Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
John invites Kathleen to share her story about her years in the Church of God of Prophecy and her eventual exit from Pentecostalism. Kathleen recalls the subtle ways the movement drew her in, starting with emotionally resonant worship and a welcoming environment, only to slowly introduce exclusivist doctrines, fear-based teachings, and legalism. She recounts how her desire for spiritual growth led her into accepting teachings that, in hindsight, were harmful and spiritually manipulative. The conversation explores themes of religious identity, deception, spiritual elitism, and the burdens of legalistic performance within certain faith traditions.
As the conversation deepens, Kathleen reflects on her experiences living abroad in Greece and how vulnerability as a foreigner contributed to her prolonged involvement in a group that she now views as spiritually damaging. She also explains how she came to recognize the problematic theology behind teachings such as “baptism of the Holy Spirit” and the pursuit of perfection. Ultimately, her journey out of Pentecostalism was catalyzed by researching online ministries, listening to critical perspectives, and realizing that the grace of Christ was being replaced with performance-based religion. The discussion closes with advice to others in similar situations, emphasizing discernment, intuition, and the joy of spiritual freedom.
00:00 Introduction
03:02 Discovering Pentecostalism and Life in Greece
11:07 First Red Flags: Worship, Tongues, and Emotional Control
17:06 Legalism, Superiority, and Social Pressure
24:54 The Burden of Perfection and Performance
33:24 Leaving the Movement and Learning Grace
41:04 Questioning the Roots of Pentecostal Belief
48:59 Leadership Hypocrisy and Emotional Aftermath
52:08 Advice, Regret, and Finding Freedom
55:05 Closing Reflections and Encouragement
______________________
– 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
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
John invites Kathleen to share her story about her years in the Church of God of Prophecy and her eventual exit from Pentecostalism. Kathleen recalls the subtle ways the movement drew her in, starting with emotionally resonant worship and a welcoming environment, only to slowly introduce exclusivist doctrines, fear-based teachings, and legalism. She recounts how her desire for spiritual growth led her into accepting teachings that, in hindsight, were harmful and spiritually manipulative. The conversation explores themes of religious identity, deception, spiritual elitism, and the burdens of legalistic performance within certain faith traditions.
As the conversation deepens, Kathleen reflects on her experiences living abroad in Greece and how vulnerability as a foreigner contributed to her prolonged involvement in a group that she now views as spiritually damaging. She also explains how she came to recognize the problematic theology behind teachings such as “baptism of the Holy Spirit” and the pursuit of perfection. Ultimately, her journey out of Pentecostalism was catalyzed by researching online ministries, listening to critical perspectives, and realizing that the grace of Christ was being replaced with performance-based religion. The discussion closes with advice to others in similar situations, emphasizing discernment, intuition, and the joy of spiritual freedom.
00:00 Introduction
03:02 Discovering Pentecostalism and Life in Greece
11:07 First Red Flags: Worship, Tongues, and Emotional Control
17:06 Legalism, Superiority, and Social Pressure
24:54 The Burden of Perfection and Performance
33:24 Leaving the Movement and Learning Grace
41:04 Questioning the Roots of Pentecostal Belief
48:59 Leadership Hypocrisy and Emotional Aftermath
52:08 Advice, Regret, and Finding Freedom
55:05 Closing Reflections and Encouragement
______________________
– 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
00:30Hello, 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
00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Kathleen Chalopoulos,
00:47former member of the Church of God of Prophecy.
00:51Kathleen, it's very good to have you on and to tell your story about the Church of God
00:55and prophecy.
00:56I am just vaguely familiar with this from a distance.
01:02I've been studying how things evolved into what they have become today, and there's this
01:09weird intersection with the Branham cult religion and the Church of God and apparently the spinning
01:15off of the Church of God and prophecy.
01:17I think that's actually how we connected through the internet, but you had more to tell, and
01:23I'm very excited to hear your story.
01:25So maybe if you could just tell everybody a little bit about yourself.
01:28Well, I live in Florida, and I'm a retired nurse, and I, maybe four months ago, I recently
01:41came out of the Pentecostal movement, but I was not a slash charismatic.
01:46I was not attending the Church of God of Prophecy for that entire time, because after eight years
01:56in the Church of God of Prophecy, I decided I didn't want to go back to that, but I did
02:04not understand that maybe there were further issues with the Pentecostal slash charismatic
02:10movement.
02:10So I recently have come out of that, and I'm in a, I call it a period of detox.
