Something Was Wrong - S21 Ep9: (1/4) [Jubilee] Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

*Content Warning: disordered eating, religious abuse, purity culture, infertility/pregnancy loss, suicidal ideation, self harm, sexual abuse, religious trauma, cultic abuse. *Sources:A Look at the Megachurch That Calls Redding Home: Bethel Church. (2019, June 20). The LAist. https://laist.com/shows/airtalk/a-look-at-the-megachurch-that-calls-redding-home-bethel-churchBethel Church. (2019, December 20). Resurrection Prayer for Olive Heiligenthal. https://www.bethel.com/news/olive-heiligenthalBill Johnson: Creative Miracles At Bethel - Part 1. (2011, January 11). [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=shared&v=2PzttaVImCYWilson, D. (2008). Finger of God [Video]. https://wpfilm.com/media/finger-of-god/*Resources:For a list of related non-profit organizations, please visit: http://www.somethingwaswrong.com/resourcesNational Domestic Violence Hotline https://www.thehotline.org/ Follow Something Was Wrong:Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese:Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookieboo [e-mail] The SWW theme Song is U Think U, by Glad Rags. The S21 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart.  

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Something Was Wrong is intended for mature audiences, as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. Content warnings for each episode and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes. pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection. Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, Broken Cycle Media, or Wondery.

The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. Thank you so much for listening. You think you know me, you don't know me well. Hi, my name is Jubilee. I was born and raised in Texas.

I have four other siblings. So there's five of us total. We all have a wide range of ages. I have a sibling that is three years older than me. He's the oldest. Another sibling. And then I'm the middle child. And then I have two younger sisters.

The youngest is actually 10 years younger than me. me. So there's quite an age gap there. We were raised Christian, non-denominational, pretty involved in the church. We'd go through periods of where we would go to one church pretty diligently for six months, you know, and it might fade away, and then we'd give it another go. I did go to public school when I was younger, and I didn't have the best experience I was bullied at a young age because I had this really big afro. I'm Mexican, and my hair would just grow up. It would not grow down. So no matter how much I tried to grow my hair out, it just grew up. And the kids were pretty ruthless. They used to call me cotton balls starting in kindergarten. I was always just a very

sensitive child, even before all of that. So I used to cry a lot at school to the point where my teacher had told me, if you don't stop crying, I'm going to have to make a calendar and mark every single day that you cry and I'm going to show it to your mom. I was just always a very emotional kid and and the bullying definitely didn't help. As I was getting older, they continued to be pretty ruthless about my hair. Middle school was the hardest time for me. When I was in seventh grade, I remember being in computer class. And some kid literally took granola bar and made it into a ball and was like throwing

granola bar into my afro. And I didn't notice. Someone told me after, but everybody in class was laughing at me. They were just like trying to find anything that they could. make fun of me for. And I was pretty quiet at the time. I was going through depression. So I feel like I was kind of an easy target. I had one bully in particular who was always threatening to beat me up. So I was living in fear. It was so clicky in middle school, you know, but there was this girl and she was the most popular girl in school. I sat next to her during math in eighth grade. And we just built this

friendship and she actually really liked me after we started talking and we had so much fun. And she honestly turned things around for me because she was not afraid to be my friend. She started hanging out with me, asking me to come sit at the popular table, which was like a very big deal at the time and a very big difference from the bullying I had endured. I wasn't cool, but I was acceptable to them. That's when people laid off of me a bit. When I was in eighth grade, I ended up getting my hair relaxed, so it was finally able to grow down, and I started straightening my hair, and then my hair was able to grow out, and then I've just had longer hair since then. So the bullying stopped pretty much after that, but I still felt depressed. I had also dealt with childhood sexual abuse, which nobody knew about at that point. It was something that I had kept private. I didn't want to worry my parents. I didn't want to tell people around me. So this started this,

season of depression for me at the age of 12 or 13. I started self-harming after I saw a character do this in a TV show, which now I'm like very conscious of the things that are on TV now, because I don't actually think that I would have had the idea to do that had I not seen a character do it on a TV show and think she's in pain, I'm in pain, so I should try this. And that just started this self-harm addiction that I had for four or five years. High school was so different. I really think that middle school is the worst time of a lot of people's lives. And high school wasn't as bad.

There were not bullies at my school. Everybody was cool. Nobody was really talked bad about or left out. Everybody had their click. I did make friends in high school. So my sadness in high school didn't come from being bullied. It just came from the unresolved. trauma that I had been experiencing at that point and the self-harm addiction that I had developed.

During that entire time, I was going to church. I was pretty involved in my youth group growing up. My parents thought that that would be really important to be involved in the youth group. And so did my siblings. They came with me. And I honestly have nothing but good memories for the most part from my youth group. A lot of time, youth group was just fun. We used to go on these trips to Corpus Christi or South Padre, and we would do these church camps

that were very surrounded around going to the beach. It was the worship type of vibe. You know, everybody's really emotional. Everybody's crying and hugging and playing games, and we would split off into teams and do competitions against each other. So it was a good time. For me, personally, it was great to be able to have so many friends. I feel like growing up, it's kind of hard to find your group of people. And with youth group, it felt like I just had built-in friends. The purity culture was not ideal. And that's the only bad thing that I remember from youth group.

