- 1 day ago
John and Andrea examine The Way International through Andrea Ball’s firsthand experience as a former member, exploring how Victor Wierwille’s teachings blended biblical language, positive confession, secret knowledge, authoritarian hierarchy, and fear-based control. Andrea describes the appeal of early fellowship, the PFAL class, the law of believing, speaking in tongues as a thought-stopping practice, and the painful realization that the group’s love disappeared when she needed help.
The conversation also traces connections between The Way, postwar healing revival influences, Word of Faith ideas, anti-communist fear, conspiracy thinking, unhealthy leadership structures, and the emotional aftermath of leaving a high-control religious group. Andrea offers practical wisdom for survivors: forgive yourself, rebuild slowly, ask questions, recover healthy spirituality, and create safer Christian communities where doubts can be spoken without shame.
______________________
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 also traces connections between The Way, postwar healing revival influences, Word of Faith ideas, anti-communist fear, conspiracy thinking, unhealthy leadership structures, and the emotional aftermath of leaving a high-control religious group. Andrea offers practical wisdom for survivors: forgive yourself, rebuild slowly, ask questions, recover healthy spirituality, and create safer Christian communities where doubts can be spoken without shame.
______________________
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
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LearningTranscript
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, Andrea Ball, former
00:45member of The Way.
00:47Andrea, it's good to have you on and to talk through your story and The Way.
00:51I'll never forget whenever I first began researching Branhamism.
00:54I was going through all of the recordings not knowing exactly how big this mess had
01:01grown, and I was looking during this pass of looking through the sermons, I was looking
01:05specifically to identify all of the names that had not yet been cut from the transcripts,
01:11and this is one of the names that came up, Victor Warewell, and I was just reading it.
01:17I didn't hear the pronunciation, but I did a short video talking through this, and he
01:23was just one of the many cults that spun off of it, so I slaughtered his name, and people
01:29were in an uproar.
01:31You pronounced it wrong.
01:32It's Victor Warewell.
01:33But anyway, I'm glad to have you on.
01:36It's shocking to me how many different people have contacted me about this small little group.
01:41It apparently exists and thrives, so very glad to have you on.
01:45If you could begin, just tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
01:48Well, I'm totally blind.
01:50I have been blind since I was born.
01:53One thing I remember as a little girl is that I always loved Jesus.
02:00I was drawn to him.
02:01I was drawn to his teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and about love of neighbor and of
02:09enemy.
02:10I was drawn to his parables, all the miracles that he did to help heal the blind and raise
02:18the dead and heal the lepers who were outcasts of society and to calm the storm, and I really
02:25needed that comfort when I was at home.
02:29Home was a turbulent place sometimes.
02:32I lived in terror of my dad, who I don't think ever really accepted my blindness.
02:43And so, I wrestled with that, and I was taught about a very wrathful God.
02:50I was taught about Jesus' love, too, but I was taught about a wrathful God.
02:54So, it took me years to wrestle with who is God.
03:01And so, when I was a teenager, I was an avid reader, and I loved to read history.
03:08And so, when I was a teenager, I went through kind of an existential crisis in my faith.
03:14I began to question a lot of things, especially as I began reading about the horrors of the
03:21holocaust.
03:22I've always loved history, and I think what I wrestled with, because we were one of these
03:29churches where you walk the aisle and you come down and you say the sinner's prayer and all of
03:34that, and I was like, what about these poor people who were killed in the gas chambers or the euthanasia
03:41program?
03:42And so, I had nobody to talk to in the church.
03:46I just kind of kept quiet and said churchy things and wrestled with things alone as a teenager.
03:52When I went to college at Marshall University, I tried going to a free will Baptist church
03:59there, and we clashed.
04:03We clashed right away, because I didn't agree that you had to go along with Jerry Fletcher.
04:12Falwell, let's put it that way, in order to be a Christian.
04:16And I also didn't like that they patronized me because of my blindness.
04:22Oh, honey, just play the piano and sit down.
04:25I was so mad that I told my mom, I said, Mom, I hate it.
04:29I'm never going back there again, and I never did either.
04:33So, in the process, then I met a young man, actually he was several years older than me,
04:38at university, who was an atheist, and I flirted with atheism for a while.
04:44He was my boyfriend, but he also isolated me from my other friends, and this is important
04:50because when we come to talking about the cult later, we'll go into a little bit more of
04:55how that happens.
04:56And so, we had a nasty breakup.
04:59He was very controlling, and I woke up one day and said, you know what, he's no different
05:06of fundamentalist than what I grew up with.
05:10So, I was at loose ends when I met the members of the WAY International.
05:15I was standing at the reference desk at our library at the university, and these two women,
05:23nice, kind of middle-aged, I would think, came up to me at the desk.
05:27I was looking for the book by Howard Fast called The Jew's Story of a People.
05:33And so, we got to talking, and they said, we are part of a biblical research and teaching
05:42ministry.
05:43We're a non-denominational group, and we meet in people's homes.
05:47Well, I've always loved history, and I've always loved languages, and this sounded interesting
05:54to me, and it seemed like a very loving group, of course.
05:59They seemed like they weren't as judgmental, maybe, as what I grew up with.
06:04They seemed very positive.
06:06They were affirming in the way that sometimes Word of Faith teaching can seem to be affirming.
