I would like to start
with saying that I did not leave the message so that I could experience “the
things of the world”. It is my hope that by the end of this that even if you do
not agree with me will at least understand that it was not a decision based off
of emotion, want for pleasure, or because I thought it would make life easier.
I left the message because I could no longer stay knowing that I did not
believe it. The purpose of this blog entry is to explain the thought process
that has led me to where I am today. I will try to write everything in this
entry as I thought about it at the time I thought of it. I will start at my
earliest concerns which are more foundational to what I believed than even the
message, expand to include the message itself, describe as briefly as is
reasonable what I believe today, and then end in conclusion.
I will not lie, my
doubt had been going on for years. I found myself doubting everything that did
not seem reasonably possible. Anything that seemed like that it could not have
a more likely explanation that could actually be confirmed possible by facts.
However, I would generally tell myself that I have to just believe by faith.
After all, if I did not do this than God would judge me for doubting his word. There
were however several things that bothered me. One of my biggest points of
confusion was why does the bible seem to be so sexist? To me it was obvious
that both men and women were equally intelligent. Was God really so petty that
he would make all females subject to the man for something that happened 8
thousand years ago? To prevent them from having equal rights to even speak in
the church? That did not add up for me, but I continued on. Maybe if I spent
enough time praying in my closet where not even my parents knew where I was
praying that God would take away all my doubts and help me to believe it would
all make sense?
I’ve always in my own
opinion been a very empathetic person. I go out of my way when I’m checking out
to make sure I try to positively influence the day of the cashier, the waiter,
or whoever else I interact with. When I was a young kid I had borrowed my
uncles SNES game Zelda: Link to the Past. He gave only one instruction “Don’t
erase my saved game”. This wasn’t a problem. I had my own save game on his
cartridge. However, I took the game over to my friend’s house and they asked if
they could play. I said sure. When I wasn’t in the room they erased my uncles
saved game which was almost to the end. I was devastated. Not because I thought
my uncle would be mad at me, but because I knew the disappointment my uncle
would have when he found out. This may seem meaningless to most people in the
context of this post, but it’s not to me. The point of all this is, I care a
lot about the wellbeing of others. Their feelings matter to me. I would never
intentionally inflict any kind of emotional or physical pain on anyone. This
presented a major problem for me as someone who believed in both the bible and
the message. The God of the old testament clearly demonstrates no value of life
for any that do not follow him to the letter of the law, or of those not of the
people of Israel. “Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and
utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling,
ox and sheep, camel and ass. 1 Samuel 15:2-3”. That is not an isolated verse.
There are multiple accounts of genocide condoned by the God of the bible. But
there must have been a reason for it right? There had to be some way to
rationalize it, I just hadn’t found it yet. So for now, I will pray in my
closet and try harder to make myself believe.
Every Christian
believer whether message or otherwise knows about hell. It’s where God sends
all the unbelievers when they die. The message expands on this a little bit.
Only those who are elected get to be raptured. The rest must go through the
tribulation period because they neglected to get the oil (the Holy Ghost) and
cannot be part of the wedding supper. Most message churches believe that you
cannot even be part of that group, the foolish virgins, unless they were part
of the message. There is another way to get in, but only if you did something
good for the bride while they are on earth. The rest according to at least most
message churches go to hell. This bothered me quite a bit, and I actually spoke
somewhat against this idea even while apart of the message. Just because people
aren’t selected to have a “revelation” they are condemned to hell fire? I
didn’t want to see any of my friends go to hell. It would seem unthinkable to
even think about it. I don’t have any friends that aren’t good natured people
that would do anything for you. And they are going to be sent to hell because
they don’t believe what I do? It’s just the devil Bryant, I need to go to the
alter to have this demon prayed out. My prayers are not enough by themselves, I
need the joint praying power of the saints.
Why are these thoughts
still plaguing me? It’s just the devil. Don’t question it, you may blaspheme without
even knowing it and condemn yourself to hell. Ok. Well, maybe I can at least
evaluate what I believe through the parameters that William Branham himself
gave right? That’s what I’ll do. He said to judge him by the Word, so I’ll just
take it to the bible and everything will all make sense. But he also says, that
I have to have a revelation to see it his way so how am I supposed to know if
I’m reading it right? I guess all I can do is pray that I do. Surely God will
not judge someone who is honestly searching for truth right? So I search. I
start with Genesis and serpent seed, the belief that the serpent was actually
an upright walking animal almost like man that impregnated Eve with Cain. Now
if you ask most message people if Genesis is an allegory they will say no.
