- 2 days ago
John talks with Harvey, a former Amish man who describes growing up in a closed religious community, milking cows by hand, singing centuries-old hymns in German, and believing that leaving the Amish meant eternal danger. Harvey explains how reading Scripture in context led him to question inherited rules, man-made traditions, thought blocking, and the fear-based identity built around separation from the outside world.
The conversation follows Harvey’s journey from Amish life into Pentecostalism, his later disillusionment with another system of man-made doctrine, and the emotional cost of shunning, family loss, and rebuilding life afterward. John and Harvey also discuss the similarities between Amish separation, Branhamite isolation, Pentecostal control structures, personality suppression, and the difficult process of learning to see people clearly after leaving high-control religion.
00:00 Introduction
01:14 Harvey's Amish Upbringing And Closed Community
03:46 Thought Blocking, Tradition, And Work-Based Identity
07:00 Amish Worship, High German, And Inherited Rituals
12:30 Why Harvey Began Questioning The Amish System
16:33 Binding, Loosing, And Commandments Of Men
19:25 Excommunication, Shunning, And Leaving The Amish
21:10 Encountering William Branham's Message In Florida
24:05 Comparing Amish Control With Branhamite Control
27:25 The Dot On The Page: Seeing Doctrine Clearly
30:19 Reconnecting With Family After Leaving
32:55 Emotional Shunning And The Walls Of Closed Groups
34:39 Power, Personality, And Control In Religious Groups
38:32 Culture, Language, And Separatist Doctrine
42:11 Personality Suppression In Closed Communities
45:42 Cult Mind Control And The Authentic Self
47:45 Religion, Politics, And Triggered Mindsets
49:27 Advice To Someone Leaving A Closed Religious Group
50:55 Closing Remarks
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
The conversation follows Harvey’s journey from Amish life into Pentecostalism, his later disillusionment with another system of man-made doctrine, and the emotional cost of shunning, family loss, and rebuilding life afterward. John and Harvey also discuss the similarities between Amish separation, Branhamite isolation, Pentecostal control structures, personality suppression, and the difficult process of learning to see people clearly after leaving high-control religion.
00:00 Introduction
01:14 Harvey's Amish Upbringing And Closed Community
03:46 Thought Blocking, Tradition, And Work-Based Identity
07:00 Amish Worship, High German, And Inherited Rituals
12:30 Why Harvey Began Questioning The Amish System
16:33 Binding, Loosing, And Commandments Of Men
19:25 Excommunication, Shunning, And Leaving The Amish
21:10 Encountering William Branham's Message In Florida
24:05 Comparing Amish Control With Branhamite Control
27:25 The Dot On The Page: Seeing Doctrine Clearly
30:19 Reconnecting With Family After Leaving
32:55 Emotional Shunning And The Walls Of Closed Groups
34:39 Power, Personality, And Control In Religious Groups
38:32 Culture, Language, And Separatist Doctrine
42:11 Personality Suppression In Closed Communities
45:42 Cult Mind Control And The Authentic Self
47:45 Religion, Politics, And Triggered Mindsets
49:27 Advice To Someone Leaving A Closed Religious Group
50:55 Closing Remarks
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:31Hello, 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 at william-branham.org.
00:42And with me, I have my very special guest, Harvey Bontrager, former member of the Amish.
00:48Harvey, it's good to have you on and to talk about your story.
00:51And I guess it goes a little bit beyond the Amish, but I've mentioned a couple of times I have
00:56a loosely connected tie to the Amish through my wife.
01:00My wife was very respected in the Amish community in Holmes County in Ohio.
01:06And from time to time, we get to go up and I get to meet all of her Amish friends
01:11that she grew up with.
01:12And it's a crazy story I won't get into now, but I'm very familiar and very glad to have you
01:16on.
01:16Maybe if you could begin by telling everybody a little bit about yourself.
01:20Hello, John.
01:21So I'm thankful to be able to speak on your podcast.
01:26I've learned a lot from listening to sessions of life's people's journeys and how they were managed to get on
01:38with life after making some major decisions.
01:40So that's really meant a lot to me.
01:44So briefly, if I can describe briefly kind of my background.
01:54I'm 66 years old, grew up Amish family, never knew, never was outside the community.
02:03We didn't have electricity at all, farm with horses, milk cows by hand.
02:10And so I never ate at a restaurant until I was 17 years old or catch glimpses of the outside
02:18world, what was going on, kind of had a vague idea.
02:21But so really, the point is, I grew up in a community where it was really closed.
02:32Our square miles were kind of identified us as belonging to this group or that group.