06:14And so, I signed up for the PFAL class.
06:18That was my next step.
06:19But in the fellowship, we went to our Twig Fellowship.
06:23That's quite a journey.
06:24If you don't mind, for people who are unfamiliar with the WAY, let's talk a little bit about
06:29that, and specifically this Twig Fellowship, as they call it.
06:33The WAY is a hierarchical structure.
06:36The Twig Fellowship is a small local group, and the members are leaves.
06:42Okay?
06:42So, you go up.
06:43The branch is your state.
06:46Your limb is, or your branch is like a region, and then your limb is your state, and then your
06:52tree is the whole nation.
06:55Okay?
06:55So, that's basically, it's very hierarchical.
06:58Of course, I was not told that.
07:00I was just kind of led to believe it was an informal group, like a house church, like what
07:06you would imagine that the early churches were like in the first century.
07:10Got it.
07:11Yes, it is very hierarchical.
07:13So, I'm curious, whenever you joined, what was it first like, whenever you first came
07:17on board, and you're meeting all of the people, you're meeting the WAY, what was it like for
07:22you?
07:22At first, it was very loving.
07:24Like, I remember when my seeing eye dog, Coco, I had a chocolate lab.
07:29She had developed canine hepatitis, and one of the women in our Twig Fellowship did a very
07:39thoughtful thing, she bought me a can opener, which I needed because my dog had to go on this
07:46special I'm science diet of canned food.
07:49Of course, she thought she was in heaven, because it had egg, and fish, and liver, and all that
07:53good stuff.
07:54So, anyway, it was a family, and I was missing that in my life at that point.
08:01So, then in January, after the holidays, we started with the PFAL class.
08:07Now, the very first thing you learn in PFAL is John 10.10 is their foundational text.
08:15I come that you might, well, actually, it starts out, the thief cometh but to kill and to steal
08:20and to destroy, but I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.
08:26I mean, who doesn't want an abundant life free of fear and worry?
08:31And I had plenty of things on my mind at that time, and I thought, boy, I want that.
08:38And so, the first night of the class, we learned the foundational law, the law of believing.
08:45It is a law that works like the force of gravity.
08:48It works for saint and sinner alike.
08:51Believing equals receiving is what the law is.
08:54So, John, if you have heard in the prosperity gospel, positive confession, it's kind of the
09:02same thing.
09:04And it sounds really wonderful.
09:07If I want to believe for health and healing and happiness in my life and a happy home for
09:12my family, I can have that.
09:14All I've got to do is believe and say it and confess it.
09:18But it has a dark edge.
09:20It has a very dark edge.
09:22The first night, Dr. Weirwell told this awful story about this mom who was very protective
09:30of her little boy, and she was so afraid that the little boy was going to get hit by a
09:35car.
09:36So, but what happens?
09:39The little boy goes out and gets hit by a car, and the moral of that story, according to Weirwell,
09:45is he got hit by a car because the mom believed that into her life.
09:51Can you imagine what kind of guilt that leaves people with?
09:57It doesn't feel that way at first until you really stop and think about it.
10:02But as we went on in the class, we learned a lot of novel biblical interpretations.
10:08Now, keep in mind, Weirwell taught that he was teaching us that God had told him that he would
10:17teach us the word of God as it had not been taught in the first century.
10:23And so, we were hearing some novel interpretations.
10:28One of those was ultra-dispensationalism, which he got, as I found out later, from E.W.
10:35Bollinger.
10:36And according to him, we are now in the church administration.
10:40There are seven administrations, and we are in the church administration.
10:43And, but what he did with that, too, was to say, okay, the Old Testament, the New Testament
10:51and Revelation are there for our learning.
10:54All this is coming back to me now after all of these years, right?
10:59So, for our learning.
11:01So, none of that really applies to us.
11:04The only things that apply to us in Scripture are the seven church epistles of Paul.
11:10So, basically, he did a cut-and-paste thing with the Bible and just took out what he didn't
11:15want.
11:17And I was like, where is Jesus in all of this?
11:20Because what I was drawn to was Jesus, and I wasn't really seeing him.
11:26Exactly.
11:27That's the same question that I was facing whenever I came out of Branhamism.
11:30Where is Jesus in all of this?
11:32It's like Jesus had become a sideshow in Branhamism.
11:35And, yes, they mention the name Jesus.
11:37Yes, they ask that you be saved by Jesus, but Jesus was a side story that, really, he
11:44was so far off to the side that your focus was solely upon the leader of the group.
11:49And, for me, that just, that was a problem.
11:51I didn't, I didn't worship the guy who's the central figure.
11:55Some people did, actually, outright.
11:57But I started to learn that all of these groups that spun off were much the same way.
12:01They had such weird beliefs that it was really their core doctrines that was the main focal
12:07point, and Jesus was just off to the side.
12:09Well, he has some really odd views of God, too, and of the Godhead.
12:14For instance, he doesn't believe in the Trinity.
12:18He adopts a lot of the belief that a lot of oneness Pentecostals do, but he takes it a
12:23step further.
12:24It's more like the Jehovah's Witnesses, that Jesus was a thought in the mind of God.
12:29He was not created.
12:30He was not like a son of God from the very beginning, not like what John 1 teaches us.
