From Word Of Faith To Deliverance Trauma: A Survivor’s Story | Podcast Episode 585 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John and Candice explore the long-term spiritual and psychological impact of Word of Faith teaching, Christ for the Nations culture, and extreme deliverance ministry. Candice shares her journey from charismatic enthusiasm in the late 1970s through decades of performance-driven faith, idolizing "God's generals," and eventually entering a highly controlling deliverance environment that revolved around demons, witchcraft, and spiritual fear.  This conversation examines how authoritarian leadership, fear-based theology, and unrealistic expectations of constant blessing can damage faith and identity. Together, they discuss trauma, spiritual manipulation, angelic visitation claims, and what recovery looks like after leaving high-control charismatic movements. It is a candid reflection on discernment, sovereignty, healing, and learning to read Scripture in context after years inside Word of Faith and NAR-influenced environments.  00:00 Introduction 01:23 Candace’s Background and Early Charismatic Experience 07:53 Arriving at Christ for the Nations 09:05 Word of Faith and the Idolatry of Leaders 16:38 The Damage of Hero Worship and False Models of Power 19:33 Returning to Christ for the Nations in 2000 25:29 Losing Hope After the Second Experience 29:00 How Deliverance Ministry Pulled Her Back In 30:36 Dark Times, Shame, and Spiritual Isolation 33:45 Entering an Extreme Deliverance Ministry 40:07 Fear, Control, and Everyday Superstition 46:20 Trauma Ignored and Replaced With Demon Narratives 49:02 Paranoia, Suppression, and Emotional Collapse 53:26 Angel Visitations and the Breaking Point 55:23 Recovery, Scripture, and Learning to Question  ______________________ 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

Transcript

00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.

00:35I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research

00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Candice Prentiss, former

00:45member of Christ for the Nations.

00:48Candice, it's good to have you on and to finally talk through your story.

00:51I mentioned this in email.

00:53I've been really wanting to get more people out of Christ for the Nations because that

00:57is the central hub for generating everything that we see today, and not many people realize

01:03it, but when you understand its history, where it came from, how it's connected to Branham,

01:09what they did after Branham grew and developed a movement, this became a generator of heroes

01:16to, you know, some of them turned into hero worship, others turned out pretty good, but

01:21it's such a fascinating story.

01:23I'm glad to have you on, so maybe if you could start and just tell everybody a little

01:26bit about yourself.

01:27I am Candice, and I'm retired.

01:30My husband's retired, and we live on 10 acres in the country, and so I call us old stedders

01:36instead of homesteaders, and I garden.

01:39We have rabbits.

01:41I sow, do creative stuff.

01:43I teach a Bible study, and I just have my family and friends, and I'm not looking to

01:49start a ministry, but I do that, and I went to CFNI in the late 70s, and then I worked

01:57there in 2000, and then in 2018, I was part of a cultish deliverance ministry, and so this

02:04is what I'm going to talk about today.

02:06I think I'm a survivor, so last year, 2025, was really when the false nature of word of

02:15faith began to kind of get in my mind, and I'd already been sorting out my experience

02:21with this deliverance ministry, meaning I realized it was a bad thing, and then I wondered why

02:28I fell for it, and it wasn't until I started listening to your podcasts that I realized CFNI

02:36played a part in that, because before that, I didn't think CFNI had any negative impact

02:42on my spiritual life at all, and I think it did.

02:46So I began examining everything that I have learned over 48 years, and it was difficult

02:52because those teachings were like an integral part of me, and my thoughts and my opinions

02:58and my doctrine, even, I had trouble separating me from all the things that I had learned,

03:04but in the process of preparing for this podcast, which took me a month and a half, I began to

03:09see connections that I had not seen before, and I also need to make the observation that

03:15I have two minds, and I've noticed over the years that I have two minds.

03:19I have a rational brain that looks at things and says, that's just not making any sense, and

03:26then the irrational brain that goes, shh, don't think, things don't have to make sense, everything

03:32looks great, and so there was a big disconnect between the two.

03:37And so I'm just going to go back to the beginning and just talk a little bit about myself and

03:42how things came to be, and I wasn't raised in cultish churches, I went to a liberal Methodist

03:49church, and then a non-denominational church, and I loved church, because I love music, and

03:56I really like harmony, and I loved being in the choir, and so church and music were an

04:01escape for me, because I did have abuse in my background of several different kinds.

04:07And then my father disowned me when I was 18, so there were some troublesome things back

04:13then, but I got born again when I was in 1971, when I was a teenager. I don't know if

04:19it took,

04:20because nothing changed, because there was a lot of stuff going on. But then when I was

04:2420, in 1977, I was taking piano lessons, and my piano teacher invited me to her charismatic

04:31church, and I got the baptism in the Holy Spirit. And what's really interesting is I had

04:38no emotion at all. I didn't fall on the floor, I didn't writhe all over the place, I didn't

04:43scream in tongues, I just repented. And the change in me was night to day, and it was an

04:51amazing change, and it goes to show that you don't have to get emotional for God to do stuff.

04:56So then I started getting involved in church, and in the charismatic churches. And at the time,

05:05there was sort of this hippie excitement about Jesus, I think it was the end of the charismatic

05:10renewal. And we had Bible studies in people's homes. And they were interesting, because we sang

05:18scripture choruses. And I played the guitar, not well, but I played the guitar, and the chords

05:24were one, four, and five chords with an occasional minor. And so I could do that. And I really did

05:29enjoy that, because I could hear the voices, I could hear harmony. At the same time,

05:35there were really weird people. And there are always weird people. And this emphasis on

05:42supernatural experiences. One study that I attended, one Bible study, was led by this woman

05:48who would sit at her desk and empty her mind and receive automatic writing from God to teach

05:55at the Bible study. No one said a word about it. I didn't know that was occult practice back

06:00then. Weird. Another lady threw her glasses on the floor and stomped on them in faith so that her

06:07eyes would get healed. And she had to get new glasses. And then cassette tapes, of course, of Kenneth

06:14Copeland were making the rounds. And this guy named Frank Hammond came out with his book, Pigs in the

06:20Parlor. And that was pretty popular, too. So that's kind of where, for me, the weird thing sort of started

06:27right from the beginning. You know, I envy you in a way. You mentioned you had two minds. I wish

06:32I had

06:32two. I've only got the critical one. You've only got the critical one. Yeah. Now, whenever I was in

06:38the thing, you know, I suppressed it. I think you're reading Dr. Stephen Hassan's book,

06:43Combating Cult Mind Control. Great book if you haven't read it. But it talks about how the cult identity

06:50suppresses the authentic self. My authentic self has a critical mind that is off the charts.