02:42So I grew up like that, and it's after raising a family, getting to milk cows by hand, still in
02:53our 40s and 50s, and did a lot of things, raised produce, this and that.
03:00And after, I don't know if a midlife crisis comes in or what happens, but I came face to face
03:09with reality and realized that what the scripture was saying wasn't actually jiving.
03:20It wasn't actually measuring up.
03:22And there's something about when life hits you, and you want to just want to figure out what the meaning
03:34of life is, or so to speak, that you have to ask yourself some really honest questions.
03:42And in previous podcasts, it was brought up about the stop the thought.
03:50Yeah, about thought blocking.
03:51I realized that was happening.
03:53And so, let me back up a little bit and maybe explain what the culture is like growing up.
04:04So, if you grow into it, it doesn't really matter what denomination it is.
04:11If you grow up in it, you automatically accept a lot of things that, looking at it from the outside
04:20now, I just can't believe I actually accepted that.
04:29And some of the church rules that they came up with were like, you can ride in a car, but
04:35you cannot drive a car.
04:38And if it's being preached all through your life that if you're not Amish, you're definitely going to hell.
04:47That is a certain thing.
04:50So, if you grow up in that, it plants a seed in your mind that, well, I really don't want
04:56to go to hell, so I'll definitely stay Amish.
04:58And then the other thing that comes in there is your work ethic is really frames our life in doing
05:11well, making sure you pick up a trade.
05:13And if you're not, you're definitely something wrong with you.
05:18So, that creates an identity that, I guess you'd say, your identity, if you don't measure up to it socially,
05:33in wealth, you're probably not spiritual.
05:42And you just get that, just, I don't know how to say it, John, but that's the identity you get.
05:49It's created for you.
05:52And so, it definitely is a work-based culture.
05:56It definitely is.
05:57And, you know, there are very few people who break free from it.
06:01Somebody who is in it, they have to be able to critically think and buck the system, I guess, like
06:06you did.
06:06I guess that's who I am.
06:08I'm always trying out something new.
06:12And so, I was always bending the rules a little bit.
06:15One particular story that comes to mind is we had a dairy farm, milking 60 cows, and we weren't allowed
06:24to have skid loaders.
06:25So, I bought a tiller without the rotors on it and welded a frame at the front just to push
06:35the manure into the pit.
06:38And the deacon comes over and says, no, that won't work.
06:42And I said, yeah, it does.
06:43Check it out.
06:44Well, needless to say, they didn't think that was a good idea.
06:49So, and looking back at that, the why are traditions passed on like that, I love the idea of what
07:00you are doing is that through history, you can find a lot of disclaimers where they pass.
07:10Somebody came up with the rule and it caught on, it became a tradition, a tradition created the culture, and
07:17the culture creates people that have no idea they're doing what they're doing.
07:21And out of the Anabaptists, which they evolved in the 1500s, and they came out of the Protestant era from
07:32the Catholic denomination, the Catholics, the Amish still maintain a lot of those, even though they broke away from them.
07:45Such as, I was a song leader in the Amish church, and we sang out of a book, a hymnal
07:51called the Osmond, and those songs were written in the 1500s.
07:57And we still sang them with the same tunes, same, I don't know what you would call them.
08:05And they're not, so it takes, on a four-line stanza, it takes four and a half minutes, four and
08:12a half to five minutes to sing four lines.
08:15It's that slow.
08:17And just to briefly explain, I can catch on to a new song really fast because it's a lot faster
08:26in your memory, you just get it.
08:29The tune, you kind of get it.
08:31But to sing like that, it's totally, in one four-syllable word, it takes about two breaths to actually sing
08:42it that slow.
08:43So, and then we never, in the church services itself, they would never have a pulpit.
08:52That would be considered way too worldly, never read from a printed version of a sermon.
09:00So, everything was basically stories, or out of scripture, where done in high German.
09:10So, all the sermons are done in high German, very basic, very similar to the Catholic, where they taught in
09:19Latin.
09:19And so, the common people wouldn't really understand, but it seemed really spiritual.
09:26And that's still the way it's done.
09:28It's sung in German.
09:30We sang, as a song leader, we sang in high German.
09:35And most of the congregation did not understand the words that were being sung, what they really meant.
09:43Heavy tradition.
09:44I would really struggle with that, because I have a mind that I just want to know things.
09:49I want to know what things are about.
09:51And if I was told to sing a song, but never know the words, I don't know that I would
09:56last very long.
09:57What was it like for you?
09:58When I was a song leader, I got them the true meaning of the words done in a book.
10:11And I took it to the group and said, hey, check this out.
10:15This is what we're really singing.
10:17And it's some amazing versions of early Anabaptist history.
