to do this thing.
49:17I may not like it, but I chose to do it, and I can choose to decide whether I like it or not later.
49:22The thing that we did, we – and my wife will probably kill me for this, but I took her to this – we've got a casino boat here in New Albany, Indiana.
49:36So out of the blue, I took her – we're going to go to the casino, and we're going to play one slot.
49:42I'm not a gambler.
49:44I hate it.
49:44I hated the whole idea of going to a casino because it goes against everything that I believe in, not from a religious standpoint,
49:51just because I'm not a person who wastes money.
49:54So we did.
49:55We went through all of the layers of the levels of this boat, and we found the penny slots, and I put a dollar in and lost a dollar,
50:02like you're going to do if you go to a casino.
50:05I'm not recommending that people go to a casino.
50:07But the experience was that, okay, I did this.
50:11I decided to do this.
50:13I absolutely hated it when I was there.
50:15I looked around at all of the faces of the people who are addicted to gambling.
50:19I absolutely did not enjoy looking at anybody who's addicted because half of the crowd is addicted.
50:25But I did this, and now I know that I don't like to do this ever again, and we never did.
50:31I love that example.
50:35Yeah, I think that's what I would say is like, you've got some time to make up for.
50:43So let yourself go and explore.
50:46And I like to say, you know, toddlers don't learn to walk immediately.
50:52You might stumble, and you might find, no, I don't want to do that.
50:55You might discover something that you absolutely love, and you're like, wow, I wish I had found this 30 years sooner.
51:03For me, a huge help on my journey has been improv lessons.
51:10And I've just loved, like, one, it's really a practice of trusting your brain and your spontaneity and whatever comes up.
51:20And it's usually in a very supportive environment that you can take a risk, and you can say the silly thing or the mean thing or whatever comes to mind.
51:28And then the person across from you is going to yes and it, and they're going to come back.
51:32And so it's this thing of like, oh, my gosh, I can actually, like, put on these characters that maybe I have been afraid to give voice to, give airtime to,
51:43in a way that is playful and safe and consensual and supportive.
51:48And so I'm a huge, huge fan of improv, and as a way to explore maybe the different parts of your personality and your style of relating
52:00that you haven't been able to explore in these worlds that you've been living in.
52:07And there are hundreds of other techniques.
52:09Like people, like you said, people can go to your website.
52:11You can also just do some Google searches and just find techniques for mental health issues, and you'll find all kinds of things.
52:18That's where I began.
52:20I ended up reading a few books, and I don't recall the names of them.
52:24I would give the names, but this is something that you can do self-help.
52:28If you need a therapist, I recommend you go get a therapist because it's much easier than I thought whenever I went my first time.
52:35I, too, was indoctrinated to think this is where you get a demon, and I go, and they're just an average person like me wanting to help me.
52:42Same as going to a doctor.
52:44It's just a doctor for your head.
52:45So highly recommend it if you need it, and you can overcome this after leaving.
52:51So this is the good part.
52:53You can get over this, get past this.
52:55So, like I said, I'm so excited to talk to you and learn more about Youth with a Mission and all of the things that we're bringing up.
53:03It's bringing back memories of whenever I was in the group and then started to escape.
53:08I feel a lot healthier than I did back then, and I'm hoping that people can listen to us and get healthy just the same.
53:17Agreed.
53:17Yeah.
53:18I often tell my clients I wouldn't be in the line of work I do if I didn't think healing was possible,
53:24because it is hard to sit all day in these difficult spaces.
53:29And, you know, I've been a therapist for 10 years now, and I've seen dozens of clients work through exactly what we're talking about.
53:38And so, while I think it's really important to talk about the difficult things, I also appreciate you bringing it around.
53:48And, like, yes, we're also doing this because there is another side to these worlds that you've been navigating and moving through.
53:56Absolutely.
53:57Well, hopefully somebody has heard something that can bring them to the other side.
54:00So thank you so much for doing this.
54:02Yes.
54:03Thanks so much for having me.
54:04Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
54:08You can find us at william-branham.org and indwellmovement.com.
54:12For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion,
54:17From Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
54:21Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
54:51Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
55:21Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Inheritory, from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
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