Our Stories: Escaping NAR - An Interview With Jesse Aldrich - Episode 164 Branham Research - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/branham   Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts: https://william-branham.org/podcast   John invites Jesse Aldrich, to discuss his escape from the NAR. Jesse shares his story of growing up in a family that was initially not very religious, but gradually became more involved in church activities. He experienced a significant spiritual event at the age of 15, which led him to have a vision about confronting the Pope. This vision marked the beginning of Jesse's deep spiritual journey, leading him to various religious experiences, including speaking in tongues.  As Jesse's journey continues, he describes how he got involved in different denominations and eventually came across the teachings of William Branham. Jesse was drawn to Branham's emphasis on healings and spiritual experiences, which led him to leave his previous church and Bible school. He then delves into his deeper involvement with other movements and teachings, including those of Bill Britton and the sonship movement. Over time, Jesse became more isolated in his beliefs, leading to conflicts with mainstream denominations and eventually joining a church in the NAR network. Jesse's story highlights the dangers of spiritual deception and the importance of seeking the truth with a humble heart.  00:00 Introduction   02:30 Jesse's Early Spiritual Experiences   06:50 Vision of Confronting the Pope   10:45 Involvement with Different Denominations   15:45 Encounter with Jehovah's Witnesses   20:10 Discovery of William Branham   25:35 Transition to Bill Britton's Teachings   30:25 Cult-Like Community and Isolation   35:40 Advanced Spiritual Teachings and Experiences   40:50 Involvement with Kabbalistic Interpretations   45:10 Challenges in Understanding Scripture   50:00 Impact of Spiritual Teachings on Family   55:30 Dealing with Personal Tragedy and Loss   01:02:00 Final Break from Cult and Finding Healing   01:07:30 Reconciliation with Family and Moving Forward ______________________ – 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

00:00:00You

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

00:00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research

00:00:42at william-branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Jesse Aldrich, former CULT member.

00:00:49Jesse, we've been exchanging emails talking about some of your history, and it was becoming so fascinating.

00:00:57I just paused and I said, let's stop the emails and let's bring you on the podcast and let you share your story to the world.

00:01:05So here we are today, and that's what we're attempting to do.

00:01:09So maybe it would be good if you could introduce yourself and tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

00:01:15Sure. Well, number one, John, thank you for having me on.

00:01:20It is humbling, and I'm not going to, you know, lie here.

00:01:28I'm nervous. I really was kicking and screaming to get on this.

00:01:33I didn't want to, and my wife just sat me down and says, Jesse, you need to tell your story.

00:01:40It's important, and I think it's going to bring healing to others as well.

00:01:46Yeah, so I basically, I was previously married, and I'll talk about that in my testimony.

00:01:55I lost my wife, and I had four children with her.

00:01:59I have since been remarried, brought in three additional children, and so now there's seven of us.

00:02:07Some of the children are, of course, older, 18 and out of the house.

00:02:11We still have two that are in the house.

00:02:15So that's kind of where we're at.

00:02:18We're busy. We have a busy life.

00:02:22Yeah, so we're trying to put the pieces together and continue on living life to the fullest.

00:02:30Awesome. Well, for the listeners who might be interested in giving your story and sharing it with the others,

00:02:38I tell everybody, just like I told you right before this, it's a casual conversation.

00:02:43The intent is to have fun, share your story, and maybe everybody can learn from it.

00:02:48Everybody's welcome if you've escaped something like this.

00:02:51To help people feel better, like I say, it's a casual conversation that we have.

00:02:56One lady, we were talking, and I could tell she was just so incredibly nervous.

00:03:01I stopped mid-sentence, and I said, okay, let's talk about the weather.

00:03:06I can't remember what it was, but let's talk about something else for a while, and let's calm down a bit.

00:03:11Because this is for fun, but also to help people by sharing your story.

00:03:16Other people can find encouragement, so don't be nervous at all.

00:03:20Just tell us what happened and what got you to the point you are today.

00:03:27Yeah, well, so going back in my history, I grew up in a family that you could consider a C.E. family, Christmas and Easter family.

00:03:39We had lived in another location, and they were all into the Methodist church, but Christmas and Easter.

00:03:46That's kind of what I experienced, and then gradually went into the Lutheran church.

00:03:55So I was baptized and confirmed Lutheran.

00:03:58At the age of 13, became close friends with a young man who was in my class.

00:04:08He invited me to a Bible camp.

00:04:11Of course, at that point in time, there was an altar call that was given, the classic type of Billy Graham altar call.

00:04:19I had went forward to accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior.

00:04:24At that point leading up to the age of 13, you basically do what any child does.

00:04:33But at the age of 13 and onward, things began to change.

00:04:37Spiritually speaking, I began to think about God more and wondered what my life was about.

00:04:47At the age of 15, I began to have spiritual experiences.

00:04:55Now, I wasn't in a Pentecostal or charismatic or anything like that,

00:05:01nor had I ever even heard of such things.

00:05:06I wasn't really into the Bible, but reading it a little bit.

00:05:12But at the age of 15, I had a spiritual experience.

00:05:16The reason I want to share this with you is simply because I look at those individuals that are in NAR,

00:05:26those that are in the fivefold ministries, and I see so many of them that have spiritual experiences.

00:05:34They can justify in their mind that next layer of spirituality.

00:05:43At the age of 15, I had this spiritual experience where I had a vision.

00:05:50I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but in this vision,

00:05:54there was one part of it where I was standing at the Vatican, on the steps of the Vatican.

00:06:01I was saying something to the Pope, and I was very upset with the Pope,

00:06:07telling him there was a lot of false things that he was doing.

00:06:12Now, granted, I'm 15 years old.

00:06:14There were spiritual words.

00:06:16There were doctrinal words that were coming out of me, but I didn't know what it meant.

00:06:22From there, my life began to become more spiritual.

00:06:28I was very illiterate. I couldn't read very well.

00:06:31I remember when I was very young, I used to have to take special ed classes.

00:06:36I had to learn how to read, and it was horrible.

00:06:39My brother's friend had left a Bible here in the house for some odd reason,

00:06:44and I picked it up, and it was a yearly Bible.

00:06:47I made it my mission to read the Bible in one year.

00:06:52By the end of the year of reading that Bible, I was very fluent in reading.

00:06:56It was truly a miraculous encounter that God had done in my heart.

00:07:00Ever since then, I've been able to read fluently, three to four to five books a week I could read.

00:07:07It was pretty incredible.

00:07:09I was looking and seeing what God was doing in my life.

00:07:14At the age of 18, the friend that I had become very close to at the age of 13

00:07:20decided that he was going to go to Bible school in Germany, and I wanted to go with.

00:07:26I went to Germany to a six-month intense Bible school.

00:07:32It was hooked on to Torchbearer Bible School with Major Ian Thomas.

00:07:37It was the first time that I had ever heard of the teaching on Christ in you,

00:07:44the doctrine of Christ in you out of Colossians.

00:07:47It was a beautiful message, and I got to meet Major Ian Thomas.

00:07:53He was back in the 40s and 50s and 60s, and he ended up starting these Bible schools.

00:07:58It was non-denominational.

00:08:00There were 17 nationalities that were represented there,

00:08:03and people came from all over the world and got to learn their culture and their background.

00:08:09The beautiful thing about this Bible school was they would have speakers come from all over the world,

00:08:14and they would teach all different types of denominations.

00:08:19Well, this is what this denomination teaches, and this denomination teaches this, and so on and so forth.

00:08:24I remember there was one week where we had some Jehovah Witnesses that came to our school,

00:08:32a couple elders, and the president of the Bible school grabbed me.