However I realize Genesis Chapter 3 is clearly talking about a literal garden,
with multiple literal trees. The idea behind serpent seed however is that the
fruit is the fruit of the womb. Now I’ve read this scripture multiple times
growing up under the context of serpent seed being true, but now this was
falling apart to me. The bible says that the fruit was good for food, pleasant
to the eyes, and she decided to eat it. She also gave the same fruit to Adam to
eat. This is obviously literal. Ok, I’m prayfully checking this with what
William Branham taught. He said to check what he taught by the Word, not the
Word by the revelation. But he also says to believe what he said until you get
the revelation of what he said. But then what if I was supposed to be doing
what the bible said and judge what he teaches by the bible? So many voices. Do
I choose to do what the bible says and judge what he says by the bible itself,
or do I do what he say and also to wait for the revelation that it’s right? What if revelation is just a belief you
brainwash yourself to believe? Well, I thought about it and realized that
telling you to both judge what he preached by the word, and to also believe
what he said until you got the revelation is a major contradiction. It also
occurred to me at this time that it would be an excellent way to deceive
someone. Tell them that what they taught was true despite the evidence that
seems to contradict it. But wait, what about the discernments and the healings.
I just don’t understand it all yet. God will reveal it to me and then all will
be clear. I’ll continue to pray, it doesn’t make sense to me now, but he said
the angel spoke to him and that he was vindicated. He gave prophesies that came
to pass right?
The thoughts of friends
going to hell is returning. How does a benevolent God send people to hell for
eternity? Apparently this thought bothered William Branham too, because he
found a roundabout way to make forever mean a space of time. What he believed
would actually only be thousands of years. I was certainly ok with the time
being reduced, but 5 seconds in a fiery pit is too long for my empathy. I think
of Hitler who sends the Jews to concentration camps and others to be killed in
gas chambers because they were not in his idea of an Arian race. We consider
Hitler to be a terrible person for sending innocent people to the gas chambers
where they would die over a short period of time. What if Hitler actually could
have prevented people from dying in a way that they could still feel pain and
thirst and throw them into a fiery pit to be burned alive for thousands of
years? That would be unthinkable. There would be no crime on earth including
murder that would justify that harsh of a punishment. Do people even have free
will anyways strictly speaking? God places the person on the earth exactly
where he wants them, knowing because he’s the one who created the soul and body
both which decisions they will make. I realize he places some people in a
burning building knowing they will never find a way out and be condemned to
burn in the fire. I don’t know, but none of this seems right to me now. Lord
please reveal to me why this is okay for me to do, or blind me to the fact that
this goes against everything my conscience stands for.
It was around this time
Believethesign.com came into the picture with their humble pie apology. I knew
Seekyethetruth.com had been around for a while, but I never looked into it
because it had to be just some disgruntled message believer hurt by his specific
minister. Or someone deceived by Satan himself. I realized however after the
humble pie apology, that the only person I was basing the validation of any of
William Branham’s prophesies was William Branham himself. However, I knew that
those in charge of Believethesign.com were former members of a church whose
pastor had been caught in a big lie, and thought they were likely just hurt and
thereby could not form an objective opinion about the message. All of these
prophesies had to have been right, otherwise why would so many believe it? I
did my best to counter BTS. You cannot prove that this prophesy didn’t happen I
said. After all, that prophesy in question he told about after the fact
anyways. There are no records of him giving it until after it would have
happened so how could he have given it wrong after the fact? Well, I began to
realize the first part by itself should have always been a problem to me. There
were no prophesies that he gave specifics on that I knew of on tape that he
gave until after the fact. I then began to realize the second part was problem
too. I was supposed to judge prophesy by whether it came to pass, not on
whether I could prove that it didn’t come to pass or not. That could be an
argument with almost any prophesy. Not only that, but according to the bible if
even one of these prophesies are wrong I’m supposed to never listen to that
prophet again. This cannot be happening. My entire world is the message. All of
my friends are in the message. If I have to swallow my pride and admit I’ve
always been wrong I will lose all of my friends, and I definitely don’t know
how my family will react. I still felt I could not just take the articles written
by STT and BTS at face value. I searched as best as I could for myself, and to
my disappointment I could not find anything to prove Believethesign.com wrong.
That did not stop me from debating them though. I would find a weakness if I
tried hard enough. The more I tried though, the more I realized that every
argument I gave had holes all through it. There was no way to defend this. I
had been deceived into believing in a false prophet, and I had no idea what to
do about it. I had to be wrong. I just needed to pray. God would show me how he
didn’t actually miss these prophesies, he just didn’t understand them
correctly.