12:40So, anyway, but he also had this teaching that Holy Spirit, small h, small s, is an impersonal
12:50force that you activate, and in the last day of the course, in his book, Receiving the
12:58Holy Spirit Today, he actually talks about this.
13:01He taught us how to speak in tongues.
13:05Now, I at first thought this was a teaching that originated with him, but it didn't.
13:11It originated with two post-World War II healing revivalists.
13:16You may be familiar with these guys.
13:18They were B.G.
13:19Leonard and J.E.
13:21Stiles, and I'd heard other people, I'd heard John Judes, who's written extensively about
13:28it, say this, but just to be sure, I went on yesterday, and I looked up J.E.
13:35Stiles and looked up some YouTube video of him, and what Weirwill tells us to do is almost
13:45verbatim J.E.
13:46Stiles, okay?
13:47So, what they have you do is you sit in a relaxed posture, no praying, no tearing necessary.
13:55You sit in a relaxed posture, and you breathe, you know, take deep breaths, and then you breathe
14:01in because you're inhaling the Holy Spirit.
14:04If this seems like hypnosis to you, it is, I think.
14:08And so, you breathe in, and he borrows this, he takes a scripture from Psalm 81.10, where
14:18Jesus says, or where the psalm says, open your mouth and I will fill it, okay?
14:24And it's taken out of context.
14:27And it was a quote that actually Jesus was talking about on the last great day of the
14:33feast, where he was talking about that we would have within us a river flowing up of living
14:40water.
14:41Out of your belly would come rivers of living water, and it was kind of referring to the
14:46Holy Spirit.
14:46Well, here he's kind of doing that, too.
14:49And then he says, but now you must move your lips and your tongue.
14:54You must form the words.
14:56And so, he's teaching you how to speak in tongues.
15:00Now, speaking in tongues functions in several ways.
15:04One, according to Werewolf, was that it would renew the inner man, and it would renew your
15:11mind.
15:12So, when you needed your mind to be renewed and to be more in love with God and on fire
15:18for God, you just speak in tongues, or S-I-T, as they use the acronym.
15:25But the next thing is, is that when you start to have a negative thought or fear or worry,
15:32S-I-T, okay?
15:34And so, you can see how this would work, right?
15:38It's a thought-stopping technique.
15:41It's kind of like if somebody uses a phrase that's meant to end all conversation.
15:46That's what happened here.
15:48So, this is some of the things that we were taught.
15:51It was just so interesting to me whenever I was looking up this particular name, because
15:55this is a group that's not really considered with the core Lateran post-World War II healing
16:01revival movement, yet there were connections.
16:04And there were, you know, in fact, Branham mentions him on recording, so he was at least
16:08at some of the conventions.
16:10But you don't really consider this group as part of that revival, but at the same time,
16:14they're adopting some of the core belief sets.
16:16The Word of Faith, you mentioned, you actually described one of the views that Branham had on
16:21the Godhead.
16:22So, there were some elements that were copied and carried forward with Werewolf and his
16:28movement.
16:28Why do you think it is that he decided to copy and start teaching some of these things
16:34rather than become one of the core revivalists?
16:38Well, I think part of it may have been a quest to be original.
16:43Well, and I also think with Werewolf, have you ever, like in the old days when your mom was
16:50looking for something to make in the kitchen and there was a little hodgepodge of this and
16:54that in the refrigerator, and she would make what you might not so affectionately call goulash,
17:00and whatever went in the pot, that's what you got.
17:05That's how I explained to people what he did.
17:08He came up with this concoction of stuff, and then he added a few of his own little herbs
17:16and spices or whatever to it to make it original.
17:21That's what I think about why he did what he did, because he wanted to create something
17:29that had not been seen since the first century.
17:32I've mentioned a few times that this group is really odd, and those that sit adjacent
17:38to it, I have all kinds of questions, because at the core, you had people who were strongly
17:43tied to Christian identity, and that included everything that came with it.
17:47That was the anti-Semitism.
17:48That was some of the racial identity stuff.
17:52This was a problematic movement, but at the same time, it was connected to faith healing,
17:56and it was just so odd.
17:58You had these weird key figures.
18:00Gordon Lindsay, he's speaking at Christian identity conferences, and then he's platforming
18:05all of these healing revivalists, and some of them, you have to wonder, were they really
18:10healing revivalists, or were they more on the Christian identity side, and they were just
18:14using this as a platform, but nevertheless, he was platforming them, and then you have the
18:19groups that sit adjacent to this, like Victor Warewell on the way.
18:22I'm curious, from your perspective, focusing on the faith healing side of this, what that
18:28was like, I know that in Branhamism, there are several people who have chronic illnesses,
18:33some of them who now have died of, you know, with their chronic illnesses, and the whole
18:39time, they're teaching that salvation is mixed with the healing, divine healing, and so when
18:46you have that merging of the two, well, that's fine if you're healthy, but what if you're not
18:51healthy?
18:51And that was the problem that some of the people I know faced, they wondered, am I even
18:56saved, because I'm not healed, and that was the false gospel that the movement was teaching.
19:01I'm curious, with your blindness, what that was like in the movement.
19:06How did that make you feel?
19:07Well, not so well, and actually, I mean, there were some reasons I left.
19:15Now, some of them didn't really have to do with divine healing.
19:18Some of them were ideological, because where will and the way I found out were very right
19:26wing, and I have always been, I'm a Christian first, and I've never been comfortable with
19:34being pigeonholed into either a liberal or conservative box.