I laugh about it now, but it's actually super inappropriate. But there was an entire camp that they did at my youth group where we went to this ranch nearby and we just talked about purity the entire weekend. and that was the entire point of this camp. The kids started calling it sex camp, and it was a joke that everybody was in on. And actually, if I remember correctly, I think the pastors might have called it that, too, like as a joke. I remember there was this one girl. I felt pretty judged when we were talking.

We had a small group. The guys and the girls are in different areas. We were talking about, like, how far is too far to go before marriage? and she was dating one of the guys in the youth group, and she said, well, anything that turns you on is a sin. And people start pushing back saying, well, then is holding hands wrong is like just giving a peck wrong? And she said, if it turns you on, yes, it's wrong.

She fully believed that all of that was a sin. So I did feel kind of out of place because I was not as religious as some of the people there. The funny thing now is that she's not even a Christian anymore. So, I mean, she really broke free of those beliefs as well, which I'm sure she was struggling too because we were all in this environment where it's almost like we're trying to prove to each other who is the most holy, who is the closest to God, and how far are we willing to prove that we are not lukewarm as the Bible talks about the worst thing that you can do is be lukewarm and God will spit you out. So I think that that was one of the hardest times at the time.

that youth group. It just felt very unattainable to me what they were preaching from the stage, especially to like a group of teenagers that are discovering their sexuality. My parents went to a different church that they enjoyed going to, and they used to make us go there on Sunday sometimes. And we didn't really like it because that church really focused around like finances. I remember being like 10 years old and having to listen to really boring sermons about how to trust God with your money and thinking this is not for me at all. But the church was a good place for me for a very long time. It was always ingrained in me that seeking God in hard times is how you're going to get through it. So even though I was so depressed at school, I had my friends at church. I had my friends who really

took me under their wing and were always there for me when I was sad. And we kind of had like this sad kids club in our youth group where we were all dealing with depression, but we were all best friends trying to help each other out. So for me, religion was always a positive thing other than the purity culture that I did encounter. Choir was another safe place for me. All of my friends were in choir and one friend that I made in choir, she is still one of my best friends. But I had a choir teacher. I'll just call him Mr. Martinez. Another reason I was really struggling in school was I found out halfway through the year that he had been having a relationship with an 18 year old girl, a senior. And he was in his mid-60s. It was jarring and horrible. She was in choir with me. And I loved this teacher up until then.

I thought he was the coolest guy ever. I had gone on a choir trip with him to Dallas, and we all called him dad. That's how much we loved this man. We thought he was so awesome, so safe, and just a good person. And then we found out that he was having this relationship with a senior that happened during Christmas break. We all came back from Christmas break to find out that there was an investigation that was being launched and that he resigned. So that was very traumatic for me because having been sexually abused, I felt like my judgment is just off. Like, I cannot tell who is safe and who isn't safe.

It definitely impacted my view of men in general and men in power. I became more and more depressed and it just felt like there was no way to break outside of what I was going through at the time. I just remember laying in bed at night thinking, my name is Jubilee, which means celebration, and I am literally the most depressed person on the planet. And it felt like some sick joke that God made my name be Jubilee. It felt so far away from what my reality was at the time. It became a battle just to go to school. My parents really did try to help me as much as they could.

I saw several therapists. I distinctly remember one time my mom let me play hooky and we watched So You Think You Can Dance. We just had a great time together. But it was hard for my parents because they didn't know everything that was going on with me and they just felt like they couldn't help at the time. So there were some definitely real and raw conversations between me and my parents where they were at their wits end felt like they didn't know what to do to rescue me from this. and I would just beg them to let me be homeschooled. I had begged my mom for years, and they had put it off and didn't want me to be, but my cousins were homeschooled. So in my mind, I was like, this is going to solve all of my problems. So I ended up pitching it to my parents. I said, please let me be homeschooled for my last two years of school. I was a pretty smart kid in school, and I said, I'll get everything done and I'll get a job. I just want a head start on my life. And I think,

it's going to help my depression. So my parents ended up agreeing. I ended up finishing that year and getting a job at a local cafe. And I loved it there. I had a coworker who was married. And he was a lot older than me. I was only 16. And I think he was 28. He was a bus boy and I was a host. And he ended up coming on to me in the bathroom when we were cleaning. I ended up having to go to my manager and say that I was being sexually harassed. So I really just did have this overarching feeling that men were not safe, that I could not trust anybody at that point. And I felt very closed off, very hopeless. I just couldn't catch a break. So while I was homeschooled, things continued to get worse for me. Mentally, I wasn't feeling better. That boils down to you can't outrun trauma at some point. It has to be felt.

