Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
John invites Amy Fischer, a former member of William Branham's message, to share her story. Amy recounts her journey from a Baptist upbringing to becoming deeply involved in the message due to her father's influence. She describes the rigid rules and fear-based teachings that dominated her life, leading to severe anxiety and a sense of alienation from both the religious community and society at large. As Amy grew older, her critical thinking led her to question the doctrines she had been taught, particularly as she observed the contradictions and legalism within the movement. Her story illustrates the intense pressure and fear instilled in members, ultimately leading her to leave the message and seek a healthier spiritual path.
The discussion also touches on broader issues within cult-like religious movements, such as the suppression of critical thought and the manipulation of followers through fear. Both John and Amy share their personal experiences of gradually realizing the flaws and deceptions within the message. They emphasize the importance of seeking truth and maintaining a personal relationship with Jesus, independent of the legalistic structures imposed by such groups. The conversation serves as a powerful testimony to the challenges and rewards of breaking free from controlling religious systems.
00:00 Introduction
01:02 Amy's Early Life and Introduction to the Message
04:04 Transition to Message and Changes in Family Life
07:01 Initial Doubts and Critical Thoughts
10:06 Fear-Based Teachings and Their Impact
13:05 Struggles with Anxiety and Leaving the Message
18:01 Reflections on Legalism and Religious Upbringing
21:18 Realization of the Message's Falsehood
24:03 Encounter with Legalism and Questioning the Doctrine
28:34 Research into the Message and Discovering the Truth
31:06 Connection Between William Branham and Jim Jones
34:40 Confronting Family Beliefs and Indoctrination
39:01 Observations on Legalism in Other Religious Groups
45:01 Dealing with Prophecies and Contradictions
50:02 Advice for Those Questioning the Message
______________________
– 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
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
John invites Amy Fischer, a former member of William Branham's message, to share her story. Amy recounts her journey from a Baptist upbringing to becoming deeply involved in the message due to her father's influence. She describes the rigid rules and fear-based teachings that dominated her life, leading to severe anxiety and a sense of alienation from both the religious community and society at large. As Amy grew older, her critical thinking led her to question the doctrines she had been taught, particularly as she observed the contradictions and legalism within the movement. Her story illustrates the intense pressure and fear instilled in members, ultimately leading her to leave the message and seek a healthier spiritual path.
The discussion also touches on broader issues within cult-like religious movements, such as the suppression of critical thought and the manipulation of followers through fear. Both John and Amy share their personal experiences of gradually realizing the flaws and deceptions within the message. They emphasize the importance of seeking truth and maintaining a personal relationship with Jesus, independent of the legalistic structures imposed by such groups. The conversation serves as a powerful testimony to the challenges and rewards of breaking free from controlling religious systems.
00:00 Introduction
01:02 Amy's Early Life and Introduction to the Message
04:04 Transition to Message and Changes in Family Life
07:01 Initial Doubts and Critical Thoughts
10:06 Fear-Based Teachings and Their Impact
13:05 Struggles with Anxiety and Leaving the Message
18:01 Reflections on Legalism and Religious Upbringing
21:18 Realization of the Message's Falsehood
24:03 Encounter with Legalism and Questioning the Doctrine
28:34 Research into the Message and Discovering the Truth
31:06 Connection Between William Branham and Jim Jones
34:40 Confronting Family Beliefs and Indoctrination
39:01 Observations on Legalism in Other Religious Groups
45:01 Dealing with Prophecies and Contradictions
50:02 Advice for Those Questioning the Message
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00You
00:30Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham historical research podcast.
00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham historical research
00:42at William-Branham.org. And with me, I have my very special guest, Amy Fisher, former
00:48member of William Branham's message. Amy, it's good to have you on here and to share
00:53your story. We've chatted a bit, you know, via the Facebook chats and we, you know, tried
01:01to make this connect and I've had a couple weeks of just crazy busy, but we finally are
01:06connected and good to have you on here. Maybe if you could start and just tell everybody
01:11a little bit about yourself.
01:13My name is Amy Fisher. I live in a small town in Ohio. I'm 52 years old. I have a blended
01:22family. So we have four boys, six grandchildren, which keep us extremely busy. So we have,
01:30we had a pretty good life here, small town, USA.
01:33Awesome. I've made many, many trips into small town, Ohio. My wife's family's from Ohio.
01:39So we go up to Amish country, several, used to go several times a year. Now it's about
01:43once a year, but love it up there. So what brought you into the message?
01:49My parents. Yeah. Give a little background. When I was extremely small, my parents did
01:58not, I'm the oldest of three girls, was born in 71. My parents did not go to church. I
02:06think it was around the time my sister, my youngest sister was born. They started going
02:12to a Baptist church. And that's where we first started out in this process. Went to
02:19Baptist church. We went to the Baptist school, first and second grade. Everything seemed
02:26fine. My parents seemed normal. My dad and mom, they were Sunday school teachers. My
02:31dad drove a bus for the church. I was in the choir. They seemed to be very active. Mom
02:38did mission work. From what I remember, everything seemed, you know, we had a normal couple of
02:47years. Then I'm not real sure what happened. Dad didn't like some of the teachings. So
02:55we started, he took us out of the Baptist Christian school there and put us into a Wesleyan
03:02private Christian school with a Wesleyan church. It was about that time my father,
03:09who worked for General Motors, his best friend in the factory was a message believer. That's
03:15about the time he drew my dad into the religion. Everything totally changed for us.
03:24I can only imagine. That's also, again, a similar story. My in-laws, some of them are
03:31Wesleyan. I could be wrong, but I think it's my wife's story. I'll let her tell it on her
03:37podcast. Something similar. Somebody met somebody at work. That's how it usually starts.