19:38I've always been a little bit left of center, but this, basically, what I found out about their
19:43ideology didn't fit well, they, for instance, I found out that Werewolf was anti-Semitic,
19:52that he denied the Holocaust, and if you go and you look, it's, I think it's New York
19:58Jewish Post, but it's an article that he wrote, they quote from it extensively, from the St.
20:05Mary's Evening Leader, and it affirmed it for me.
20:09He said the nasty parts out loud, that one of my TWIC members said, because I was commenting
20:16one time, I said, yeah, I'm reading this novel about the Holocaust, I think it was Schindler's
20:22List or something like that.
20:23He said, oh, you need to stop that.
20:25You know, the Holocaust is a hoax, you know, that six million didn't really die.
20:30And I'm sitting there going, wait a minute.
20:31But, no, thank you, Way International, this is not what I signed up for.
20:38And I just kind of pushed it back, though, like you push back red flags.
20:43I kept it in my mind and thought about it.
20:47And then I also, you know, when I read the Weirwill quote the other day, it confirmed for
20:54me.
20:54And then what he does, he does a bait and switch.
20:57Oh, yes, I have the Arthur Kessler book, The Thirteen Tribes and The Hoax of the Holocaust
21:03and Did Six Million Really Die?
21:05Libraries have them, too.
21:06Well, then I guess they're anti-Semitic.
21:09So, you know, that's a rhetorical switch and bait thing that he does that a lot of people
21:15do, by the way.
21:16And so, anyway, there was that.
21:18They were just way too far to the right for me in a lot of ways.
21:22Yeah, I mean, it's just so odd when you think about it.
21:25I'm convinced that this was a political cult disguised as a religious cult.
21:29And when you look at all of the different people that spun off of this, the people that
21:34were leading it, the people like Weirwill that was adjacent to it, you see those connections.
21:39And like you said, it is the racist right.
21:43Whenever you connect what Michael Barkun wrote in his book, Religion and the Racist Right,
21:48you start to see that, wait a minute, there's more going on here than meets the eye.
21:52And to the people who truly came because they needed healing or they knew somebody who needed
21:58healing, they come devoutly to God, thinking that this was a movement by God.
22:04The problem was they didn't get really the comfort and help that they needed, especially
22:09those who never received their healing.
22:12That was what was so hard for me.
22:14I would watch people who desperately needed just assistance from other people and never really
22:19got it because the movement, again, had combined the salvation with the healing.
22:24And if you didn't get healed, well, that's somebody I don't really want to associate with
22:29or that's somebody that God's dealing with them.
22:32I'm not going to deal with them.
22:34And to the people who are needing the assistance, needing the help, you just never really got
22:38it.
22:38I would call it a godsend, although it didn't feel like it at the time.
22:43In March, I was on my way to class and my seeing eye dog was trying to tell me that
22:50there was
22:51a step coming.
22:52And of course, being the idiot that I was and wearing high heels, I didn't listen.
22:57So down the steps I went and I broke my arm.
23:02And so for about six weeks, it was a green stick fracture, but my arm was in a sling.
23:08And so I got illustrated for me just exactly what you described.
23:13I was left alone by these people that I thought had been so loving.
23:18They were nowhere to be, you know, they did not want, because I think in a way, they might
23:24have thought that my falling and breaking my arm was something that I had believed in
23:31in my life.
23:31Believe me, I would never have done that.
23:33It was painful.
23:34And I had to go through physical therapy.
23:36But the blessing was that I had plenty of time to think.
23:42I had plenty of time to reflect and to ask myself some questions.
23:47Is this really what I want?
23:50Is this the kind of group I want to be in?
23:54In the meantime, with all of that going on, we had gone to a biblical research meeting.
24:03And at the end of the meeting, they left me alone in the hotel lobby, which is scary enough
24:09of being a totally blind person, because they were having a meeting with their branch coordinator
24:15that I was not supposed to be at.
24:18So I nodded off.
24:20I mean, I literally went to sleep in my chair.
24:22And I woke up crying.
24:25Well, one of the local twig coordinators found me and took me into the room.
24:30And the branch coordinator was, he was just terrible.
24:32He said, stop that crying immediately and sit down now and speak in tongues.
24:38What do you do?
24:38You know, you're acting like somebody possessed of devil spirits.
24:42And there's a little part of me that's going, whoa, this is the way my dad talked to me.
24:49This is the kind of voice he used.
24:52And as I'm reliving this for you right now, I'm thinking, wow, at some instinctive level,
25:00I knew that something was wrong about this.
25:03And as I was listening to this meeting, I had a boyfriend that I had made in the cult.
25:07And as I was listening to this meeting, he was berating my boyfriend.
25:13And he was saying, Mark, not his real name, Mark, if you, because he was a, Mark was a
25:19wow ambassador who had come there from across the country.
25:23He said, Mark, if you don't get a part-time job 20 or 30 hours a week, we don't run
25:31a welfare
25:31state around here.
25:32If you don't get a 20 or 30 hour a week job within 10 days, then you'll have to leave.
25:39I mean, he said this right out in front of everybody.
25:42And that poor boy, I'm a young man.
25:45It was just, it was just heartbreaking.
