Our Stories: Escaping IHOP - An Interview With Jessica Wehrle - Episode 158 Branham Podcast
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John invites Jessica Wehrle to talk about her experience in the International House of Prayer.
00:00 Introduction
01:03 Jessica’s Background and Introduction to IHOP
04:49 Sense of Urgency in IHOP
07:45 Early Experiences at the House of Prayer
11:14 The Bridal Paradigm
18:18 Joel’s Army and Critical Thinking
22:32 Emotional Manipulation and Community Dynamics
31:02 Leadership and Critical Thinking in Cults
36:02 Trust Issues with Leadership
39:19 False Prophecy in the Charismatic Movement
46:26 Harp and Bowl Model
50:01 Advice to Younger Self
______________________
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https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
John invites Jessica Wehrle to talk about her experience in the International House of Prayer.
00:00 Introduction
01:03 Jessica’s Background and Introduction to IHOP
04:49 Sense of Urgency in IHOP
07:45 Early Experiences at the House of Prayer
11:14 The Bridal Paradigm
18:18 Joel’s Army and Critical Thinking
22:32 Emotional Manipulation and Community Dynamics
31:02 Leadership and Critical Thinking in Cults
36:02 Trust Issues with Leadership
39:19 False Prophecy in the Charismatic Movement
46:26 Harp and Bowl Model
50:01 Advice to Younger Self
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Transcript
00:00You
00:30Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham historical research podcast.
00:36I'm your host John Collins the author and founder of William Branham historical research at William
00:42dash Branham org and with me I have my very special guest Jessica Worley and today we're
00:48talking about all things I hop and NAR and charismatic and what it means to be spirit
00:56field while suddenly discovering that there's a whole mess out there and what is this mess and
01:02so Jessica and I we got to talking via email and Jessica would be good maybe if you just take a
01:09moment and tell everybody about yourself and how you got connected to this weird world that I've
01:14been researching I've been really enjoying your videos on YouTube I've been watching them as I
01:21try to start detangling myself from all of the craziness that was mixed up inside of I hop my
01:31background is I started at a house of prayer in Chicago when I was just 17 years old and that
01:39house of prayer was just starting the year was 2001 so very shortly after Mike Bickles house
01:47of prayer started today I am you know in my 40s and have five kids and living far away from all
01:55that and I left I left the house of prayer worlds all the way back in 2008 not the world I left that
02:05particular house of prayer in about 2008 so my window of involvement was not super brief but
02:14man I was all in I was I was staffed for at least 20 hours a week almost that entire time and even
02:28the hours that I didn't need to be there it was just such a home for me that I loved it I was
02:32there all the time and it's mentally taxing right to be so engaged all the time while you're while
02:39you're there you're thinking about the church and then when you leave you're thinking about the
02:42church and it's constantly there this sense of urgency we've talked about this in a few different
02:48podcasts they give you the sense of urgency and it just sticks with you and what was it like
02:53whenever you made the transition away a lot of people feel this strange emptiness whenever they
02:59get disconnected from from the urgency did you experience this that word urgency all I can think
03:05of is their catchphrase the urgency of the hour have you heard that I haven't the urgency of the
03:12hour that was an often repeated phrase Corey Russell would talk about it which I still like
03:20Corey Russell all kinds of we need to be here we need to be crying out for the return of the Lord
03:29the Spirit and the bride say come you know we need to build his house lots of conversations
03:36about Nehemiah building the wall a lot of inserting ourselves into the scriptural narrative from
03:44history and applying it to right now but yeah so leaving the prayer movement and then just kind of
03:53being a normal person was weird it was really strange to come out of that and then I just I
04:03the elitism stuck with me I'm a forerunner that was another big word I'm I'm a forerunner I'm to
04:12carry this message wherever I go I just felt like I was more different and special I'm not that I
04:21was a better person but that I had this secret knowledge this higher revelation if only you knew
04:27what I knew it's very odd to me tracking the history of this movement from splinter group to
04:33splinter group into the you know I hop the NAR they always use that catchphrase of the hour and
04:39they can say whatever they want before of the hour because if they say of the hour it's urgent right
04:45you have to be mixed in with this and the thing that all of these groups seem to have in common
04:51is they want to put on to your shoulders you being the rank-and-file members of the cult the sense of
05:00urgency that it's your job to make sure that you build yourself up to a level of hype that Jesus
05:07comes back and so you're you're staying in this hype forever and it's exhausting from what people
05:13are telling me I was in a similar hype but it was the hype for destruction because the the latter
05:19rain movement was seeking for a destruction of the United States so we were we had a hype for
05:25destruction and then you know that's no fun so as it went into cares mania it was more of a let's
05:32let's work ourselves up because Jesus is gonna come back if we can work ourselves up that absolutely
05:38happened yeah so tell us a little bit more about the early experiences you had so you were in one
05:44of the original houses of prayer what what was that like you said you spent 20 hours ish in there