00:08:37Now, I was still so new to so many things, John,

00:08:41and I sat down and I began to hear what these Jehovah Witnesses believed,

00:08:46and I really didn't know.

00:08:48I was very ignorant still at that time, just learning the Scriptures line upon line.

00:08:55And so after sitting down with them for about three hours,

00:09:01there was something that stirred with inside me that just wasn't right with their character,

00:09:09with their opinions, with so many things.

00:09:14And it caused me to really—that was something that caused me to just really get into Scriptures.

00:09:24To try to understand, what do they believe?

00:09:28What do I believe?

00:09:30And I began to really begin to study the Trinity as well.

00:09:34And I became—I had a Bible that I had for about three years.

00:09:39I mean, I had studied it so much that the pages began to wear through.

00:09:44But I called it my Trinitarian Jehovah Witness Bible.

00:09:48And those elders would continue to keep coming back,

00:09:52and I would sit down, and that's kind of where my ministry developed

00:09:57in ministering to the Jehovah Witnesses.

00:10:00And then it began to develop into ministering to cults, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons,

00:10:08just multiple—the mainline cults that most fundamental churches know.

00:10:16And so there was one incident that occurred after meeting with some Jehovah Witnesses.

00:10:22In our Bible school, we had a prayer room.

00:10:25And everybody was at class, and my heart was so heavy after meeting with these Jehovah Witnesses,

00:10:30and I was praying for them.

00:10:31And I remember going into that Bible school, our prayer room,

00:10:35and I got down on my knees and began to pray.

00:10:39And all of a sudden, I just felt a strong presence of the Spirit of the Lord.

00:10:44And I began to speak in tongues.

00:10:48And I had never heard of speaking in tongues before, never.

00:10:52The school that I was at, I later came to find out there was a couple of charismatic Pentecostals

00:10:58that were there from Africa that I got to talk to a little bit.

00:11:05But I don't know how—I don't remember how long I spoke in tongues,

00:11:09but I remember my heart just poured out such love for these Jehovah Witnesses,

00:11:14to pray that they would receive salvation, truth, and so on.

00:11:19And what happened was that after I kind of gathered myself and wiped away the snot and the tears

00:11:26and the moment that I had with the Lord, I was—I didn't know what happened.

00:11:33And I didn't tell anybody.

00:11:36A week later at the Bible school, there was a teacher that came from England,

00:11:41and he spoke on the spiritual gifts.

00:11:44And of course, once again, he said, well, Baptists believe this,

00:11:48Psalms of God teach this, Lutherans believe this, and so on.

00:11:52And I remember when the class got done, I was heading out the door,

00:11:57and there was about six of my friends, and one of them was my best friend from high school standing there.

00:12:02And I heard my name, Jesse, come here, come here.

00:12:05And I came walking over, and he said, Jesse, what do you think about this speaking in tongues?

00:12:11And I was put right on the spot, John.

00:12:14And I said, well, I said, to tell you the truth, I said, I did last week.

00:12:21And I'll never forget the look on my friend's face.

00:12:24It was complete disgust.

00:12:28And he said to me, Jesse, don't you know that speaking in tongues is of the devil?

00:12:34Now, I had looked up to him.

00:12:35His family was like a family to me.

00:12:38And for the next year, John, every time I would get into deep prayer,

00:12:44the tongues would rise up in me, and I would immediately stop it.

00:12:49And I would just say, devil, this is of you.

00:12:51This is not of God.

00:12:53And I would just cut it off.

00:12:56About a year after that, of doing that, I remember one time my heart was so heavy,

00:13:01and I was praying, and all of a sudden I could feel the tongues rising up in me to speak in tongues.

00:13:07And I once again just said, devil, and all of a sudden, as soon as I began to do that,

00:13:12it was as though the Holy Spirit came into me and just gave me the scripture,

00:13:16why are you grieving me?

00:13:18Why are you grieving me?

00:13:20And I remember just breaking down and bawling.

00:13:23And I said, Lord, I don't know if this is of you or not, but if it is, reveal it to me.

00:13:29My heart's prayer, John, from when I came to know the Lord and as I began to develop,

00:13:34was always, Lord, you're the truth.

00:13:37You're the truth, and I want nothing but the truth.

00:13:41And so I said, Lord, if this is the truth, then you have to reveal it to me.

00:13:46And so about a week later, I'm in a house church,

00:13:51and someone had come into the house church, and he was Pentecostal.

00:14:00And I shared with him about what my experience was, and he began to give me the scripture verses.

00:14:06I said, I need to see it.

00:14:08I need to see it.

00:14:10And that's what it really came down to for me.

00:14:13So my heart was constantly looking for more of Jesus.

00:14:18I was having the spiritual experiences that I was having,

00:14:22and, of course, beautiful experiences at Bible school in Germany.

00:14:27I was asked to stay on and go into Romania and to missions work and so on, and I did that.

00:14:36Then I came back home and went to a secular college for a couple of years.

00:14:40And I only went there for one simple reason, and that was to start a college church.

00:14:45And I didn't really care about getting any type of diploma or anything, John.

00:14:51I just simply wanted to tell people about Jesus.

00:14:54I just loved Jesus.

00:14:56You know, you were mentioning about the Jehovah's Witnesses.

00:14:59And I've told this before a couple times, but when I was working with Dr. Stephen Hassan,

00:15:05he was – I'm a Star Trek fan, if you can't tell from all of the different –

00:15:11I've got a spaceship right here.

00:15:13This one is the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.

00:15:15But he found out I was a Star Trek fan, and he mentioned that he had helped –

00:15:21he had worked with a guy on the set of the Next Generation Star Trek program.

00:15:25And that guy said that his wife had been converted into the Jehovah's Witnesses,

00:15:31and he said this was the greatest form of evil I have ever encountered.

00:15:34Help me create a villain that resembles that in Star Trek.

00:15:40And that is how the concept of Star Trek Borg came about.

00:15:43And, yeah, it's crazy if you think about the similarities between the Borg and a cult.

00:15:50But what's even more interesting, you also mention Mormons and witnessing to them.

00:15:56When I was in the cult that we escaped, we had a couple of the Mormons coming.

00:16:03You know, they come door to door, and most people turn them away.

00:16:06But I let them in because I'm one of these people who let anybody come talk to me.

00:16:12And so they got in, and they started talking to me.

00:16:15And they – I don't know what you call the two of them.

00:16:18There's one of them that is very professional, very skilled, has a used car salesman kind of smile on his face.

00:16:24And then there's another one that's, like, in training.

00:16:27In Star Wars, they would call this the Padawan Learner.

00:16:30And so as we get to talking, you know, I'm talking to the skilled used car salesman guy.

00:16:36And I'm asking him some very, very targeted questions because I know even back then I knew Mormonism, and I knew it was a cult.

00:16:44And the irony was that I was in a cult.

00:16:47But I kept asking questions, and you could see in the Padawan Learner's eyes, his eyes got, like, this big.

00:16:52And you could tell that I had pretty much deconverted him while they were trying to convert me, and I was still in a cult.

00:17:00Yeah, that's good.

00:17:03Yeah, my wife and I, we were so bold, John.

00:17:07We would go and stand outside their congregations, waiting for them to come out so we could witness to them.

00:17:19And, yeah, that's what we felt our ministry was intended, where it was intended to look like it was going to go.

00:17:28And we were young.

00:17:30You know, my wife and I, we were 20, 21 years old at the time.

00:17:35And we just, we weren't going to stop.

00:17:38We were going to tell everybody the truth.

00:17:40So, oh, boy.

00:17:43Yeah, so we were, what we ended up doing was, is we stayed in the secular college for a couple years.