06:55But while I was in the cult, it was compressing that idea in my head. And I was only allowed

07:02to

07:02be oppressed, I guess is the best way to put it. And so all of the funny things that you're

07:07mentioning, I did not smash my glasses, but I did other things like you're talking about,

07:11because that's exactly how we grew up in that world. Right. And I think my critical mind did get

07:18oppressed a little later on. I'll talk about that. It's kind of odd how that happens.

07:24And that book is good, by the way. I met my now ex-husband at a charismatic church,

07:30and he had one of those amazing, phenomenal testimonies that people sometimes write books

07:36about. And I was so glowy-eyed about this, you know. But it is my opinion now, and I think

07:42it's

07:42biblical, that new believers should be encouraged to sit down and learn and maybe get counseling

07:47before they are platformed on a local speaking circuit. And he was platformed. Full gospel

07:54businessmen, all of those things. He did that. So right after we got married, we headed off

08:00to Dallas, to the promised land, to Christ for the nations. And this was 1978. I think it

08:06was about four years after Gordon Lindsay passed away, the founder. And my ex-husband wanted to go

08:11into the ministry. And so I had no previous disciplined Bible study in my life. I barely

08:19knew the order of the Gospels at that time. And so I thought Luke was one of Jesus' disciples.

08:25And I was ripe then for anything that came my way. And I have to say, there were some really

08:31good

08:31things about Christ for the nations then. What I call, again, that hippie Jesus exuberance. And I

08:37don't think it was just my age. I think it really was the way things were. People were just excited

08:45about God there. And there was a choir, not just the worship team. There was a choir. So I got

08:51to

08:51be part of the choir. And I had some good classes, like New Testament Survey and Biblical Archaeology.

08:57And I learned a lot from those classes. Dennis Lindsay, Gordon Lindsay's son, taught a class called

09:03Biblical Creationism. And that was very interesting as well. But at the same time, there were two major

09:10false beliefs that I learned there that I think became the core of what you could call my religion

09:16from that point on. And those, I believe, contributed to me falling prey to an abuse of deliverance ministry

09:23later on. Number one, word of faith doctrine, including lack of critical thinking, us and them

09:32mentality, the damaging belief that when things went wrong, it was all my fault because I didn't have

09:38enough faith. Number two, idolatry of God's generals, which led really to an idolatry of all anointed

09:48leadership. And that idolatry led me to desiring everything they had, the anointing and the power of

09:57the Holy Spirit and supernatural manifestations and all the things. So what I'd like to do is briefly

10:04address those two things as they apply to my experience. And then I'm going to talk about my

10:10second experience at Christ for the Nations and then the awful deliverance ministry.

10:15One of the things that I've been trying to bring out, and I'm doing it very slowly because this is

10:20something that to a lot of people, it's really offensive. Whenever the Lateran movement, the,

10:27you know, the post-World War II healing revival began to die out, there were leaders who began to

10:32realize that we had created an entertainment form of the gospel, and the stage personas were being

10:38worshipped far more than they should. And so they kind of shifted away from that, it was good. But they

10:44retained some of the negative attributes, such as there are leaders that called it the Moses model.

10:50Basically, we were leaving behind the showmanship that existed in the, in that revival. However, we

10:57like their authoritarian control because it empowers us. That's really what happened. So they went

11:02forward with the Moses model. And that became heavily influencing to several different streams of the

11:10charismatic movement. The shepherding movement, which was led by William Branham's campaign manager and

11:16partner, helped to organize the shepherding movement. And they created it basically as a hierarchy of

11:21authoritarian control that began to be adopted by several parts of the movement. But where it ended

11:28up is essentially, instead of a God's general that was an entertainer, like the post-World War II healing

11:33revival carnival style tent revivals, what they had instead was a God's general who was in power as a

11:40general. And that turns far more authoritarian, I think, than people realized.

11:45At CFNI, Word of Faith was presented as the way it ought to be. I guess that's the foundation that

11:50Gordon Lindsay taught. And as well as the teachings, of course, as the voice of healing ministers,

11:56we learned about them there. And that is where I began to accept Word of Faith as the way it

12:01should be.

12:03We were not taught critical thinking or to examine teaching in light of scripture in context. In fact,

12:09Gordon Lindsay's writings and all the voice of healing and Word of Faith ministers discouraged

12:13critical thinking. Not really in those words, but they implied that if you questioned, it equated

12:21lack of faith or disobedience to God or an attack by the devil. And questioning teaching or demanding

12:28evidence was considered a lack of maturity at best. And so I developed this belief that when things went

12:37wrong, it was my fault because I didn't have enough faith and I hadn't prayed enough or I hadn't spoken

12:43enough scripture to have the faith to get what I needed, or I must have made a negative confession.

12:50And according to Word of Faith doctrine, of course, when you don't have faith, you're in unbelief. And when

12:56you're in unbelief, you're in sin. And then you're a sinner and you don't have faith. And it is a

13:00never-ending

13:01merry-go-round of guilt and torment, or it was for me. And I, that was just a lot of

13:07pressure. It was

13:08really devastating to live under that. You know, I had lists of scriptures to pray over me and people

13:15and things and everything else. And sometimes they ended up sounding like mantras or incantations.