03:46Somebody says, hey, do you know there's a prophet? They don't tell you that not all
03:52of the prophecies were correct and all that. Just get you hooked and then you get curious
03:58and you come into it. I'm guessing your father got curious and brought the whole family along
04:05with him into the message? He did. He said that he always being Baptist
04:10in the way they believed, he always felt like there was something more. There was something
04:14more. Now that I'm older, I'm thinking, what more do you want than God's grace? What do
04:21you need? Rules to live by? What do you need? What do you need? I remember when he started
04:27going to a small message church. My mom soon followed him, of course. She was baptized
04:33right away. That's when we had to start wearing dresses and couldn't do this, couldn't do
04:39that. It's kind of hard because going to Wesleyan school, they had their own rules. They had
04:48to wear long sleeves and always had their hair up. Just different rules and regulations.
04:56We were kind of always the oddball because here we had another set of regulations. We
05:02didn't belong to their church and they had their own group of people. I always felt like
05:07an outsider. All these years, I learned the Bible. I learned the Bible and I just kept
05:18it in my heart. When I was in high school, we switched to a Pentecostal school. Some
05:26things that happened at the Wesleyan school. When I was in about ninth grade, we switched
05:30to a Pentecostal school, which was a little bit better for me. They weren't so rigid as
05:36the Wesleyan rules, but still, it was like all their women wore the same skirt, the same
05:42hairstyle, and we bought the same purse. They all married each other. I just felt like
05:49I never belonged anywhere. We were just always the outsiders. We went to such a small message
05:57church. There was no one. We didn't have many friends.
06:02Yeah, I can relate to all of that, too. I migrated with my family to various places
06:10around the country. Some of the churches were just a house with a few people in it. I'm
06:15familiar with how that works. I can't imagine having been a Baptist and then heard the gospel
06:23and the gospel in its simplicity. Like you said, wanting to learn more. The irony of
06:29this is you go to the message and you keep hearing that phrase, the gospel in its simplicity,
06:35but then they complicate it so much that nobody in it can really even understand what
06:39it is. If you ask somebody what is the gospel, they never give you what the Bible says is
06:46the gospel, the good news that Jesus came. What was that like for you being a person
06:52who reads the Bible? Were you able to detect anything that you felt was abnormal about
07:00the doctrine while you were in it?
07:02Let me clarify this. Sometime in that period when we went to the Wesleyan church, my dad
07:10and his friends started pastoring a church. We went with them. It was two families. For
07:16my entire life, most of my church was just our family and another family. This family
07:21had four children and they felt like me and my sisters did. Here we are. I started noticing
07:32things fairly young. There's a couple examples. One time we had some women come to our church.
07:39They just showed up on Sunday morning off the street and walked in. Our pastor, they
07:44were wearing pants. Right away, our pastor started preaching against women wearing pants
07:51are going to hell. I thought, and the women, they immediately walked out of the church.
07:57They weren't there ten minutes. I thought, how are they going to get saved? How are they
08:03going to know about Jesus if you condemn them? In the first five minutes, you know them.
08:09It was odd. Odd.
08:12Yeah. In my high school years, we lived in a small town that really didn't have a church.
08:18I drove, as a teenager, I drove a long ways to go to the church in high school. I grew
08:26up reading the Bible. I felt sorry for the people that would be lost. Like you, how can
08:35they be saved unless you tell them? I told several people about the gospel, about the
08:40actual gospel because I was reading my Bible. I also told them about William Branham because
08:45that's what we were supposed to do. I'll never forget when I moved back here. I was at my
08:51grandfather's house, which he was the pastor of the Branham Tabernacle. Some sales lady
08:58came to the door. I can't remember what it was for. I remember the whole family looking
09:03out and seeing her and clearly saying, she has pants. We can't let her in this house.
09:10I was just shocked. This is a pastor's home. The thought hit me. Even though I still was
09:18expressing critical thought, I was thinking about the lady. If she was unsaved and he's
09:23the pastor trying to save her, why would he not let her in the house? That was one of
09:31the first few instances that I had of critical thought.
09:36Looking back, there's so many things like that. It was not a message to the lost and
09:41dying world like most churches. It was a message to corral the people that you already had
09:47in your gates.
09:48Right. Right. They do that with fear. I think that's my main point of doing this with you
09:56is the fear and anxiety that crept into my life when my parents started in the message.
10:02They taught me fear, straight up fear. The world's ending soon. You're going to go to
10:08hell if you do this. If you don't straighten up at school. By the time I was 15 or 16,
10:16I was having panic attacks. Back in the 80s, they didn't know what it was. They talked
10:21it up as asthma, maybe breathing problems. They really didn't know. They didn't have
10:27a name for it back then. It was a terrifying, overwhelming fear.
10:36I sat in a pew with my kids when I was older. My two sons, they were very little. I clearly
10:43remember this. We were sitting in the pew and someone was preaching and the man says,
10:48you don't have a future. The world's going to end. These kids here don't have a future.
10:53I remember that was the last time I ever went to a message church. I walked out the door
10:58and said, I'm not going to raise my kids to feel like I feel. There's no way I can do
11:03this.
11:04Yeah, I remember many, many sermons on that theme. What's interesting is a lot of the
11:09preachers will preach that theme, but they won't outright tell you, you have no future.
11:14They'll just lead you to believe that you have no future. As a child, you're living
11:18in constant fear because you don't know when it's going to end. Am I going to be at school
11:23whenever it ends? Can I get reconnected with my parents? That kind of thing.
11:29Back to the gospel discussion earlier. In fact, I just had a call earlier today with
11:34a guy talking about this. The gospel that they give you is a gospel of fear, which is
11:39ironic because the word gospel just simply means the good news, the good news that Jesus
11:44came and you too can be free in Jesus. But what they give you is something to hold you
11:50captivated by fear. The thing that it does, the worst part of it for me is it gives you
12:00a – it takes away your outlook in life. So as a child, there's no future. There's
12:05nothing to look forward to. Why do I care about this world? That kind of thought enters
12:10your head.