05:50what were some of the things that you did when you were a part of that movement yeah so we were
05:57the first internship that opened the house of prayer my what had happened was my youth pastor
06:04went away to Kansas City got a download commonly used term not like he plugged himself into a
06:14computer but a download from heaven like this new fresh Commission that he got from Kansas City to
06:23build God's house to build a house of prayer and wherever you know where he lived which was Chicago
06:30so he brought this fresh vision back to the church our original pastor step back and retired and this
06:43guy became the full-on pastor and then started a house of prayer to the side of our church and
06:50where I was at when it started was I was a 17 year old girl that had been homeschooled her whole life
06:59and a Christian bubble her whole life was I was attending church in the womb so I was always in it
07:06and I had just attended my first semester of a secular college and that was a very confusing
07:14experience for me because you know I've now I'm not in that yes bubble of all of this is correct
07:22I got people making fun of me people making fun of Christian beliefs constantly and I was in a
07:27typical struggle in college where you're trying to figure out what I'm who am I really is this that
07:33was my parents thing isn't my thing I don't know so when our youth pastor turned pastor said this
07:42is the house of prayer we're starting it caught we're calling forth interns to staff this place
07:46I thought well if I'm gonna try it and maybe I will find out that it's not for me that like well
07:55I gave it I gave it 20 hours a week and I'm just not a Christian or oh my gosh yes this is definitely
08:02me so that is my entrance into house of prayer world and it was like I said totally totally
08:15foreign concept of the bridal paradigm was all very new to me in that last year he had started
08:24talking about it at our church but the bridal paradigm was pretty new and should I explain that
08:29yeah that would be good there's all different ways that the Bible uses to explain God's love
08:35for us as humans and it's so different that it requires a lot of different relationships to say
08:45it's kind of like this it's kind of like this it's kind of like that like a father-child relationship
08:51king servant he's the judge he's also a bridegroom it's mentioned a couple times in the scripture
08:59he's a bridegroom and us as the body of Christ were the bride well we got really into studying
09:05that scandalous books on songs and using it as a Bible study tool to understand God's love for us
09:14that way and it wasn't just like corporately as a body of Christ we are the bride and he's the
09:23bridegroom it was also you know in our individualistic society as Americans I'm the bride
09:30of Christ and he's my bridegroom and there was lots of bridal imagery there and there was always
09:37a disclaimer at the beginning of a song of Solomon class because the first verses are kiss me with
09:44the kisses of your mouth they said stop we're not gonna imagine kissing Jesus okay that's weird
09:50and I'm like phew because that that's not cool thing that's you so they really they really sold
10:00us on the metaphor like this is all metaphorical obviously because if anyone's ever read the song
10:05song of Solomon it's very very strange imagery like am I supposed to be flattered that you said
10:12I have an ivory tower neck and I've got goats on me like I'm not really sure so they would go
10:23into like the law of first mentions of like well the first time this is what it meant so we're
10:29gonna apply that here and it was really interesting you know I the biggest takeaway for me that was
10:36good was that God doesn't just love me he likes me he enjoys me that I am an enjoyed creation of
10:44God and I think that's I still think that's great it transformed my relationship with God to be that
10:52of a fearful of judgment all the time too I'm delighted in and so that's that's good right
11:00it was just it was just a lot there's all different ways to experience God's
11:06lover to understand God's love and that was definitely the hyper focus of that movement
11:10yeah you just basically described every church that I've been to since a small child in the
11:15Branham cults they all often did this bride and bridegroom thing because under the framework of
11:22British Israelism you were to believe that the United States and Canada was one of the lost
11:29you know tribes of Israel and that the all of the bride passages that you read from the Old
11:35Testament was applicable to us as the 20th 21st century Christians right and I'll never forget
11:45see they didn't tell us this British Israel thing we I had no idea until I began researching that
11:50this was a thing and I just remember I came across reading Ezekiel 16 and it was talking about God's
11:58faithless bride Jerusalem and I'm scratching my head wait a minute Jerusalem and I started
12:03looking at every passage that I could find obviously in the Old Testament it's all applicable
12:08to the children of Israel and then you get into the New Testament and book of Hebrews etc there's
12:15a clear transition where it's talking about the bride being Jerusalem and then now there's a new
12:20covenant and there's this clear separation right and when that first hit me I you know I was like
12:28this can't be right I ended up reading my Bible over and over and over trying to just piece
12:33together and understand what all of this meant because we were taught that there was this coming
12:39destruction like I said and we were part of the bride the elite Christians and then outside of
12:46this group of elite Christians were the they had different names for them but the worst of which
12:51was cannon fodder Christians and the ones that the ones that were to be sent to the enemies to
12:57be destroyed is basically what this man so we as the elite were the good guys were the were the