It was sometime in the
fall of 2012 that a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while sent me text. She
asked me “What do you think about all the BTS and STT stuff?” I was at my
grandma’s house at the time, with the message collection Hebrews with me to
read. Maybe if I keep reading the message I will start to see it. God will give
me a revelation on why all of the contradictions, and failed prophesies don’t
matter. I mean, some people do really claim to have been healed right? But as I
read her text and thought about it I began to be honest with myself, there was
no justification. I had judged him by the conditions he set. I had judged him
by the conditions the bible set. And I had judged him according to my own
conscience. In all three accounts he had failed. Most message believers will
not believe me when I say this because while in the message it is preached that
people who leave know that they are wrong, and they are doing it so that they
can experience the world. But I say honestly that leaving the message was the
hardest thing I have ever done. I didn’t want to leave, but my conscience
wouldn’t allow me to stay. The correspondence went on with my friend, but it
eventually came to me saying “I think that the message is wrong, and I’ll
probably be resigning from my positions at the church as soon as I can think of
a way to do it.”
This was easier said
than done. I did go to my pastor however and tell him that I had doubts that I
had to sort out, and that while I try to work things out I had to resign from
my position on the missionary board. He agreed that it was the right thing for
me to do if I had doubts, and offered to talk to me if I ever had any
questions. One thing I will say is the pastor I had at this time was a good
man. He did not try to make me feel bad for questioning or for any of my
decisions. I did continue to search, but by that point I had seen more than
enough to prevent me from believing the message for another day. My questions
now went deeper. I had learned how manipulation worked, and I wanted to find
out how deep it went. To quote Brian Tracy “Your
beliefs act as a set of filters that screen out information that is
inconsistent with them. You do not necessarily believe what you see, but rather
you see what you already believe. You reject information that contradicts what
you have already decided to believe, whether or not your beliefs, your
prejudices, are based on fact or fantasy.” I knew I had to evaluate
everything that I had believed from a new viewpoint. If I was wrong in one
area, I was almost definitely wrong in others too. I had to be sure. I have
already made it clear that some of my earliest doubts were not actually of the
message itself, but of Christianity as a whole so it will come as no surprise
that it was my next step of validation.
Now, regardless of how
pious you are questioning what you believe at this deep a level is
intimidating. It is one thing to find out you have been wrong according to the
context of the bible, it’s another thing entirely to question the bible itself.
In the United States it’s almost unheard of, especially in the bible belt of
the south. I had to be careful, what if questioning at this deep a level was
wrong and was blasphemy? Well, in the interest of objectivity the logical place
to start was to look at other religions which I did. I started thinking about
why does Christianity have more credibility than the other religions, or did
it? After reading up on them I decided at face value at least Judaism, Buddhism
(which is more of a philosophy in my opinion), and Hinduism were no less
credible. Well, I will put this in the back pocket for now and move forward. A
lot of religious people will start disregarding everything I say at this point,
and that’s okay I guess. Why? Because the next step of my journey of science.
Well, I will admit that
even as a message believer and Christian I would try to work in science to the
belief. I would try to make the gap theory work to factor in what I knew the
age of the earth had been discovered to be. I never could find a way to make
evolution work out in the bible, but in the back of my mind I believed it. I
just hadn’t found a way to reconcile it. At this point I reviewed what I knew
about science, and also looked into different people’s ideas to reconcile the
bible with the natural world. I looked into intelligent design theories. There
wasn’t a single theory that I could justify reconciling. I know many of you if
you are still reading are telling me “It is faith Bryant, you can’t make it
work intellectually”. Well, for me that’s a problem. Why would God go so far
out of his way to make it look like the universe was older than the bible said
it was, and then expect us to believe that it was only 8 thousand years old? Why
would God place fossils in the ground showing us our path of evolution to
deceive us? “The fossil records are incomplete Bryant”. Well, they are pretty
complete actually once I looked into it. Because I did check. Remember, the
further I drift from what I grew up in, the less I have in common with my
friends and family. I would have rather proved intelligent design and just
moved on with my life. But I couldn’t. I have watched debate after debate. I
have watched documentaries explaining “Darwin’s Black Box”, and always the
evidence for evolution disproved everything that was presented when I looked
for myself. “You’re being deceived by the devil Bryant, science is just the
devils religion and he’s got you right in his grasp”. Well, I’m sorry you feel
that way.