12:11Yes, yes. I remember when I married my first husband, we moved to Texas, and I lived in
12:17fear. If California had an earthquake, I've had a panic attack. I would call my mom long
12:24distance to make sure my parents weren't raptured yet. There were times I would call
12:29their house at 2 o'clock in the morning and hang up the phone when they answered just
12:33to make sure I didn't miss the rapture, everybody's still here. What a terrible,
12:40terrible way to live. What a burden to put on children and young people, to give them
12:46no hope and just straight fear. The Bible tells us, what, 365 times to fear not? We
12:54were never taught that in church. I never heard that.
12:58No. In California, Branham's prophecy of California sinking, I had to go out there
13:05on business, and I went out there. Everywhere in California, every day, there are tremors.
13:12You're out there, and you're like, oh my gosh, am I going to live through this trip?
13:18It changes. It's hard to conduct business while you're thinking this. I'll just say
13:22it like that.
13:25It is, it is. I can remember one time I went out there to see a friend. My dad, he would
13:32be like, I would rather your plane crash, you die, than you have to, California, fall
13:40off into the ocean, and you'd be there. I'm thinking, where are you getting this from?
13:45What is your thought process? It's just the things I heard from preachers and people in
13:52the church, something just didn't sit right with me. Just didn't sit right with me. My
13:57mom would always tell me, women with short hair, they were going to hell. If you wore
14:01pants, you were going to hell. Then I would, as I got older, I thought, these women, I
14:07saw other women that were so godly, that had such godly homes and loved their families.
14:14I thought, why do you think we're better than they are? I thought the attitude and the message
14:23is terrible compared to the attitude to a community church or such. It just didn't add
14:30up for me.
14:34We recently went out to Los Angeles on just a weekend getaway. My wife had never seen
14:39the West Coast, so we went out there. The thought hit me while I was out there. I spent
14:45my whole life looking for Los Angeles to sink. That was part of the prophecy. But worse than
14:52that, we wanted it to. Every time that there's a tremor, you're kind of hoping that it does
14:58so that it makes this prophecy come true. But you're never really thinking about the
15:02people that would suffer and die if that happened. Many of those people are Christian
15:07people. We were out there looking around at some of the people. You could see entire families.
15:15They're really good people. The fact that we cared so little about the people and cared
15:22more about the so-called prophecy, it made me realize that it wasn't even Christianity
15:29we were in. We were in something else.
15:32Right. If it's true and we truly believed that it was going to fall off the ocean and
15:37millions of people were going to live, why wouldn't we be out there trying to convert
15:41them? Well, that's not how it happened. Let's see here. I remember going to church
15:48camp. We had a fairly good-sized church camp for the message in Ohio. I don't know if
15:55you ever heard of it or the people that ran it. My mom and dad were involved for a couple
15:59years running the snack shack and the kitchen. Let me tell you, church camp, especially for
16:10girls, church camp consisted of church, doing nothing, and going to church for five or six
16:16hours. That was our camp. I could see other kids, as I got older, they would go to church
16:22camp and they would swim and ride horses and do archery. I would be like, really? Why
16:30can't we do this stuff? Why can't we do it? I guess I questioned authority. My parents
16:37would tell you, you really had a problem with authority because it just wasn't adding up
16:41for me. It didn't make any sense to me. It would be nothing for our services at church
16:48camp to start at seven and go all night. If you didn't stay all night, you were looked
16:53down upon. I don't know, John. I don't know.
16:59I enjoy my sleep too much to do that. The funny part for me is I was never allowed to
17:05go to those things because my family looked down on the people running them. I really
17:12didn't get a chance to go. My grandfather, in fact, you can listen to him say it on the
17:19resignation speech on the website. His words were, if you can get to the children, you
17:25can get to the parents. If you can get to the parents, you can get to their money. I
17:30can remember Grandpa clearly saying things like this all the time. They were so against
17:36all of these things for the youth, but I never got to experience it.
17:43You didn't miss much.
17:45I wanted to. You'll laugh at this. The reason why I wanted to is because I read the Berenstain
17:51Bears books. I would see all of the camping, the fun stuff they're doing with the canoes
17:56and the fishing, but I'm certain it was nothing like this.
18:00It didn't happen. It did not happen.
18:05Another thing is you couldn't find three families in the message to agree. That's probably
18:12why we never went to Jeffersonville or go to their church. We went one Easter one year
18:17to experience it and went to the Voice of God. No one would ever agree. I think that's
18:23why my dad and his friend went out on their own to a church because they couldn't agree
18:27with two other people in the church we went. I'm like, why can't we just all get along?
18:34This is not what Jesus wanted. If you listen to Paul, he preached against that. We should
18:39all come together and be one.
18:41That's the real problem for people like you and I who have an analytical mind. If you're
18:48trying to think logically about this, there's no logic to it, and it doesn't make sense.
18:54Internally, you're told to suppress all of your questions, but internally they're surfacing,
19:00and it creates this big problem because now I've got questions, and none of this makes
19:05sense. Why are these guys doing this?
19:08But the fact that they force an opinion is the bigger problem because people have differences
19:15of opinion, but yet you're taught to suppress the questions, and you're not trained how
19:22to interact with people who don't share your opinion.
19:25What it ends up with is people get very angry with one another whenever they don't have
19:30the same opinion. The interesting part of all of this is when we left the message and
19:35we started going to other churches, we would find that one church's doctrine was completely
19:41different than the other one. That's why they're different denominations.