13:03bride that God loves and they're the non bride that are going to be destroyed how very convenient
13:09yeah it was it was a mess so I recently in fact it was just yesterday I had a podcast recording
13:17which will come out later maybe before this one of a lady who also went into some similar challenges
13:23when she got into the education system and she had to try to reconcile now that she's in I think
13:30you called it the real world but she used the phrase and not in this I think she said not in
13:35the same hype or the same level of excitement of the message that she was in you you start to
13:42realize that there there are two separate worlds that exist and you're trying to reconcile how
13:47does this work how is this possible and you begin to critically think and some of the things that
13:53you critically think about are you know it really can't apply to the cult and so there's this big
13:59separation between now you're seeing that there's reality and then there's this fictional part that
14:05you were this fictional story that you were part of what was that like whenever that began to hit
14:11you the critical thinking aspect is such a big piece realize primarily young people were being
14:21called to this movement from Mike Bickles in Kansas City to Houses of Prayer all over it was
14:28this vision they had of all these young people coming in and now we know Mike Bickle was doing
14:34that because he loved the ladies the younger ladies right but we us younger people another
14:42another reason is our critical thinking isn't at peak when you're 19 years old 22 years old
14:49we're still so malleable I you said you know while you were already grown kind of I was kind
14:55of a grown-up in the sense that I was physically matured but I was still extremely malleable
15:02extremely impressionable and a lot of my identity was formed in this bubble in this movement there's
15:11good parts and there's bad parts and as I have grown I feel like when I hit 30 something clicked
15:18and I'd been out of that for a while and and as continued I just feel like I mean we continue
15:25to mature as we age but my critical thinking continues to turn on and what one of the things
15:31that flipped it believe it or not was right before the 2020 election and I would be tuning in to all
15:40these prophetic people on YouTube to see what they said about the election because I still liked them
15:47at that point and everybody was prophesying that Trump was going to win and he didn't and then they
15:54kept prophesying well he's going to get back in office and then this is going to happen and this
15:57is going to happen and it just wasn't and it became so clear to me that holy smokes these people are
16:04nuts and they're thinking they're hearing from God and they're not it was just a big wake-up
16:09call and I think I'm not the only person there's plenty of other people in my circles that just
16:16went no no and it also became very clear to me this whole spiritualizing the political
16:24is um we just need to keep them separated right but that's um yeah we gotta keep them separate
16:30it's not let Jesus's kingdom is not about politics and that's the first time that's how they screwed
16:38up is they were expecting Jesus to overthrow Caesar and he's like that's not actually what
16:44I'm doing guys and unfortunately we're in that same mess again anyway so my critical thinking
16:49got turned on more so starting there and now I'm just looking back as as things have continued to
16:59happen I'm looking back and starting to pull things apart there's one element one or two
17:04elements that I would hear in our movement that gave me gave me pause one of them was the whole
17:11Joel's army teaching because it was ripped screaming out of context I mean it just it wasn't
17:19what if you if if you're gonna look at that book in historical context and all the things that
17:26they're trying to say they're not saying that we're gonna be this big army of of young people
17:33and believers spirit-filled that are gonna take over like that's just not not it was about judgment
17:39it wasn't about yeah and so I noticed that my parents noticed that my parents were part of it
17:47and a little bit of my critical thinking would be activated every time my parents would go
17:55that's actually not biblically accurate at all and this is a little weird and then I didn't
18:01really want to listen to them but I couldn't help see it too so there were little bits and I just
18:06you just have that mentality of well you know what you know take the meat eat the meat spit out
18:11the bones it's all right like no one's gonna get it a hundred percent so I just kept trudging on
18:17yeah it's so weird to me to think that this religion and all of its splinter groups and
18:24in its history have such strong ties to the politics because like you just said the church
18:31is no place for this man if you want to vote go talk you know go to a public rally for voting
18:36don't go to church but we see over and over and over again in my history I've been going back
18:43as you probably have seen I went back to study the Klan history because William Branham was
18:48associated with high-ranking officials not just one but multiple from the Klan and they tried the
18:55same exact thing in the 20s the Klan tried to take over Washington through the state of Indiana
19:01and they actually started putting proxies in place in Indianapolis government and were going
19:07to put the governor in and when he didn't make it then there's this big outcry the voting systems
19:14flawed there's fake ballots all of this stuff and it keeps repeating you you can see in the 60s
19:21the same exact thing whenever Kennedy was about to be elected they had this big outcry and all
19:27the Christians banded together who were in part of this movement and same exact thing the voting's
19:34rigged can he get elected because the voting's rigged and it just happens over and over and over
