Rod: So Jeff, what has surprised you most since you left the message? You've been out now for seven years. What was something that you never expected to find out that now you're surprised is, in fact, the case. And let me get, let me give you an example for me first, the, one of the main things for me is that the message gave me the sense that I was completely and totally right.
And it led to significant spiritual pride. We were right, and you mentioned this, and everyone else was wrong. This is the we versus they, that you've talked about. And this was a huge problem. And I remember listening to this wonderful TED talk on the subject of being wrong. And this lady who's talking says, how does it feel to be wrong?
And, people are going, oh, it's dreadful, it's embarrassing, it's terrible. But then she makes the point. That's how you feel when you realize you're wrong and realizing you're wrong, as it was when I came out of the message, can be totally devastating. But just  being wrong, doesn't feel like anything.
And it's like remembering that, when you see, the that cartoon of the coyote and the Roadrunner and the coyote is always chasing and he's never catching the road runner. And, on one occasion, the Coyote's chasing the Roadrunner and the road runner runs this cloud of dust and the coyote follows,  'cause he's after the road runner. And then the dust clears and you see that the road runner's on the edge of a cliff, but the coyote...  under him is complete thin air.
And, like a thousand feet straight down and he doesn't realize he just standing there. Then he looks down and, and he realizes and what's funny, at least if you're six years old, is that the coyotes totally fine. He's completely fine right up until the moment  he looks down and he realizes that's he's in midair and then, he's devastated and then, he falls.
And when we're wrong about something, it's not when we realize it. But before that, we're like the coyote he's gone off the cliff in a cloud of dust...   Before he looks down and we're already wrong, we're already in trouble, but we feel like we're on solid ground.

Jeff: Yeah.

Rod: It does feel like something to be wrong. It actually feels like being right. And I was in the message. I was totally wrong, but I thought it was right. So I felt fine. And the problem is,  going back to our elementary school days, we thought that people who got stuff wrong were lazy, irresponsible dimwits. That wasn't us. And second of all, the way to succeed in life is never to make any mistakes. And we learn these really bad lessons really well, and a lot of us. And I'm sure if some of the people listening to this podcast dealt with it by just becoming perfect little A students, perfectionists, overachievers. That's me, Mr. CFO, Mr. Super achiever, except that  we freak out at the possibility that we've gotten something wrong.
Because according to our  internal script, getting something wrong means that there's something wrong with me. So we just insist that we're right, because it makes us feel smart and responsible and virtuous and safe. And think for a moment what it means to feel right? It means you think that your beliefs perfectly reflect reality.
And when you feel that way, you've got a problem to solve, which is how are you going to explain what you believe to all of those people who disagree with you? And it turns out that most of us explain those people the same way by, resorting to a series of what are unfortunately bad assumptions.
First thing is we usually do when someone disagrees with us, as we assume they're ignorant. And so people in the message think we're ignorant because we disagree with them. They don't have access to the same information that we do. And when we generously share that information with them, obviously they're going to see the light and come over to our team.
And when that doesn't work, when it turns out those people have all the same facts that we do, and they still disagree with us,  then we move on to a second assumption, which is that they're idiots. Or in the case of the message, there simply atomic fodder, right?

Jeff: Yep.

Rod: And they have all the pieces to the puzzle, but they're too moronic to put them together correctly like we did. 

Jeff: Right, right. 

Rod: And then when that doesn't work, when it turns out that people who disagree with us have all the same facts we do and are actually pretty smart, then we move on to a third assumption that is, they know the truth and they are deliberately distorting it for their own malevolent purposes. And this is what message preachers think of us.

We know the truth, but our motivations for disagreeing with them must be our evil intent.

Jeff: Yeah. They think that we've taken an easier route, that it's easier on the flesh to have left the message. And now we're living in Laodicea and we're living in the comfort of our own imagination and our own reality. And we've rejected Christ the word and so on and all the terminology that we'd use.
And and that's not the case at all. There's I find myself much more challenged, much more challenged outside the messages than I ever did inside the message.