19:44But even in the same church, I would take the pastors and assistant pastors out to lunch
19:50sometimes and just ask them questions, and they would openly say,
19:54Now, I believe this, and for me it was like a core fundamental Christian doctrine.
20:00But the assistant pastor, he believes this other thing, and it was the polar opposite.
20:06But they were taught properly that people can have differences of opinion, and it took
20:15a long time for me to understand.
20:17What we were taught is to look very, very deeply into the little things and make it
20:24such that the little things mattered more than the big things.
20:28And so my focus was entirely in the wrong place, and through talking to these guys,
20:33I came to understand the little things that they're talking about that they have differences
20:37of opinion, they really didn't matter.
20:39For me, they were core Christianity, but for most Christians, they didn't matter at all.
20:44Right, right.
20:46It's like the serpent seed.
20:48Some people believe it.
20:50Some people don't.
20:52I struggle with the Book of Revelation.
20:55I don't know much about it, but there comes a point where you have to focus on Jesus.
21:00Get saved.
21:02Follow His way.
21:04Does these other things matter?
21:07We can debate doctrine forever, but as long as you are saved and you seek after God, He'll answer.
21:16Because when I started this process, I prayed.
21:19I said, God, if the message is true, show me.
21:23Show me.
21:24If it's not true, show me.
21:26I just want to know.
21:27I just want to quell this in my heart once and for all.
21:30He showed me.
21:31He showed me that it was false.
21:33It was a false way.
21:36I got married young, of course, because I wanted to go to college.
21:42I always dreamed of going to Ohio State.
21:44Of course, that's out for a girl.
21:46I wasn't going to live at home my whole life, so I married the first guy that asked.
21:51It was a horrible marriage out of respect for my boys who loved their dad.
21:57I never really talked about it.
21:59We were married ten years.
22:01Then we divorced, which is just a terrible thing for message people.
22:05It was about that time I took my boys and left the church.
22:09The day we left, I never heard from anyone from the church ever again.
22:14Never.
22:15After going there about my entire life, never heard from anybody again.
22:19It kind of turned our backs on us.
22:21Then your divorce, which is a double indemnity, you're lower of the low.
22:27I met my husband now.
22:30I started telling him it's hard to tell people, hey, I was part of a cult.
22:35It's just like, I have cancer or whatever.
22:39To know someone who's in a cult, that's like, okay.
22:42I tried to tell him a little bit about it.
22:44He was the first person who used the term legalism with me.
22:49He explained to me what legalism was.
22:51It was like a light bulb went off in my head.
22:53I said, oh, my gosh.
22:56Why didn't they ever teach that we were legalistic?
22:59I never heard that term in the message.
23:01That's what they are, 100% legalistic.
23:05Darrell Bock You know, the funny part about all of this
23:07is, I believed the message hook, line, and sinker until 2011.
23:13It wasn't until a trip to a revival in the South, believe it or not,
23:19that things started just really bothering me.
23:23On the trip, we shared driving.
23:26I would drive part of the way, and she would drive the next.
23:29While she was driving, I was looking up just things that were bothering me on the phone,
23:34things that did not make sense.
23:36Lo and behold, I found one of the earliest versions of people
23:40who were critically examining the message.
23:43Sure enough, there were other people that saw the same problems as me.
23:47I began to look at it, and oh, my gosh.
23:50They're right.
23:52There's a problem here.
23:54There's a big problem here.
23:56So we get to the revival, and it's the funniest thing.
23:59It was a church I grew up in, parts of my life in the South.
24:05It used to be a small mobile home.
24:08Everybody met in this mobile home, but they built this nice, big, fancy church.
24:12They had a room underneath.
24:16You'd walk down the stairs under the sanctuary,
24:18and they had a room for the men who wanted to take their children out of the building.
24:23If they were being unruly, they could go down there.
24:25We had a young child, so I'd never seen anything like this in a message church.
24:30Usually, the women take the children.
24:32So I go down there, and my gosh, man.
24:36They had this nice, big, leather recliner that I sat in.
24:39They had Legos over here for the boy.
24:42I was having it.
24:44On the screen on the wall, there was like a 50-inch screen of the platform,
24:50so you could watch the preacher preaching.
24:52I'm sitting back here.
24:54My hands prop behind me.
24:55This is great.
24:56I'm not going back up there, right?
24:59So you bribed your kids to act up in church, right?
25:03Well, we were only there for like two meetings.
25:06Anyway, this preacher came in, and he started preaching on legalism.
25:12It was the first time I knew the term, but it never really clicked that that's what we were in.
25:18But he started just blasting the Branham Tabernacle,
25:22because you know there's different splinter groups of the message, right?
25:26So he was in one that hated the Tabernacle and the main sect of the message.
25:31He was saying things that it was offensive to me, because I came from the Branham Tabernacle,
25:37which looking back, I look at this, and I think, why does this man do this?
25:41Because half the crowd came from the Tabernacle, and he's just berating them, right?
25:46And then the irony is, as he's preaching against them, saying that they're so legalistic,
25:52then he starts into his preaching and preaches legalism.
25:57So the whole thing, none of it made any sense.
26:00I was just sitting there looking at this big screen TV, and I thought, you know,
26:04this looks an awful lot like those televangelists where the whole thing is fake.
26:09And that's when it really hit me.
26:12All of this, these people have this, you know, a nice front.
26:16They look like they're Christian, they're playing Christian,
26:19but what they're doing isn't Christian, and that's when it really hit me.
26:23Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started,
26:27or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,
26:32charismatic and other fringe movements, into the New Apostolic Reformation?
26:37You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
26:41william-branham.org.
26:44On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
26:49Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,
26:53with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
26:58You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
27:04If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
27:11And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
27:17On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
27:23I really started struggling with this last year, and I started doing some studying.
27:29Now, the thing we have today that folks didn't have back in the 80s and 90s is the Internet.