19:39again and the Joel's army believe it or not was tied to that racism it was tied to the Christian
19:47identity movement and I um I never forget the first time I took a step back to just look at
19:55manifested sons of God Joel's army what it meant and I go back and I read Joel 2 and the army that
20:02it's referring to was an army of a plague that God had sent because the children of Israel weren't
20:08being very good and so this plague of locusts and caterpillars and everything and then God said now
20:15you've changed your ways now I'm going to take you out of the plague and right to stop and think that
20:20these guys did not even take the time to read and understand what Joel's prophecy meant it just
20:27blows your mind it does it just made I keep saying to myself where were the adults what why did we
20:36turn off our critical thinking skills so often and it's I think it's the emotionalism is that
20:44we were always whipping ourselves up to a frenzy because it it felt good you know it feels good to
20:51be overly emotional and when you're that age when these young these younger people I mean that's
20:56where we're strongest in our emotions and we can get real passionate and it's inspiring for the
21:03older generation to see the younger people you know crying out to God for revival it's it's
21:09inspiring for them to see us do that and we enjoyed it once we once you get into that flow
21:15and you you kind of break past the the fear of man you know you're afraid what are they going
21:20to think about me who's that or what is this person going to think about me and you're in a
21:24group where everyone thinks it's great it's it's a little easier to just kind of jump in 100 percent
21:33I remember watching a young man dancing in in the prayer room and there wasn't a ton of people there
21:42he was the only other young person in the room and he was just a hundred percent in worshiping Jesus
21:51and it wasn't a girly dance it was a manly dance and it looked good on him and it just it made me
21:57go you know what I want that I think I want to I think I want to just let go that way and really
22:02just be physically worshiping the Lord not just this quiet in place and so that a lot a lot of
22:14that a lot of that intense dancing and wildness is really what marked our IHOP experience in Chicago
22:23not so much in Kansas City I heard that they like kept the dancers in a little box
22:27they didn't like that they like things more control it's more like go-go dancers
22:32not go-go dancers no no but I do with like the prophetic flags and the scarves and you know
22:38special outfits which have always cracked me up I'm sorry I never thought that was cool but that's
22:43okay um okay anyway um the control that I think one of the big differences between Kansas City IHOP
22:52and our Chicago House of Prayer was initially is that we had a lot more freedom Mike Bickle was a
23:00very type a personality and and if you look at his sermon notes everything is you know part one
23:08section a section b and that his blueprint his personality was all over that that that particular
23:19house of prayer with how structured everything is how how um you know people are singing all
23:25these passionate beautiful songs but but if you see the video of the live stream like they're
23:30hardly moving everyone's got these big headphones on and they're very stiffly um just kind of like
23:36stuck there and that was always a little bit strange to me um where we had a lot more freedom
23:42at least in the beginning of our house of prayer um and we had our own Chicago flavor that way
23:47Chicago's famous for their musicians we had some really good ones we had some really great musicians
23:52some really amazing talented singers and uh prophetic prophetic singers which another way
23:59to put that for those of you that aren't in our stream is they're really good at improv
24:05okay so this is really good we just like okay what's the topic uh we're gonna sing Psalm 23
24:12and go and then someone's playing chords in the background and it's like lord isn't my shepherd
24:19and you just start going and just singing it and it's still like really fun for me i still
24:26really enjoy it sounds great but it's just great and it's actually still my favorite way to um
24:33to talk to god is to sit at the piano open the bible and sing god's truth over my own heart
24:39and they would call us they'd call us singing theologians he would say it's here at the house
24:43of prayer we're going to pray our songs and we're going to sing our prayers and that focus on
24:48connecting to god by singing the word it's not again like that's not a bad thing and
24:55with i'm really glad honestly this mike bickle is a dirtbag revelation came out in pieces and
25:02gradually we're finding out how the depths of his depravity and for how far back came out
25:09in pieces because we just wouldn't have believed it it was already hard enough to believe that
25:15there was a sexual indiscretion just that that was hard to believe and this is coming on the heels
25:22where we're being rocked by the october 7th step in israel and being upset about that and then a
25:27few weeks later oh mike bickle's stepping down they're doing some kind of an investigation i
25:34don't know half of us are like i don't know if he did it or not let's just see and you know
25:39nobody's perfect and we'll just wait to see but it was that was unsettling then the jane doe started
25:45coming forward and reading the story oh my gosh he was in paris with her and she woke up in a bed
25:52somewhere what the heck and we're starting to understand you know and he was he was lying to
26:00them and saying um you're gonna be in my chariot and we are gonna come back with jesus together
26:09in this chariot and it just became more and more clear how completely bat crap bonkers he is
26:17and all of it is and i'm like wow i
26:22this is as an adult this is hitting even more strange um then when the emails of mike pickles