02:17I can imagine that that's quite an adventure coming out of it and experiencing something
02:22else.
02:23I'll never forget whenever we left the Branham movement, which was very similar to the Pentecostal
02:29movement.
02:30I know it is different in some ways, but it was, for us, it felt like shell shock going
02:35into a new church and meeting new people and finding the way that they behaved and act
02:40in church was, for me, it took a lot of work to get used to it.
02:45I would say my first obstacle was how quiet it was, and not the charismatic rock band music
02:57or very lively music, and just very quiet.
03:02It was very hard to get used to.
03:04Yeah, for me, it was the opposite experience, because in my grandfather's church, my grandfather
03:09apparently had this distaste for music, and he, even clapping, if you started clapping,
03:16it was like you had committed the great offense, and he would get up and tell the song leader
03:20that person claps, so let's slow this song way down where they don't clap.
03:25And then I went to a new church, and they had the whole band in the back.
03:30And for me, it was shell shock in a different way, but I have seen the Pentecostal services
03:35and watched the bands and the runners.
03:39Did you have any runners in your church?
03:41Yes, and I will have to sadly admit I may have participated in that.
03:47That was probably one of the first things that attracted me to the Pentecostal movement,
03:56which I knew nothing about when I became part of it, was the worship.
04:03In my naive mind at that time, it was, wow, these people love God like I do
04:10and have a relationship with Christ like I do, and they're showing it externally,
04:18the happiness and the joy they have now that they've found Christ.
04:22So, but as I said, I had no knowledge of the Pentecostal movement at the time,
04:31and probably not, I fully really didn't understand it up until maybe 10, 15 years ago,
04:39and I still did not think it was, in my personal opinion, wrong teaching in a lot of areas.
04:48I'm interested to get into that a little bit and talk through some of the wrong teachings,
04:52but the running just fascinates me.
04:54We did not have that either, and I have good friends who have escaped other similar movements,
05:00and one of my friends was also a runner.
05:03See, I was not, and towards the end of my time in the Branham cult,
05:07I was a little bit larger than I am now.
05:09But had I been a runner like you, I would be just as skinny.
05:13Okay.
05:15I'm a cyclist.
05:16I'm no longer a runner.
05:18Now I'm a cyclist.
05:19Oh, okay.
05:19Not as in motorcycle, but as in bicycle.
05:22And to anybody who's listening who is not familiar with what this is,
05:25in some Pentecostal groups, whenever the Spirit hits your feet,
05:30you get up and you run circles around the congregation,
05:32and you can find videos of this.
05:35And it's, you know, I understand if you're in it,
05:38it's probably offensive for me to be laughing like this,
05:40because you associate that with the Holy Spirit.
05:42But to somebody who wasn't in it, you have to understand that this is just a little bit odd.
05:47So, I became a follower of Christ or born again,
05:55whatever term one feels comfortable using,
05:59when I was in my early 30s.
06:02And my husband and my two children were living in the United States.
06:06He's of Greek descent, and we felt it would be better quality of living for our children
06:12and us to move to the country of Greece.
06:17So, we did move there a little bit outside of Athens.
06:22Initially, the American bases were there.
06:24So, there was a variety of English-speaking churches, main line.
06:29I had been going to a Baptist church when I lived in the United States.
06:35And so, I did go to a mainline Baptist church in Greece.
06:40It was English-speaking.
06:42And it was basically all Americans, mainly 99% from the bases.
06:50For exact reasons I do not know,
06:53the Greeks asked the American bases to pull out, mainly.
07:01And so, all those churches left in the American community.
07:06And the church that I was attending at the time
07:09was then taken over by a Greek-American missionary
07:15and his American wife.
07:19And being a, I think they call them empaths,
07:27empathetic people,
07:28who are very vulnerable to narcissistic behavior.
07:33I was taken aback by the over-friendliness,
07:38especially of the pastor's wife,
07:42and felt like I was her best friend immediately.
07:46So, I felt very comfortable that they had taken over.
07:49And I knew they did not say they were a Pentecostal movement.
07:55I believe they, well, I would say they say the Church of God,
08:00which I was familiar with,
08:02because my mother came from the Church of God,
08:05but not out of Tennessee, Cleveland,
08:07but out of Anderson, Indiana,
08:09which I think there's some differences there.
08:12So, the Church was probably 95% women
08:21who were in a similar situation.
08:25They were foreign women,
08:26foreign to not Greek,
08:29and married to Greek gentlemen.