Rod: Yeah, and that attachment to our own rightness causes us to treat each other terribly. We want everyone else to gaze out the same window that we look out and see exactly the same thing. But if that were actually true, life would be really boring. The miracle of the mind that God has gave us. And this is really the interesting thing.
The human brain is the most complicated thing in the universe. We know nothing that's more complicated than the human brain and God gave that to us. And the miracle of our mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It's that you can see the world as it isn't.

Jeff: Right.

Rod: We can remember the past and we can think about the future and we can imagine what it's like to be some other person in some other place.
And we all do this a little differently, which is why we can all look at the same night sky and we see different things. And it's also why we also get things really wrong.

Jeff: Yeah.

Rod: And what leaving the message has taught me is that though I thought I was completely right. I came to understand that I was wrong.

Jeff: Yeah. 

Rod: And now I ask myself the question, what else is there that I think I'm right about, but actually I'm wrong.

Jeff: I find that liberating. I find it, it is.
Isn't it though. Yeah, because now I've given myself permission because the Holy Spirit gives me permission. And in the scriptures it says, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling in Christ Jesus. And if I be any otherwise minded, he will even reveal that to me.
And so I do find it liberating that I don't have a script, a  William Branham script, a model anymore based upon an Old Testament and,  if I do something like Achan did, and I take a golden wedge and a Babylonian garment that I in my whole entire family will be stoned and burned.
And yet William Branham would talk about a woman who said, I wouldn't give my cow that religion. And how has her face broke out and huge pimples like, and she died. And of course, none of that, of which I believe at all, but see that's Old Testament. That's something that smacks of Elijah allowing she bears to kill the little children and has nothing to do with the new covenant whatsoever.
But I find the fact that now I can be wrong, liberating. Because I know he's not going to do anything, but he's not going to chase me or upbraid me. But if I ask him, he's going to give to me liberally wisdom that I need.

Rod: I think you're right. I, because I'm human, that means I'm born broken. I'm born messed up. And I understand now that there are probably things that I believe right now that are wrong, but with that understanding, I simply pray to God. And as long as we have this attitude, God, please help me to understand how you think.
Give me the courage to examine my own flawed beliefs and help me to simply recognize your truth, the truth of your word
Anyways, sorry for that segue. But  when I was thinking about asking you this question, I thought, this is certainly for me, what I've gone through is that the Liberty recognized... The stuff I'm wrong about, and that's okay. As long as the Lord is constantly leading me into the truth. And so sorry for the segue. Back to the question that I wanted to ask you, Jeff, what has surprised you most, since you left the message.