10:22And what it really meant to stand for faith.
10:26And they weren't interested.
10:27They just wanted to know the tune.
10:30They just wanted to be able to get by, to sing, be able to not mess up when they were
10:34singing.
10:34And so, that was a real big surprise.
10:39Then when we, so most of the scriptures are done in high German.
10:45And they can paraphrase.
10:49Every twice a year, the ministry goes from Genesis to the crucifixion.
10:58And preachers get up and they paraphrase for two hours without reading a single note.
11:06And so, that's a brief description of how similar it is to the Catholics.
11:16In fact, if you mess up, John, you would have to go sit before the whole congregation
11:24and declare what you messed up with.
11:27Kind of like the penance.
11:30Very similar to the Catholic.
11:31Like, Father, I've sinned and so forth.
11:34And then you would have to pay a penance according to the measure of sin.
11:39So, a lot of the, a lot of that rituals are still practiced by the Amish today.
11:48It's all about the tradition.
11:50You know, some of those traditions get to be very harmful.
11:54You mentioned bringing people forward.
11:56Yes, the Catholics do it.
11:58Yes, the Amish.
11:58But if you go to some of the charismatic churches, some of the more extreme ones,
12:03Pentecostal churches are the same.
12:05Branhamites, I've visited churches where they would do something similar.
12:09They would call people out from the platform.
12:11And in some cases, they were required in some groups to actually come forward and confess their sins to the
12:17crowd.
12:17It humiliates the person who's doing it.
12:20And, you know, it's not really, at that point, it's not really about the salvation of the person.
12:25It's embarrassing them so that nobody else does it.
12:28So, it's like, it's almost like a form of crowd control.
12:31What was it that made you decide to come out of this?
12:35As I got into it more, I realized that there was another world that I was not aware of, and
12:47a lot of Scripture I wasn't aware of.
12:49I never knew the books of the Bible until I was 49 years old.
12:56And I had no idea.
12:59It was Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
13:03Didn't have a clue.
13:05We were always told those are the books of Moses.
13:07And, you know, so briefly, there was no Sunday school.
13:12Only church every two weeks on a Sunday passed from house to house.
13:19So, if you grow up like that, you don't think it's strange.
13:22You actually think it's strange that people would gather in a church building and do the way they do.
13:29So, but after, I think I was, I believe I was 49 when I really started questioning and asking questions
13:39and met with some people that really were interested in sharing the gospel.
13:46And when I started to discover this, and I thought, if I go to my leaders, they'll be really interested
13:54in hearing what I have to say.
13:55Of course, that was not the case.
14:00So, we were told to not read too much.
14:03Do not gather together and have Bible studies for sure.
14:07You will be betrayed.
14:12There's no other way.
14:14And so, that caused a lot of, it really caused me to think, what are they hiding?
14:21What is going on?
14:22Why can't they?
14:24Of course, the answer is, we've always done it this way.
14:27Yeah, it's all about the tradition.
14:29You know, whenever I look at all of these groups, whether it's Amish or Pentecostal or Charismatic, you can almost
14:37take every single one through history and you can find that some people were in a group.
14:42They were in the group because they thought it was the right thing.
14:46Something happened and they decided that they're no longer part of that group.
14:49They wanted to either create their own group or join another group.
14:52Well, what happens is they split off and a new group is formed.
14:56Well, with the new group comes the new traditions.
14:59And the traditions may not have actually been that bad.
15:02Maybe they just didn't like what the other guy was doing, but they decided to do their own thing.
15:07Well, over time, they continued to do their own thing.
15:10And it evolved into, now you must do the own thing, our own thing that we do, because we do
15:16this because we're different than the other group.
15:18And so it becomes more of an us versus them mentality.
15:22When I first started encountering Amish people after I got married, I started noticing that they purposely had rules that
15:30were, the sole intent was to separate them from what they call the Englishmen.
15:35So I looked at this and as a cult mindset person, I actually thought this was a good thing, not
15:41a bad thing.
15:42They're trying to separate themselves from the world.
15:45That's one of the things that we taught.
15:46But what if the world includes other Christians?
15:50That's really, for me, that's where I began to have a problem with it once I began to critically think.
15:56They do not consider other Christians to be the same as followers of Christ.
16:02They have our version of Christianity and your version, which is the world.
16:06So there's this separatist mentality.
16:09How can that be any different from anything that you see in the Pentecostal charismatic movement?
16:14I have visited churches where they preach against the church down the street.
16:18Our group is better because we do this thing that we do.
16:21Often you look and you try to find the thing that they do that separates themselves in the Bible and
16:26you just simply can't find it.