Now let’s take a break
from the narrative for a moment to have a conversation. If I was trying to
deceive a group of people into believing in invisible Martians and didn’t want
to risk you finding something that went against it how would I do it? Would I
tell them to make their own observations, formulate a hypothesis, test it
multiple times, and then publish their findings as a theory? Only if I’m an
idiot. They would find out I was lying pretty fast I would think. But if I tell
them that the invisible Martians are real, but they mustn’t try to do their own
search for themselves. That would be the better of the two strategies. The
deception still isn’t perfect though. Let us throw in a dash a fear. I want you
scared to not believe in the Martians so if you don’t I tell you that you will
spend forever with your head stuck in Martian sand. “That’s all well and good,
but why would they have started believing in the first place?” Very good point!
I’m glad you’re getting involved in the discussion. They need a bait so to
speak. Why don’t we tell them that the Martians can forgive everything you have
ever done wrong! Target those with regrets, which is practically everyone. “Why
would they believe the Martians would forgive anyone?” Again great point, we
have to tell the people that the Martians are full of love and mercy. Let’s go
ahead and even throw in the added bonus of living forever in another dimension
and we have them hooked for life! We really only have to hook one generation,
and then they’ll pass it down themselves. They’ll undoubtedly divide into sects
as disagreements arise, but they will all believe in the invisible Martians. “I
get what you’re saying Bryant, but your ‘Martians’ don’t have any signs or
wonders.” Again great point, but while you are at least considering the rest of
my points let’s move on with the narrative.
The feelings you get
during worship and prayer, the healings and discernments you hear about. What
do they mean? Are the feelings caused by a state of mind, how do I reach that?
These are the questions I am asking myself at this point. They hadn’t mattered
when it came down to the message itself, but surely it couldn’t have all been
synthetic right? You can’t fake feeling the presence of the Holy Ghost…right?
“No! You can’t! And don’t try proving that the feeling of the Holy Ghost is
just a state of mind or you’ll blaspheme!” Yikes there, why would a benevolent
God care if I try to see how the sensations of deep prayer and of worship are
achieved? Well, if you’re offended you certainly don’t have to continue
reading. To you at this point I am probably a tool of the devil trying be a
stumbling block to the true believers. I certainly understand and can relate to
the feeling and have no hard feelings. Well, there may be fewer of us reading
at this point, but that’s fine. This is a story of my journey, and even in the
best case scenario as far as I’m concerned it will only start yours. You
definitely should not use this as your own decision maker. You need to do the
research for yourself, and in my opinion you would be wrong to take my word for
any of this. Anyways, back to the topic at hand. I thought about what prayer
was at its roots. You are kneeling, thinking and concentrating on what you want
from God. You are thanking him for the blessings of your life. Well I had
studied meditation before so it didn’t seem too farfetched that the elation
that comes from prayer could also come from meditation. It was worth a try
right? Well, I discovered that given enough time of meditating your mind became
clear. It became clear how I should handle a certain situations I was facing in
my life. It was an identical experience to when you believed you had received
instructions from God on how to handle a situation. This was big, but it did not
answer all of my questions. Worship was much easier for me to get a grasp on
however. I had seen how the atmosphere of a song can affect an entire crowd.
After all in the DVD “Music, Might, and Manipulation” had been passed out to
show the devil could simulate worship. What if it was all psychological? After
all, I had listened to songs and gotten caught up in them in the same way I got
caught up in Christian songs. If I didn’t want my believers doubting God’s
influence over the worship service would I not tell them that all other music
was evil? You may disagree with me on this point, and that’s fine. As far as
I’m concerned though it’s all a state of the mind.
Now, I admit that
during my research I have not found a way to heal people. So assuming it was
done, how was it done? Well certainly many people claim to have been healed in WMB’s
services, Oral Roberts services, and according to WMB’s 64-0823E message
“Questions and Answers” healings even happened in the Beatles concerts. I
cannot answer how it happens, not honestly anyways. I can explain the placebo
effect and spontaneous recession/regression though. I will only say that test group 1 would be
given the actual drug, and test group 2 would be given a sugar pill or placebo.
People that take the placebo and believe that it is going to work often find some
of their symptoms going away, and likewise those who do not believe the placebo
is going to work often find their symptoms getting worst. There are reports of
spontaneous remission and even regression of cancer being caused by meditation.
So if I was a renowned faith healer and told you to believe without a shadow of
a doubt that you were healed and that the sickness would come back if you
claimed otherwise wouldn’t you continue to claim it even if you weren’t
healed? WMB may have assisted people at
achieving the right state of mind to allow their body to be healed, but that
certainly does not erase everything else he has done and make him a prophet.