00:17:51And then we felt that the Lord was leading us to another Bible school.

00:17:55And so we ended up going to a Bible school, and it was associated with Christian Missionary Alliance.

00:18:01And, of course, I've watched plenty of, you know, your podcast and so on, and the website.

00:18:09And it's fascinating to hear just some of the history of A.B. Simpson and others that are connected to all that as looking back on it now.

00:18:20And so I also became a youth pastor at that time within the United Methodist Church.

00:18:26And so it was kind of interesting because I began, I just continued to grow in my spiritual gifting.

00:18:34But, of course, these denominations and so on, that's not really where Pentecostalism is.

00:18:42And so there was definitely conflicts that were arising.

00:18:49In this Bible school that I was attending, they had a massive library.

00:18:54And so, of course, this was right when the Internet was coming out.

00:19:00But, you know, you didn't really have computers and you had dial-up and so on.

00:19:04But I remember I began to do a study.

00:19:07And somehow, and I don't remember, I remember it started with F.F. Bosworth that I was looking into.

00:19:14And I remember hearing the name William Branham for the first time.

00:19:19And I thought, who is this man named William Branham?

00:19:23And I just started to consume this.

00:19:28You know, there's a quote, it says,

00:19:31Ego is able to convert anything to its own use, even spirituality.

00:19:38And I just wanted more spirituality.

00:19:42And so I'm looking at F.F. Bosworth.

00:19:44And then all of a sudden I come across William Branham.

00:19:47And I'm seeing here is this man that can heal the sick and just massive healings.

00:19:54And he's all over the world.

00:19:57And so all of a sudden, I can't quite remember.

00:20:02I know I've got several of his books.

00:20:05I don't remember the timeline of how I got them all.

00:20:08But the very first one I ordered was the Seven Church Ages.

00:20:13And I started looking into other material as well.

00:20:17But here was the one thing, when I look back, John,

00:20:20this is the one thing that caused me to question where I spiritually was.

00:20:26And the doctrinal beliefs that I had.

00:20:29And that was the whole idea of the Trinity.

00:20:35And associated with that, connected with that, was come out of her, my people.

00:20:46Now, when reading into that, I remember back to that vision I had about the Catholic Church.

00:20:58And it connected with me.

00:21:01And I began to get deeper into what William Branham was saying.

00:21:04I thought, well, who could question this individual?

00:21:08He's got all the signs and the wonders and everything else.

00:21:13And now he's got this understanding of the Catholic Church and who it is.

00:21:22And that must mean, that must kind of be the interpretation of what my vision was when I was younger.

00:21:32And so he had me hooked.

00:21:34Hook, line, and sinker, he had me hooked.

00:21:38And so it ended up where I remember going to my wife, and we began to read more and more on this.

00:21:45And I wanted to be more spiritual.

00:21:48And I wasn't getting the spirituality that I wanted, that I was longing for, where we were at.

00:21:56And we ended up leaving.

00:21:57I was a youth pastor.

00:21:58I left the church.

00:22:00We left the Bible school.

00:22:02And now my wife was raised.

00:22:07And this all would come back.

00:22:08It would all be interconnected.

00:22:10But she was raised in a small little house church type setting, where the woman that was her teacher was associated with Bill Britton.

00:22:24And the whole sonship movement.

00:22:26Now, all of this began to connect to me.

00:22:31I had thrown it off.

00:22:32In my early days, when we were in Bible school, it was like, that's crazy talk.

00:22:38And they preached Jesus Christ baptism, just like William Branham had.

00:22:43And so, of course, here I am.

00:22:46I start studying this.

00:22:47And William Branham made sense.

00:22:49Baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

00:22:53Well, who is that name?

00:22:55If you remember William Branham's son, who is that name?

00:22:58Well, it's Jesus Christ.

00:23:00And so, I just began to just eat up everything he was saying.

00:23:05Yeah, and the funny part about that, I remember the same thoughts.

00:23:09And I went through a lot of similar journeys that you had, believe it or not.

00:23:14But I remember clearly, when I left the cult, that kept going through my head.

00:23:20Who is the name of God?

00:23:22Is Jesus Christ?

00:23:23And we were taught that Jesus was the first name and Christ was the last name.

00:23:27Which isn't at all correct.

00:23:29And the way that he had us baptized and everything, it had to be,

00:23:34there was like this specific word phrase that you had to use.

00:23:38And so, it became like this enchantment.

00:23:40The power of your salvation was literally in the words that were being spoken.

00:23:46And after a while, I started scratching my head after I left.

00:23:49And I was like, wait a minute, that's kind of witchcraft, man.

00:23:53That's not the Christian faith.

00:23:56But I went through very similar.

00:23:59I read the Bible constantly when I was in the cult.

00:24:02And I was told falsely by that man who I was listening to these ridiculous sermons of.

00:24:09He was saying incorrectly what Trinitarians believe.

00:24:13He said that Trinitarians believe in three gods and therefore they're false.

00:24:17And how can you deny this?

00:24:19And of course I can't deny this, right?

00:24:21The man, it's a red herring.

00:24:23It's not true.

00:24:24Right.

00:24:25And I remember getting in this argument with this guy who's a Trinitarian.

00:24:29I think he was maybe Baptist.

00:24:32I can't remember.

00:24:33But anyway, he and I went back and forth.

00:24:35And I was rattling off scriptures.

00:24:37He was rattling off scriptures.

00:24:39And I was telling him that Trinitarianism is of the devil because that's what I was told.

00:24:45But I was explaining to him the exact thing that he believed, which was that there's a father, there's a son, there's a Holy Ghost.

00:24:53And he's 301.

00:24:54And he's like, wait a minute, man.

00:24:56You're saying what I'm saying.

00:24:58Yeah.

00:24:59Yes.

00:25:00Absolutely.

00:25:01It's so true.

00:25:02And this is the incredible thing about the deception here, John, is here I am.

00:25:09I've got a Bible that I used to go to the Jehovah Witnesses, to go to the Mormons, and

00:25:16to be able to see how these little twists in the truth begin to make you step back.

00:25:23And of course, then you add on the healings and all these miracles that William Branham had.

00:25:29And how can you deny it?

00:25:31How can you deny it?

00:25:33And so then, of course, we ended up leaving Bible school.

00:25:39And we go back to what my wife had been raised up to the age of seven.

00:25:45She had been in this kind of cult-like commune.

00:25:49They believed in not to be of the flesh.

00:25:53Men had to wear corduroy pants, which was really hot during the summer months, might I add.

00:25:59Jeans were denim.

00:26:01That was of the world.

00:26:02You couldn't wear that.

00:26:03Women had to wear the dresses.

00:26:05No makeup.

00:26:08We even had a home delivery.

00:26:11We didn't have a nurse.

00:26:14We had to believe that Jesus Christ, God was going to be the one that would deliver it.

00:26:19And we had a beautiful home birth, believe it or not.

00:26:21And I look back in and out, and I thought, wow, was I crazy.

00:26:24We were crazy.

00:26:27But we wanted to be so faithful, John.

00:26:30We wanted to be faithful.

00:26:33And so, of course, I got stronger and stronger in believing that the churches, the denominations,

00:26:39that they were the great Babylon, the great whore of revelation.

00:26:45And we just continued to break ourselves away from the church.

00:26:50And we had beautiful moments while we were in the churches.

00:26:56All different denominations, beautiful friendships.

00:26:59And we destroyed them.

00:27:01It was on us.

00:27:02Because we had believed this lie that they were the ones that had been seduced and lied to.

00:27:10And, of course, what happens when that occurs?