I had this breaking point where I was very suicidal at the time. I was 17 years old. I had graduated high school a little bit early. It was on Christmas Eve. I was crying to my parents and I was telling them that I was suicidal and I was afraid I was going to hurt myself. They told me that if I could just hold on until December 26th, after Christmas, they would get me admitted into a psychiatric hospital. So on the 26th, my parents, parents took me to the psychiatric hospital here in town, and it was quite the experience. It really felt like they just kept me safe for the time being. I did meet with a psychiatrist and I was put on some medication. He did diagnose me with depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The actual hospital experience felt like I was just locked in this little ward of kids. Because I was under 18, I had to go to the children's hospital, and there were young kids there who were only eight years old, ranging to me who was the oldest, and there was only a few kids there that were around my age. We mostly colored, and we watched some movies, we went to art, and then we would meet

with the psychiatrist once a day. At the time, I was really praying that this was going to fix me, and when I got out of the hospital, I just realized that I still feel depressed. I feel like that didn't help anything, but I was on this medication and I was hopeful that it was going to start working. My parents, because I had finished school early, told me, well, maybe it would be a good idea to go to Abilene with your brother. My brother was going to a school called ACU in Abilene, a college, and my cousins were there too, and I was close with my cousins, and my parents thought it might be good for me to go stay with my brother for a couple weeks. That way, I could just get out and try to shake up my routine and have a little bit of a break from my life. So I ended up going to ACU to go

see my brother. I was having a good time with my family, and I was starting to feel a little more hopeful. we ended up going to this church service that was not at ACU, but it was affiliated. They had a missionary there who was visiting from Africa. She, I found out, was very big in the charismatic Christianity world. She's a traveling minister as well. So her story is she actually lives in Mozambique and she lives in a hut with her husband and they fully have immersed themselves in that life. And she almost carries herself differently.

She is in full-time ministry, and she has hundreds of kids that call her mom where she's from. She feeds all of them, and she's kind of emotionally adopted all of these children, and she takes care of them. She funds so many different villages. I really respected her because she was one of those people who, like, walks the walk.

In my church, you were just raised to believe that missionaries are the best people in the whole world. They're sacrificing their entire lives. I was feeling so inspired by her talk. And at the end of her sermon, they end up saying, you know, if anybody needs prayer, come down to the front. She starts naming things, which I would later find out that Bethel and other churches call this Words of Knowledge, which words of knowledge are essentially someone saying, God told me this key piece of information. and it came to my brain from God. How many of you are missing cartilage in your knees?

Put a hand up. Lord's going to create cartilage tonight. How many of you are missing disc in the back? Okay? How many of you have fused spine, either surgically or naturally? How many of you have metal in like pins, screws, plates, that sort of thing? Somebody's got, who is it? You have, I think you have a metal plate or screws or something in your right ankle.

Who's that? Yeah, I believe there's going to be a real miracle here tonight. And that, I really do. She said, I was just told by God that he is healing PTSD tonight. He is going to heal your PTSD. I was newly out of the hospital, newly diagnosed with PTSD, and I was 100% convinced that this word was for me. She said, if you have PTSD and you want to be healed, come down to the front.

So I walked down to the front. My adrenaline is pumping and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this was meant exactly for me. I'm from San Antonio and now I am here in Abilene and I was brought here for a reason for this word. And honestly, it's very hazy. I don't remember this very clearly. I remember being on my knees, praying and feeling the presence of God. and feeling comforted. Like, I knew that I was going to be healed of this.

I had full faith. After that service, something did change. This is where things get tricky as we talk about what happened afterward. I do believe in God. So maybe it was God. But I had been struggling so much mentally for years, and I just felt free.

I felt alive, For the first time, I felt like I wasn't depressed. I felt like I never wanted to harm myself ever again. Don't do what I'm about to say, but I quit all of my medications, cold turkey, that I had just gotten in the hospital. I felt like I was healed of this PTSD. Another crazy thing that happened was all of this time when I was struggling with that childhood sexual abuse. I had been having nightmares almost every single night for five or six years. years at that point. And after I went to this event, for years, I didn't have any nightmares.

That's really why I was such a big believer in all of the things to come as I felt like I had seen it with my own eyes. I had felt it and that it had had a true change in me. I was really ready to sign on the dotted line of whatever this lady was selling or whatever this church told me that I needed to do. After that day, my family, we started looking up who this lady was, and we saw that she was in a documentary that had come out called The Finger of God, which was directed by a man who wanted to prove that signs and wonders that happened in the Bible still happen, that words of knowledge, healing, prophecy, all of these things that happened in the New Testament still happened today. We're all riding the high of this crazy church service.

and we're watching this movie. I'm just like, this is going to be my life now. This is my new personality. And I end up seeing Bethel come on the screen. Bethel is a church that is in Reading, California. It started in Weaverville, the leader of Bethel. Bill Johnson's dad had a church in Weaverville, and then he moved it to Reading.