Even if it is God that is responsible for the healings as a result of the
peoples “faith” it still would not be WMB’s faith, it would be the people’s
faith. Many of the discernments could easily have been faked. Derren Brown is a
fantastic cold reader. He can by talking to someone tell them numerous things
about themselves that no one but them would know. Imagine if you had the added
benefit of prayer cards that include the name, address, and illness of the
person in question? Now imagine that you have ushers or even a son that travel
with you that can do hot reading in the audience before the service for you.
“Now Bryant you are just being a doubter. With that attitude how would you ever
believe a true prophet if he really did come” Well, as I stated before at this
point we have already established that he a false prophet. We are only trying
to find out if he can do the things he says he can. Who knows maybe he did have
some sort of discernment that for whatever reason was sometimes wrong, but once
wrong the entire thing is without. The greater miracle by far would be that he
was actually discerning them, it’s not nearly as farfetched to believe the
alternative I have just described. I encourage you to look up an interesting
illusion that was given to me my by a friend to watch. It’s called “The Magic
Bullet illusion” performed by Penn and Teller. Do you have any clue how they
pull it off? I sure don’t, but I’m not going to believe their claim that it’s
magic. In short, I don’t have an explanation that will work for everyone on
healing and discernment, I can only tell you what I think about it.
So many of you who were
never part of the message are probably reading this and are asking yourself “Why
would anyone believe this!” Well, there are many reasons. The prospect of
someone with signs and wonders following him is pretty tempting. You are going
to give this person more leeway even if you don’t see right away how his
doctrines line up with the bible. “But what about after it’s pointed out that
no specific prophesy on tape came to pass after he gave it?” Ah, this is where
it comes to something called sunken costs. I left the message when I was 23,
and even by that amount of time I had given hundreds hours of my time
resources, thousands of dollars of my money, and had believed something was
absolute truth for my entire life! Imagine you have a really old car for a
moment, or maybe you don’t have to imagine. Over the last year you have spent
$4000 dollars and things seem to keep breaking in your, let’s say, 1982
Mercedes sedan. Your transmission goes out, and it will cost you $2000 more to
fix. You know that $2000 is more than the car is currently even worth, but you
have already spent $4000 over the last year trying to fix it. If you sell it
now all that money will be down the drain! And so it should be, at this point
you need to invest in a better car. Another and perhaps easier example is
stock. Let’s say you own $50000 worth of stock at $60 a share. The price of the
stock goes down 10 business days straight now stock is down to $40 a share.
Well you don’t want to sell of course because you will lose all of that
investment! Well, the stock never goes back up. It eventually goes down to 0
and you’ve lost what you could have gotten back on your investment had you tried
to sell earlier. Just think of someone that has been in the message since they
were born in 1962. Think of the countless days, money, and effort they have
placed into the message. They have not only themselves believed, but they have
also influenced others to believe it. They can’t quit now, the cost would be
too high! Well, unfortunately once you realize something is no longer worth the
investment it’s time to sell. Why pour more of your resources of time and money
into something that you are only justifying to be right because of your
perceived loss? I’m not saying it’s easy, because it’s not. You’re most likely
going to lose friends. You will be criticized. People will tell you that you
have been deceived and you will probably even get preached about by the message
churches you used to attend. I can only try to convince you the opportunity
cost is worth it.
While the last 5000
words have attempted to show you the journey I have taken to come to my current
understanding of the universe, it is not even close to being a complete
picture. My opinion of the existence of a benevolent god consists of more than the
fact that the God of the bible ordered the Israelites to wipe out an entire
tribe, more than just because the bible is sexist and more than because it
implies that a benevolent God is compatible with the existence of hell. When I
evaluated the message I did not stop at serpent seed, I looked into many of the
other doctrines as well. While Believethesign.com, and Seekthetruth.com played
a role in the journey, they were not the start nor the end of it. My point of,
my journey consists of much more than I can fit in this article. I would need a
book. As you have seen my journey was not based on a desire to experience more
of “the world”, but certainly the result has been a broader “world view”. Have
I arrived at the correct conclusion on everything? I sure hope not! If I’m
already right about everything at my age I’m going to have a long boring life
ahead of me. No, I know I will always be learning. My mind will always be
broadening. I will continue to do my best to learn from others what they can
teach me, and maybe by the time I am 127 ½ I will at least be reasonably closer
to having things figured out. My name is Bryant Lane, I am a former follower of
the false prophet William Branham, and a free thinker.
“Your
beliefs act as a set of filters that screen out information that is
inconsistent with them. You do not necessarily believe what you see, but rather
you see what you already believe. You reject information that contradicts what
you have already decided to believe, whether or not your beliefs, your
prejudices, are based on fact or fantasy.” – Brian Traci