26:30email started released that his communications with jane doe's husband um jack dear
26:38the level of manipulation narcissism grandiose delusions um every spiritual abuse tactic in the
26:48book he was full display showing these in the emails and reading this as an adult there's my
26:56critical thinking kicking on again
26:58on again where were the adults who who who is letting this maniac run things what where are
27:07the checks and balances here i don't care how gifted and anointed he is he's trash he's a trash
27:14human and he was like this this this is what gets me he was like this from the beginning he was like
27:21this once we found out that it was a 15 year old babysitter in the 80s what i mean i might have got
27:29my facts wrong here there there but i'm just saying like way back there before he started
27:35the house of prayer it was a teenage girl that that's the final nail in the coffin for me it's
27:43like no you've always been horrible there wasn't just oh you had an indiscretion here and there
27:49just like any of us can stumble in any way whatever i'm not going to judge you no now i'm
27:54judging you dude i'm judging you as a wolf as a wolf in sheep's clothing that we all trusted and
28:00somehow you manipulated all of us and that's what started this whole process of going back in time
28:07this formational period of my life and trying to extract the whatever was specifically mike
28:17and not the pure word of god whatever was specifically the culture that he created
28:23and not just simple gospel and trying to separate it out from my personal theology and who i am
28:32like for crying out loud this guy's dreams and visions that he had they were
28:39it's all part of like the formation of who i have become it's really disturbing it's really hard
28:46it is disturbing you know i didn't escape anything similar with with regards to the
28:53sexual allegations my grandfather wasn't like that but the cult structures it is so similar
29:00to watch every single one of them as they progress because like you describe going after
29:07the children that's a common theme among every single splinter group that we've examined you
29:11go after the young because if you can warp their minds when they're young what happens it's not
29:17just that you hook them it's that they don't really progress in their critical thinking
29:23and some of them don't progress in just you know normal thinkings people in our support groups
29:31after they have started to deprogram they've noticed that they act very childish compared
29:36to other adults because they've been locked and trapped in this state of child mind basically
29:42and outside adults who never experienced this especially the mike bickle thing if a normal
29:49human being who's never experienced a cult comes in contact with a person that is saying things
29:54like i'm going to ride the chariot with you back from heaven they're going to immediately just say
29:58this guy's a fruitcake but while you're in this while you're in this state of mind you're you know
30:06can't think as an adult so the question where are the adults the problem is many of the adults have
30:12also been suppressed and they have a childlike mind because their authentic self has been
30:16completely isolated and they've not really developed a sense of security in having a
30:24critical thought have you ever wondered how the pentecostal movement started or how the progression
30:30of modern pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign charismatic and other fringe
30:36movements into the new apostolic reformation you can learn this and more on william branham
30:42historical research's website william-branham.org on the books page of the website you can find the
30:49compiled research of john collins charles paisley stephen mcgomery john mckinnon and others with
30:56links to the paper audio and digital versions of each book you can also find resources and
31:02documentation on various people and topics related to those movements if you want to contribute to
31:08the cause you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top and as always be
31:15sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching
31:20on behalf of william branham historical research we want to thank you for your support another
31:26aspect of of what was wrong with house of prayer culture in the praying of and the praying on
31:37of young people is that they didn't ever encourage us to go to college get a work history
31:46things that that you need to do to become a healthy adult anything that wasn't directly
31:55house of prayer focused was not outright discouraged but just never talked about
32:00and it was all because it was all about building this man's vision of a house of prayer and that
32:07tells you
32:11he wasn't really a good shepherd like he wasn't really a good leader because it wasn't about
32:17his sheep it wasn't about the people under his spiritual care it was about the vision
32:24so that's that's another thing that my parents had noticed that there was never any encouragement of
32:31personal development outside of what would fill their their leaders goals and dreams yeah that's
32:40that's definitely true i've noticed that whenever i was in it and i actually had a problem with this
32:45it was one of the few there were just a handful of things that i had somewhat of a critical thought
32:51and an issue with and that was the fact that you rank and file members the the elders did not want
32:57them to become elders they did not want them to rise and in the ranks because if they can keep
33:03them under their control their sheeple instead of the you know instead of the eldership and the uh
33:10sure the pyramid structure of a cult and while i'm reading the bible i'm seeing that jesus creates
33:16disciples and the disciples go create more disciples and those disciples create more
33:21disciples and it's it's a way that a religion spreads and the thought that really struck me was