00:27:14Now, your doctrine begins to change.

00:27:17Because now you no longer believe in the Trinity.

00:27:20You believe that all the denominations are the great whore of Babylon.

00:27:26And now you're beginning to be looked at as a cult.

00:27:31Well, then your mind starts going to the place of, well, we're the ones being crucified for Christ.

00:27:40It's us.

00:27:42And that just means that we're the truth.

00:27:46It's such a lie that ends up happening in our mind.

00:27:52And we just got stronger and stronger.

00:27:54And I would study more and more in it.

00:27:57I ended up reaching out to build Britain's ministry.

00:28:02And got into the George Warnock and E.V. Press.

00:28:05All these different individuals.

00:28:07And began to read the history.

00:28:09And bringing William Branham in it.

00:28:11And looking at the Nicene Council.

00:28:13All these different things.

00:28:15And just kind of honing in on understanding the Jesus Christ baptism and the oneness.

00:28:22It wasn't really oneness according to Branham.

00:28:24But just looking into that and trying to get that doctrine set in my mind.

00:28:29So that I could go out and tell others about it.

00:28:33And so we get up to that point.

00:28:37And the teacher, I don't really want to say pastor.

00:28:41Because that was considered Catholic as well.

00:28:44So we didn't like to use any of those types of names.

00:28:47But she was kind of the leader.

00:28:50It was kind of a commune in a lot of ways.

00:28:54And so she passed away.

00:28:58And now we were in limbo.

00:29:01What were we going to do?

00:29:03This woman, right before she died, she laid hands on me.

00:29:08And as that saying goes, she passed the mantle on to me.

00:29:13And of course this terrified me.

00:29:16And I so thank the Lord.

00:29:18Because for me, I felt I wasn't ready.

00:29:21I didn't want to be a teacher.

00:29:23I didn't want to be any of those type of things.

00:29:25Still down in the depths of my heart, I just wanted truth.

00:29:30I wanted to know Jesus.

00:29:31I thought I had found the truth.

00:29:33And so what had happened was, I spent the next year of just searching.

00:29:40And of course now we have a greater extent of, at this point in time, of the Internet.

00:29:44And I'm looking online.

00:29:46And of course I get more associated with the apostles and the prophets of the Build Britain group.

00:29:55And so I start getting involved in their online message centers and so on,

00:30:04and messaging back and forth, and adding my little information to it.

00:30:08And of course I began to grow in that.

00:30:11And then of course I start getting accepted to come and speak.

00:30:17And so we began to travel to other locations, into Wisconsin, into Illinois.

00:30:23And of course this name started floating around that I was now this young apostle.

00:30:29And I was about 24, 25 years at the time.

00:30:33And of course, John, you get a name associated with that.

00:30:38A young apostle, well, your head begins to get bigger.

00:30:42I ran from it, but yet it was enticing, to say the least.

00:30:48But they bring you in.

00:30:53And so we spent a couple years doing this.

00:30:59And of course we became more cult-like in the community's eyes and so on, and radical and so on.

00:31:06Believing the type of beliefs we did.

00:31:08Because I was still very involved in trying to get those that were in the churches out of the churches.

00:31:15Over to our side.

00:31:18So that's kind of where we were at that point in time.

00:31:24Yeah.

00:31:25Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started?

00:31:28Or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,

00:31:34charismatic and other fringe movements, into the New Apostolic Reformation?

00:31:39You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,

00:31:43William-Branham.org.

00:31:46On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,

00:31:51Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,

00:31:55with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

00:32:00You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

00:32:07If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.

00:32:13And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

00:32:20On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

00:32:25You know, it's funny, you were running from being called the young apostle.

00:32:29Well, ever since I've started this podcast, I get labeled the young devil.

00:32:32So it's your apostle, my devil.

00:32:35You know, when I left the cult, like I said, I read the Bible constantly.

00:32:41And even after I left, I read it more because I wanted to wash all of that stuff out of my head.

00:32:46There's this weird thing when you're in a cult.

00:32:49You read it through the lens as though you're looking through the glass of the cult's doctrine.

00:32:54And so everything that I read was different after I left.

00:32:58Once I realized that this was false, I can clearly remember reading a passage in the Bible and my head had like snapped out of it.

00:33:07And I read that same exact passage the next day and it said the polar opposite of what I had just read.

00:33:13And I'm like, no, this can't be.

00:33:15So, you know, flipping back and forth.

00:33:17But I got to, I read the Bible cover to cover like I lost count 10, 15 times.

00:33:24But I got to Ezekiel 16.

00:33:27And when you go back into, you look at the latter rain movement, which William Branham was a part of.

00:33:34Even go back further.

00:33:35Look at what Bosworth was in.

00:33:37He was in a cult.

00:33:38All of the cult strategies that they teach you is the come out of her, my people.

00:33:44Come out of whatever you're in because you can join our cult.

00:33:49That's basically what this is, right?

00:33:51And I was reading Ezekiel 16.

00:33:53We were taught not corduroy, but we had a lot of the same things.

00:33:57You're not allowed to wear earrings.

00:33:58Don't dress yourself up to look haughty, pretty, because God doesn't like beauty.

00:34:03That's another one of these cult things, which is a strategy.

00:34:07They want the cult people to be able to identify one another.

00:34:11If they can make them dress differently, they're a cohesive group and they can see outsiders versus insiders.

00:34:17So I'm reading Ezekiel 16 and, oh my gosh, here's God who loves beauty and he takes Jerusalem

00:34:23and I gave you beautiful jewelry and an earring in your ear and a nose ring in your nose.

00:34:29Wait a minute.

00:34:30Earrings are up the devil, man.

00:34:32We call those the devil stirrups.

00:34:35But there were very clear things in the 60s and you fast forward today.

00:34:41There's also very clear things that they associated with Sodom.

00:34:45And there were all of these Sodom doctrines.

00:34:47Sodom was condemned and burned and destroyed because they did X.

00:34:52And then a few generations later it's because they did Y and then Z and who knows how many different

00:34:57condemnations of Sodom that you can come up with.

00:35:00But I got to verse 49 where it said, and also, by the way, Jerusalem was the queen of all the harlots,

00:35:09according to Ezekiel 16, which totally defies the Catholic stuff that we had.

00:35:15But I got to the end of verse 49.

00:35:18This was the sin of your sister Sodom.

00:35:21So it said Jerusalem was the sister of Sodom.

00:35:24She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed, and unconcerned and did not help the poor and needy.

00:35:29They were haughty and did detestable things and therefore did away with them.

00:35:34But Samaria did not commit half the sins that you did.

00:35:38Jerusalem.

00:35:39And so I'm reading this and arrogance.

00:35:42Arrogance?

00:35:43Well, wait a minute.

00:35:44Our cult indoctrination was an arrogant indoctrination.

00:35:49We were taught and trained and manipulated to be arrogant.

00:35:52And every single thing that I read in Ezekiel 16 applied to the cult.

00:35:58And suddenly I woke up.

00:36:00Now, wait a minute.

00:36:01Which is the real harlot here, the Catholic Church or this cult that I just escaped?

00:36:05Yes.

00:36:06Yes.

00:36:07So true.

00:36:08That's really good, John.

00:36:10The more as I have left everything that I was in, I do.

00:36:16God looks at the heart.

00:36:19It's truly fascinating of this exterior and everything that we attempt to do work-wise.

00:36:26And it's just—it's pride and it's arrogance and it's competition and it's all of these different things.

00:36:36And yet God just keeps coming back to the heart.

00:36:39The heart.

00:36:40I look at your heart.