13:22And I tried to pray like the Word of Faith teachers, decreeing and naming and claiming and doing that.

13:29Eventually, I collected hundreds of dollars worth of books by all of the Word of Faith teachers.

13:35And I listened to them all the time so much that I could still give their testimonies for them.

13:41And yet, I didn't seem to have enough faith. And oddly then, for all my failures, there was this sort

13:50of pride that Word of Faith instilled. Like, I've got judgy about things, especially unbelieving

13:57believers, even though I wasn't healed myself. Actually, in my opinion now, Word of Faith feeds

14:04pride and ego. And it's because it's all about our efforts, what we can make happen by doing everything

14:11right. And so that kind of leads me to the next negative thing that I walked away from CF9 with,

14:18and that's putting people with so-called supernatural spiritual experiences on pedestals,

14:24which I had already done with my ex-husband. And we learned, of course, about the heroes of faith,

14:29Gordon Lindsay and John G. Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, Charles Parhams, A.A. Allen,

14:35all of the people called God's generals. We idolized these men and women, hoping that we might

14:43maybe someday be as super spiritual as they were, but probably not. And what these men and women

14:51taught was taken as gospel, really, at Christ for the Nations, and by me, up until last year.

14:59And I believed them because what they said, they said, you know. But the claims, like you keep talking

15:06about, they can't be substantiated. And yet Word of Faith people take these as fact because they said

15:14so. You know, I write books. I've got a few books out there. And my books are critical of different

15:19ministries trying to show how all of this ties together. So it's more of a history book. What

15:26these guys are writing in these movements is more than a history book because of the nature of Word of

15:32Faith and how it developed, they're writing it as such that it's a second book of Acts, or a third

15:38book, or a fourth book, or a fifth book of Acts. So when people read it, that mentality of that

15:43book

15:43is in their mind. They read it as though it is a book of Acts. Yet it's not biblical. It's

15:48not the

15:49Bible. Some of the things that they say may be biblical, but what they're trying to portray is,

15:54we're in a new situation, and this is just as good as the book of Acts. The problem is, it's

15:59really not.

16:00So if you read it and you get that mentality, well, you're taking on, instead of taking the identity

16:07of Christ through the Bible, you're taking the identity of the author. And so if the author is a,

16:14if the author is just really rude to people, which I have a list of people who were in this

16:21movement,

16:21if they're really rude, you're going to take on that identity, and you're going to think it is

16:27godly, to be rude to another person in that way. Whereas if you read the Bible,

16:31it's talking about peace, humility, love your neighbor. So the identity is actually different.

16:36Dr. Absolutely. And I can see that. I can see that in the ministers that I've known,

16:42and who they follow. You can see they act just like them. I knew some of these people were flawed,

16:49because you can't cover up some of those things. But we were told that the good they did so far

16:55outweighed the bad. But discovering the extent of the lies and the deception and the cover-up that you

17:00have brought out, it was like a punch in the head of reality for me, including what I learned about

17:08Gordon Lindsay. I had no idea. He was like part of this golden glowing past of mine, and it was

17:16quite

17:16disturbing. In fact, one of your podcasts about him, last year, I got partially into it, and I had

17:22to turn it off, because I was so disturbed. But I thought, well, Candace, that's being kind of childish.

17:27You really need to listen to this. So I did. But we were not encouraged to examine a leader's

17:35character. Now you can't go back and examine these people in the past, but basically the fruit of the

17:39Holy Spirit, or the lack thereof. And based on my experience now, after 48 years, if you don't examine

17:46their character, you can get really hurt. So, you know, idolizing these so-called faith giants led me

17:55to wanting to have what they had or said they had, and that supernatural power and control and anointing.

18:03And I desperately wanted to be able to do all the things that they did, because I'm an intense person

18:08that way. And so, I had this belief, if I could just reach the certain pinnacle of faith, that germs

18:15would die in my hands, like they did in John G. Lake's hands, in his unsubstantiated testimony.

18:22And I would pray for people, and tumors would just roll out of them, and I would never get sick.

18:29And I

18:29could pray for people from a distance, and they'd fall over and get healed. You know, everything would be

18:34good if I could just work hard enough to have the faith to get that anointing. So, I really feel

18:42like

18:44it was like an abnormal life, in a lot of ways, because there were those beating drums.

18:51You know, you've got to do something really important for God. Being a mom, and a wife, and a housewife,

18:57that's not really enough. You've got to do more, and get out there, and God will bless you if you

19:02do

19:03more, and give more, and listen to more teaching. Confess more scripture. And I could never do enough.

19:11And I did give up sometimes, but then I'd always go back to Word of Faith. So, looking back, I

19:18think

19:18those are the beliefs that I got at Christ for the Nations. And like I said, I'm a little bit

19:24of an

19:24intense person. So, I'd take things and run with them. And these things continued to be fed by

19:30teachers that I followed. Now, when we left Christ for the Nations, my ex-husband was not called into

19:37the ministry. And that was a blow for him. And things were not quite the same for us after that.

19:45And there were 20 years between that first time at Christ for the Nations and the second time.

19:50And I'm not going to talk about things in those 20 years. There were a lot of things. But for

19:56the

19:57sake of time, I'm just going to move to the second time there.

20:01You know, whenever I first came across Gordon Lindsay, I had known him through Branhamism.

20:09Branham mentioned him frequently. I did not know the complexity of their relationship. I just knew him

20:15as Gordon Lindsay, the man who uplifted our prophet. And I was a little bit shocked to find out that

20:21he

20:21was the man who uplifted several other prophets and basically helped generate their ministries.

