The Manhattan Project
David Courchaine is the son of Tom Courchaine, pastor of New Life Church, a small message church in Sweetwater, Tennessee. He occasionally speaks at the church, and this has been increasing of late.
What is the "Manhattan Project"
In an intense, emotional video posted on Facebook on May 8, 2026, David described what he calls the "Manhattan Project":
- What is the Manhattan project? I am systematically dismantling every lie ever set against the message of the hour. All of them. Too long has the forces of darkness hurt God’s people… from the liars of Rod Bergen, John Collins, Tim Humes, and the others… Jeff Jenkins. I am systematically dismantling every single lie they have ever told.
- I am eight chapters in to Bergen’s book. Four hundred seven footnotes out of nine hundred fifty-five. It’s a lie. I actually have looked at it. I’ve lost track of all the lies. That’s what the Manhattan Project is. And when I’m done, the Manhattan Project is going to produce nukes that nuke these liars words back into hell where they belong. Because they’re lies and they come from the father of lies. They pervert what Brother Branham said into their own little lies a lie. So that’s what I’m doing and that’s what I’m going to do.
- Too long have this lies of Satan hurt God’s people. And no more. When I’m done someone can look at this stuff and conclude whatever they want, but they can’t conclude that these guys are honest, because they’re not. I just spent five and a half hours straight without stopping, running a voice message, going through three-fourths of the rest of chapter eight from the Arizona Cloud from Rod Bergen. It’s a piece of hell is what it is. It’s a lie. Even by intellectual standards. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what the Manhattan Project is. So I appreciate your prayers as I take these lies and I put them back in hell where they belong. Too long has this hell hurt God’s bride. And when I am done, it would be no more.”[1]
Several people contacted us after he posted this video to let us know about it and to request prayer for David as he seemed to be on the verge of an emotional breakdown. It was clear from watching the video that David Courchaine was experiencing cognitive dissonance; however, because he is in a group where all five of the criteria required for increased fervency of belief are present, we must, in his eyes, be considered liars. This is what cognitive dissonance does to a person.
Courchaine's use of the term "The Manhattan Project" is interesting, as the original Manhattan Project resulted in the deaths of 150,000 to 246,,000 innocent civilians in Japan, while at least 86 workers perished in construction and radiation accidents at the Manhattan Project facilities in the U.S. Additionally downwind communities in New Mexico, primarily Hispanic and Native American populations, also suffered chronic health issues and elevated cancer rates due to fallout from testing.
Courchaine originally announced the Manhattan Project in a series of videos on Facebook and Instagram; however, these have all since been deleted. He also removed all of the episodes of his YouTube podcast, "What do you mean by."
Premature evaluation
From the video transcript above, it is clear that David Courchaine started with his conclusions already established... before examining all the evidence. This is typical of cult followers. The ad hominem attacks (attacking the person rather than the arguments) he engaged in are also typical of responses from a person in a cult.
While he has not released any of his "findings" with respect to his "research," he has given a number of clues in several recent sermons as well as in a document entitled "The Manhattan Project: Part One - The Meta-Layer" he published in May (but has since withdrawn). While we wait for his "bomb" to drop, let's look at the content of his recent sermons.
What is the Message? - Part 5 - Why Me? - All Things - 2026-04-22
David appears to be warm, self-deprecating, repeatedly generous toward Calvinists, Arminians, Catholics, and even atheists ("some of my best conversations have come from people who don't believe in God at all"). This is at odds with hi s calling us liars.
This sermon may be where the idea of the Manhattan Project started. In many of the videos he deleted, he talked about epistemology, the study of the nature, origin, scope, and limits of human knowledge. In this sermon, he appears to be retreating to higher ground, attempting to build an epistemological fortress, a theory of knowledge designed so that no evidence could ever counter the Message.
His core claim
His core claim is that you cannot use reasoning or evidence to establish spiritual truth. Such truth is grasped only by faith and revelation. The moment you allow reasoning to have a vote, you've already surrendered to the enemy.
And the HUGE problem with this is he spends 45 minutes reasoning and citing evidence to convince you of that. He gives definitions, walks through history, cites Greek and Hebrew, compares proof texts, and weighs Calvinism against Arminianism. Every one of those is an appeal to your reason. A claim that "reason cannot establish truth" cannot itself be established by reason without refuting itself, and it cannot be established by revelation without simply asking you to take his word for it.
The law of non-contradiction isn't a hostile skeptic's tool; it's the precondition for meaning in any statement at all. When Courchaine says "intellectual consistency is not truth," he needs that statement itself to be intellectually consistent and true, or there's no reason to accept it. The sentence eats its own tail.
This is the load-bearing wall of Clourchaine's argument. If it falls, then the whole "you can't question the Message" apparatus falls with it. While it should be obvious, cognitive dissonance will prevent those in the message from feeling the sleight of hand even before they can name it: he told me not to reason, and then reasoned with me for an hour.
God and logic
- Main articles: God and the rules of logic and Logic and the Message
God serves as the foundation of all logic, having created the reality in which we discover the rules of laws.
Footnotes
- ↑ Transcript of video posted by David Courchaine on Facebook on May 8, 2026. The video was subsequently deleted from his feed. The transcript is verbatim. We have not corrected any grammar.