25:47And the thought I had and the thought I got to reflect on while my arm was healing was,
25:55wow, this is worse, if anything, than what I grew up with.
26:00This is not the loving, accepting group I thought I had joined.
26:08And in that loneliness, in that wilderness wandering time that I had, I just, I prayed a lot.
26:20And I will tell you, I'll tell your listeners too, as I don't know where any of them are,
26:25but it's like if you're going through a cult experience or through a wilderness experience
26:30in general, God goes behind you and before you.
26:34And I really, from my Wesleyan understanding, I really find comfort in that.
26:41And so God was there in that moment, even though it didn't feel like it at the time.
26:46Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of
26:52modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
26:57movements into the new apostolic reformation?
27:00You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
27:05william-branham.org.
27:07On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
27:13Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
27:19audio, and digital versions of each book.
27:22You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
27:27movements.
27:28If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the
27:33Contribute button at the top.
27:35And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're
27:40listening to or watching.
27:41On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
27:46You mentioned the anti-Semitic books that Werewell was pushing, and I'll never forget the
27:52surprise that I had when I came to realize that many of the books that Branham was also pushing
27:58had themes that came from Christian identity.
28:03The Fox Book of the Martyrs, for example, was one that was heavily pushed by those who
28:07were in the anti-Semitic crowd.
28:08I had no idea of this.
28:10Whenever I was young, I read it.
28:12I cried for the martyrs.
28:13But I didn't realize the themes that, the anti-Catholic themes, the false Jew themes that
28:18were in that book.
28:19And then I came to know, through my research, that there were significant figures that were
28:26embedded in Christian identity or adjacent to and supporting Christian identity that
28:31were a fundamental part of this movement's creation.
28:35I've mentioned several times Gerald Burton Winrod, who was working as one of the directors
28:40of the Fundamentalist League, Fundamentalists of the World, I guess it was.
28:45He was a director at the same time Branham's mentor.
28:47Roy Davis was a director in this.
28:50Davis, the second in command of the Klan.
28:52I mean, you had all of these weird connections that had political themes.
28:57And so the movement got created.
28:59The movement started heading down this weird political Christian pathway that it was heading.
29:05And then, whenever you got into the mid-50s, 60s especially, you started to have the communist
29:13scare.
29:14And so they platformed many themes within the movement that was intended solely for the
29:23purpose of convincing people that the end of the world was coming through this communist
29:27scare.
29:28We need to get right with God today because the world will end tomorrow.
29:33That was kind of the theme that was spreading through the movement.
29:37It was problematic in that that focus never really left.
29:41In Branhamism today, we still fear the communist scare.
29:44And every time that Russia does anything, it doesn't matter what they do, suddenly this is
29:49it.
29:50This is the big one.
29:50This is the end of the world.
29:52And yes, that may happen.
29:54I'm not going to say that it's not.
29:55But the movement was more about the fear than it was about the comforter.
30:00For me, that was a problem.
30:02And like I said, it continues today.
30:05I'm curious within the way.
30:06This was a movement that's sitting adjacent to all of this that we're describing.
30:10They apparently had many of the same themes.
30:12That was probably why they were connected.
30:15I'm curious today.
30:16Did they still have the communist threats, the communist scare within the movement?
30:21Yes, when I was involved, I loved, and I would listen, actually, at the time, too, I was
30:28listening to a biography of Martin Luther King, and I had actually listened to some of the
30:33sermons.
30:34And I made that comment, and they said, oh, no, you can't have that.
30:38You know, you shouldn't listen to that.
30:40Martin Luther King is a communist.
30:42So, I mean, this was exactly what they taught.
30:47I think there were a lot of Cold War fears that they had, that they taught.
30:54I think there were some doomsday elements, too, because we will, you know, basically encourage
31:01people to be prepared, to have your car full of gas, to do all of these preparedness things.
31:09I know at one point, I didn't see them do it, but they were really pushing that movie,
31:15Red Dawn, and they were encouraging their members to watch it.
31:21Now, I have read a lot of history about communism in the Soviet Union and in China, and like Ann
31:32Applebaum's Gulag, a history, or Solzhenitsyn, or anyone, or Nian Cheng's life and death in
31:39Shanghai.
31:40So, I know about the history, but using it as a weapon, using it to instill fear in people,
31:46I think is just a misuse of the discipline.
31:50I had this conversation just yesterday with the person I was interviewing on a podcast,
31:55and we were talking about all of the people who have escaped.
31:57I've worked with hundreds at this point who have gone through the process of
32:02deconstructing, finding their footing, going down the pathways.
32:05And some of those people who do come back into the Christian churches, they contact me and
32:10say, John, this Bible reads differently than I ever read it when I was in the group.
32:14And they start mentioning some of their favorite new passages.
32:17Many of them go to the passages that are talking about peace and comfort, because Jesus is the
32:24comforter.
32:24He'll send you the Holy Spirit that's the comforter.
32:26And whenever you think about this, whenever you think about the core of Christianity is that
32:32it will give you peace, there is no fear.
32:34It says there are passages like, perfect love casts out all fear.
32:38But the movement heightened the fear.
32:41They focused on the fear.
32:43They really wanted to drive the fear because that was driving people into the movement.
32:48I think that's really what it was.
32:49It's not that fear sells, but fear contains.
32:53So, once you got into the movement, they would use the fear as a whip to basically keep you in
32:57here.