08:31We were all raising children,
08:32so we had a lot of similarities,
08:35and so there was a lot of commonalities and friendship,
08:39and we felt like family,
08:42because most of us didn't have family,
08:45except maybe our Greek in-laws.
08:48So, at the beginning of the Church,
08:52it was not anything hyper-Pentecostal or charismatic,
08:57although the worship was,
09:02but everybody seemed to really enjoy that.
09:05You mentioned that you weren't aware that it was Church of God,
09:08and that's one of the things that,
09:09I don't know if it's purposefully this way,
09:11but it's somewhat insidious.
09:13Whenever some of these groups move into an area,
09:16they really don't advertise what they are.
09:18You have to get in,
09:19and they want to get their hook into you
09:21before you really see what's going on.
09:24Again, it's probably not on purpose,
09:29but the design of it seems a little bit,
09:31for me, it's just a little bit scary.
09:33Well, this was before access to the Internet,
09:40and there were not, that I'm aware of,
09:45books that would have any information on that
09:49in the city of Athens as well.
09:51So there was no way to check also.
09:55And I would say most of the,
09:59probably most of the women who were there
10:01were relatively new Christians,
10:05and none of us probably had an awareness
10:09of cult-type behavior.
10:13Most of us thought, and speaking for myself,
10:17a cult would be defined as Jehovah Witness or Mormons,
10:21or Hare Krishna, that sort of thing.
10:25So there was a lot of ignorance on all of our parts.
10:33And also, I think being in a foreign country
10:37makes you a bit more vulnerable in a lot of ways
10:42if you don't have support as well as,
10:46so you tend to find people who have commonalities with you,
10:51and you kind of stick with that group,
10:52as most humans do.
10:53You stick with where we feel comfortable.
10:56Yeah, I can imagine that would be the case,
10:57because you're in another country,
10:59and here's a church that is,
11:01somehow you've got a tie to from back in the States,
11:04and you're not expecting it to be what you found out that it was.
11:09So let's talk about that a little bit deeper.
11:11What was it like whenever you first discovered
11:14that this isn't what I really thought it was?
11:18Because I was so naive and such a brand-new Christian,
11:22the only thing that was a bit peculiar to me
11:25was such a lively worship.
11:28And then slowly I heard the wife,
11:35who was the worship leader,
11:38throwing out sentences of tongues,
11:42but not in an intelligible language.
11:45So I don't know if you want to call it static speech
11:49or gibberish, whatever one feels comfortable,
11:53where they're at.
11:56And that was very curious.
11:58I'd never heard that before.
12:00But the sermons themselves,
12:04in the beginning,
12:05although they were pretty loud, I would say,
12:13I did not find anything
12:15that put a check in my spirit.
12:19But as a young Christian myself,
12:21I don't think I could have identified it,
12:25not unless it was a complete heresy
12:28that any young Christian could identify.
12:32But I would say basically,
12:34probably most would be the worship
12:38made me wonder what's going on
12:41when I started hearing the speaking in tongues.
12:44And that subject had not been broached
12:49in any of the sermons yet.
12:51So she did have women's Bible studies.
13:00And also she did have a lot of socialization
13:04with individuals,
13:06I guess, trying to make us feel
13:09like she's our friend
13:11and be part of the church, etc.
13:13And so I did ask about that with her.
13:17And then she started telling me
13:18about the second occurrence,
13:24which is called what they call
13:27the baptism of the Holy Spirit,
13:29which the Pentecost,
13:31most Pentecostal readers
13:32are a second experience
13:34after one is born again
13:38and baptized.
13:39And that it entails,
13:42the Church of God of Prophecy
13:43believes that the evidence
13:45of baptism of the Holy Spirit
13:47is speaking in tongues.
13:49And then subsequent gifts
13:51can be given
13:52as God feels that that's appropriate.
13:57And those are used in the church
13:59or outside to as God wills
14:04or gifts us with.
14:06But so I wanted,
14:11as I hear a lot of Pentecostal people
14:14say when they,
14:17after they receive tongues
14:19or not, that's a,
14:21I don't want to say that word receive,
14:23after they start speaking in tongues.
14:26that I wanted these gifts.
14:30I wanted everything
14:33that God had to offer me.
14:35And if this was going to bring me
14:36into a stronger relationship
14:39with the Lord,
14:41and that's what I wanted.