It's been going for a while. I had never heard of Bethel before this, but a lot of people have heard of Bethel because of their music industry. They have Bethel music, which is extremely popular. A lot of people will listen to Bethel music, not knowing what the church believes in, not knowing what this organization even is, just because it's pretty worship music. That's how I found out about Bethel was through this documentary. A lot of the documentary, it's honestly the perfect introduction into this. type of thinking. They talk about gold teeth. They believe that if you are in a church service, that God might give people teeth that are gold because he wants to. In this documentary, they're like,

wow, let's take a video of this girl's mouth. Look, gold appeared in the middle of the service. And they also believe that like feathers are falling from the sky. So they would take close up video feathers falling on the floor, or they would say that jewels were appearing out of nowhere and that they were jewels from heaven and that God was making all of these crazy things appear during these worship services where the anointing, quote unquote, was so thick in the air. They also believed that gold dust would fall from the sky and they would call them glory clouds. So there's like glitter on the floor, which came from clothes or maybe someone's pumping it through the vents. but that happens when God really likes the group of people that are worshipping him.

There were just a lot of crazy things in this documentary. I haven't seen it in over 10 years, but it had a big impact on me. There was this whole section of the movie where they were interviewing Bethel students and they have a ministry school called Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, where they teach people all of these things so that they can go and change the world and help other people and become missionaries. When I heard the name, I was like, this really does sound like Harry Potter.

And oh my gosh, I was a lover of Harry Potter. People who are into fantasy or fun fictional books, you love getting immersed into different worlds because it's entertaining and it's a fun escape from reality. Here I am watching this documentary thinking, like, are you telling me that life is not boring? Are you telling me that life is this cool? Like, you almost want to eat it up.

You're like, I want to live in this world where jewels appear out of nowhere. I want to live in a world where God puts gold teeth in my mouth just because he wants to. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. And this sounds like a great next step. Coming off of this experience where I felt fully healed of PTSD and I was feeling like my life had just been changed, I want to help people like how I was helped. I want to show people that God still heals people. and I want to be a part of this.

I went on their website and I saw that I could apply to this Hogwarts type school in California. That sounded cool to be able to go to California. And my parents were just happy that I was happy. They had always told us that they would pay for any Christian college that we wanted to attend. I had toured a couple Christian colleges. I said, well, instead of going to Christian college, would you pay for me to go to Bethel, I want to be a missionary, God's changed my life. I can't even imagine what they must have been thinking. Like, they sent me off completely depressed to Abilene, and I come back and I'm like,

by the way, I'm going to be a missionary, and I'm going to move to California, and God gives people gold teeth. This was not their sector of Christianity. They did not really buy into these things very much. It did not interest them, but they were just happy that I was happy and that it had to do with Jesus. That was their bottom line on how they felt about Bethel. They could see a change in me and they could see how serious I was about it. I was very, very passionate. I had been in a relationship with someone who was an atheist at the time and I was totally in love with him. I thought he was the best thing in the whole world. He was my only safe place in my life during that time. He had been so loyal to me all throughout when I was in the hospital, but he was an atheist. And when I came back

from Abilene, we just had nothing to talk about because all of a sudden, all I wanted to talk about was this. All I wanted to talk about was God and my newfound faith and how I wanted to be a missionary. And we basically broke up within a couple months of this happening because we just didn't have very much in common anymore. I have nothing but good things to say about this guy. I hope he's happy. He's awesome. I ended up applying to Bethel. I filled out their questionnaire. I honestly don't remember too much of the physical application. It was just asking about like your relationship with God, your testimony, what you believe. Once you submitted your application, you would have an interview. And there was this guy. And I believe his name was Adam. He was the one who I had my interview with.

Looking back on this now, it's so inappropriate because one of the questions in the interview was asking me about my purity and my sexuality. I felt so guilty telling him my sins and what I had done. And here I am just like talking to this man who's only a few years older than me, feeling like I have to give him all of this very personal information about myself. After that interview, I got a email back from him and I got accepted into the school, but there was a contingency. I was accepted to Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, but I had to create a purity plan. I had to follow it for the summer, and I had to update them regularly on my purity throughout the summer, and they could revoke my acceptance if I did not remain pure. It was absolutely wild. So I ended up making my purity plan document and I sent it to him very quickly because I was like, I will prove to you how pure I can be. And I found it recently. I was like, I promise that I'm not

going to hang out with a boy alone because that would be setting myself up for failure. And I promise that I'm going to find an accountability partner and I'm going to check in with them every single week about my purity and my thoughts. I promise to not masturbate. It was ridiculous. And I'm sending it to this guy. It was so inappropriate. And you're a minor, to be clear, right? And this is a grown man. Yeah, I was a minor.

I was 17. When your parents weren't there. Yeah, so it's very inappropriate. But I'm like, no, this makes sense because I'm going to be a missionary. I guess I passed the purity test. My purity partner was my sister-in-law because we were also both involved in cults. I was going to go to Bethel, which I later. found to be very culty, and she actually went to IHOP, which is the International House of Prayer

in Kansas City, which they are experiencing a lot of controversy at the moment, because a lot of allegations have come against the leader of IHOP. We were leaning on each other in our very similar cults, which these cults did not like each other, which is interesting. I remember being at Bethel and them saying, well, we don't really like the International House of Prayer. I don't think that the leader of Bethel said that, but it was more so just known through the other leaders, the revival group pastors. The International House of Prayer wasn't in line with Bethel's beliefs because the International House of Prayer really harped on end times, believing that a lot of the world was going to go to hell. And they were a bit more negative, whereas Bethel liked to paint themselves as like a hope center. We are the people who are going to heal the world.