32:58But the problem is, it's really hard to keep up that fear.
33:01You have to turn it into this thing where any recent news, doesn't matter what it is, if
33:07you can find negative recent news, you use that, capitalize it to bring fear back into
33:13the movement, and it creates this invisible boundary around people, around their minds.
33:18So, for me, it's really odd when you think about it, because there's no way to do that
33:22without turning it into some sort of a conspiracy theory movement.
33:26Every single news item that hits the newspapers or the news media, you're going to take it,
33:33you're going to say, look at this conspiracy.
33:35This is something that it proves.
33:37I'm right.
33:38The end of the world is coming.
33:39That's what it was.
33:40It was a movement of conspiracy theory.
33:42It's interesting about the conspiracy culture, too.
33:45Back during the pandemic, since I left, it's kind of funny because I get called on whenever
33:52there's a question about a cult.
33:55Back during the pandemic, I was talking to a lady at my church, and she said, say, I was
34:00wondering if you could answer a question.
34:02And I said, sure, I can answer a question.
34:04She said, what do you know about QAnon?
34:07And I said, oh, well, what I know about it is that it started with Pizzagate, and the way
34:14people are attracted is through these Facebook memes.
34:17And who doesn't want to help children who are being trafficked, right?
34:21But there's a whole nother dark layer to that.
34:25So I was describing to her of what it was.
34:28And she says, well, I thought you would know.
34:31You know, I think once you have lived through something like that, I would not wish that whole
34:36experience on anybody.
34:37But I can tell you that having gone through that, it's taught me a great deal of empathy
34:44and humility.
34:46It's taught me that anybody can be vulnerable.
34:50So you don't judge somebody and say, oh, well, if you knew your scripture better, you'd
34:55never get involved in a cult.
34:57False.
34:58I think one of the things that I've learned is once you experience that, I think, you do
35:08start to develop more discernment and more ability to think critically and to ask questions.
35:17Questions like, what is this group?
35:20Where did it come from?
35:22Who is your leader?
35:24What is this background?
35:26Now the internet can help a lot.
35:28It can be a blessing and a curse, but it can help a lot in that area.
35:31And that's another conversation that I had recently.
35:34Why a leader?
35:36Think of a normal Christian church.
35:37If something were to happen and the pastor needed to be replaced, the church continues
35:43on.
35:44But in these type of movements, if you take the leader out, the movement really ceases
35:48to exist.
35:49You almost can't have the movement without the leader.
35:52That's why in Branhamism, even though he's dead, they still focus on what he said, his
35:57recordings.
35:58They play these recordings constantly.
35:59He is the movement.
36:01And if you take him out of the movement, what are you left with?
36:04There is really nothing.
36:05But in a Christian church, you don't need the leader.
36:08And at the same time, the leaders, it's just really odd because they're trying to come
36:13up with these conspiracies and claim that they have divine knowledge or intellect.
36:18I guess in werewolves and werewolves circles, it was a little bit different than Branhamism.
36:23They're supposed to have the special knowledge that nobody else has.
36:27And so therefore, you have to come to the movement.
36:29They become the guru, I guess is the best way to say it.
36:33And at the same time, they're bringing in elements of Gnosticism, which is perfectly fitting
36:38because Gnosticism is the Gnosis or the secret knowledge.
36:42They bring in elements like this to create something that really isn't Christianity, but
36:47yet at the same time, they use the name Jesus.
36:49They use the word Christian and make it appear like it.
36:53It would almost be like if you took some mud out of the ground and smeared some icing on
36:58it and said, here, this is a birthday cake.
36:59That's what they did with Christianity.
37:02Another thing that they also do is try to make themselves appear wonderful.
37:08Like, who doesn't want to be an instrument of healing in the world?
37:12I'll never forget it.
37:14In 2005, my pastor at the Baptist Church I grew up in when I was little, he was dealing
37:22with the situation in Logan County, West Virginia, where I'm from, with the new apostolic movement
37:29in the early 2000s.
37:31He was dealing with the God chasers, Tommy Tenney and the God chasers.
37:35And I'll never forget it.
37:36My grandma was talking about it.
37:38I said, ma'am, I said, you know, I think I can find you some information about that.
37:44And so I did.
37:45I found some, there was deception in the church.
37:48There were some discernment websites that did have some pretty good information.
37:53And so she told my pastor, she said, you know, my granddaughter can help you with this.
37:59So it was kind of an interesting full circle moment of me going from when I was a teenager,
38:05I would never have talked to my pastor about the doubts I was facing to now here we are
38:10in 2005 and I'm looking up stuff for him and helping him.
38:16But what would happen, and this is what cults do, I think, is that this particular group within
38:24the charismatic movement were going into the local schools, supposedly offering an anti-drug program,
38:32like who doesn't want a program to keep your kids off drugs, right?
38:37So they were going into the schools and they were also going into the churches and they
38:43were taking the best and brightest from all the denominations in the area, whether it be
38:49Methodist, Baptist, Assemblies of God, into their movement, into their church.
38:54It was very sneaky and very covert.
38:57And, but this is what they do.
39:00They start out, they seem well-meaning, but there's always, always, always a hidden agenda
39:07somewhere.
39:08The other thing that all of these groups have in common is the way that people who have
39:13questions or who just simply have doubts are treated.