20:27That was the platform of Voice of Healing. When I first began to understand what he was doing was

20:34more of a business structure than a religious structure. And more than that, if you really get

20:41down deep into the structure that he was building, it was almost like a pyramid scheme. And he was at

20:47the

20:47top of the pyramid. So you had all these people who wanted to rise up to the pyramid. And the

20:53thought

20:53suddenly hit me. And I've actually not talked about this on the podcast. There's a point in time in which

20:58my grandfather got so excited to be one of these traveling revivalists. I've got some old photographs,

21:03which I won't put on the screen, but he wanted to be part of that, that entertainment industry. And

21:09it was a religious entertainment industry. Now, my grandfather's heart, I believe was right. He

21:14wanted to convert souls to Christ. But he also wanted to do it in this fashion. You know, you see

21:20all

21:20these traveling revivalists, the tents, look at the massive number of people that they're converting and

21:24healing. I think he really bought into it and believed it. I don't think, you know, if I look,

21:30examine later years of his life, I don't think he believed everything that he was taught because

21:34some of it was, he had to have known was fiction. He just had to have known. But there's a

21:39point in

21:40time in which this is appealing to the people, they get into it. And then once you get into it,

21:46it's

21:46never fulfilling. And so there are people who leave, and they leave trying to find something,

21:51they don't find what it is they're looking for, because they've already been influenced by the

21:56movement. So they leave for a period of time. And sadly, I've watched, in fact, I know people

22:01this has happened with, they've left for a period of time and went into something that was even worse.

22:05And when you go into something worse, well, now the cult looks better. So you go back to the cult.

22:10So this is a, you mentioned it like a merry-go-round. It is a cycle that continues to repeat

22:17over time.

22:18It really does. It really does. And I see that absolutely in my life, until now.

22:26I think I've jumped off the merry-go-round now. I'm really glad.

22:31I'm glad too.

22:33It was the year 2000 that we planned to go back to Christ for the Nations. You know,

22:38that was when the year was gonna, the world was gonna end during Y2K. But it didn't. So we planned

22:45to return once again to Christ for the Nations. Things had not been going well for us. And I really

22:50hoped if we could just get back to the land of faith and promise, maybe things would get better.

22:56And it was a hard transition, because we had to uproot our life. And it was a long life,

23:01and I had to give up my dog, because she couldn't come with us. And that still bothers me.

23:06But I knew, I felt like we were making this great sacrifice for our future. And I was desperate. I

23:14was desperate to heal my marriage and turn things around. So we headed to Dallas once again.

23:20At that time, Christ for the Nations had three schools of ministry that you could attend after

23:26your first two years. And my ex-husband was going to attend the pastoral school of ministry,

23:31and they had a one-year school of music or praise and worship or something, and then a one-year

23:35school of the prophets. And so while he went to school, I worked at the school as an admin in

23:42what

23:42was called student services. And I dealt with most of the departments. I never had anything to do with

23:49the Lindsay's, so I can't really speak about that. There were some nice people there, and there were also

23:53some very weird people there. But the atmosphere of the school had changed since the first time I was

24:00there. It seemed heavier. It didn't have that Jesus hippie thing going on. And I think from my viewpoint,

24:07looking back now, it had been NARD. N-A-R, indeed. Like that school of prophecy. I had not heard

24:15of a

24:15school of prophecy until I went there. And I thought it was weird, and my rational brain thought it was

24:22weird, because the New Testament doesn't have schools of prophecy. And the people were weird,

24:27because they just kind of floated around and prophesied over people. So I kept wondering,

24:34why, if prophecy is a gift, do we have to teach this? It still doesn't make sense to me.

24:42Another change that I had noticed is that honoring God's generals had morphed into this

24:48thing called being a servant, or putting all leaders on pedestal. And despite the school's

24:54reputation of being missionary-focused, when people talked about being a servant, it wasn't about a pastor

25:01serving the congregation or the church serving the community. It was about serving religious

25:07leadership and religious organizations. So I have to say, I have absolutely no good memories of my

25:15second time there. I hated it. I remember sitting outside our apartment wishing I wasn't there. I gave

25:21up my dog for that. And when we left, my ex-husband was not called into the ministry again.

25:26And at that point, we moved away, and something died. And preparing for this podcast, I finally

25:35realized what died was hope. I hadn't put two and two together before, and it's a terrible thing to

25:41lose hope. And I fell into a very dark hole, spiritually, backslid. And it's kind of strange that happened,

25:51because I've just been at Christ for the Nations. And really, I should have been on fire. I'm not

25:55blaming them. But I had a Christian veneer. But on the inside, I was in so much pain.

26:03At the same time, I had great success. I sold my first Christian cozy mystery series to a real

26:11publisher, because they had a short-lived cozy mystery line. And writing was an escape for me. I could

26:19enter a world of my own making, you know, happily ever afters with a few dead bodies along the way.

26:26And I could forget everything that was happening. And so my identity became Candace, the Christian

26:33author. And my editor also hired me to do acquisitions, editing, and do some content reviewing.

26:39And that's a really heady experience for a broken person. I had speaking engagements, conferences,

26:45stuff like that. But you know, success does not heal hurt. It just masks it. It's kind of like a

26:51scab

26:52over an infected wound. It just keeps weeping. And success feeds the ego, but it doesn't draw a person

26:58close to God. And on the surface, things looked good. But behind the scenes, I was a wreck. I was

27:05not

27:05walking with God. My marriage was ending, and I was in spiritual darkness. And you know what I never

27:11learned as a word of faith Christian was how to walk through dark times. Of course, if you're a word

27:18of faith person, you're not supposed to have dark times. I don't know. You're supposed to confess and

27:23believe and decree your way out of it. But I didn't have enough faith to overcome anything. Ended up

27:30divorced. But here's where my hero God comes in, because he's merciful, and he's so good, and he's so

27:40me. And after a number of years, I was blessed with a man I'm married to now.

27:45And he's stable, and he's good, and he's very kind. And our marriage gave me the peace to start

27:50to restore. And that phrase, word of faith, means nothing to him. The only time, he can hear me

27:58ramble sometimes or babble about word of faith. He has no idea what I'm talking about. And that's great,

28:04because he doesn't have all this false doctrine and beating drums in his head. But at the same time,

28:08I think it kind of puzzles him, because I don't think he can really comprehend how twisted my

28:14brain has been by all of these things. But for the first time in my adult life, there were not

28:20beating drums coming at me in the sense that the only important thing was the power and the anointing

28:27and what I could do with my faith. However, word of faith did not leave. It went underground.