We're going to bring heaven to earth. So their overarching vibes did not align from what I remember. My dad, he was going to go with me to get everything set up. So we took this road trip from Texas to California. I distinctly remember just to set the scene. This is the day that we are never, ever getting back together from Taylor Swift came out. The morning that I woke up for this road trip, she dropped that song. And pretty much the entire road trip, I listened to that song on repeat.

When we were driving to California, I checked my email, and this is absolutely crazy. Some guy had gotten all of the email addresses for all of the incoming students who were going to be coming to Bethel that year. He ended up emailing everybody saying that he was also somebody who was supposed to be a student and that he had arrived to Bethel a few weeks early because he wanted to get settled in the area and that he had seen a lot of questionable. things at Bethel. He sent out a mass email, essentially accusing Bethel of teaching false words and saying that everybody should cancel being a student and go back home. He basically accused Bethel of being a cult. He said he was very much Christian and I just want to tell you guys what I've seen. That way everybody can make a decision for themselves. It was very respectful but also firm in his belief that they were preaching falsehoods. One of the things he talked about was he had heard

somebody talking about the third heaven. I don't even know what that means, but like another layer of heaven. He was saying they were just preaching things that were not biblical. He had pushed back on them and told them, where is that in scripture? And they were brushing him off. And when he had raised concerns to leadership about some things that he had been hearing, they came back and said, Bethel encourages people to think for themselves. So we have teachers who believe different things. We're all entitled to our own relationship with God, basically. Bethel did respond to that guy's email. And they said, we have been made aware of an email that was sent out. Obviously, we deny these claims. And we can't wait to see you this week. They tried to paint him like as a disgruntled

person. And the funny thing is, his email was so thoughtfully written. that it did kind of scare me because he sounded pretty level-headed. I just remembered thinking, well, I hope that's not true. And I did feel some anxiety deep inside of me, but I thought to myself, well, I've seen God move. I was healed of PTSD, so I just think that I'm in the right place. It's a three-year program. So I moved in. I had a couple roommates.

There was a girl who I was sharing a room with. She was from England, and she was in second year. I was in first year, and she had been living in that apartment the year prior. She really kind of wanted to be my mom. She thought that she had some spiritual hold over me since she was in second year. And she was older than me. I think she was maybe 26 or 27. And she positioned herself as the apartment mom.

She wanted me to view her as a mentor. And I was just looking for a roommate. So we did have some like back and forth during my first year. we were staying on this street called Clay Street. Everybody in Reading is going to know what Clay Street is. It is this rough side of town. There's a lot of drug use on this street. And Bethel students were known for living on Clay Street and trying to convert everybody.

One reason the Bethel students were always there was because we were all broke. We all have no money. It was very cheap rent. I didn't have any horrible experiences, but I was living in this apartment. And we had this detached laundry room. So in our detached laundry room, I would often find people who are experiencing homelessness, sleeping.

It was always very awkward when I was startled when someone's in there. I don't know how they kept breaking in. So many of us were so broke. I've talked to so many Bethel students. I just had one slide in my DMs on Instagram this week, and we were joking about how embarrassed we are at how much we used to beg for money. because it was very encouraged to just ask people to pay for your rent,

ask people to help you pay for your utilities. My entire 18, 19, 20 ages, I was just constantly asking people to fundraise for me being a missionary. Reading itself, I'd have to look up the population, but it does have a small-ish feel to it. It's not that big, and Bethel is connected to a lot of it. Bethel is everywhere in Reading. You can't go anywhere without running into a Bethel student or just seeing young people and knowing that they go to Bethel.

If I remember correctly, there was about 1,200 students in first year, and then maybe in second year there were around 500. You have to find a place to put all of these students. Their auditorium on their church campus was not big enough to house first year. So as much as they were starting to grow, they knew that they needed to. find a place for them to go. What they decided to do because the city of Reading was struggling so much financially is that the church bought the Civic Center, which is essentially the place where the musical artists would come or comedians would come to do shows and house that sort of entertainment for the city. And Bethel made a deal with the city and said,

We will buy the Civic Center, which will help the city financially, and will run the Civic Center. We are going to have our school at the Civic Center. But with that, Bethel did have a say and who got to come and who got to perform and what artists could be booked there. So there was a lot of pushback on that from the residents saying, well, we don't want a church deciding what comedians or what artists can come see us because we're only ever going to get Christian artists. that didn't end up entirely being true. There were non-Christian artists and people who had come through, but it was more the idea that Bethel did have the power to stop it and they could decide what was appropriate and what wasn't appropriate for the city. So that really upset a lot of people in Reading. Bethel itself is beautiful. I can't even imagine how much money goes into that building.