33:28that if this was a of the hour message you know whatever they call these these things in the
33:36groups if this is the thing for the hour why would you not want it to spread virally and have people
33:43become leaders and make leaders create more leaders create more leaders until this becomes a movement
33:50that does usher in the return of christ if that's you know if that was biblical it is not biblical
33:56you know christ comes when he chooses according to the bible but if that were the true intent if
34:02these men's true if these men truly intended that they would lead by being leaders and the the
34:09critical thought that hit me is that none of these men who are in leadership are true leaders if you
34:15look at the history of just great leaders in the world they lead by example so that other people
34:21become leaders as well there's not a single person i can think of in the entire movement that is like
34:27that i'm not a hundred percent there right now because i feel like i still know some good examples
34:34i still feel like i know some good men that are good leaders within it um but at this point i
34:41wouldn't be surprised if horrible things come out a funny um a funny way to to say my new
34:52my new strategy for when i can look up to somebody is not till they've been dead for
34:58a couple decades and then i can say yeah now i can now i now i see the fruit of their life
35:05no it gave it time for any bad stories to come out of the closet of oh well actually they were
35:11really doing this once they've been dead for a while then you can say yeah they were actually a
35:15really good leader and a good person so that's hard and that's very common among the people in
35:22the support groups the problem is whenever somebody's betrayed your trust you have a real
35:28problem trusting and one of the really negative consequences of these types of movement people
35:35who are in a church situation and they realize that the leadership in the church can't be trusted
35:40well then after they escape well what church can you trust the leader because i went through this
35:44i thought he was a good leader and look what happened and it goes back to the the statement
35:50that i had on leadership when leadership is structured such that everyone becomes a leader
35:57you have not just one single person who's the ultimate authority on doctrine and scripture
36:02there's a balance of power and when you have a cult framework wherein there is a central figure
36:09and then there's a hierarchy of leaders under him they're looking up they're not looking down
36:14to make new leaders in most cases now they will like the carrot on the string example they will
36:20lead you to think that you can become a leader and that's the thought you know as i was processing
36:26that it really hit me that there's just really not a good structure within these cults to create
36:32leaders and so i was in the cult when it hit me and i'm like well what do you do with that i can't
36:38just my grandfather was the head of our church and there were numerous sects of you know the
36:44branhamism i can't go to all these people and say hey you guys aren't creating leaders this is like
36:49a pyramid and the guy at the top wins but i was stuck in that world right and um i never really
36:57what's odd is i never really thought of as a as a cult until after i escaped and um started
37:03piecing that together but um so what was it like for you after you went through those stages and
37:11then suddenly came to terms with the fact that okay the leadership here has a serious problem
37:18and now we see all these allegations and i think you said you may have even been in contact with
37:23one of the jane does what was it like in the moments after that whenever you're coming to
37:28terms with the fact that this wasn't a movement that was really of god what was it it just feels
37:35very very confusing to have that foundation that you thought was firm under your feet
37:43just everything being called into question it's all just disintegrating underneath you and um
37:52the bewilderment the confusion the lost feeling
37:58right now it feels like i'm cleaning out a very chaotic garage my soul you know my belief system
38:05and i'm dragging everything out under the driveway and examining it and going where did
38:10this come from do i really need this and you're just pitching it all in the dumpster and right
38:15now i got a whole like three or four things in the garage that i'm keeping and i don't
38:21it's it's very it can be very very disorienting but um another another element of this it's not
38:29just i hop it's also um the charismatic movement and that was starting to unravel with for me
38:39with watching all these youtube profits be so deeply wrong about trump um i also started
38:45watching allowing myself to watch some charismatic critical channels um three or four of those
38:55and the youtube profits that i thought were the bee's knees and i it was so scary and hard for
39:01me to even just push play on that because i just viewed them as so negative and grouchy and sure
39:09they are but there is there's truth in it and again just like picking through and being brave
39:16enough to like okay just because i'm listening to something spiritual doesn't mean i get to turn my
39:20brain off i got to keep my critical thought on i can listen to this and see what they have to say
39:25well i'm coming to find out that a lot of the people that were huge are engaging in just
39:33straight up false prophecy false personal prophecy looking people up on facebook
39:40ahead of the conference looking through that the email list of people that had
39:45the names and right you know the registration of people that have registered for the conference
39:49and then calling calling out i see somebody i see this number and they call out their address
39:57like oh man it was and everyone's so excited and crying like they knew my address they knew
40:05they knew all those things so it has to be god speaking to me right now in this