28:33And I didn't recognize how ingrained I was in that belief system. And so over a period of eight years,

28:40I began to expand and grow, actually enjoying things about life, and without feeling guilty,

28:48because everything was my fault, that when bad things happened. And I was reading my Bible, and I

28:53was studying. And then we can cue the creepy music right here. I discovered deliverance and became

29:03convinced I needed it because of that period of time that I had backslidden. And that led me to

29:10this deliverance ministry that I was part of. And with that word of faith came creeping out of the

29:16recesses of my mind, because this deliverance minister was very word of faith and NAR. And all those

29:23lessons that I had learned at Christ for the Nations, including word of faith doctrine,

29:28idolatry of leadership, seeking supernatural experiences, along with some of the abuse from

29:34my past, I think, it made me susceptible. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started,

29:41or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic,

29:46and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on

29:53William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the

29:59website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,

30:06John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

30:11You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those

30:18movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking

30:23the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video

30:29version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research,

30:34we want to thank you for your support. I think one of the most important things that you mentioned

30:39was the dark times. I don't talk about it much because it is very extremely excessively painful

30:47for me. But we were in a ministry that taught you that whether you're in word of faith or divine

30:54healing or any form of this charismania, you're basically taught that God will always bless you

31:01and always give you good times. And when he doesn't, there's something wrong with you.

31:06And the problem is, when something happens, because we live in a world where things are going to

31:12happen, when something happens, you start to feel something's wrong with you. But worse than that,

31:17everybody who should be in your support group, who's in the church with you, they start to feel

31:22something's wrong with you. And so suddenly, you've got this scarlet letter of something's being wrong

31:27with you, right? I remember, I went through a series of very, very traumatic experiences.

31:34The darkest time possible. In fact, if not for a cousin who kept calling me to keep me alive,

31:40I would not be alive today. But it was such a dark time. And through all of that, I'm thinking,

31:47number one, I'm trained to believe something's wrong with me. What have I done? Why is it like

31:52this? And you start going through all of your faults. So your faults become amplified, right?

31:58And, and you don't find a way to overcome that. And so essentially, that that is really what led me

32:05out of the cult. But I wasn't prepared for what come next. Because once you leave that security

32:12blanket of all of these people that you rely upon, well, now every dark time you're wading through

32:17uncharted territory, and you're going to have dark times. So when people leave these cults, and they

32:23encounter a dark time, it puts them into a dark place. Whereas if you're in a normal, healthy

32:29church, and you're going through a dark time, even if you're the lowest sinner, you're going to have

32:33a group of people who support you, lift you up and say, Hey, you can do better than this.

32:37We can, we can help you through this, let us help you through this.

32:41We didn't have that when we're in this group. And that's because of the way that they have trained

32:46you to believe that everything can be spoken into existence through the word of faith,

32:52everything is blessed by God. In other words, every single thing that exists in life,

32:58that's going to happen to you, because it will, if you live in this earth, you're going to have bad

33:01things happen. All of that stuff is your fault. Just speak it and speak it and conquer it. And nobody

33:07can conquer it. That's the real problem here.

33:10I didn't go into the details about that dark time. But I had a moment like what you were talking

33:16about, that I just almost ended it. Because it is very dark. And I did blame myself because

33:25I was just a loser. So anyway, I'm going to move on here. You just kind of got me going

33:36there. I had a

33:37little bit of emotion because you kind of, I'm trying to avoid the emotions really, but you hit

33:43on some emotions there. I need to say, before I get into the details of this deliverance ministry,

33:49that this lady has passed away. And I'm going to refer to her as Lady Deliverance Minister.

33:55Looking back, this deliverance ministry, I have to say, was probably one of the most damaging

34:01experiences, religious experiences of my life. It just got worse. And I hear so much lately about

34:07the excesses of the prophetic and word of faith and all the other things. I think we need to hear

34:13more about the excesses of deliverance. And I have heard some, there were a couple of podcasts that

34:19I've heard, because I really want people to see how harmful and twisted this kind of ministry can be.

34:25And so I'm going to go into some details here, some of my details about my experiences.

34:32Now, I discovered this Lady Deliverance Minister when she taught a two-part series on witchcraft

34:37on somebody else's podcast. Witchcraft is a big deal in deliverance circles. And for her,

34:43it's a major big deal. And she knew a lot about witchcraft, a lot. She could have written books.

34:50She also had a doctorate. And I was impressed by both of those things. So in my mind, she knew

34:55all

34:56this stuff. And I could learn from her. And that's probably when the idolatry began. She had this daily

35:03morning podcast every single morning that I listened to religiously. There were some red flags early on,

35:11like her very, very harsh personality. And she said she had to be harsh because she was always dealing

35:16with demons. And then there was this constant focus in her podcast on the demonic and on witchcraft.

35:23And at the time, I didn't really view this as wrong. And in the meantime, being the kind of person

35:30that

35:30I am, I began to study everything that I could about deliverance, because I'm like that. And I bought books,

35:37and I listened to all these podcasts. And I listened to all these podcasts. You know, there's some really,

35:41really weird people out there. And oddly, maybe not so oddly, after I started doing all that,

35:48I began to have demonic manifestations in my home and weird stuff. And at the time, I thought that

35:57confirmed that I needed deliverance. And now I think it's me concentrating on all of that dark stuff,

36:05kind of maybe open spiritual doors. I can't explain this. But it's like, if you ask them to come,

36:11will they come? I don't know. They like to put on boogie boogie scary shows. So maybe it's just all

36:17deception. But after about six months after I started listening to her, she invited me to her

36:23healing home for personal deliverance. I still needed deliverance after six months. And so the first day I

36:31was there, we sat in her office and talked for hours. I talked for hours. And it was very flattering.