Bethel is super rich. From what I've always heard, they could. afford it. They like to say it as if, like, we did the city such a favor. We got them out of a bad place by buying the Civic Center. And they did some things to help the city. I do like to be fair. They would have the students clean up the city for free and do other different things for the city, like helping with graffiti. I'm sure that there were some that did really like Bethel because they were saying, well, we want to change the culture of writing because there was a lot of crime and they're saying, we're bringing all of these good Christian kids and adults to come and help and we're going to have our school serve you to try to win over the people of Reading.

On an economical level, we were taking a lot of jobs. There was a big problem with the students getting part-time jobs, working at Starbucks or just anywhere in town. The people who were born and raised in Reading couldn't find work. I had a very difficult time finding a job when I was living in Reading. My first job when I was at Bethel was working at Taco Bell. It was the only place that would hire me. And then I ended up working at a charter school as a teacher's assistant. So I was like a little kindergarten teacher aide slash lunch lady at this charter school. I was very lucky to get that job, but I know that it was very hard for the citizens of Reading because Bethel students were just absolutely taking over the city.

My first year was in 2012. At the Civic Center, it did feel very full. You go to class and you're basically having it in this very large auditorium. There's bleachers, you know, an arena-type seating. When I first walked in, I thought this was the coolest thing ever to have class in a building like this. It was Monday through Friday. we would meet at the Civic Center and we would have, I believe, at least an hour of worship where

craziness is ensuing. Lots of people prophesying over other people. There's people dancing. Sometimes it would get really, really rowdy. Sometimes there would be conga lines. People just having fun. You feel like you're at a giant party. Sometimes if the spirit was moving and if things were feeling very anointed that day, the leadership would come on stage and they would say, we just feel like God is doing something really special, so we're going to push back the speaking, and we're just going to keep doing worship. One thing that we would do is we would line up two lines facing each other, kind of like, you know, in soccer when kids would like go through the middle of two lines, what they would do is they would ask us to go through the lines and

everybody's touching them and praying for them, and then all of a sudden these people start quote unquote manifesting, they're like shaking, they're laughing, they're filled with God, they might fall in the middle of the thing, and they would call them fire tunnels. This is something that people would do when the anointing was really high or everybody was really feeling it in service that day. I'm like, I love being amongst these people. It just feels fun to be there. And another really interesting thing about the church. And I don't know the exact stats, but it felt like 50% of the students, were not from America. It honestly might even be more. There were so many international students.

We had a lot from Norway, Sweden, a lot of people from Africa, England, Mexico, Canada. I had friends from all over the world. All of a sudden, I'm newly 18. I'm living in California. I feel like I'm on this adventure to change the world at this like Hogwarts school. And now all of my friends are from all over the world. And you just feel kind of cultured. It was a fun difference from growing up in Texas. The majority of my really close friends were the international students. I clicked a lot with them and I became really close with a lot of Norwegian people. I'm still friends with a good amount of them. I had a romantic interest with someone from Norway to Bethel was known as the hipster church. A lot of the students were attractive and you could

tell by looking at them that they went to Bethel because this was like peak hipster time with beards and mustaches. There was a lot of that going on, a lot of plaid, a lot of hats. We would just keep worshipping and keep worshiping. Whenever worship was finished, we would have speakers. So we would sometimes have the leader of the church or his second in command, other leaders throughout the school who would come and speak as well. It got tiring quickly. for me that portion of Bethel. I did enjoy my first year, but imagine sitting in church five days a week for like eight hours. It's a lot after a while. I remember I did not want to go to church on Sunday. It really kind of ruined church for me. A lot of Bethel students, they wouldn't go to church

because they're like, well, I did this five days this week. I'm not really in the mood, but you would have to scan in because it was part of the school that you needed to go to church. One really interesting thing that you might not really think about is we have all of these students and we can't go all to the same service or else we would fill up the entire auditorium and nobody who just lives in Reading and isn't a student could go to church because it would be overflowing. So all of the students were assigned a specific church service that they were allowed to go to. I personally was never allowed to go to church in the auditorium where everybody was. They had these secondary places where you could go.

There was a building a few miles down from Bethel, where you would go and you would watch the live feed of the church happening in another little church that they had partnered with. You might be in an overflow room. I remember being like, I can't believe I moved all the way out here to Bethel and I'm not even allowed to go to the church service. We would have class, and then we would also have these other things called activations. Activations were on Thursdays and everybody got a different one. There was a sign-up list and it

essentially was like an elective, but it was an elective where you were serving the city or serving others in our community. Some of the activations that you could sign up for were to go to the local nursing home, go and hang out with them every Thursday. I remember that there was one where they would like go to strip clubs and they would try to talk to the sex workers as they were leaving. They would give goodie bags. It was probably like nail polish and sweet stuff, you know, like, oh, we're being nice. Can we pray for you? So that was one activation. Some of the activations were like going to the mall and praying for strangers. Some of them were more community based cleaning and stuff like that. You got to pick your top three that you wanted to do,