27:35So whatever you were told, you believed.
27:40I started with, there was a man out of Lima, Ohio, who was a message preacher, and he left the message.
27:47And I read and I listened to his testimonies, and I thought, I knew him from church camp.
27:53So I went and asked my dad, did you know so-and-so had left the message a couple of years ago?
27:59And my dad's reply was, well, he was always not right.
28:04He was kind of a womanizer.
28:07And I'm like, no.
28:10My dad looked at me like, how dare you say no to me?
28:13And I said, no.
28:15I said, I remember him from camp.
28:17He was a young man.
28:18I said, and the women, he was from an elite family, and the women would throw their daughters at him.
28:24Of course, you know, they wanted their daughters to marry the elite people in the message.
28:28The bigger the name, the better the marriage.
28:31And I really started questioning.
28:34So then I started digging, like, Florence Nightingale, was it her niece that supposedly got healed?
28:41And I found out Florence Nightingale never got married, and her sister never had children.
28:46And I'm like, is this a fake?
28:50I mean, this can't be right.
28:52This can't be right.
28:54So I went to our pastor, my pastor I am now.
28:57We've been going to church for a couple of years, and he's a great man.
29:00And I said, I got a story for you.
29:02You're not going to believe this, but I think I grew up in a cult.
29:06So I told him a little bit about it, and he's like, Amy, this is one I have never heard of.
29:12So he said, I'll get back with you.
29:15So he calls me the next day, and he's like, I got some information on you.
29:18So I started looking on the Internet.
29:20It's when I found out that William Branham and Jim Jones worked together, I was like, oh, this is bad.
29:31This is very bad.
29:34How close did we come from being a Jim Jones cult?
29:39How close?
29:40You know, I don't talk about it much because I can't prove this,
29:44but I've talked to many people who have escaped the message.
29:48And one family was from an area close to here.
29:52It was a little bit north of where we live in Jeffersonville.
29:55And they were in the message.
29:56I knew their whole family.
29:57I knew every one of them.
30:00And they told me that the only reason why they didn't go to Jonestown with Jones
30:05was because their family had more money and they didn't want to go live like that.
30:11But they were so connected to the Branham Tabernacle and apparently what was left there.
30:18And when they told me, I didn't believe it.
30:21And I can't prove it, so I can only take their word at it.
30:25At that point in time, I only knew of one mission that William Branham had with Jim Jones
30:31where they went to the Cato Tabernacle and basically they launched Jones' career.
30:36I had not seen all the other information.
30:39And come to find out later, you know, Jones was introduced by William Branham's,
30:44one of William Branham's primary publicists, Joseph Mattson Beause,
30:50who he ran the Herald of Truth, and they connected with each other.
30:54And it looked like they were prepping Jim Jones to be a significant leader in this thing
30:59until an explosion happened and Jones was sponsoring Branham's meetings
31:04and not just that one, but other meetings in even other states.
31:08So this was a big deal.
31:11And now after knowing that knowledge, I look back at what that person told me
31:16and I still can't prove it, but it's very plausible when you think through it.
31:21And Jones isn't the only bad fruit that came out of this mess, this movement.
31:27You can go through history and you can find one after another after another.
31:31And the Bible says, by your fruits you'll know them.
31:34By their fruits you'll know them.
31:36But none of the people are trained to examine the fruit, and that's the real problem.
31:40Right, right.
31:42It's terrible to think how close some of us could have come to being part of that.
31:48It's scary.
31:50I tried to approach my mom and dad with my husband a couple months ago, and I told them.
31:56I said, I've been searching.
31:58I'm trying to get through this.
32:02I said, did you know about Florence Nightingale's niece?
32:06That was a picture of some woman from a concentration camp, rest her soul, in Jim Jones.
32:14And they were livid.
32:16I said, you can't believe everything you see on the internet or hear on TV.
32:21You just can't.
32:22People just make this stuff up so you won't believe in William Branham.
32:25And I'm like, there's documents.
32:28There's photographs.
32:30I heard a recording yesterday.
32:33I was watching one of your videos and I heard a recording of Jim Jones.
32:37I believe he was talking about Brother Branham dying in a car wreck in Texas.
32:44I'm like, no, there's proof.
32:46Just look.
32:48My family is so indoctrinated.
32:51Nope.
32:52No way.
32:53No way.
32:54We're right and you're wrong and there's no in between.
32:57The problem is they've been trained so much to suppress the critical thinking.
33:03But more than that, they're trained to deflect it.
33:07So if you bring critical thought to them, they'll deflect it.
33:10And the easiest deflection is it's all lies.
33:12Don't believe any of it.
33:14So that's usually the position that they take.
33:16But inwardly, whenever you engage people like this,
33:22if you can engage them and they don't bring their guards up.
33:26In other words, you're talking about things that you enjoy,
33:30things that you have connected with them in the past.
33:33And in a non-confrontational way, just talk about Florence Nightingale.
33:40They already know this part, so you can't use that example.
33:43But talk about Florence Nightingale and the actual history without a confrontation.
33:49And so what happens is the next time they hear that name,
33:54William Branham claimed that he healed the Florence Nightingale.
33:58He later changed it to a daughter and then a granddaughter, I think.
34:03And once all of that was proven fiction, some message.
34:07I'm not going to give his name, but some message pastor out there said,
34:10no, he got it wrong, it was the niece.
34:13And so that's why you had to look up whether the sister had one.
34:17Because they're just deflecting.
34:18They're actually producing more fiction to uphold the fiction.
34:23But if you give them just enough so that next time they hear it,
34:27they can think through it, maybe they can break through
34:30and hopefully escape this thing.
34:35I want people to know that it's just not the message.
34:39In my town I live in now, there's a Church of God that is a known cult.
34:44And these people wear, I call them uniforms.