36:36It's very flattering when somebody gives you that much attention hours. And so I went from everything

36:42from when I was could remember until that point. And she was extremely kind that day, very. I remember

36:50thinking, this is not the same lady I've been listening to on the podcast. She was so nice to me.

36:56And then the next day, she called me back to her office. And she said she'd heard from God

37:00about what I needed deliverance from. And she sat me down and she said,

37:05who's the witch in your life? And I'm like, I don't know. But the only person I could think about

37:13was

37:14this holistic nurse practitioner that I had been seeing periodically, who was new agey, but she didn't

37:22do like woo woo stuff over me. But anyway, I said that and lady deliverance minister said,

37:27that's the one. And so she demanded that I cough that witchcraft spirit up. And she's like, kind of

37:34in my face doing this. At the time, I wanted to be convinced that I had been delivered of something.

37:41But now I don't believe that there is so much pressure in that kind of thing. You've got somebody

37:47right in your face saying, cough it up, come out, you come out of her. And if you say anything

37:55wrong,

37:56they're going to start talking to the demon in you. And it's kind of scary. And if a minister has

38:01a powerful personality like this lady did, it's difficult. I've mentioned this a few times,

38:07I'm just fascinated with psychology. And I don't mean to offend people who believe in a wild world of

38:15angels and demons that exist today. I'm not speaking against ill against that. But what you

38:20just described is cold reading. If you understand how cold reading works, you tell people, you get

38:26them very anxious, you get them very excited. You don't tell them the source of their trouble. But you

38:32let them reveal it to you. And then suddenly, that's it. That's the one that's the one I saw.

38:36That's how cold reading works. Right. And I watch I'm a big fan of science fiction. I just watched a

38:42science fiction movie where there was a carnival where the guy was doing that. And that was part

38:46of his scheme. And I got to thinking about how similar that carnival was to this religion.

38:51And that that led me down this whole wide array of problems. But the other thing that I want to

38:57mention, I know people who otherwise had they not been in the religion, they probably would have

39:03been mentally healthy. They didn't have any sort of, you know, bipolar or anything like this.

39:08But the movement builds you up with such anxiety that if you can convince them to have a demon

39:14while they're in that state of anxiety, they're going to go home and they may even see it. In fact,

39:19I hate to say this. I'll try not to say enough that he can be recognized. But this one person,

39:26he got in that state and he went home and he said it was like the spider demon. It went

39:30right up the wall.

39:31And, you know, he's telling me this then. And I'm thinking that doesn't really sound real.

39:37I think I've seen that one. I'm not joking.

39:39Is it real? I don't know. I'm not here to say, but I do know that if you can get

39:43somebody to that

39:44psychological state, you can make them think that they have seen it, whether they have or not.

39:49And that's, I'm not saying that it was real. I just know that I know exactly what you're talking

39:54about because you hear it over and over and over again on these podcasts. You hear about all these

39:59demons. Aren't you going to see them? Yeah. The interesting thing about this is, you know,

40:07if you recall, I had abuse in my background and that caused me trauma. She didn't address that at all.

40:15Even after I told her all about it, it was all about witchcraft. And so when I got home from

40:21this

40:21session, she called me and she said, now I can work with you. And I guess that's because I had

40:26been

40:26delivered from the demon witchcraft goodies or something. And so she started sending me her

40:32writing to edit. She used to write all the time. She never published anything, but she'd write these

40:37little booklets and she just wanted me to fix them for her. And I could, so I did. And I

40:43was flattered

40:44by her request because it meant I could be part of her ministry. And it also fed my ego

40:51because I got to see her stuff before anybody else did. And so I thought that I could be part

40:58of the inner circle. And I was about as inner circle as you could get, but the nobody was really

41:04inner circle because she wasn't accountable to anybody. And nobody knew everything that she was

41:09doing. And the circle moved depending on the day and what you had done really. Now, most of the time,

41:16her podcasts were about demons, uh, how we got victory over demons, spiritual warfare,

41:23and of course, witchcraft. And I still had all the word of faith naming, claiming and decreeing going

41:29on. But on top of that, I was learning how to rebuke and bind whatever those things were that I

41:34would

41:34see. And it was still my fault when things went wrong. And so, you know, looking back,

41:42what she called discernment looked more like fear or superstition. And I began to have the same kind

41:49of fear. She saw evil everywhere. And she, she instilled that in me, and I'm sure in other people.

41:57And to me, this is one of the dangers of extreme deliverance ministry, this total concentration on

42:04the dark side. How can you not be afraid? One day, one, one week, I was watching my neighbor's cats.

42:11They went on vacation, and they had two adult cats and a kitten. And I like kittens. So I brought

42:16it to

42:16my house to let it play so I could watch it. And she found out because I told her, because

42:21I told her

42:21everything. And she said, Oh, you don't want to do that. You're going to bring a demon in the house.

42:27And at that point, I didn't believe it, because I'd been doing it for three days. But I just,

42:32I let it pass. Even though I didn't believe her, I let it pass. She believed that objects like jewelry

42:39and food could carry witchcraft, spirits, and curses. And we needed a revelation from God, really,

42:46in order to eat out or get jewelry from other people. And she even told us on the podcast,

42:52don't send me food, don't send me jewelry, just in case. And my question there is, are Christians really

42:59so susceptible to being jumped on by random demons from random people?

43:04You know, that's one of the questions that plagued me whenever I left. Because I was still,

43:09whenever I left the cult, I was very clear with my family, I'm not leaving Jesus. I'm leaving the,

43:16and I didn't call it a cult. I'm leaving this movement, basically. I was really troubled by that,

43:23because we started going to other churches. And they're telling us, they're basically preaching a

43:27side of the Bible that I had never heard before. I'd read it. But the way that they were preaching

43:31it, it was a way of telling you that there's comfort in Christ, there's protection in Christ.

43:36So I left the building with this feeling of security. And it suddenly hit me, why have I only

43:41had this now? I was 37 years old. Why is this the first time that I have security? And I

43:47started

43:47thinking, well, there's something wrong with this church. God's not supposed to protect you like this.