14:42And I heard this said
14:48from other Pentecosts
14:51who are willing to say it,
14:53it kind of made me feel
14:55like I had an edge.
14:56I always looked at superior.
14:58Shamefully to say that.
15:00But it's the truth.
15:02And I know that the,
15:06that I can only speak
15:08for this church in Athens.
15:11I'm sure there's other churches
15:13in America
15:13who are in Church of God of Prophecy
15:16that will be completely different.
15:21But she would say that we,
15:27she would,
15:28she verbally did say,
15:30but it was mainly insinuated
15:31that this Church of God of Prophecy
15:34is the only true church.
15:35And so that,
15:40if you're immature,
15:41like I was,
15:42that gives you maybe a feeling
15:44of looking at others
15:46as less than,
15:48which I did.
15:49Of course,
15:50I would never admit it then,
15:52but I did.
15:54And that's one of the top 10 signs
15:57of a Christian religious cult.
15:59Whenever you have a group
16:01that sees themselves as the elite
16:03and they're the only ones
16:04and what they essentially,
16:06they're doing,
16:06they're severing the body of Christ.
16:08They're saying that we're,
16:09we're the special Christians,
16:10you are not.
16:12And I,
16:13I'll never forget that feeling
16:14whenever I first had to apologize
16:16myself for being such an elitist.
16:19Because we really,
16:21it's so deep,
16:22people who have never experienced this
16:24can't understand,
16:25but it's so deeply embedded
16:26into your personality
16:27that you start to feel yourself
16:30superior in all situations.
16:32You can be at the grocery store,
16:33you can be in a restaurant,
16:35and the people who are serving you
16:37at the restaurant,
16:38they're lower than you
16:39because you're this elite Christian.
16:42I would,
16:43I would probably have to confess
16:45to that at some level.
16:46I probably would,
16:47yes.
16:48Yeah.
16:49I know it was definitely
16:50that way towards
16:51anyone in another religion.
16:54That's for sure.
16:56Um,
16:57another thing is that
16:58during that period of time
16:59in the country of Greece,
17:02um,
17:03any outside church
17:04from Orthodoxy
17:05was considered heretical
17:07except the Catholic Church,
17:09um,
17:09but all other churches
17:11were considered heretical.
17:12And there were
17:14one or two occasions
17:16that I'm aware of
17:17where the Orthodox priest
17:19came into the,
17:22um,
17:22the building
17:23that we were meeting in.
17:25It wasn't an official church.
17:26It was a,
17:27like a storefront type of thing.
17:29And they did threaten them.
17:32Um,
17:33I don't think,
17:34I think it was more
17:35a scare tactic.
17:36I don't think anything
17:36came out of it.
17:38But,
17:39um,
17:39that was greatly
17:40publicized within the church
17:43and it all gave us
17:44a feeling of
17:45martyrdom.
17:47And,
17:47um,
17:48again,
17:49that expanded
17:50the feeling
17:51of superiority.
17:53Um,
17:53also,
17:54at that period of time,
17:55the,
17:55um,
17:57Orthodox Church
17:58was very involved,
18:00uh,
18:01part of the government
18:01politically.
18:02Um,
18:03in order for your children
18:05to go to
18:05a Greek school,
18:07you had to show
18:08proof of,
18:08uh,
18:09baptism
18:10in,
18:10excuse me,
18:11in the Orthodox Church.
18:14And,
18:15um,
18:15this is a side note.
18:17But,
18:18um,
18:20if,
18:21uh,
18:22being a foreigner
18:23and not having
18:24a citizenship,
18:26if you
18:26wanted to,
18:28let's say,
18:29leave your husband
18:30and take your children,
18:31um,
18:32he could avoid,
18:33he could prevent
18:34that from happening.
18:35Um,
18:36if he was angry
18:37at you
18:38and,
18:38um,
18:40uh,
18:41wanted to make you
18:42have a difficult life,
18:44he could report you
18:45as being a heretic
18:47and bringing,
18:49proselytizing
18:50your children.
18:51So,
18:52all those things
18:53were made known
18:53to us,
18:54which,
18:55um,
18:55I personally
18:56had no idea,
18:57but it didn't affect me.
18:59Um,
19:00that wasn't the case.
19:01with myself
19:02and my husband.
19:03But,
19:03um,
19:04those were
19:05definitely fear tactics
19:06that also fed into
19:08the,
19:09uh,
19:10being maybe
19:12martyred a bit
19:13and
19:14a bigger head.
19:17Look what I'm...