Jeff: What you said a moment ago about Wile E. Coyote and him looking down and seeing thin air the message now has literally become thin air. And so then when I fall, I have to have somebody that makes sure that I don't hit the bottom. And yet what's interesting is that you do hit your own version of the bottom.
Nobody ever hits the bottom. I don't care how sinful they become how silly they become, how immoral they become. They really don't hit the bottom because God's going to give them grace while there's breath in their body to recover and reconstruct. But I would say for me, probably the most surprising thing that came out of my leaving the message was the liberating freedom I had in the Holy Spirit.
And I could see why Paul said, now that you've got this freedom, don't use it for an occasion to the flesh. I could see why he would tell a bunch of Jews that had been touch not, not taste, not handle not. Holy days. This is sacred. This is kosher. This isn't sacred. This is... and all of a sudden, now we have Liberty.
And all of a sudden I had to re-examine everything. Even my wife came to me, my daughters came to me, first of all, and said what do we believe now? I remember one, my daughter, Leah said, do you even believe in serpent's seed anymore? And so we went into that and she, and of course we went into they wanted to understand dress and what was right, what was wrong.
And what I found was is that they were like a wound up rubber band. And as soon as they had that freedom, then they went about experimenting. Scared me to death, to be honest. But after a while they slowly come back. They get their bearings. They realized, is that right? And so my kids are definitely on a different journey than I am.
But the point is that they use their Liberty one way. For me, what it caused me to become. This is interesting, but I came became self-empowered. It was no longer, if you'll pardon me, but it's what you find is this that when you have a group religion, everybody is a hypocrite. You understand what I'm saying? Yeah. Everybody's a hypocrite because everybody is actually trying to live out to a degree, a certain amount of what other people's convictions are. And it's not holier than thou, but almost. And when all of a sudden all that is stripped from you. Literally there's no... we'll call it, no conduct order and church doctrine.
No more big red volume of brother Branham. And and all of a sudden when you walk into church and everybody's talking when you're used to the sanctuary being reverenced and all of a sudden people are chatting, and then you have to say wait a minute. Is this wrong for them to talk? And then all of a sudden, somebody hands you a cup of coffee, or says would you like a cup of coffee and take it in the sanctuary well, is that wrong for me to have a cup of coffee?
And so all of those Old Testament, you're standing in holy ground and you're in the holiest of Holies and you're among the seven church age messengers to cherubims and the seven golden candlesticks. And how much of that model is actually anything that God even requires of me? And so I found that I was liberated to go make a mistake to figure it out on my own.
And then if I felt convicted about a certain something, but somebody else didn't feel convicted, I was 100% okay with that. They are on their journey and it has nothing to do with salvation, no bearing with regard to the Holy Spirit or no Holy Spirit. And it was just I'll tell you the scripture that came to my mind and I'm going to read it to you.
Moses writes this about the righteousness that is of the law. That the person who does the things must live by them. But the righteousness that is of faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven. And that is to bring Christ down from above or who will descend into the deep that is to bring Christ up from the dead.
But what does it say? The word is in you near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart. And that is the message that we preach concerning faith that we proclaim. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified. And it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As the scripture says, anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame for there is no difference between the Jew or the Gentile. The same Lord is Lord of all, and richly blesses all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. 
In the message, there were all these caveats. There were all these other bullet points that you had  to go through in order to be justified, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Romans 10 says, I confess my sins. I acknowledge my need for the Lord and Savior, and I'm saved. And then the growth process begins.
So there's no. All of these things I have to meet requirements that I have to meet before. Truly the token has been applied to my life. It's the message. Going back to something that Tim said initially, and I find that the message that brother Branham taught detracted from the cross, minimized the power of the cross, minimized the office of the Holy Spirit, minimized the power of the Holy Spirit in the individual.
And in reality, brother Branham, in reality, he was the counterfeit Holy Spirit, the counterfeit.  Because he was trying to take the place of Christ and take the place of the Holy Spirit. And that's where fear is injected rather than pure love and pure faith.
So to me, the most liberating is that I can tell somebody at work or somebody I meet that, you're okay. You've told me, you're a sinner. Yeah. I know. I really messed up Jeff. I said, okay, let's pray. I don't know how to pray. Okay. Let me just read you this. Romans 10 says, if you confess with your mouth, do you want to repent?
You acknowledge Jesus as your savior. Yes, I know. I know I need somebody to steer the ship and I do not want to be the pilot anymore. I do not want to be the captain. I need his help. I have made a mess out of my life. Good, so that's wonderful. So Christ has come to justify you, to take away all your sins. And then when you begin to lead them to a sinner's prayer, in the back of my mind, I don't have William Branham back there anymore.
I don't have seven seals back there anymore. I don't have seven churches back through anymore. I don't have token lifeback there anymore. I have the simple scriptures. That to me is what is liberating.

Rod: Yeah, exactly. 

Tim: I heard that recently from when, as Tim Humes... Jeff, I don't know if you've seen his podcast recently, where he talks about evidence. And this is on his own channel.  We haven't talked to Tim Humes. But  it's interesting  he talks about a common salvation versus a message salvation.
And the common salvation, like you say, is just, it is scripture tells us what we need to do to be saved, period, by adding all the rest of that, it seems to me that we are layering addition. Oh, and by the way, in addition to scripture, in addition to the word of God, you need these things too. 
Now you'll be saved. You can still be saved if you just pay attention to the common salvation. But this is where we know you're going to the rapture because brother Branham said. There's an another layer  of requirement on top of that. And people outwardly want to show their assembly that they're into that. That they understand that they are obedient to that requirement.
But inwardly, certainly I did this when I was in the message, struggle at saying, you can outwardly show that, but  is that the thing that Christ requires of me inwardly? That was a real challenge. I think a lot of that has to do with ministers saying you have to behave this way when you come.
And you mentioned as an example, you're reverent and you're quiet and you're obedient in the house of God versus having somebody hand you a cup of coffee to say, would you like to take that into the sanctuary? The message minister would be, oh my gosh, that would, he, it would be important to him that somebody would offer you a cup of coffee to go into a sanctuary. How disrespectful you might be, but that's the layer.
That's the other reason. 