43:53You're supposed to be afraid. And I mean, it sounds stupid, but I started.

43:59Dr. Justin Marchegiani I understand.

44:00Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah, I read the Bible so

44:02many times trying to figure out what's wrong with this place. And I found out that they were more

44:06right. So, crazy story. Dr. Justin Marchegiani And I'm, that's, that is a good point. And I'm

44:14looking, we're looking right now, we just moved here recently. So we're looking for

44:18a church, just a normal church, like really normal. That's what I want.

44:25Dr. Justin Marchegiani You know, I think, oh, here's another story. When supposedly demon

44:30possessed people left her office, she had to cleanse the furniture they sat on. And she had a

44:37very deliberate order of ingredients she used to do this to get the demons out of the cushions.

44:42Dr. Justin Marchegiani I was there when she did it. So I'm not making this up. And I wonder,

44:47do demons really transfer through people's butts? I don't know. These things should have been red

44:52flags for me because that's weird. It's just weird. And all this concentration on demons made her

45:00suspicious of everyone and their motives, including me. And I was so totally dedicated to her ministry,

45:06I wouldn't have hurt her for the world. One day I asked her why she did her deliverance techniques

45:12the way she did because it was a little unusual. She accused me of trying to steal her deliverance

45:18techniques because God told her that's what I was doing. I was kind of stunned because it was

45:25irrational and paranoid. But she said God told her that. And I couldn't defend myself because she

45:32wouldn't listen to reason. And the irony is, I had all of her writing on my computer.

45:37I could have taken all of her stuff and rewritten it in my own voice and changed it around and

45:43stolen

45:44it. And that never occurred to her. Not that I would have done that, but it's just irrational,

45:49this fear.

45:51Darrell Bock It's so crazy because that sounds exactly like

45:53the television show I was mentioning. And I have to go back and look, but I think it might have

45:57been

45:58written by Stephen King. It was, I mean, it's so crazy the way that they do this stuff.

46:03Darrell Bock Yes.

46:03Darrell Bock It is not a Christian movement. Whenever you,

46:06when you're bringing that level of fear and demons and spiritualism, it's spiritualism really is what

46:11it is, but you're bringing something that's not Christian and you're branding it Christianity,

46:16which is really, really wrong.

46:18Darrell Bock And very harmful. Another time I traveled again to,

46:23and this was a 10 hour trip for me, by the way, to go get deliverance in person. And apparently,

46:29after two years of being part of her ministry, I still needed deliverance. During our session,

46:35she brought up a house that I had lived in when I was a little girl. And there were some

46:39really bad

46:40things that happened to me in that house. And so I thought, finally, we're going to deal with

46:44something that happened to me when I was little. No, no, no, no, no, not anything so rational. She said,

46:51I had a demon from a little Indian girl that had lived on that property centuries ago or a demon

46:58that the little girl had had or killed her or something. I don't remember. But how ridiculous

47:03it seems now. I thought it was ridiculous then. It really surprised me, but she's in my face.

47:09And she's telling me that demon, you come out of her, you come out of her and made me cough.

47:15I knew if I told her, I'm not doing this, it would, she would have been yelling at me,

47:21yelling at the demon in me because it would have been the demon talking to her. And so I just

47:26coughed.

47:27I just coughed it up, wailed a little bit and walked away. Why didn't I walk away from the ministry

47:34at that point? I let it slide even though that was so bogus. And I knew it was bogus.

47:41And isn't it odd? She never dealt with any of the real issues in my past. It was all strange

47:46demons

47:47and witchcraft. And to me, that is the danger of a deliverance ministry. Most of the time,

47:53recipients don't learn to deal with trauma. Instead, everything is a demon and you can just rebuke it.

48:00You can't rebuke trauma. So, I'm just going to give you a few more examples. I like growing plants

48:07and I grow herbs. And so I told her, because I tell her everything, I was going to make some

48:13tinctures and some salves. Well, she called me back and she said, God said, you can't do that

48:19because of the witchcraft in your background. Now, I was never a witch. That's something I never was.

48:25And contrary to that threat, I've been making herbal tinctures the last several years. And

48:33you know, amazingly, demons have not come storming into my house and taken over me and caused me to

48:39buy spell books and start practicing witchcraft. It was bogus. She had us do strange missions,

48:45like burying a Bible in a hole somewhere. And there were times I didn't do these things because I didn't

48:51want to, but I didn't tell her because she expected me to do them. At the time, I thought it

48:57was just

48:57kind of quirky. But there was no arguing with her. If you argued, you had a spirit of rebellion. If

49:04you

49:04got angry, you had a spirit of anger. You can't argue. And over this period of time, and it was

49:12a

49:13period of time, four years, she was getting more paranoid and more irrational. And my relationship

49:19with her was a seesaw. I was always guessing and I was always so off balance, but I kept trying

49:27to get

49:28in her good graces. And sometimes I'd be there and sometimes I wouldn't be there. It was up and down

49:33and all around. And what's really interesting to me is I never told my husband everything that was going

49:40on. She didn't tell me not to tell him. I don't understand this. I don't know if I was just

49:47accepting all of this as normal or whether I was avoiding telling him because I knew it wasn't. I

49:54don't know. He and I have talked about this recently and he's a little disturbed to find out the extent

50:00of what I experienced. One of the problems that people have when they're in the state of mind,

50:07they're trying to suppress what emotionally is trying to bubble up because that might be seen

50:14as a demon. And also the things that they're telling you that are evil, you need to stay away

50:20from those. That's a demon. What's happening essentially from a mental standpoint, you are

50:25suppressing your thoughts, which will eventually come out into an explosion. But before it does,

50:31there are people who sometimes disassociate. So you may have been in a mental state where you

50:36didn't even recognize some of the things that you were doing because mentally inside you were crying

50:44out. You needed help, but you couldn't get that help. Instead, what you had is somebody who kept

50:49suppressing your thoughts even further. Thank you for saying that because actually that helps me a lot.