but you're assigned one at the end of the day because not everybody can get their first option. This one that I got leads into one of the big core things that Bethel believes in, which is treasure hunting. Treasure hunting was a part of the film that I saw, the documentary, The Finger of God. It showed these Bethel students going on quote unquote treasure hunts. Essentially what this means is everybody gets in a circle, you're with a group of people, you close your eyes, and you're supposed to pray to God and ask him, show me who I'm supposed to pray for, show me what they're wearing, show me what they look like. Everybody's deep in prayer. And then when you open your eyes, you're supposed to get a piece of paper or take out your phone and write down what you saw. So,

for example, you might say, I saw a woman with a red hat or a man with a large beard or I saw a yellow shirt and you write down all of these physical characteristics that you see. You are supposed to go and find your quote unquote treasure. This obviously became a very big problem for the people of Reading because they are trying to just shop. And all of a sudden there are Bethel students coming up to you and a conversation might go like, hi, I see that you're wearing a yellow shirt. I have this piece of paper. I prayed to God and I asked him, who should I pray for today? And he told me yellow shirt, you are wearing a yellow shirt and I just feel like God wants me to talk to you. Is there anything that you need prayer for? The script would just happen over and over and over with everybody. And I remember as a

student, I got treasure hunted. Somebody came up to me when I was trying to grocery shopping. I was annoyed. I was like, bro, I'm just trying to get my groceries. It's pretty inescapable. It happens all the time. If they were Christians, a lot of the time they would humor us and they'll let us do it. And some of them actually liked it. But you definitely got people saying, somebody came up to me a week ago. Like, please leave me alone. I'm sick and tired of you guys.

You know, and they could get really mad. Or a lot of the times they would just walk away. You were encouraged to just go give out, quote unquote, prophetic words all the time during school. You'd be in worship and somebody would tap on your shoulder and say, God just told me this thing about you. I remember one time somebody gave me a prophetic word and I am a naturally anxious person. I am worried about bad things happening to me. And a stranger told me, God told me that you don't have to worry and that you're going to be safe.

You are his anointed chosen people. No harm is going to come to you. At the time, I found that very comforting. I thought, okay, I am protected. God is going to make sure nothing bad happens to me because I'm a chosen teacher of his word. But as I started to deconstruct in later years, I started to think, okay, well, what about everybody else? Everybody else who dies of cancer, they're not protected. People who die in mass shootings, they're not protected, but somehow I am more special than them.

And do I want to serve a God like that? Do I want to serve a God that looks at me and says, yes, Jubilee deserves to be protected above everybody else? they would often use children as well to give these prophetic words. I know that Bethel had a children's school. I think they still do. And they teach these kids from a young age to prophesy. Something that Bethel preached a lot, they would say that God is always talking. If you wanted to get a prophetic word for someone, say they told me, Jubilee, you need to give Tiffany a prophecy.

I could not say, well, God hasn't told me anything for Tiffany. They would say, well, God is always speaking, so you're just not listening to what he's saying because God always has something to say. So you end up being left with this environment where people are like really scraping the bottom of the barrel to try to get a word for people. I remember in the beginning, one of the head pastors, he did a whole thing on prophetic words and he had said, I want everybody to stand up and give a prophetic word to the person on your right. We don't know how to get prophetic words. We don't know what we're doing. And he said, just do it. So we said it. And then he said, okay, now, good job everybody for doing that. I want everybody to commit to

messing up three times this year because you're never going to get it all right. It came across as this very, don't be afraid to fail kind of speech. We'd step out in faith. When you're telling people to give life-altering prophetic words out of nowhere. And don't worry about making mistake. Don't worry if it's wrong. You tried. People were really taught that whatever comes into your mind could be a prophetic word, even if it's just some random intrusive thought. Another thing that they would do is they would give you an object sometimes. They would call it practicing our prophetic gifts. They might give me a red marker and they would say prophesy based off of this red marker. So I might say, this red marker has the ability to create beautiful pictures

and God's just telling me that you're so creative. People are just getting stuff out of nowhere, but you're praised for it. You're a good student. You're communicating God's heart. You just have a lot of people fumbling their way around. It was horrible for my social anxiety. If you ever went to a birthday party at Bethel. They would say, let's all gather around and give prophecies to the birthday girl or the birthday boy. So we'd have like a group of 20 people and they'd say, sit in the middle and we're going to go around the circle and we are all going to give a prophecy for you. And this was pretty standard at Bethel birthdays. And I distinctly remember leaving multiple birthdays before the cake was cut because I wanted to avoid it. I was like, no thank you.