00:36:41And so, yeah, we—so we were involved in Bill Britton's ministry and Branham and just

00:36:51kind of a collection of all these different cults and beliefs and so on.

00:36:57And here's where it came to, John.

00:36:59And so I had experienced all of the gifts out of 1 Corinthians 12.

00:37:07I had been involved in deliverance ministry.

00:37:10And this wasn't done in big glamorized type mass churches and so on, but they would be

00:37:18in little house settings and so on.

00:37:21But deliverance of casting demons out and seeing people manifest and the speaking in

00:37:27tongues and the interpretation in tongues and the prophecy, the healings, even the raising

00:37:33of the dead.

00:37:34I'd seen God do some miraculous things.

00:37:38And here was the thing, John.

00:37:41I wasn't satisfied.

00:37:43I remember telling people I would talk with, because I had friends within the Sons of God

00:37:47church and the Pentecostal churches, and I said, you know, I've seen all these things.

00:37:52I've experienced the book of Acts chapter 2.

00:37:54I've experienced those things.

00:37:56And yet I'm not satisfied with those things.

00:37:59I even wrote a song back in the late 90s about that, that I've seen the visions and dreamed

00:38:04the dreams and cast out demons and healed the sick.

00:38:08And yet there's one thing that I still long for, and that's just to sit at the throne,

00:38:13at the feet of the throne of Jesus Christ.

00:38:16Well, here's what happened.

00:38:19Mystery comes into play.

00:38:22The mystery of the gospel.

00:38:25What I had heard back in the early to mid-90s out of Major Ian Thomas' and the Bible school

00:38:32I'd been to about the whole doctrine of Christ in you out of Colossians, it manifested into

00:38:40this whole new concept of the mystery of scriptures.

00:38:47What is it?

00:38:48What is this divine doctrine?

00:38:52And so I began to look into that.

00:38:55There was a passage in Romans chapter 16 where it says,

00:39:00Now to him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of

00:39:04Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret since the

00:39:09world began.

00:39:11Now, of course, you cut it off right at that verse.

00:39:14But the rest of the verses, but now is made manifest and by the scriptures of the prophets

00:39:20according to the commandments of the everlasting.

00:39:21See, it happened.

00:39:23But yet, you don't go that far.

00:39:26You stop right there and you say, oh, what is the mystery?

00:39:31What's the mystery of Christ in you?

00:39:34That was one of Branham's strategies as well, and I'll never forget when I read that next

00:39:39verse without the Colt lens, and I'm like, what in the world were we thinking, man?

00:39:44The mystery's right here.

00:39:47Yes.

00:39:48Yes.

00:39:49It's truly amazing because it keeps you captured into this belief that you're learning these

00:39:58new mysteries and you think there's something new that's never occurred before.

00:40:04But here's the reality.

00:40:06The reality is that there's nothing new.

00:40:08There's truly nothing new under the sun.

00:40:12But for my wife and I, we got into this whole mystery idea.

00:40:18What is the mystery of this Christ in you and this gospel and so on?

00:40:22And so I began to search.

00:40:25I wasn't satisfied with just the gifts.

00:40:27I wanted something more.

00:40:29I had this incredible spiritual experience.

00:40:32And in the group that I was in, the Bill Britton type group, and there's apostles and prophets

00:40:37all over the world, I had this incredible vision and I sent this vision to them.

00:40:41None of them could interpret it.

00:40:44And I thought, well, that's strange.

00:40:46And I remember one night, I'm sitting there about 2 a.m. and I typed it into the computer,

00:40:51a couple of the words regarding this vision that I had, and only seven hits came up on

00:40:56my computer.

00:40:57Usually when you do that, it's about a million hits.

00:40:59And one of them seemed to be glowing off of the screen.

00:41:02And so I clicked on it and it brought me to this website.

00:41:07And this website taught what was called the doctrine of Christ.

00:41:15It was considered to be the divine doctrine of Christ.

00:41:21Now, what this teaching taught was that the five-fold ministry of apostles and prophets

00:41:28and evangelists, teachers and pastors, that that was under the Holy Spirit.

00:41:33But the Holy Spirit is only the down payment, the foretaste of things to come.

00:41:44And what is that thing to come?

00:41:47Christ in you, the hope of glory, the hope of glorification.

00:41:53So now I step back and I go, William Brannan didn't have it.

00:41:58Bill Britton didn't have it.

00:42:00They only had the gifts and the healings and they had all these different things.

00:42:05They had teaching, but it stopped in the Holy Spirit realm.

00:42:12Now Christ Jesus, now this next realm, he's the man, he's the one who is the righteous one.

00:42:19Well, that's who I want to get taught from.

00:42:22So I'm eliminating out because I no longer believe in the Trinity.

00:42:27We look at the Holy Spirit as this dunamis power, a force.

00:42:34It's an aspect of the Spirit of God.

00:42:38And so my wife and I began reading.

00:42:41There was hundreds and hundreds of transcribed messages online as I'm reading through this.

00:42:48And so we ended up getting connected with this ministry.

00:42:52And not only was this ministry teaching the doctrine of Christ, but an even more advanced doctrine.

00:43:03Now you have to be very spiritual to be able to understand this advanced doctrine.

00:43:09And what it did was is that this teacher weaved together the doctrine of Christ with Lurianic Kabbalah.

00:43:19Now, for those that don't know what Lurianic Kabbalah is, it is Rabbi Isaac Luria, who was back in the 1500s.

00:43:29There was a book that his student, Chaim Vital, wrote called The Book of Life.

00:43:34And of course, it's Kabbalist Kabbalah.

00:43:38And so this goes into detail with Kabbalistic teachings.

00:43:47And it's the spiritual understanding of Scripture is what it was.

00:43:56And so what my pastor then—we came into this new ministry.

00:44:05We ended up being in this ministry for about 16, 17 years.

00:44:11My four children and my wife and I, we raised our children up into this.

00:44:17Now here's the problem with this, John.

00:44:19And here's just a little simple example.

00:44:24Genesis 1, verse 6.

00:44:27It talks about separating the waters from the waters.

00:44:31If you would look at it into the teaching of Kabbalism, you would see that—

00:44:37looking at that separating the waters from the waters, if you look at it into the Strong's Concordance,

00:44:43you will see that it's a euphemism.

00:44:45That it should be translated as seminal fluid and urine.

00:44:54So all of a sudden, a literal creation is no longer a literal creation.

00:45:02It's a spiritual creation, like what Kabbalah teaches.

00:45:07Well, when I saw this, even out of the Strong's Concordance, I went,

00:45:10Wow! This is amazing!

00:45:14And I just began to eat it up.

00:45:17Just began to eat it up.

00:45:18And my wife began to eat it up.

00:45:20And we were just so excited, because we were doing—

00:45:25there were messages on Thursdays that my pastor at the time would give, and Sundays.

00:45:30My pastor would speak on Thursdays for about four to five hours.

00:45:34And then on Sundays, we started our own fellowship in our state.

00:45:38Her fellowship was out in New York.

00:45:42And so we would have our fellowship for about two hours, three hours, and we would read messages.

00:45:47So we had to start at the beginning of message one, so we could learn and understand.

00:45:52And then when we got done around 11, 12 o'clock, then she would then teach.

00:45:58And that would go on for another five to six hours.

00:46:01So we would have a good eight to nine hours on Sundays of just teaching.

00:46:07And, of course, we looked at it as, this is a college course.

00:46:11This is a doctorate.

00:46:12You know, it's not your normal type of church setting.

00:46:16And it would just be word upon word upon word of studying the modern Scripture

00:46:22and then having a spiritual understanding behind it.

00:46:26And so it was always fresh.

00:46:28It was always new.