Rod: Even that word sanctuary is an old Testament word.  If you look at the New Testament church, people started meeting in their house. I don't know if Roman houses had living rooms, I assume they did, but it wasn't a sanctuary and they didn't have separate church buildings.
This is something that the old Testament concept of the tabernacle, the temple rather was brought into the new one. And so we've taken this old Testament concept and brought it into the new. But really, it doesn't exist in the new.

Jeff: Does not exist. I had a minister who said, Jeff, I wanted to come here and sit under your ministry and become a part of your church. But I decided I can't do it. He was at family camp. I said, oh, I said, that's fine. And actually we had about 11 ministers and I sure didn't need another one to be honest.
But anyway,  I said, but I'm curious to know why. He says, you have a kitchen that's next to your sanctuary. I said, yeah. Brother Branham was totally against soup suppers. I said, where'd you get soup suppers in a kitchen. And so he says, now, if you would have had a firewall or some larger wall or a separation between your kitchen and your sanctuary, instead of this little steel door, I probably could have handled it. But I just can't bear the thought that I can smell food coming from the microwave while I'm in church.
And  I was shocked, but yet I see where he got that from. I can see where brother Branham talks about ice cream, socials and soup suppers. And he made a leap. What I find with the message is between the legalism and all the doctrine, what it really did was, it gave us a lot to fight over.
It gave us a lot to splinter over. It gave us a lot... And again, going back to Liberty, when your faith is cross centric and Christ centric, then you know what? You leave everything else, concerns somebody else up, into God's hand. I'm not about to try to get the beam out of another person's eyes when I've got a mote in my own. 

Tim: As I listened to the discussion, guys, I have to say, if I'm a message believer listening to this podcast, I am appalled at the amount of Liberty that we take upon ourselves. As an example, after we leave the message. And I understand that position, it takes a long time to get to that cross centric, faith versus  the message or the prophet centered faith.
Are you with me? And I can imagine people that are still in the message who are struggling with just what we're talking about as it relates to the Liberty that we have in Christ for our own salvation or our own worship and the way we worship and what's acceptable to us. I can imagine these people are just, I can imagine that they're having a rough time with this. 

Rod: Let me read what Paul says in Galatians 5, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Jeff: yeah.

Rod: You who are trying to be justified by the law or rules... like the law is rules. You who are trying to be justified by the rules in the message have been alienated from Christ.
You have fallen away from grace.

Tim: Yeah, And so the real question is, as an example, when you retain those laws or rules or regulations as how you're supposed to act or how you're supposed to behave, have you really given yourself to the Liberty that Christ offers you through the guidance of the Holy Spirit? To Jeff, like you said earlier, become centered because  Christ and the Holy Spirit are leading you.  Have your personal walk with them.

Jeff: People in the message, that of course we all love and adore, and that's why we're having this podcast, is because we're wanting to:
One: encourage those that have come out to deconstruct their former faith and not be afraid of it anymore and realize that as something that should not have power over them.
But number two: is that people in the message that will maybe perhaps listen to this, have to understand that we have all the compassion in the world for them. I understand it. I'd been there done that.  And I get it. But once you've come out,  now my terminology is biblical terminology without the message filter. And so , most of what I considered to be maybe truth as I was coming out, I'm finding out I've had to dismiss most every theme and most every principle and most every paradigm that brother Branham fed to us, and most of it was wrong.

Tim: So I'm going to ask you Jeff, as late as we've talked about this here, and I can imagine that there are ministers, people are going to talk to their ministers about this podcast as well...  message ministers. My guess is when you came out of the message you had contact with other ministers, but the question I want to ask you is this, have you had any contact with other message ministers since you left or do they just regard you as an unbeliever and they've just, haven't bothered to reach out?