50:55And I'm about to say this. I was losing myself during this time. I stopped writing. I stopped music.

51:03And I didn't see what was happening. I lost creativity. And I simply didn't have the energy

51:09or the brain bandwidth to do the things that I really wanted to do. It was like I was being

51:14sucked into

51:15this black hole and everything was about her and her ministry and deliverance and demons and witchcraft.

51:22There was a really bad confrontation. Not that the others weren't bad, but we had one really bad one.

51:29It was as a result of a phone call that I had had with a lady from another deliverance ministry.

51:35I had known this lady just by phone for a little longer than lady deliverance minister.

51:42So we would just periodically talk about life in general. However, I happened to mention to lady

51:49deliverance ministry that I had talked to this woman and nuclear. She went nuclear. It was terrible.

51:56Of all of the abusive confrontations that I had experienced with her, this topped the list.

52:05She accused the other ministry of stealing things from her. She said I didn't need to talk to them

52:10about her, which I was not. And she kept emphasizing that I didn't know enough to be talking to them.

52:17And she went on and on and ranted and raved. That conversation left me so traumatized. It was like

52:25all I could see was white. It was the strangest thing. And it took me days to recover from that.

52:34I

52:35didn't leave. Now in the last few months of her life, her paranoia and irrational behavior peaked. And she

52:42began to accuse people publicly on her podcast by name. Not just once, because she would do that on

52:50occasion, accuse people of things. But she would accuse people for weeks on end, talk about one

52:56person over and over for weeks. And looking back, I'm kind of amazed nobody sued her. They probably all

53:04felt like I did. But it instilled fear in me. Because I didn't want to be called out like that.

53:09And it was irrational. Because the reality was, I only knew one other person in that ministry. And

53:17that was somebody I had been at the healing home with. The rest of those people don't know me from

53:22a hill of beans. It wouldn't matter what she said about me. Then the thing happened that made me realize

53:29how deceived she was becoming. And this was a wake up call for me. And I'm glad. She told us

53:37on the

53:37podcast that she started getting daily morning visitations from an angel. The angel was coming

53:45and just talking to her every day and giving her sometimes messages to give to us on the podcast.

53:52And twice she said it was Gabriel. Now I knew enough at that point, thank God, to know enough about

53:59biblical behavior of angels in the Bible. And angels don't do that. They don't come and talk to us

54:05every morning like, let's have coffee together. And certainly not Gabriel. Certainly not Gabriel.

54:12I mean, you and I both know that Gabriel only spoke to three people. And one of them was Mary,

54:17and the other one, John the Baptist's father, and then Daniel. And she wasn't important enough

54:21for Gabriel. And I'm not. Nobody I know is. So personally, my opinion, looking back now,

54:30many people who claim angelic visitations like this are really caught up in pride. After all,

54:36they have an angel. In my opinion, it is absolute deception. This was not an angel of God.

54:43And whether it was a hallucination, or a demon manifesting, whatever it was, it was demonic. And

54:53I wanted no part of that. Because I didn't want to listen to what something like that said. And so,

54:59that was the kind of, it kind of slapped me. And I stopped listening to the podcasts.

55:04That's a lot to go through. And you and I, we share a lot in what you talk about in

55:09your history,

55:10not just with the, you know, we talked about the dark places that we went. But even though I was

55:16not in Word of Faith, we were in something that was very, very similar. So I relate to almost

55:20everything you said. How were you able to come out of this?

55:23Well, you know, she died. And it was an interesting thing, because when she died,

55:29my very first reaction was I had a great deal of relief. And then I went through a lot of

55:33emotions.

55:34But that began my opportunity to slowly recover. And I started to realize very quickly how,

55:45how deceptive it had all been. And like I said, last year was when I really started to wake up,

55:51too, from the Word of Faith. So now I am learning how to read scripture in context. And I am

55:59learning

56:00to question things, everything. I'm allowed to question things. I don't have to be afraid.

56:06And I'm working on getting past that unrealistic standard of perfection in Word of Faith, meaning

56:13my life has to be perfect or it's rotten, because the fact is there's nothing perfect. And often life is

56:20good and bad at the same time. So I'm learning to be able to see the good, even when things

56:26aren't

56:26going right. And I'm not panicking because the bad is my fault somehow, or there are demons,

56:32or there is witchcraft, and I need to just change everything by faith. I am moving past that. And I'm

56:39just very grateful for what God is doing, because I haven't thrown away my belief that He does miracles,

56:45or that He moves in supernatural ways. But we can't control Him. And that's probably the biggest thing

56:53that I have learned coming out of the Word of Faith. I can't demand that He do things, just because

56:58I

56:58quote enough scriptures to have enough faith. He's sovereign, and I'm not. And also remembering just

57:05how good He's been to me. I'll never forget, He didn't walk away from me when I backslid. And He's

57:11given

57:11me a new life, really, a new start. And I'm very grateful. I'm also grateful to be on this

57:17podcast, because preparing for this has clarified so many things in my mind. I am

57:24very appreciative.

57:25Darrell Bock Well, thank you so much for coming. It's a fascinating story. Like I said,

57:29I really wanted to have you on because of the Christ for Nations Institute, all of that history. But

57:34what you got into is so much more interesting. So thank you so much for doing this.

57:38Darrell Bock You're welcome. And again, I appreciate everything

57:41you do, too, because you really have helped me.

57:43Darrell Bock That's awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed

57:45our show and you want more information, or to share your story, you can check us out on the web.

57:49You can find us at william-brannum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation,

57:54you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

58:01And again, I'll see you next time.

58:13Bye.

58:18Bye.

58:22Bye.

58:23Bye.

58:24Bye.

58:25Bye.

58:26Bye.

58:28Bye.

58:38Bye.

58:40Bye.

From Word Of Faith To Deliverance Trauma: A Survivor’s Story | Podcast Episode 585

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