16:27So for me, it's a little bit sad, but I understand how it all works.
16:32One of the people that you interviewed was when she said that throughout the NAR and almost every denomination, there
16:43is a common thing that they all do.
16:45And that is to say, you know, we're not perfect, but at least we're not like them.
16:52Right. And that's that struck such a chord in me when I heard that is like, you know what?
16:57That's right. That's what we really did.
17:00We if you're not I know we're not perfect Amishmen, but at least we're not like them.
17:06And even in the community, they'll have different rules.
17:10Most of them go up by the Matthew 18 where Jesus told Peter that whatsoever you bind on earth shall
17:20be bound in heaven.
17:22Whatsoever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
17:24So they took that to mean that whatever church ordnum or commandment that they would develop as times change, they
17:35had the right to do that.
17:37And if you would try to loose something that they bound, you had to be punished.
17:44And that's a that's the common thread that runs through.
17:50And and I think a lot of denominations kind of practice that, not not fully realizing what they're doing, but
17:57they think they have the power to loose and to bind.
18:00And the other thing I remember the first times I started reading an English version Bible was I think it's
18:11in Mark and in Matthew as well.
18:13And it's also an Isaiah scripture where it says that people people honor me with their lips, but the hearts
18:25are far from me.
18:27And and then it goes on to say they're teaching doctrines for the commandments of men.
18:35And and that really, really, when I still remember the first time I read that, it was such a boom,
18:43there it is.
18:44That's exactly what they're what what's happening is they're teaching doctrines for the commandments of men.
18:55And for that reason, the hearts are far from me, far from me and their their lips, they honor me
19:02with their lips.
19:03But the hearts are far from me.
19:05So that was that's some of the main some of the turning points where I felt like really got me
19:15to thinking and involved in critical thinking to where I realized I'm not thinking for myself.
19:22I'm not making those decisions.
19:24Somebody else is trying to make those for me.
19:27So the story goes, we we as we dug into scripture, we're being taught by some people that were really
19:37encouraging us.
19:42It they booted us out.
19:44We can't they really didn't allow.
19:47Allowed and we were treated like aliens in the middle of the community, people we had worked with, my brothers
19:54and sisters that my family, they all disowned us.
20:00The yeah, it you can eat with them or they wouldn't wait when they went by like everything changed.
20:10So that was really like living in the middle of a foreign land.
20:15All of a sudden it changed.
20:17So we we did move out of the county in just on the outside of the community just to it
20:28was good for our children.
20:29They felt it and so so we went from from that we went to a Pentecostal church where we were
20:41running the aisles and and more exuberant worship.
20:45And we really, really did enjoy that because it was such a relief in the Amish church service.
20:53Because if somebody coughed, it would swivel around and, you know, it was quiet.
20:58Nobody said amen.
21:00They didn't have an amen corner anywhere.
21:03So it's quite a difference in culture.
21:06And in fact, we would visit Florida.
21:10And that is when we the reason I got on your podcast is I seen the William Branham dot org.
21:19I thought, wow, that's interesting, because while we're in Florida, we visited a Branham church and were introduced to the
21:30doctrine.
21:30And I've got a whole box of cassette tapes and really dug into that and really nice people, really awesome
21:41people.
21:42But I kind of didn't agree with the theology, but we did attend the Pentecostal church for a long time.
21:51And in that, I learned more scripture during the 10 years than I did in the first 40 years.
22:01And I got to be more familiar with placement and theology, and I really just, we were so hungry for
22:14it.
22:14It really, I really, really learned a lot.
22:19So that's kind of the, within the charismatic or, I don't know if you call it charismatic, but we called
22:28it apostolic church to where we would base it on, base it on the, after Jesus left and the church
22:40was established in the book of Acts.
22:43But we don't attend there anymore as well.
22:47It turned out that the, discovered a lot of man-made doctrines, things that came up that they theorize on
23:01that's actually not in the Bible.
23:03And that's actually not, that's not what it says in context.
23:09And so we no longer attend there as well.
23:13But that's, that's a brief, so I find it, find it really interesting.
23:20In fact, we were excommunicated by the Pentecostals now as well.
23:23So I know the feeling of being able to think for yourself, being able to rationalize what it really means
23:32to live for Jesus Christ and to be able to look at a scripture in the context and apply it
23:39to my life.
23:40And so that's kind of a, I know what it means to have, be able to, to think everything you've
23:51been taught to have a mind shift.
23:54So your podcast has been really, really helpful in, in just nuggets here and there that help you realize things.
24:04You know, I have a unique perspective of interactions with the Amish that some people don't have.