00:46:29It was always new revelation that we were getting every week.

00:46:34And, of course, we became very close to our pastor to the point that not daily,

00:46:41but close to daily where we would talk on the phone an hour a night, two hours a night,

00:46:46sometimes three hours a night.

00:46:48And, of course, we have our children.

00:46:50And our children are beginning to get neglected as we are being raised up into this ministry.

00:46:58Yeah, that's so sad and very common.

00:47:02It's a mystery cult.

00:47:03In the mystery cults, this kind of thing happens.

00:47:06And I'll never forget, when I had just left, I began studying just history of religion in general.

00:47:13What is religion?

00:47:15And I got fascinated when I got into Kabbalah and Gnosticism

00:47:20and discovered the mystery cults of ancient Rome and ancient Greece.

00:47:25And then I started realizing that the strategies that they were using

00:47:29was very similar to the cults of today.

00:47:31They can take something that is common knowledge,

00:47:34and then they say that we have this special detail that the rest of them don't have.

00:47:38And then they create a cult around whatever is that detail.

00:47:41And you compare it to the NAR today.

00:47:44They're taking little words and phrases.

00:47:47They'll say, well, if you read the Greek, it means X, Y, and Z.

00:47:51And now we know what this is, my brother, right?

00:47:55But the basics of the religion, such as apostles,

00:47:59the basics of the Greek translations,

00:48:01apostle means simply a man who's sent out

00:48:04because Jesus was sending them to spread the gospel.

00:48:08But you don't find any of the NAR apostles that would even be willing

00:48:11to leave their fancy churches and big home mansions

00:48:15and actually go out and try to spread the gospel.

00:48:18But they'll call themselves apostle because that, too, becomes part of the mystery.

00:48:23Yes, absolutely. You hit it right in the head.

00:48:27You're so intrigued by that because for so many people,

00:48:32and it's one of the reasons why I share a little bit about my background,

00:48:36just of the spiritual experiences that I had.

00:48:39And I had a lot of them through my life

00:48:42because in the depths, I believe that at that time,

00:48:45I had had a true experience with the Lord in my younger years.

00:48:49And I had built a foundation.

00:48:51My wife and I had built a foundation in our life

00:48:55that was built, I believe, on the truth of who Jesus Christ was.

00:48:59But our minds got captured into this grandiose type idea

00:49:06that it was beyond what we were getting and where we were at.

00:49:13And so we began to just get into that spiritual doctrine.

00:49:18And we spent, as I said, 16 years in it.

00:49:21Well, through the years, we became elders of the fellowship.

00:49:26And my wife and I basically became the two that would be the successors

00:49:33if anything happened to our pastor.

00:49:36Now, what's interesting is that my pastor actually teaches,

00:49:40or still teaches and taught,

00:49:44that the reason people die is because of sin, physically die,

00:49:50but that you can enter into physical longevity.

00:49:55Now, this is based off of the difference

00:50:00between the Holy Spirit and Christ.

00:50:04So Christ is the soul man.

00:50:06And so when you look at passages, for instance, like Galatians 2.20,

00:50:09where it talks about being crucified to Christ,

00:50:12what we need to do is we need to be crucified to Christ

00:50:15so it's no longer us who lives, but Christ who lives in us.

00:50:18But what it basically is saying is that you become fused.

00:50:25And it's in stages.

00:50:27But you want to get to the point of where your personality

00:50:31is so enveloped into the personality or the soul of Christ Jesus,

00:50:37the new man.

00:50:39In Ephesians it talks about the entity becoming one new man,

00:50:44the two becoming one new man, so making peace.

00:50:49And so that's basically what's being taught.

00:50:52So if you're fused together and you become one with the new man,

00:50:55then you'll be sinless in Christ and you'll no longer physically die

00:51:01and you'll continue to keep living.

00:51:03Now, my pastor at that time said, I still get sick.

00:51:08So that means I still have sin, therefore I haven't entered into longevity.

00:51:13But my hope, is what she would say, is that I hope to enter into that longevity.

00:51:19And so there's a lot to it, and I'm just giving you just a very basic,

00:51:23broad overview of that type of teaching.

00:51:27So here we are.

00:51:30What's happening to my wife and I is we're becoming more spiritually minded.

00:51:37And so it got to the point, John, where we would read the Scripture.

00:51:42And what was the point of reading the Scripture?

00:51:45See, my pastor would say, and it's called Translator's License,

00:51:50it's what it's called, and she would share that all the translations

00:51:55that are out there, whether it's the King James Version,

00:51:58the New American Standard, New International Version,

00:52:00whatever it might be, that it was based on the revelation

00:52:04that the translators had.

00:52:07And they did the best that they could with the revelation that they had,

00:52:11and that was their interpretation.

00:52:14That was their translation, however much they knew God.

00:52:18But it was limited.

00:52:20But now what she was bringing forth was the spiritual understanding

00:52:24of the Scriptures.

00:52:26And she ended up now creating, through her experiences with God,

00:52:33that she began to get a spiritual translation.

00:52:37And so she would rewrite the Bibles.

00:52:40She would take the Hebrew and the Greek, and she would look up the words,

00:52:44and she would get the spiritual meaning from them,

00:52:46using Kabbalistic as well, understanding of it,

00:52:49and she would incorporate it into these new Scriptures.

00:52:53So there are several books.

00:52:55It's not the whole Bible yet, but there are several books in the Old Testament

00:52:58that she's translated, several books in the New Testament,

00:53:02as well as the Book of Revelation that she's translated

00:53:06into a spiritual understanding.

00:53:08I almost interrupted you and made the joke.

00:53:11So she's found the fountain of youth.

00:53:13When can we expect the book sales?

00:53:15Because that's usually what comes next.

00:53:17Let's make money, and then here it's a different set of books.

00:53:20Yes, yes.

00:53:22And she has written, I believe she's up to 50 or 60 books now that she has written.

00:53:28So they are out there, unfortunately.

00:53:33And she's got close to about 1,000 messages that she has transcribed

00:53:39on her websites, her two websites.

00:53:42So we, of course, my wife and I, my kids, we no longer can.

00:53:48Now here's the thing.

00:53:50See, you still need to read those versions.

00:53:53The King James or the New Living Translation, whatever it might be,

00:53:56the translation, see?

00:53:58And you get a good grasp of the foundational teachings.

00:54:02But see, in your mind, you start thinking to yourself,

00:54:06well, I'm advanced.

00:54:08Even though she wouldn't teach it that way, yet she would.

00:54:12And you're being impacted by that.

00:54:16So I remember my wife and I, my kids, we would sit around the table,

00:54:19and it would be like, let's just have a teaching on scripture.

00:54:23Well, you couldn't do it.

00:54:25You know, a simple scripture as Jesus walked on water.

00:54:29Well, kids, unfortunately it's not really water that Jesus walked on.

00:54:34If you look at that word in water in the Greek,

00:54:37and you compare it with the Hebrew, it's actually the urine of Satan.

00:54:42So Jesus is actually walking on the mind.

00:54:46He's stepping on Satan's mind.

00:54:48Well, try telling this to a 6-year-old or a 10-year-old in your family, see?

00:54:53You can't.

00:54:55Their little minds can't grasp that.

00:54:57And so for myself, my wife,

00:55:01we began to slowly drift away from just reading scripture.

00:55:05I just stopped reading scripture.

00:55:07And when I attempted to try to read scripture,

00:55:09I would attempt to try to read it with the spiritual understanding.

00:55:14Because, see, I needed the doctrine of Christ because it fed that Christ in me

00:55:20that could eventually bring me into longevity, see?