34:47They all wear the same exact dress.
34:49It's either black or navy blue.
34:53It is so bad that they adopt children to get their numbers up.
34:58They don't try to recruit from the outside.
35:00They adopt children.
35:02This group was run out of Canada, and they came down here to my town
35:06and built a great big church.
35:09And I've heard rumors, can't prove anything.
35:11There's some things going on.
35:13But I know a girl I used to go to school with,
35:16she left it a couple years ago and said it's definitely a cult.
35:20And we have a lot of German Baptists, Amish in this area,
35:25and I don't know what it is with me.
35:26I have a big problem with people who have to wear what I call uniforms.
35:31I don't get why everybody has to wear the same dress,
35:35and these rules and regulations, you know.
35:39I see a lot of German Baptists, they won't drive trucks,
35:42but will drive tractors or will have all this equipment for work,
35:47but our wives can't have a washing machine.
35:50And I just want people to know this is not biblical.
35:54It is not in the Bible.
35:55This is not, God does not require this of you.
35:59He requires your heart.
36:01And I just want people to, if something seems off, go to the Lord.
36:06Yeah, I told you, we went up to Ohio several times a year,
36:10and my wife is from Amish country, so she has a lot of Amish friends.
36:15And it's legalism, pure, plain, and simple.
36:18There's no question there.
36:20But I had never experienced Amish until I met my wife.
36:25So we made a few trips, and I got to meet the really nice people.
36:29I got to meet a few of them.
36:30Oh, absolutely.
36:31I had just got a new Dodge Durango, and it had the big engine in it,
36:36the big 360 or whatever.
36:38And we made a trip up, and our first stop was at one of these Amish homes.
36:44And we pull off.
36:45It's always a long gravel driveway, so pull off on the gravel driveway.
36:49And the closer I got to the house,
36:51I could feel the truck was, like, making a noise,
36:54and it felt like it was shaking.
36:55And I thought, is that the gravel or is it the truck?
36:58And we pull up to the house, and I turn it off, and the ground's still shaking.
37:02And I'm like, what in the world is this?
37:04And I get out, and the closer I walk to the house, the more it's shaking.
37:09And so my wife and the kids, they go inside.
37:12Everybody's greeting them, hi, how are you doing?
37:15My curiosity is not like that.
37:16I can't just go in the house.
37:17I got to figure out what in the world is going on.
37:20So I start walking around the house,
37:22and I see this cable coming up out of the ground with a U-joint going in the house,
37:27and it was turning.
37:29So somewhere behind me in a barn or something was a massive diesel engine,
37:33and it was turning a thing for multiple houses.
37:38So I go inside, hi, how are you doing?
37:41I still got to figure out what this is.
37:43So I walk to the back of the house,
37:45and there's an almost handmade built washing machine
37:51because they're not allowed to have electricity in the house,
37:54but the men can run a diesel engine.
37:57So this guy had figured out that if he can pump the diesel engine, turn something,
38:02he can turn a washing machine, and so he did.
38:05And so I go a little bit further, and I said, well, it's hot outside.
38:09Would you like a drink?
38:10And I said, sure, and I'm thinking, I'm going to get hot water in this place.
38:14She goes up to her refrigerator, pulls it out, and hands me an ice-cold Coke,
38:19and I'm like, how did you do that?
38:21Oh, it's a propane from a refrigerator.
38:26And I go further.
38:28I go into the living room, and I sit down.
38:31They've got a nice recliner and everything, and I'm sitting there,
38:34and she says, oh, watch this.
38:36I've got to show you something.
38:37And she flips a switch on the side of the thing, and it starts vibrating
38:41and gives me a massage.
38:42It's a massage chair that didn't even look like one.
38:44And I'm like, how did you do that with no electricity?
38:47And up here over the corner is a car battery behind me.
38:51But the kicker for me was when it got – it started getting dark,
38:56and I was bored out of my mind.
38:57There's nothing to do in this house.
39:00They bring me some magazines, and I'm kind of thumbing through them,
39:03and as the sun was going down, it was getting dark in the room,
39:06and the lady comes in the room, and she says,
39:09what are you doing reading in the dark?
39:11And goes to the wall and flips a switch.
39:13And I'm like, okay, I figured out the washing machine.
39:18I figured out the – how did you do that?
39:20And she says, oh, we have gas all throughout the house,
39:23and when we flip it, it just ignites a little.
39:26They had every modern convenience that we have,
39:29but they're so legalistic that they could not –
39:33even though they're doing the same exact thing,
39:35they couldn't abide by the same rules.
39:38And we were still in the cult when all of this hit me,
39:42but that's the point of which I realized,
39:45that legalism makes you do things that don't make sense at all.
39:51None whatsoever.
39:54And there are – German Baptist, Amish, this Church of God.
40:00It's funny.
40:01It's funny the things they do.
40:03They'll take – we call it Papa and Mama.
40:06And every Thursday night on their tractor,
40:08they go into the local restaurant to eat,
40:11but they won't drive – they'll drive a tractor,
40:13but they won't drive a car.
40:14And it's just like, oh, you just –
40:18I don't know why people feel like they have to live by these rules.
40:21Now, I'm not saying it's okay to go out and live any way you want.
40:24That's between you and God.
40:26I believe God convicts people of things.
40:29Some people might have a conviction of going to bars
40:33versus not going to restaurants that serve beer,
40:36or women should have long hair, or everybody.
40:40If you ask the Lord to lead you, he will lead you.
40:43He will tell you what you should do.
40:45And that's – I guess I feel – I'm doing this for my grandchildren.
40:50I didn't want to speak about this because my family is still in the message,
40:54my mom and dad, both my sisters.
40:57But I see how they live.
41:01And their lives are a mess.
41:03My family's lives are a mess.