39:17I'll never forget whenever I first started to come to terms with the fact that there might
39:21be a problem with brandimism.
39:23I couldn't eat.
39:24I couldn't sleep.
39:24I really needed help.
39:26I needed, I went to my grandfather to get some of my questions answered and suddenly
39:31I watched my grandfather change because I had a question and it just, it really bothered
39:36me because if you have something that's true and something that's defensible, you would
39:41defend it with, with actual truth, right?
39:44But instead what they want to do is silence the questions and this turned into a problem
39:48for me.
39:49Carry that forward.
39:51Now, whenever you leave, your entire world is wrapped up in this group.
39:55You have made all of your connections, your strong personal ties to people who really,
40:02you felt like they were strong bonds.
40:04But as soon as you leave, you find out they were all paper thin.
40:08Everybody really put more focus on the group than they did the individuals in the group.
40:13For me, that was a problem.
40:15What was that like for you?
40:16Whenever you first started to leave, what, what was it like for you?
40:20What did you experience?
40:22Well, it was a little different for me.
40:24I'm what they would call and call parlance a walk away because I was there for slightly
40:29less than a year.
40:31So I didn't have what you had, which was the extreme, you know, this has been your whole
40:36entire life.
40:37For me, it was more, I think falling and having that time to think really helped in an odd
40:45way because I did have a little bit of wiggle room to distance myself from it.
40:52But I do think, actually, what happened with me was more of a feeling of numbness, like
40:59nothing really happened anyway.
41:02And it took a while for it to really register that, yeah, something really did happen.
41:08I really was exposed to this environment and I wasted a year of my life in it.
41:15But I also think what did help me in coming out was that I did, I did reach out to
41:26people.
41:27I tried first going to the library and seeing if there was any information.
41:31And at the time, there was just a dearth of any kind of, all they had was a little article
41:37in a Ronald Enroth book called The Jesus People, Old Time Religion in the Age of Aquarius.
41:44And I didn't find much that didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
41:50And so anyway, I reached out, actually, it was a peace group on campus that I was in.
41:57And me and this guy who, he was an atheist, once again, here we go with that.
42:03We were ranting about, I mean, I was really mad.
42:06I was venting, I have to say.
42:09I was telling him about my experience in the way, you know, I just came out of this and
42:14it was terrible.
42:15And I was telling him some of the things that happened.
42:19And this girl came up to us and she was an angel.
42:23She was overweight.
42:24She was dyslexic.
42:25I remember she threw a shot put.
42:27And, but she invited me into something different.
42:31She said, well, it doesn't have to be that way.
42:34And she was telling me about a Presbyterian group that met.
42:39And she said, would you like to try it?
42:41And I said, well, yeah, but if there's anything that I don't like, I'm running away.
42:46I'm out of here.
42:47So, I tried it and really found comfort there.
42:52It took a while.
42:53I went through some stages where I was even praying, God, I don't even know if you exist.
43:00I don't know if you're real or not.
43:02But if you're here, help me.
43:04So, that was my experience.
43:07I did have some trauma reactions, though.
43:10I had nightmares.
43:12And I didn't know at first where the nightmares were coming from.
43:16I had difficulty trusting people, even like going to a church.
43:23I asked a lot of questions.
43:25And thankfully, God did put some people into my life.
43:30I guess my prayer would be, too, that I could be that person in somebody's life.
43:36That if they're struggling to leave a group like that, that I could be the person who would let them
43:43vent, that would not come up with, oh, well, you know, the scriptural reason you shouldn't be in this group
43:51is, and you're a cult.
43:52No, I wouldn't use that kind of language.
43:54I would listen to the person and gain their trust first.
43:58And then, if they expressed an interest in joining a group, I would walk through that process with them very
44:07slowly because it's painful.
44:09It's very painful for a lot of folks.
44:11It's extremely painful.
44:13It's something that many people share who have left these types of groups.
44:17It's one of the hardest things that they've ever been through.
44:19What advice would you give to people who are impacted by these types of groups and they finally make their
44:26way out?
44:27They try to escape.
44:28They try to mentally detangle what happened to them.
44:31What advice would you give to people who are struggling?
44:34Number one, learning to forgive yourself a little bit because one of the things that I went through was I
44:43thought I went through several stages.
44:47And one of them is you think, first of all, there's the how could this happen to me?
44:53That's the first one.
44:54And then the second one is, how could I have been so dumb?
45:01And so, you go from being angry at the cult to feeling that way about yourself.
45:07And so, I think that is a first step.
45:12I do think, at least for me, and it's maybe not true for everybody.
45:16Some people, like Charlene Edge did, she walked away from God altogether, and I understand that.
45:23But I think one thing that spirituality has helped me a lot to recover.
45:31And I think recovering some of the love of Jesus that I had from my childhood and recovering aspects of
45:40myself as a person.
45:42For example, my love of reading and getting back into the books that I like.
45:48These are little things, but I think those little things really help you, along with self-care.
45:56Self-care is so huge.
45:58Making sure that you get plenty of sleep, that you get exercise.
46:04In addiction circles, they talk about being a good parent to yourself.
46:10And so, I think all of those is good.
46:15And for some folks, they may have to rebuild bridges, which is, it can be tough, because you may have
46:22alienated some family and friends.
46:25Fortunately, I had friends who were patient with me, and who knew what I, they knew what I was going
46:31through.