00:55:24We looked at the five-fold ministry.

00:55:26We looked at these other ministries, and we say, they're okay.

00:55:30And that's their perspective, see, on the scriptures.

00:55:33And they've got their ministries, and it's good,

00:55:36but they're still going to die, and I've got Christ, see?

00:55:41I'm at a higher level.

00:55:43So they don't understand, and they probably won't understand,

00:55:48but it's where we are.

00:55:50So you try to stay humble, but you're not.

00:55:54Right.

00:55:56You're not.

00:55:58Yeah, it's just such a confusing mess when people try to add their mysteries to it,

00:56:03and they confuse it to such an extent that you can't even read your Bible like you said.

00:56:08And when you can, you're reading it through their lens.

00:56:10So even then, you're still not reading the Bible.

00:56:13So I can't even imagine leaving the cults that you went through and then going through that,

00:56:19and how did you come out of this mess?

00:56:22Well, it's a great question, John.

00:56:25So what had happened was my pastor began to also incorporate a lot of political things,

00:56:34and it was grandiose at times that all of these past presidents

00:56:40and these big globalists that were out there, that they were no longer the actual individuals,

00:56:47that they had been shot by firing squads, that they had died,

00:56:51and that they were just incredible types of things.

00:56:57And for a while, we were in that, and then it just didn't make sense to us anymore.

00:57:03And so my wife and I began to have these conversations between her and I.

00:57:08And every year, my wife and I would invite our pastor out to stay with us.

00:57:13And I remember the last time we had her out, she needed to talk to us,

00:57:21and she especially needed to talk to my wife.

00:57:24And so we sat down, and like always, we got strong corrections.

00:57:28And there's so much there when it comes to that and what we went through,

00:57:32because we had to be righteous.

00:57:34We had to be holy.

00:57:35We had to get rid of every sin based on whatever she would tell us that we had to get rid of,

00:57:41because she was the one that could identify things in us that we might not be able to.

00:57:46And so we sat down with her, and she began to tell us, began to tell my wife,

00:57:51that she had a Jezebel spirit, that she had idolatry for the four children.

00:57:58And it was the first time that I saw my wife really—my wife did everything she could in this ministry,

00:58:05and I did as best I could as well.

00:58:07But it was the first time I saw my wife really get impacted by it.

00:58:12It really hurt her, because she thought she had done all she could.

00:58:17And so my pastor ended up leaving the following day.

00:58:23A week later, my wife began to experience physical things,

00:58:29and she began to have issues with vertigo and began to lose her balance and so on.

00:58:37And we had went in.

00:58:39We had gotten tested for Lyme disease and those types of things.

00:58:43Everything came back negative.

00:58:45And after about two weeks of this, it really started getting out of hand,

00:58:49where she would fall over and kind of pass out.

00:58:52And I finally brought her into the hospital.

00:58:55We had an MRI done and ended up finding out that she had brain cancer,

00:59:00glioblastoma, grade four.

00:59:04We rushed her to a major hospital where she had surgery.

00:59:09But for those that don't know, there are four stages of glioblastoma.

00:59:14She had the worst.

00:59:16The surgery was done.

00:59:18They removed it, but even when they remove it,

00:59:21it's almost like you take sand and you just pull it out,

00:59:24but there's still always going to be a grain that's left there.

00:59:28For the next year and a half, we remained in the ministry.

00:59:33And my wife, she couldn't grasp things to the fullest,

00:59:39and yet she was being hammered with,

00:59:41you got to Jezebel spirit, you got to confess this thing.

00:59:44But she didn't have the ability to be able to do it.

00:59:49And after a year and a half, and there's a lot that's there,

00:59:54but after a year and a half, she passed away.

00:59:59And the very following day, my pastor did a service for my wife,

01:00:08and it was just our small net church group that she did it for.

01:00:15In this message, it stirred and it struck everybody.

01:00:19It threw everybody off, and it was very, very difficult.

01:00:22But basically the message said that the reason she had died

01:00:25was because she had a Jezebelian spirit,

01:00:29and she wasn't able to overcome that.

01:00:34And, of course, you're in this major spiritual seduction, John,

01:00:41where you're still believing that this is truth.

01:00:45But it rattled everybody.

01:00:47Everybody was struck with it, and everybody was scared

01:00:50because they looked at my wife and they said,

01:00:52if she didn't make it, how can any of us make it?

01:00:57And so my pastor went on and on talking about judgment

01:01:02and what all that meant.

01:01:06And so for the next few months, I couldn't grieve.

01:01:10I had to be this spiritual elder.

01:01:12I had four children that were young adults

01:01:19all the way down to the youngest being 13 years in age.

01:01:24And I'm trying to do the best that I can.

01:01:27I'm still trying to work and everything else, and I can't grieve.

01:01:30I have to believe that in the beliefs that I have

01:01:34that we're going to overcome this.

01:01:38Let me say this.

01:01:40I believe so strongly, because my pastor had said this,

01:01:43that she would not die, that she would be raised from the dead.

01:01:48That I told the funeral home, they said,

01:01:52do you want us to embalm the body?

01:01:54I said, no.

01:01:55I said, leave it.

01:01:56I said, because she's going to be raised from the dead.

01:01:58And they said, oh, okay.

01:01:59I said, has anybody ever told you that?

01:02:01And they said, well, actually, yes.

01:02:02I said, but has anybody ever done it?

01:02:04And they said, no.

01:02:05And I said, well, you just wait and see.

01:02:08I said, because she's going to be raised from the dead.

01:02:10I believed in my heart, John, because of what my pastor had said,

01:02:15that she won't die.

01:02:16And even if she does die, she'll be raised from the dead.

01:02:19But what happened was, after her death, she said, I never said that.

01:02:24That's not what I meant.

01:02:26It shouldn't be interpreted that way.

01:02:28Or I got greater revelation.

01:02:29See, that's what it always is.

01:02:31Well, it was this, but it was this.

01:02:34Now, as the months went by and I wasn't grieving,

01:02:37I was just trying to figure things out, my wife died in spring.

01:02:41By that fall, I really started getting hit with grief,

01:02:47started to step back and go, what is going on?

01:02:51And I met, it was one of my wife's good friends

01:02:55and somebody that I knew from when I was in grade school

01:02:58who had lost her husband two years earlier.

01:03:01And she was able, we just connected through Messenger

01:03:06and we just became friends.

01:03:08It was the only person that really brought healing to me.

01:03:11John, the most difficult thing when you lose somebody is,

01:03:16for me at nighttime, is being able to reach over

01:03:20and to just grab her hand and it was gone.

01:03:23And so in the evenings, I would call up this friend of ours

01:03:27and we would just talk and it would just ease my heart.

01:03:32And of course, we just started becoming friends,

01:03:36started healing.

01:03:37And my pastor came at me and said,

01:03:40you are to remain single.

01:03:42You are to be married to Christ.

01:03:45And you're to be a spiritual eunuch.

01:03:49And I had visions and I had dreams and there's others.

01:03:52In the ministry that have dreams and visions.

01:03:54And this is what they're being interpreted as.

01:03:56You love her and all these different things.

01:03:59And I said, whoa, whoa.

01:04:01Just wait a second.

01:04:04And I'm trying to, and they're sending me all these messages

01:04:08and dreams and there was one particular day

01:04:11and I'm just getting bombarded with them.

01:04:13And finally I had to just shut it off and I just went,

01:04:16Lord, help me.

01:04:17Help me.

01:04:19And it came to the point where my pastor said to me,

01:04:23Jesse, you've got a choice.

01:04:27It's either the world or it's Christ.

01:04:31Make your decision.