41:06But their theory is as long as you believe in Brother Branham and his message,
41:10hey, it'll all be okay.
41:12It's not okay, and it's not good.
41:14And I see other people in the message, and things aren't going right,
41:20and they lose their kids.
41:21They go off and do these other crazy things, and they want to know why.
41:27They're like, well, you know, we believe in the message,
41:30and here's a little story for you.
41:33My dad went to Amish country.
41:35Him and his preacher buddy has been going to Amish country to preach in an Amish church.
41:40They're converting to Amish now.
41:42I don't know.
41:43Maybe you'll run into them on your next trip.
41:45I don't know.
41:46So my sister, she writes, texts me, and she says, hey, Amy, dad's preaching,
41:52and it's live.
41:53I'm like, we're at an Amish church, and it's live?
41:55Okay, whatever.
41:57And I'm like, I was out mowing grass on a Sunday.
42:00God forgive me.
42:01The ox was in the ditch.
42:02It had to be mowed.
42:03So I took a break, and I thought, I'll click on here just to see what dad's saying,
42:07because my dad's a pretty good preacher.
42:10I click on there.
42:12He was talking about me.
42:15So I listened, and he was saying, in the morning service, he got filled with the Lord,
42:24and he was dancing around something he had never done before.
42:27And he said, it's because of my oldest daughter, Amy.
42:30She says she's a Christian, and she goes to church, but she just doesn't believe this message.
42:37And I don't know what to do other than to give it to the Lord to show her the way.
42:41And I thought, he showed me the way.
42:44Pray for the right thing, dad.
42:47Don't pray for me to believe this or that or another.
42:51Pray for me to know the Lord.
42:53I want my dad's prayers.
42:55I want my family to accept me.
43:00And I know so many others out there feel the same way.
43:03Once they leave this message, they're cut off, or they feel like a second citizen or a black sheep of the family.
43:10It shouldn't be like that.
43:12It shouldn't be like that.
43:13I just want these pastors, and if anyone wants to ever see this, know that we love you.
43:21And we just want you to know the Lord we know.
43:24That he's not full of, you know, you do this, this, and this.
43:27I'm going to strike you dead.
43:30I remember when I left my husband, and our pastor told me, you know, I know your husband's bad to you.
43:36Divorce isn't the only thing.
43:38We can turn him over to Satan, and I don't even know the theory now.
43:43Satan kills them, or they could die or whatever.
43:47And I just looked at him like, I don't want my ex-husband to die.
43:50I just want to be away from him.
43:52Just, you know, I don't.
43:54So then that fear grabs your heart, you know.
43:56Are they going to pray for me to die?
43:58Are they going to pray for, you know, because I don't believe in William Branham.
44:01Are they going to pray for God to strike me dead?
44:04And it just doesn't.
44:06It's not right.
44:07It's just not right.
44:09Darrell Bock No.
44:10Placing a hex on somebody whenever they disagree is not a Christian thing to do, you know.
44:15And that's the point I was trying to make earlier.
44:19If you have an analytical mind and you follow logic, well, to be a Christian means you follow Christ, which you do.
44:26And then whenever the people in the message see that you leave William Branham, they consider you not a Christian.
44:35And so the difference is, to them, Christian means following William Branham.
44:40So in other words, it's Branhamite.
44:42It's not Christian.
44:43It's following Branham.
44:45And if you follow all of this path out to its logical conclusion, it's a different religion than Christianity.
44:50It's not even Christianity.
44:52Otherwise, if you were to leave and follow Christ, they would celebrate your following of Christ, right?
44:58She left, but she's following Christ.
45:00And that's the real problem.
45:03They're manipulated to think it's Christianity, but they're in something entirely different.
45:08Right.
45:09Right.
45:10Right.
45:11Absolutely.
45:12And last year when his son Billy Paul died, chirping crickets.
45:18No one's ever mentioned it.
45:20No one's ever mentioned it.
45:21When I found out he had passed away, I thought, I'm going to test the waters.
45:25I'm going to text my sister and see what she says.
45:27And I said, do you know that Billy Paul passed away?
45:31She goes, oh, yeah.
45:32Oh, yeah.
45:33And I'm like, does this change your mode of thinking?
45:36Because, you know, God was supposed to come back before Billy Paul was an old man.
45:40And California is going to fall off of the ocean.
45:42And she says, oh, no.
45:44Oh, no.
45:45And I'm like, has something changed that I wasn't taught?
45:49Were you taught something different?
45:51Did we not sit in the same field?
45:53And she goes, no.
45:55She goes, that prophecy was about sharks swimming in the building.
45:59And that happened back in the 70s.
46:01And everybody knows that.
46:02And I'm like, no, I'm pretty sure.
46:07So, you know, I get on the Internet and I'm looking and I'm looking.
46:10I'm like, I don't see any proof this happened.
46:13Well, so-and-so said so-and-so's wife's cousin's brother's best friend worked there back then whenever it happened.
46:21And I'm like, if that happened, there would be in the 70s, there would be pictures of it.
46:26Come on.
46:28It's like their whole, I don't know about your sect of the message, but ours was primarily based on the Lord was coming back before Billy Paul was an old man.
46:40Now, that'll strike fear in you when you lay in bed at night and you're trying to figure out what's old.
46:44Well, it's not 60.
46:45Okay, 65.
46:4670 is not old yet.
46:48You know, what's old to the Lord?
46:50Because this man's getting up here in years.
46:52Then he dies.
46:53And it's like nothing.
46:55And I'm like, no, it's not me.
46:58It is.
46:59It is your beliefs.
47:00It's not mine.
47:01So then I knew that was an ill in the coffin.
47:04I knew that this is not.
47:06Not only is this not right, this is bad.
47:09This is a bad cult.
47:11I grew up in the main sect.