40:09extreme excitement that god is speaking to you through this man and a lot of times he just then
40:13would just give you a bible verse i mean it wasn't anything super life shape life-changing
40:21usually it was yeah god sees you and he's gonna do a new thing and it was just some amorphous
40:28positivity and they left really excited that they heard from god and that's it's just really sad to
40:36me it's really sad that there's so much lying going on because i do believe that prophetic
40:42gifting is something that is available to believers it's just really often abused by
40:49those who are looking for a platform for themselves because they got to keep that excitement
40:54going so they're like i'm not hearing anything from god right now so i'm going to employ this
40:58method and i'm not going to feel bad about it because i've just given them a scripture verse
41:02and you know it's fine like i'm i'm this is me kind of piecing together how they're rationalizing
41:08this and it it's everywhere it's i don't know that i want to name names but like it's it's
41:14all these big names that we all thought we meaning my community were awesome and a lot of
41:20them are just speaking and really sad and really really discouraged i just kind of comfort myself
41:27what do i know is true what do i know is true that i've experienced um where god has warned me about
41:33something and i ended up being right did i go and tell everybody god's speaking to me and i'm a
41:39prophet no that's it's weird stop you know i could just just know like hey like the the bible
41:47says his sheep hear his voice and it's just it's just some leaning and guiding and direction for
41:51my life and it's great i i enjoy that relationship with god myself um but i'm not going to go look
41:58for it from some other person because that's how you get messed up and usually the people who are
42:03most excited when they call out their address are the same people who are on the mailing lists
42:08because they they're subscribed to the mailing list and you're right the the word of knowledge
42:13or whatever they call this this thing that they give the people they try to set themselves up as
42:19a mediator between god and man and you can go directly to the bible to get most of these things
42:23these prophetic words that they give you and sometimes it's a prophetic comfort well you can
42:29get the same thing if you just read a few bible passages right why not go to the author and they
42:35want to set themselves up in that pyramid hierarchy you have to to get to the top you know
42:41pass the cult leader to to jesus you have to go through the chain and i just i really have a
42:47problem with men who do this because they have to know that this is wrong if if they're reading the
42:52same bible i'm reading they know that this is wrong it's the cult of personality is such a
42:59is such a big part of of why it's wrong and i noticed that a lot with the leader of our
43:04house of prayer was such a charismatic individual and i don't mean spiritually at all he was
43:10i mean that charisma he everybody just loved him two pieces and i felt super loved by him
43:18he would come to me and go jessica you're my favorite and i just and i knew that i wasn't
43:24his favorite favorite because he loves everybody but i felt so loved and everybody felt so loved
43:31by him and and when he would speak and be passionate about about this these things that
43:37he's hearing from the lord i mean you would think that you're feeling this this tangible fear of the
43:43lord like oh my gosh this is this is terrifying we need to repent we need to cry out to the lord
43:49um it was it was just it was very emotionally intense what they were or what what this this
43:58main leader was was passing down to us and towards the end of our the life of our house
44:05of prayer because it's been closed for a long time now um it really ultimately closed because he left
44:13he it just became a lot he was going through a lot of things personally
44:17and he decided he just needed to take a break and he moved to kansas city believe it or not
44:25and he wanted he wanted to be mentored by mike bickle he wanted to be spiritually fathered by him
44:36and um shocker he was too busy mike pickle was too busy for my leader yeah you know what he wasn't a
44:44cute girl so so he had a school of like getting fed by these beautiful women bringing him things
44:54to his office and then shutting the door so you know none of us are surprised now that he wasn't
44:59going to mentor him um and you know and because everybody was was still so like man we got to
45:05follow this is our this is our leader a lot of people moved to kansas city with him so our very
45:12tight knit amazing community that we had in chicago um that has there's nothing like it in
45:17kansas city in fact that's where community goes to die people don't hang out with each other they're
45:22way too busy building mike's movement um community was super hard to find in kansas city from what
45:29i've what i've heard and experienced for a couple months when i was there but chicago had this
45:34amazing vibrant community and we were all hanging out my my girl's apartment was the party palace
45:39all the young people would come to my house you'd make a bunch of food do a worship night in my
45:43living room it was wonderful it was really fun um that all started to change toward the end of our
45:51house of prayer because our our leader was also very type a and he felt like things were kind of
46:01getting out of control in our prayer room all the free-spirited people
46:08we we weren't really sounding like kansas city anymore this thing that mike bickle had passed
46:13on it just it was we weren't we weren't mike bickle enough we weren't doing harp and bowl
46:18properly and now when i say harp and bowl i mean the model i mean the way that we did worship that
46:27was so different um than any other place um have you heard of this term before have you heard of