24:11So you've got groups of people who were never raised in anything, any, any closely related or similar to what
24:20you've described, who look into the Amish community and there's this awe and there's this wonder because here's a different
24:26people that's living in this world that's inside of a world.
24:29And then on the other side of the coin, you have people who are raised in a cult structure, which
24:37is eerily similar to the Amish, but without the physical aspects of what you see in the Amish.
24:42Kind of what you described, you recognize some of the, some of the traits between the group that you left
24:48and then the groups that you entered.
24:50I had both because my first experience with the Amish was when I got married and I was still in
24:56it.
24:56I was still a Branamite.
24:57And so I was viewing the Amish from the Branamite perspective and I respected everything about it that was destructive,
25:05which is really weird.
25:07I saw that, I saw that they had a world within a world.
25:10I saw that they were somewhat closing out the outside world.
25:15They were looking at the outside world as though we have something they don't have.
25:19I respected that because that's, that was my mindset.
25:22Right.
25:23And I knew that we differed in doctrine, but they, they were the holiness outfits.
25:30I respected this.
25:31They were very rigid in enforcing the holiness out outfits.
25:36I respected this.
25:37I mean, right down the line, every single bit of this.
25:40And then we escaped Branamism.
25:43I still continued to go and visit the Amish friends, but I never really.
25:49Until recently, I never really thought about just the, the similarities between what we left and what the Amish had.
25:57It literally was, it was a literal version of the things that we were trying to suggest symbolically.
26:03And by that, I mean this, we tried to close it, close the outside world from us while living in
26:10the outside world.
26:11So we were a world within a world, but virtually in our minds, we had this, this thing going on
26:17in our minds, right?
26:19It wasn't as physical as what the Amish had, but for all of the same reasons, I came to the
26:25conclusion.
26:25After leaving the group that I had left and starting to deconstruct from the cult mindset, I came to the
26:33conclusion that both were really the same and I couldn't call one worse or better.
26:39They, they were both equal in just different ways, but this is the point that hit me really hard.
26:44And this is before I started the podcast, et cetera.
26:47I started to realize that there were many churches today who were headed down the same exact path as the
26:54Amish, but they were doing it in their minds rather than physically.
26:58And they didn't even realize it.
27:00They would hold on to a, to a tradition and that tradition would have such significant importance to their movement
27:07that if you pulled the tradition off,
27:09you were literally pulling Christianity out from under them, or so they thought the traditions were what they valued as
27:17Christianity.
27:19And I'm at the point in my life where I don't look at it like this.
27:22You can't really say that a doctrine of man is Christianity.
27:25Yeah, for sure.
27:26And, and so, and I, I did this, this little, came up with this idea while I was drinking a
27:35cup of coffee in the morning.
27:36I mean, if you've got a, if you've got a, got a sheet of paper like this, and you ask
27:44people, what did they see?
27:47And they say, well, it's a clear sheet of paper, but you put one, one dot in it right here.
27:54And all of a sudden you can't unsee the dot.
27:57But it's, in, in, in retrospect, this takes up such little space, but that's all you can focus on.
28:05And that's what a doctrine is.
28:07And once you, once you can see it for what it is, you can see the whole, it's like, almost
28:15like zooming out.
28:16And you can see the whole photo a lot better, but you can't see the past, you can't see the
28:26future through the lenses of your past.
28:29It's, it's almost impossible.
28:31So you have to be able to, to move on and, and then realize also to the, you know, the,
28:41I don't know if you still do this in the Brandon, but I still call the Amish my people.
28:46And I call the Pentecostals my people.
28:49Because I learned certain truths there.
28:52And I appreciate those truths that I'll, I won't change my mind about that.
28:57And one, one is community, family is important.
29:02Families, blood's thicker than water.
29:05And so there's a lot of truth in how to raise up, how to raise a family in a, in
29:12a good environment so they can be respectable adults.
29:16There's a lot of truth in that.
29:18And there's a lot of truth in having a good work ethic to be a modest people in, in, in
29:27the heart.
29:28And there's a lot of truth in, in really looking for, in the Pentecostal world, being able to worship God
29:41freely in spirit and in truth.
29:43And I'm not saying that, you know, I, I really think it gets taken too far in some, in some
29:50context.
29:51But really, that's what the scripture says, is to worship him in spirit and in truth, which I mean, I
29:57think that means without having somebody plant an idea in your head about how that should be done.
30:03And, um, so I appreciate everything I've learned in every group I've been in, and I call all those groups
30:13my people, because that's part of, part of my identity.
30:18But, and I don't look at it as detrimental anymore.
30:21In fact, my family, uh, brothers and sisters, we get together on a regular basis now.