01:04:33And I couldn't understand, John,

01:04:35why I couldn't be friends with this woman.

01:04:38That was bringing healing to me.

01:04:42And so I stepped back and deep down in the recesses of my spirit,

01:04:47something was wrong and I knew something was wrong, John.

01:04:51And I stepped back and I said,

01:04:55I guess I'm choosing the world.

01:04:59And she said, okay.

01:05:01And cut me off.

01:05:03Yeah, it's so hard.

01:05:04In the divine healing cult, I've watched people die too.

01:05:09It was never anybody I was married to,

01:05:11but I had strong connections to these people.

01:05:14And we were told that these people would be healed.

01:05:17They had faith in God.

01:05:18They believed it.

01:05:19Even though they had the signs of whatever was wrong with them,

01:05:23sometimes cancer, sometimes something else,

01:05:25we were told that if they confessed their faith and their healing,

01:05:29they would be healed because that's the framework of this type of cult.

01:05:34And then when they die, it just rips your heart out

01:05:37because not only are you losing someone,

01:05:40you're losing the hope that you had, this false hope that they'd given you.

01:05:44And it's painful.

01:05:47I can't even imagine going through it with your wife.

01:05:50How did you overcome this?

01:05:52Well, there was one last encounter that I had with my pastor,

01:05:57and she took my four children and I and two other elders.

01:06:00One of the elders was my best friend for many years

01:06:03that had come into the ministry with me and my father-in-law.

01:06:07She sat down one night with all of us on like a Zoom

01:06:12and said, kids, I want you to know that you might be scared,

01:06:18that you've lost your foundation, but you've got a foundation of Jesus.

01:06:25Your dad, he's become the Antichrist.

01:06:28He no longer has Christ,

01:06:30and he's going to even be putting witchcraft towards you,

01:06:34which could result in death curses, spiritual death curses on your life.

01:06:39But you're going to prevail because you have a strong foundation.

01:06:43And I'm sitting there and I'm listening to this,

01:06:45and, John, you have to understand I'm still through the grieving process.

01:06:48I'm still trying to understand things, and I'm stepping back,

01:06:51and I'm agreeing with her.

01:06:54I come to the realization that if I don't have Christ, then what's the point?

01:07:00John, I came to a point in my life,

01:07:02and that was the last contact I had with my pastor,

01:07:05and not only that, but my four children turned on me.

01:07:10They had been raised in this belief.

01:07:13Their connection to their mom that had passed was this ministry.

01:07:18The father-in-law, the pastor, my best friend, we were so close,

01:07:22and now I was considered an outsider.

01:07:26And so I lost my wife and now my four children.

01:07:31Even though my last son was still in the household,

01:07:34my children ended up getting up and just leaving.

01:07:37They had to get out, and they were over 18.

01:07:40Even my 14-year-old at home was just cold towards me,

01:07:45and I was patient with him, as patient as I could be.

01:07:50But I came to the point in my life where I remember praying to God

01:07:55and saying, Lord, I'm not going to take my life.

01:07:58I know suicide is wrong, but take it.

01:08:01Take it, Lord, because I've got nothing to live for.

01:08:04If I can't have you, Christ, I've got nothing to live for.

01:08:07And I remember the Lord just placing this thought in my heart.

01:08:14And the thought was that, what about your son who's still at home?

01:08:19He's not going to have anybody then.

01:08:21And I said, okay, well, then at 18, at 18, once he's an adult,

01:08:27then take my life, Lord.

01:08:29I'll take care of him until he's 18.

01:08:31And, oh, John, it's been a hardship in what I went through.

01:08:37And with this new friend in my life, she was so gentle, so loving,

01:08:47so compassionate towards me that we began to grow together.

01:08:53And I ended up marrying her.

01:08:56And we've been married now for almost two years.

01:08:58But here's the incredible, miraculous thing, John.

01:09:02All four of my children have done a circle, not a circle, but a 180,

01:09:10and we've had reconciliation.

01:09:14I had one son almost two years, had just small little conversations with him.

01:09:20And he allowed me to just share my experience.

01:09:23And he just started crying.

01:09:24He says, Dad, I never knew.

01:09:26I never knew, Dad.

01:09:28And we hugged and we loved on each other in our relationship.

01:09:31As my one daughter, she says, I've never had such a strong relationship

01:09:36as I do now with my dad.

01:09:39And all four kids.

01:09:41And what I can say about this, John, to all those that are out there

01:09:45that are struggling, that have lost their children because of these types of

01:09:48situations or their spouses or so on, but mostly their children, be patient.

01:09:54Patience, you know, time heals.

01:09:56It really does.

01:09:58I bit my tongue so many times.

01:10:00And my wife now, she helped me along the way.

01:10:03There would be times that I would type out things that I would want to send to

01:10:06and try to defend myself.

01:10:09And she would say, just tell them you love them.

01:10:13That's it.

01:10:14Just send, I love you.

01:10:16Just every once in a while send a text, send an email saying, I'm so proud of you.

01:10:20Even though where they're at, they just want to know that they're loved,

01:10:24that you're here.

01:10:25And that's all I would do, John, is just send little texts and little emails

01:10:28saying how much I loved them, how much I appreciated them.

01:10:31And when we got married, my youngest, of course, was still at home

01:10:35and had to go to the wedding.

01:10:36My three oldest didn't.

01:10:38And I sent them an email, all of them an email, and I just said,

01:10:41I want you to know that I'm never going to hold anything against you.

01:10:46It's not even about forgiveness because it's not something I can even forgive you about

01:10:50because my heart has been made so full because of what God did in my life.

01:10:56There's a Bible verse, John, that talks about His grace is sufficient enough.

01:11:00And I lost everything, John.

01:11:03I lost my wife.

01:11:04I lost my children.

01:11:05I lost my father-in-law and my family on that side.

01:11:08I lost my best friend.

01:11:10Everything I knew, John, was gone, lost it all.

01:11:15And I found Jesus again.

01:11:17I found my identity in Christ again.

01:11:21And when I recognized His love being outpoured on my life,

01:11:26I just stepped back and went, wow.

01:11:28And all of a sudden, God began to just move in little ways.

01:11:32There were individuals that I had not known before of just Him pouring out His love to me,

01:11:37just in the most simplest ways that you couldn't step back and go that it wasn't God

01:11:43because it was so miraculous.

01:11:46If I had time, I'd love to share with you how miraculous they were,

01:11:50but they were incredible, what God did.

01:11:54So hold on.

01:11:56That's the message that I have to so many that are out there that are suffering right now,

01:12:05that are right in the storm, right in the midst of it.

01:12:09Well, thank you so much for coming and sharing your story.

01:12:11It is a heartbreaking, tragic, happy ending story that I'm sure is going to encourage a lot of people.

01:12:20I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that, but I'm so glad that you came through on the other side.

01:12:25You're like Job, Job of the Bible.

01:12:28So things do get brighter, and it should be encouraging to everyone.

01:12:33Thank you so much for doing this.

01:12:35Thank you, John. I appreciate it, and God bless you.

01:12:37Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

01:12:41You can find us at william-branham.org.

01:12:45For an overview of the historical research of William Branham and the healing revivals,

01:12:49read Preacher Behind the White Hoods,

01:12:51a critical examination of William Branham and his message,

01:12:54available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

01:12:58Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started

01:13:01or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,

01:13:06charismatic and other fringe movements, into the New Apostolic Reformation?

01:13:11You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,

01:13:16william-branham.org.

01:13:18On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,

01:13:23Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,

01:13:28with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

01:13:32You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

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Our Stories: Escaping NAR - An Interview With Jesse Aldrich - Episode 164 Branham Research

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