46:33harp and ball no okay it's based off of revelation 5 verse 8 the story about a lamb taking the school
46:42and the elders have a harp and they have this bowl of incense and this is a lot of the the
46:51the backstory not the backstory it was a lot of the theology of our prayer room is that we are
46:57the harp represents the music and the bowl of incense is the prayer and this is the marriage
47:02of prayer and worship together we're gonna like i said sing our prayers prayer songs
47:08and there's a very specific way we're going to sustain day and night prayer and worship
47:14where we're doing these two things at the same time and leading an entire room into this corporate
47:19experience and so i mean there's whole manuals i printed them out of exactly the order that we do
47:26things in and um well we started off you know getting a gist of it and then we just kind of
47:32flew off and did our own thing um ultimately and you know even even our our teams i our
47:39whole teams of us would go to different new house of prayer startups like our chicago team
47:45went to fort wayne and we trained them all their team how to do harp and bowl perfectly and
47:52yeah so at the end our pastor director person said you know we we need to tighten up we need
48:02to get better picked one very type a personality young person to go to kansas city get trained
48:11and then come back and retrain all of us to tighten the ship okay and that that killed our
48:18prayer room it really it quenched the spirit okay it killed it because we were trying too
48:26hard to be perfect we were trying too hard to fit into mike bickle's box and um to be successful
48:35in whoever's eyes i don't that's weird it's less weird though than whenever i thought you were
48:41saying harp and bull like the animal because if there was a bull in your in your imagery i was
48:47going to be like yeah this sounds like a different religion altogether so you have come a long way
48:55and you've um you know you your story is i'm sure your story is going to continue as you
49:02continue to uh deprogram from all of this what would you say to your former self
49:07who was in this years ago if you could go back and give yourself some advice
49:12read the words of jesus and what he says about prayer honey
49:19it says
49:23don't keep mumbling on this vain repetition like the pagans do harp and bull has a lot of repetition
49:32sing the chorus six times change the chords underneath it and then sing it six more times
49:41i mean there's very specific things um
49:45prayer is supposed to be a secret thing go to your room shut the door what your father
49:50sees in secret however word you openly so is fasting we're always on corporate fasts and
49:55talking about our fasting we're always and corporate prayer is okay right but um and it's
50:01good it was just a hyper focus i i would go back and tell myself you know this this isn't really
50:07lining up with the big picture of christianity of what it is are you feeding the poor taking
50:16care of widows and orphans are you concerning yourself with the least of these or are you
50:21hyper focused on these really popular cool people these big personalities
50:30and the second commandment is just as important as the first
50:34right and let me fill that those blanks in for for people here
50:39we we taught at the or they taught at the house of prayer that the second commandment flows out of
50:46the first so love the lord your god with all your heart mind soul and strength and love your neighbor
50:50as yourself so they're like yeah yeah you'll love people eventually but you got to get loving god
50:56first right so the vertical more important than the horizontal
51:02i would say that there's some quite a bit of wisdom found in the catholic way of doing things
51:06is in order to love god let's serve the poor in order to love god let's let's do our service and
51:15and keep the horizontal right and that that choice we're making is a way to love god
51:21i could have used i could use so much more balance there
51:26i remember all one saying that she had the same thought why can't we do both why do we have to
51:31just take the first commandment i want to be a i can't remember her exact words but something about
51:35i want to be a second commandment christian too at the same time why are we so hyper focused on
51:41this like one little thing and that's that's how people get off and that's what that's what i'm
51:46i'm seeing big picture stepping back as an adult any group that hyper focuses on one aspect of
51:54christianity just goes off the deep end and it becomes a cult and so we want to major on the
52:02majors and minor on the minors what are the major big takeaways keep everything in balance if you're
52:08all about prayer then what the heck else is happening with all the other stuff that god
52:12for us to do to be good people to reflect him yeah and i just i go back when she said it i was
52:18thinking you know what jesus said the greatest two commandments is love god and love your neighbors
52:22yourself in the same sentence so how can you even try to separate those and not be arguing directly
52:27with jesus and i didn't say that to all one but i wish i had so now i'm getting the opportunity to
52:33say it with you one time that works out you know exactly well thank you so much for doing this i'm
52:42sure that there's a lot of people that are going to be encouraged by what you had to say today and
52:47thank you for sharing what you have with the others no problem thank you so much for asking me
52:51that was fun absolutely well if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can
52:56check us out on the web you can find us at william-brannom.org for an overview of the
53:02historical research of william brannom in the healing revivals read preacher behind the white
53:06hoods a critical examination of william brannom and his message available on amazon kindle and audible
54:06you