30:30And we're, uh, they, they're, uh, very open to, they're friendly, they're, they ask me questions about scripture, they ask
30:41me, they include us.
30:43It's not, it's, everything's changed again.
30:45And so I'm not, I'm not sure if it happened when I, I, uh, got rid of this dot, or
30:55if it was when they got rid of it, but it doesn't matter.
30:58But the point is, I can't, if I, if I go back to those people with a chip on my
31:07shoulder, or as a, someone that remembers everything that was said about you,
31:12what they did to you, what they did to you, very likely it's going to remain that way.
31:17So I've, I've kind of learned to, um, they only know what, they only, um, know what they know.
31:29And I'm, I, I realize that.
31:32So, uh, I've learned to, they're still my people.
31:36Uh, I've learned to move on, enjoy life, enjoy Christ.
31:41Um, so that's one, one way of, I've, I've learned to, um, not view my future through the lens of
31:52my past.
31:53Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter
32:01reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?
32:06You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
32:13On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,
32:21John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
32:27You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
32:34If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the
32:40top.
32:41And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or
32:47watching.
32:47On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
32:52I am a person who likes people.
32:55So, when somebody cuts me off, it's extremely difficult for me.
32:59I like all people.
33:00I don't care who you are, what you've done, what you like.
33:02I don't even really care what you believe.
33:04I may disagree with what you believe, but I'm still going to like you as a person.
33:09So, whenever I leave a group that has either physical shunning like the Amish has, or emotional shunning, which Branhamism
33:15and a lot of Pentecostals have,
33:18when you're really, really close to someone, and then you leave and you decide, I no longer believe like this.
33:25If you truly genuinely like people, it doesn't matter.
33:28They can still be in the group.
33:29You can be in a different group.
33:30You can still enjoy each other, be friends with each other.
33:34But the problem is, some of them do cut you off.
33:37And I have been, I've actually been in a group setting recently where many of my closest former friends were
33:44in the room,
33:45and it was as though they had never known I had existed, never seen me before.
33:51And so, you have to kind of mentally make the separation between the two.
33:55This is a person who genuinely likes me as a person.
33:59This is a person who doesn't like me as a person, but not because it's their will, but because that's
34:05what they've been trained to do.
34:06So, you have to make that distinction.
34:08And then, if you live your life like this, where you don't put these walls up between you and other
34:14people,
34:15your friends grow exponentially, I've learned.
34:17It's quite amazing.
34:19But when you're in that closed mindset, where it's really an us versus them mentality,
34:25when you're like that, your walls close in.
34:28It gets smaller and smaller.
34:29I believe that is the reason why a lot of the groups, the longer they exist, the more destructive they
34:34are.
34:35Because they just keep closing the walls in on themselves.
34:38Yeah.
34:39And there's a quote I learned a while back, and it says,
34:45Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
34:49And that's what happens.
34:51It corrupts friendships.
34:52It corrupts the context.
34:56And it corrupts the mind to where they think they have control over this and over the people.
35:04And if they don't listen to me, it's over.
35:07It's not about person to person.
35:10It's about power to those underneath you.
35:15But I think it's really interesting, and I recently wonder what you think about this, John.
35:24In my business, we're a commercial roofing company, and so I meet all kinds of people.
35:31I meet building owners and clients that are really hard to deal with.
35:36And the next one is so easy.
35:40It's just like we're friends.
35:41And so I learned a lot about personality, taking a personality test,
35:48and discover that that's the makeup of some people.
35:53And if you learn to accept the different personalities, I think that leads into kind of affects the leaders in
36:04churches,
36:05denominations, neighbors, everywhere.
36:08If you learn to, if you get to the fact that you can accept personality differences,
36:17you kind of know where they're coming from.
36:19And you can be good with that.
36:22Not everyone's a people person.
36:26And some people are just plain black and white.
36:30They just like it that way.
36:31They don't like any interruptions.
36:34So I think if reading through Scripture, even Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
36:39they all have their different perspective on what they heard Jesus teach.
36:47And if you learn anything from that, you see John's as different from Mark as you'd want it.
36:55You wouldn't think they lived in the same age, but they did.
36:59So that's, if you look at people like that, you know, you can appreciate their strength and not do the
37:09same thing to them as they did to me.
37:13And that's kind of what I'm trying to learn is, you know, the quote I said earlier about that came
37:23on your podcast,
37:24at least we're not like them.
37:25That mentality, it's everywhere.
37:29And it's everywhere, even in the trades or any commerce.
37:41If you're on any social media at all, that's a common thread that runs everywhere.
37:47It's that at least I'm better than they are.