I'm not about that. But this was pretty standard. It was, it was. expected at these sorts of gatherings that we're all just going to come up with prophecies out of nowhere. I remember plenty of times when they were wanting me to give prophetic words to people, and I would think to myself, I just pictured a tree, but that's probably because I passed a tree on the way to Bethel earlier, but maybe that was God. Maybe God wanted me to say something about how they're very rooted and they're going to grow strong. You would come up with anything off the top of your head and they convince you, you're not lying. For my activation, I got a specific street in Reading. I was supposed to go to this street every single Thursday for an entire year. The goal of my activation

was we were supposed to minister to this street. This street was only a couple blocks away from my apartment, so it was a rough side of town. We were supposed to go and knock on apartment doors and ask them, could I take out your trash? Could I mow your lawn? Could I do anything for you? Can I pray for you? And there wasn't much on my street. It was literally just apartments. And then there was a thrift store at the very end of the road. So that is all we had to work with for this entire time. I was extremely introverted. You have to remember, I was bullied growing up. I was not very talkative. I had come alive a bit more, but I was still nervous. Think how awkward that is. to just walk up to people and say, can I pray for you?

I was not happy about the activation that I got. I remember complaining to my leaders. They didn't really like me because I told them, I don't want to knock on doors. I feel very uncomfortable with that. I don't like treasure hunting. It makes me feel uncomfortable because it makes me feel like we are treating people

like their projects. And I don't want anybody to feel like they're a checklist on my piece of paper. That doesn't feel right to me. They would just try to talk to me and say, you shouldn't feel bad that you are forcing this on them because you're forcing something good on them. We would just have this back and forth where I would tell them I was really uncomfortable with it and they would say, well, this is your activation, this is what we're doing and we're treasure hunting this year. I did find another friend who was from Germany. He was so sweet and he wasn't against treasure hunting, but he was shy.

So him and I became friends and we found a way around this. activation. What we decided that we were going to do is we had found this mom who had three or four kids who lived in this apartment complex. She was very sweet. I really, really liked her. And she had these kids that she needed help with. And I told her, could I come every Thursday and babysit your kids for you? And she was like, thank you so much. That would be amazing. Yes, please. So I used to just like give this mom a break every Thursday. That's what I chose to do with my activation. I would play tag with these kids and they became friends with me. I still keep up with them. And to me, that felt so much more real. I'm actually building a relationship with these people

and we're actually friends. And I never tried to like push my religion on them or anything. That's how I got through that year because they kept asking me like, step outside your comfort zone, go to a different apartment this week. And I was like, no, I'm going to do this. And I'm going to play hopscotch with these kids. So that's what my first year activation was. What was the end goal? The end goal is to get people to be Christians. And obviously at the end of the day, Bethel wanted them to be their type of Christian because they think that they have their right answer. But I do think that Bethel would have been fine if these people became Christians and didn't come to the church. I think it was more so it makes Bethel look really good, and they're helping the community.

Some of the students thrived doing that because they were outgoing, but I know a lot of people who did not like treasure hunting. It was a core part of Bethel culture. They just were like, this is our giving back to the community. And also, we are trying to get people saved. We are trying to get people to know the love of God. That was really the goal of activation. At Bethel, it was very much like, yes, you can be a Christian and be saved and you'll go to heaven. Like, say if you're Baptist, okay, and you are just very by the book and you don't believe in all this crazy charismatic stuff, but they're missing out.

It's almost like you pity them, the church. They would act like, wow, we feel kind of sorry for those other Christians because they just don't get it. They're missing out on so much of who God really is. it very much harbors this level of superiority and judgment, which is so culty. It's like everybody is wrong and we're right. And we have the answer. It's almost like they wanted to flaunt how cool it was to, totally leaning into the Harry Potter type thing. Like, well, we see signs and wonders.

Normal Christianity, why would we do that when we can do this? they wanted to keep you at Bethel. I remember the leader of Bethel, he would come and talk to the first year students. I probably talked to him maybe twice. They're like rock stars. These pastors at this church, they are like celebrities, like, oh my gosh, I talk to Bill Johnson. They do nothing to discourage that, in my humble opinion. He told this story so many times this was like a mic drop thing, what I'm about to say.

He said, so many. of these students come up to me and they tell me all of the things that they're learning, all of the cool things that we're teaching and how they want to go change the world. And he would say, that is awesome that you want to change the world. But come back to me in 20 years. And let's see if you're still burning for God after 20 years. And that'll be the real test of time. I want you to come up to me in 20 years and we'll grab a coffee and we'll talk about how you never strayed from God. Because that's the real testimony. So there is this level of like, don't walk away, don't question it.

You don't want to be one of those people who has your eyes opened and then decides that you want to be blind again. Is very much how this church was. And he would tell the story all the time, like, keep burning. I hope you're burning in 20 years. He would just repeat that. So it's very ingrained in you. Next time, on something was wrong. My stomach just dropped.

It's hard to explain how isolating it felt in that moment to feel like you can't go anywhere to be safe in Reading. There's people listening everywhere who are just ready to crucify you for your sins. I felt so violated. I think that that is when I knew that I wasn't going to go back to Bethel for my third year. I was really excited to move to Pennsylvania. I was thinking that it was going to be a really good fresh start. We went to this conference at the church and Ted stopped us and gave us a prophetic word. That was my first introduction to him and he seemed very nice.

He was a student in his second year, but he also worked part-time as a custodian for the church. So he was connected. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe, friends. Something was wrong is a broken cycle media production. created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones,

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