46:32And they were able to just talk to me about it later and say, you know, we knew something was
46:40wrong about that group.
46:41Or we knew they had some weird views about sex outside of marriage, which is a whole other story, that
46:49there was rampant sexual abuse within the way, beginning with Weir Will on down.
46:54Yeah, it's just so sad.
46:56I mean, you look at the news today, and you see, time after time, there are these leaders who emerge
47:01from this movement who are falling to exactly that.
47:05And yet, at the same time, the movement is touting itself as being not only Christian, but a divinely inspired,
47:13led-by-God movement, where these apostles and prophets and teachers and other leaders are appointed by God.
47:21And yet, this happens, and this continues to happen again and again.
47:25It shows that this is the fruit of something that's not quite Christian.
47:30There's something else going on here.
47:31Let's talk about that a bit.
47:33What would you say, what you have now, the Christianity that you understand now, what would you say is the
47:40biggest difference between what you have now and what they were calling Christianity when they were in the movement?
47:45Well, there are several things.
47:47I think, first of all, we accept that Jesus, in the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with
47:55God, and the Word was God.
47:58You know, it isn't pitting God against Jesus, or Jesus as a separate being, or anything like that, that are
48:05elements of Gnosticism.
48:06It is that Jesus, and that God, too, that God loves us.
48:14He's not that wrathful Father I grew up with, and neither is His Spirit an impersonal force.
48:21His Spirit is with us every single day when we're going through the valley or on the mountaintop.
48:28He's there, and I also think that there is a difference in the health or the lack thereof.
48:37Like, in the way, the church that I was in after I left, had I decided, you know, I don't
48:47want to go to my current church anymore.
48:50I want to go somewhere else.
48:52They would not have disfellowshipped me and said, Mark and avoid this person.
49:00No, I mean, like my church now, if I were to say, you know, I would feel more comfortable in
49:06X, Y, or Z church, they would say, well, we'll miss you.
49:11We love you, but they're always my friends.
49:15And when I see them out in the store or outside or I'm going somewhere in the community because I'm
49:23very active in my community, they would say hello.
49:26They would give me a hug.
49:28That is an emotionally healthy church.
49:31An unhealthy one or what we had was that if you left, you would be shunned, like, completely.
49:40And I don't know if you've seen it.
49:43It's an old article about the shepherding movement that's a few years old, but it is still worthwhile to look
49:48at.
49:48It's called They Told Me That If I Left.
49:53And it is heartbreaking and it is sad because in an unhealthy structure like we were in in the way,
50:01if you left, your best friend wouldn't speak to you.
50:06And that is the emotionally and spiritually unhealthy thing.
50:11But in a church that is emotionally and spiritually healthy, they don't have those kinds of closed systems.
50:21It's just so different.
50:23I mean, it's wrong, really, when you think about it.
50:25When we left, we attended several different churches.
50:29And, in fact, one of those churches, we watched a change in leadership, and the old pastor ministers went out,
50:36the new ministers came in, and the church didn't miss a beat because they weren't focused on the human.
50:41But yet, in the comment feeds, I can mention any central figure of any different group, and you'll find members
50:47of that group come in and say,
50:48Well, if this isn't the leader for our day, who is?
50:51And they get really violent and angry, like they're defending the guy who we're showing that has clear issues.
50:59It just shows that they're not able to critically think and that they have focus on the leader, not in
51:05God.
51:06So you can't really call it Christian if they're followers of the human.
51:10They're followers of the human more than they are God.
51:13It's just such a different mindset.
51:14And it shows that there's a huge problem.
51:17People really need to critically think.
51:19We owe it to our people to teach them how to think critically and ask questions.
51:28I will never forget it.
51:29I had these Moonies came up to me and handed me this CAUSA pamphlet one day and a paper to
51:35go with it.
51:35And so I thought, well, this is good for something.
51:38So I had some fundamentalist friends, and I said,
51:41Oh, I would like to introduce you to this anti-communist group that you may like.
51:47So they sat down and happily signed the paper.
51:49Not a word, not a question, none of them.
51:52And after they were done, I said,
51:54Oh, by the way, you've just signed your life over to the Unification Church.
51:58I mean, it wouldn't have gone no further than me.
52:00But the point of it was, it made me sad that these people didn't even stop to say,
52:05Who is this?
52:07Where does this come from?
52:09What is this CAUSA?
52:11And so that, I think, is the most important thing.
52:16I would rather prevent somebody from joining a group like that than from going through some agonizing experience that lasts
52:2410, 12, 17, 20 years.
52:27Takes away a huge chunk of their lives.
52:30So I would say prevention, learning to ask questions, information is crucial.
52:35So the more information that you have about the group, the better.
52:42That is, that's a huge one right there.
52:44And so, and I also think creating an environment in our churches where if people have questions or they have
52:52doubts or they're wrestling with something in their faith,
52:55creating a safe space to talk.
52:59Because a lot of people end up gravitating or end up being introduced to these groups because of a lack
53:09of community and family and a sense of something lost in their own environment.
53:17Well, that's very good advice.
53:18Thank you so much for doing this.
53:20Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story, you can check us
53:24out on the web.
53:25You can find us at william-brannum.org.
53:27For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to
53:33the NAR.
53:34Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
54:17Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
54:44Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
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