37:51And that's, I don't want to be like that.
37:54So I want to be able to recognize people's strength and to be able to see, even though I grew
38:01up Amish, I don't hate them.
38:04If they want to be like that, I don't have to.
38:07But, so that's, later on in life, you get more mellow and you can see where, you know, it's not
38:18about me anyhow.
38:19It's about respecting each other and being able to look at the scriptures and see that there's a joy in
38:31living.
38:31You know, history really helps unpack all of it, but also studying culture does.
38:36So, like you mentioned, I had to take a personality test for one of my clients when I had my
38:42business.
38:43And I learned so many things about myself that I simply never would have known.
38:48And I really didn't know that they could tell you by your personality the people you are compatible with and
38:54the people you are incompatible with.
38:55And it literally gave me a chart.
38:57These are the people I will butt heads with, and these are the people that I will connect with instantly.
39:02Absolutely.
39:02And that's just part of psychology.
39:04That's part of how humanity works.
39:07But take that to a broader, grander scale.
39:10People are shaped by their experiences.
39:13Even your personality is shaped by your experiences.
39:16So, as you grow over time, there are ways that shape you that are out of your control.
39:21When you're in a cultish group, the cult mindset will actually shape your personality.
39:27So, you have this, in the more destructive versions of the groups, you have this group of people that their
39:34personality have been contained in a box.
39:37And what happens is when they leave that box, sometimes their personality types shift entire categories.
39:43It's kind of crazy.
39:45So, I was in that box.
39:47Then I started thinking about the culture.
39:49Culture plays an impact.
39:51It's not just the group you're in, but also the culture.
39:53What does your culture believe?
39:55In today's world, we would see things that they do in the ancient world as a standard practice.
40:01We would see some of them as completely evil.
40:04We would say that is anti-Christian.
40:05But even the Christians did some of the practices because that was the culture.
40:10Where it gets really odd, I don't know if you've thought through this, but what happens is as cultures survive
40:16over time and the majority of people in the culture begin to shift, things happen that shift in ways that
40:25they see as holy and righteous that sometimes aren't.
40:28It's just the doctrines of men.
40:30And it's very much like what you're describing with the Amish.
40:33So, I'll give an example of this.
40:36One of the big examples for me of just shifting over time, I used to wonder as a child, why
40:42do we have different languages out of all of this millennia of years?
40:45Why don't they just say, this is the language that we're going to choose.
40:49The whole world adopts it, whichever one it is.
40:51Then everybody can talk to each other.
40:54And then after I get older and I start studying how culture works and how language itself works, over years
41:00and years of time, as this group is isolated from this group, the language will actually shift and evolve and
41:06it will separate again anyway because that's how culture works, right?
41:10Take Judaism.
41:11In Judaism you had the circumcision, the people of Moses circumcised, those people became Christian and you actually had apostles
41:18who fought with each other because they were doing the same thing and they separated themselves.
41:23These are of the circumcision, these are not of the circumcision.
41:27So, you had an entire group of people that over one single doctrine, they formed a separatist group and you
41:33had the Bible talks, you know, about this kind of thing.
41:36That has gone on for millennia.
41:39As long as time has existed, people will take a doctrine and say, you're of the people who don't believe
41:45my doctrine, you're of the people who do.
41:48And it's something that is human nature that you can't really help.
41:52But within each group, as they begin to separate, you'll find people who are able to critically think and suddenly
41:58say to themselves, no, they're people just like me.
42:01I want to connect with those people.
42:03And then they break free and you watch it happen, history repeats itself again and again and again.
42:09Yeah, that's really, really interesting.
42:11Although, if I circle back to what you said about personalities, that culture is able to change personality.
42:19Well, I was always an introvert and I became more extroverted.
42:26But I think, but in all actuality, I do believe that you can, you're born with a personality.
42:41But if it gets conformed in a way that is against your personality, you become someone else.
42:49But given a chance, your original personality will still come up and it'll be part of who you really are.
43:01And, you know, the early psychologists say that a child's personality is formed by the time they're age three.
43:10Well, that could be true and have some bearing on that.
43:17But I think that's why, especially in the Amish Anabaptist groups, there's so many personality, what they call personality disorders.
43:33And this might seem strange to some people, but in the Amish community, here in LaGrange County, northern Indiana,
43:45I recently heard somebody that was in the know about what medications were being passed out.
43:54And 85% of people over the age of 45 are on highly medicated antidepressants, which I think it's a
44:05personality disorder.
44:08So who they were really meant to, when they had this thought and it gets blocked and they can't think
44:15it through and they have to go back to, revert to, well, this is just the way it was.