47:13And then there were they would hold these revival tours where Billy Paul would be the speaker.
47:18And every minister who left those revivals, they came back and they preached for weeks on end about how he's our time marker.
47:26We know that the rapture is about to come because he is our time marker.
47:31And, you know, for those who aren't familiar with this, the prophecy was that Los Angeles would sink before Billy Paul, William Branham's son, became an old man.
47:42And, you know, whenever I heard this, I'm looking at a man who had gray hair, who was in his – what was he, 60s, 70s?
47:51I don't know.
47:52He was already – yeah, he was already – he was past the age that most people lived whenever the alleged prophecy happened.
47:59So he was already, you know, already well beyond an old man.
48:03And when we went out to Los Angeles, I paid to go see that building.
48:08It's kind of funny because the tickets for us to fly from Indiana to L.A. were cheaper than the cost from the L.A. airport to Uber to that building, which – this is a crazy world we live in, right?
48:23So – but anyway, I went.
48:25I went to the building.
48:27And it's really interesting if you study the history of that because you never really think about this.
48:34But he's there at May's department store.
48:37He's standing in the elite shopping district of L.A.
48:41This is where the rich people go to shop.
48:43And he's claiming that he's so poor he doesn't have two pennies to scrape together.
48:47We didn't know at that time that he had millions of dollars, right?
48:51Back then in the message, I thought this was just a poor man.
48:54But what's he doing there?
48:56Why is he in the elite district shopping there?
49:01And the fact that he had the prophecy and, you know, I've got details of research on that.
49:05It's not the only problem with it.
49:07But when we left the message and I realized that all of it was false, all of this was fake, the thought hit me, you know, whenever he dies, it's not going to impact him because there are so many other problems with that story that they've shut off in their minds.
49:25They're going to shut him off, too, and that's exactly what happened.
49:28I couldn't believe it because our beliefs were so based around that, that it would happen in the spring and God would come back in the spring.
49:37And Billy Paul, it would happen before he was an old man.
49:42And I just don't know how they excuse that away.
49:45I can't get over that one.
49:47I just can't get over it.
49:49Well, I'm glad that you were able to escape.
49:52I'm glad that you were able to find something, a healthy church to go to.
49:56And I'm sorry that you had to go through all of this.
49:59You know, I went through it, too.
50:01But I'm sorry for everybody who goes through it because I feel somewhat responsible.
50:05My family helped create this mess.
50:07But thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your story.
50:11If there's some advice that you could give to somebody who's still in it and questioning, you know, like you and I have the critical mind.
50:21What would you say to a person who has a critical mind in this cult and is wrestling with the problems that are in it?
50:28I would say to pray and ask Jesus to show you the way.
50:33He will.
50:35He'll lead you in the right path.
50:37And that path might not be the same.
50:39It's different for every one of us.
50:42But when you, I want people to know if something looks off, if you go into someone's house who they say they love Jesus and they're a Christian, you don't see a picture of Jesus.
50:52But Brother Branham's on every table and on every wall in their house.
50:55Something's not right.
50:57I have family.
50:59My boys are not Christians.
51:00They're not saved.
51:01They don't follow the word.
51:02I have, you know, nieces and nephews who have married who have never heard the message.
51:07So the only thing they know about Jesus is what's preached about William Branham, which makes them even more standoffish.
51:15So you need to, it's hard when it comes to family.
51:21It's hard when it comes to friends.
51:23You just need to pray and ask God to allow you to get your foot in the door and, you know, at family picnics and gatherings and birthdays where you can be a witness.
51:35Because you might be the only way they see Jesus is through your life.
51:40And they'll question, well, why does she or he look like this?
51:45And these people are all wrapped up in William Branham.
51:47You know, if your first church experience is William Branham, you're not going back.
51:52I mean, I have a niece who's married to an Air Force guy, and he's been going to their church here and there.
51:58And I'm thinking, how can I tell him this is bad news, but you need the Lord.
52:05That's what we have to focus on.
52:09We need to pray.
52:11We need to pray for the children because no child should be raised like this.
52:15None should grow up in fear with legalistic rules.
52:19I agree.
52:21It's kind of ironic because whenever I was growing up, I looked at the Amish religion and Amish people, and I thought, well, they're not a cult because they don't have a central figure.
52:34And in my head, I was smart enough to recognize that.
52:38I was smart enough to recognize that if you're following a central figure, that is a human, you're in a cult.
52:44And back then, I didn't realize the attributes of a destructive cult.
52:50The Amish is in a much different category in my mind than it was back then.
52:54But even back when I was in The Message, I realized that people who surrounded a human being and put him up on a pedestal and said, this is our leader, our precious brother.
53:05They all use precious brother.
53:08It's weird.
53:09I knew that, but yet I did it with William Branham, and I had disconnected it in my head.
53:15I look back and I think, how did I not recognize that I was doing the same exact thing that I knew was a cult?
53:22And I had separated the two in my head.
53:25Right.
53:26Right.
53:27Exactly.
53:28That's exactly right.
53:29Well, this has been fun.
53:30Thank you so much for doing this.
53:32I'm glad that we connected.
53:34I'm glad we finally made it work.
53:36It's good to hear from you.
53:37I will say this.
53:38Growing up, I almost wish my parents turned Amish, because they have such a big community.
53:43I thought I'd have people to play with.
53:46I'd have a nice big circle, because their families are so big.
53:51Yeah.
53:52No such luck there.
53:55Yeah, and I can tell you from experience, they have really, really good food.
54:00Yes, they do.
54:03Well, thank you so much for doing this.
54:05If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
54:09You can find us at william-branham.org.
54:12For more information about William Branham and the healing revivals, you can read Preacher Behind the White Hoods,
54:18A Critical Examination of William Branham and His Message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.