44:21And they're not able to, it causes that personality disorder.
44:25And I'm sure that's what was happening to me at that age.
44:29In fact, I know it was.
44:33So, yeah, the personality thing is really interesting, the way you pointed it out.
44:41And it also, I did some research on William Branham and what he was into, you know, the bootlegging thing
44:50and all that years, his brothers, I believe, were.
44:57And so I think that personality kind of helped him develop that stage persona.
45:07And it does in a lot of church leaders, a lot of people that are like to be in control
45:16of a congregation can do it.
45:19They develop this stage persona, and there's something totally different when they're off of that platform.
45:26And I think it definitely is a type of personality that, it'd be interesting to try to connect the dots
45:36in some of the cult leaders and what type of personality they're diagnosed with.
45:41There's a book by Dr. Stephen Hasson, Combating Cult Mind Control, and it actually goes through a lot of that.
45:47They do share similar personality disorders.
45:52And usually it's narcissistic, megalomaniac.
45:55There's different attributes that they have.
45:58But back to the personality thing, because actually that is probably the most important thing that we brought up on
46:03the podcast today.
46:04You have an authentic self, and within that authentic self is your authentic personality.
46:11You were born with it.
46:13Everybody's born with it.
46:15That personality gets shaped by your life experiences, and it's weighted by your authentic personality.
46:22So if you have an authentic personality and, say, you went through a severe traumatic crisis, that crisis would actually
46:28change your personality because of the crisis.
46:31So that's part of the environmental aspects of this.
46:36But then on top of that, that's the natural human part.
46:39On top of that, the cult, once you enter the cult mindset, and Dr. Stephen Hasson describes this perfectly in
46:47his book, Combating Cult Mind Control, the cult mindset will suppress your authentic self and put the cult self on
46:56top of it.
46:57And it's interesting because you can talk to somebody who's been programmed in that way.
47:01I've done this.
47:02You can talk to them, and you can engage the authentic person, and you'll watch the personality change to their
47:09authentic personality.
47:10And then the moment you say anything that raises their guard, like you might be going to attack the cult
47:17or going to talk about the cult, you can see their eyes shift.
47:20Their eyes shift, and then suddenly their personality is different.
47:23People see this, and they think, well, they've got a demonic spirit.
47:26Maybe they do, but from a psychological standpoint, what has happened is you've just watched – it's almost like a
47:34split personality disorder.
47:35You've watched personality A, which was their authentic self you were engaging with.
47:39You've watched that being suppressed by personality B, which is the cult mindset.
47:44You really hit on something that's really tough to – if you're in that person that you have this one
47:57mindset, you've grown up with it, you're thinking you're in that cult mindset, and somebody approaches you with something that
48:09–
48:10Well, in fact, here's a test.
48:15If you want to start an argument or a conversation, just talk about religion and politics, and you can see
48:25the very same thing happen, what you just described.
48:29I mean, look at the politics in the world today, and how soon do you see that shift of, you
48:39know, do you want to take the money or don't I, you know?
48:43So that's really an interesting part of where I finally realized that, you know, I've plotted my course.
48:58I'm going to run my race, and according to Scripture, and I'm going to enjoy people.
49:05I'm not going to put people in a box anymore to – I mean, if you're taught all your life
49:11that you see somebody driving a car or whatever it may be you were taught against, that they're wrong, it's
49:21really, really refreshing to me to be able to see people who they really are.
49:27If you could go back in time, back whenever you suddenly realized that something is not right when you're in
49:34the Amish, but you had not yet started your journey, and if you could give advice to yourself, knowing that
49:41in the future, most of your friends and your family would cut you off, your life would change so significantly,
49:47what advice would you give yourself?
49:48If I live in the moment, I guess if I learn anything, it's if you live in the moment and
49:59not worry about what tomorrow brings and not try to live in the past, you'll be okay.
50:08You'll be okay.
50:10I – and too often we rationalize and always use this as a joke is that, you know, it really
50:19does help to worry about what people will do because if you worry, it'll never happen.
50:26Yeah.
50:30So, the truth of it is, most of the things you worry about that you really think might happen, and,
50:38I mean, we had – we lost all our business, we lost everything, lost our farm and everything, but what
50:46the bad things that I thought would happen never did, and we were okay.
50:50So, I guess that – just don't worry about it.
50:55Well, that's good advice. Thank you so much for doing this.
50:57Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate being on here.
50:59Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story, you can check us
51:03out on the web.
51:04You can find us at william-branham.org.
51:06For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to
51:12the NAR.
51:13Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
51:46Thank you so much for listening.
52:21We'll see you next time.
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