• 2 months ago
Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham

Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast

Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K

John invites Bob Scott to discuss the Kansas City Prophets and Mike Bickle’s movement. They explore the contrast between their personal, behind-the-scenes experiences with various religious leaders and the public personas these figures present. The dialogue touches on themes like manipulation within religious organizations, the cult-like dynamics of groups like Kansas City Fellowship (KCF), and how leaders manipulate their followers. They reflect on how people are often kept in a state of urgency and fear, convinced that they are part of a special, end-time movement.

As the discussion progresses, they also delve into the human side of these religious figures, showing that many leaders are deeply flawed and can engage in behavior they know to be wrong while believing it serves a higher purpose. This exploration leads to a broader analysis of religious movements’ tendency to exploit their members, whether knowingly or unknowingly, for financial or reputational gain. The conversation also hints at the difficulties in escaping the cycle of manipulation and control, as former members often remain psychologically tied to the same systems they left.

00:00 Introduction
02:09 Personal experiences with Kansas City Fellowship
05:50 The different perspectives of leadership and members
09:55 Emotional challenges in exposing movements
14:06 Financial interests and manipulation in large churches
19:59 Urgency and control in religious movements
24:55 Narcissism and leadership within ministries
30:05 The spectrum of religious experiences
35:10 The cycle of false end-time prophecies
38:47 Psychological damage from leaving religious movements
43:10 Leaders manipulating members for personal gain
48:07 Bob Scott’s personal journey and separation from Mike Bickle
54:10 The historical roots of religious manipulation
1:02:15 Eugenics and racism’s influence on religious movements
1:07:10 Closing thoughts and future plans for further discussion
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books

Category

📚
Learning
Transcript
00:00:00You
00:00:30Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham historical research podcast.
00:00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham historical research
00:00:42at william-branham.org.
00:00:44And with me, I have my very special guest, Bob Scott, former member of IHOPKC and author
00:00:50of Some Said They Blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City
00:00:56Prophets and the International House of Prayer.
00:00:59Bob, it's good to have you on here.
00:01:01We've had a really good conversation leading up to this podcast and some good conversation
00:01:08beforehand, but I just wanted to say that I read your book.
00:01:12I had a lot of trouble reading it because I would be reading it and you and I have a
00:01:20sort of a different perspective from the rank and file members of these things.
00:01:24So as I'm reading it, my mind kept wandering back to my own time and situation and the
00:01:30perspectives that we have are so different from what people who just join this thing
00:01:35and can't see behind the curtains, you know.
00:01:39And the one phrase that stuck out to me the most out of the whole book, you were talking
00:01:43about how it was like a three ring circus.
00:01:47And I know exactly what you're trying to say with that because it's not just that it's
00:01:52a circus act, but these stage guys get up and even the most humble minister who has,
00:01:59you know, not even a bad person, when they get up into the presence of people, they put
00:02:05on this persona that's quite different from what you see behind the scenes.
00:02:09And I remember this.
00:02:10So glad to have you on here.
00:02:12Glad to talk about your book.
00:02:13Well, thank you.
00:02:14Just one point of clarification.
00:02:16I'm a KCF guy, not an IHOP guy.
00:02:18I was never involved with IHOP.
00:02:21That was a whole other generation.
00:02:24So my roots are actually the roots of IHOP, right?
00:02:28Got it.
00:02:29So it's the whole KCF world.
00:02:30So one thing I find interesting, and to your point, I think what may differ us from most
00:02:41people is our proximity to these situations.
00:02:45For most people, and I'm realizing this especially in talking with the IHOPers, that the people
00:02:52that I wrote about in the book, for them are sort of like mythological or biblical figures,
00:02:58right?
00:02:59They're stories that Mike had told them about people, right?
00:03:04I lived it.
00:03:05These were my friends, right?
00:03:06These are people that I have emotional attachments with.
00:03:11And so for me, and for you, it's very visceral, right?
00:03:15So that's one perspective that we have that's different from most of the people sitting
00:03:20out in the pew or who may have read David Pitch's book, Some Said It Thundered, right?
00:03:26They had this whole perspective that's really, in my mind, more of a fairy tale, right?
00:03:34It's an idealistic worldview, right?
00:03:38My world is broken clay vessels in the grace of God.
00:03:41Yeah, I'm glad you clarified that.
00:03:43I had just interviewed a person from IHOPKC, and in my little intro spiel, I have it typed
00:03:50out and I had left that up there, but in your book, I do remember you having the separation
00:03:57before that.
00:03:58But you're right, talking about the people who were in it, I love some of the people,
00:04:04even some of the really bad people from the movement that I escaped.
00:04:09My own grandfather was a pastor at Branham Tabernacle.
00:04:13I love my grandfather.
00:04:16To me, he was a special person, but to the family whose father was physically abusive
00:04:24to them and my grandfather who sided with the abuser over the victims, I'm sure to them
00:04:29they have a completely different perspective of that man than I have.
00:04:33I can respect that from reading what you have written, because we had a connection
00:04:40to the people that other people didn't have, but we also saw a side of them that many of
00:04:44them did not see.
00:04:46In the book, I talk about the three Ps, right?
00:04:50Perception, perspective, paradigm, right?
00:04:54Our five senses see things, we accumulate information, right?
00:05:01But then where you are in your subculture takes that information and it frames it into
00:05:07a perspective.
00:05:08I've had to kind of learn this because I deal a lot overseas.
00:05:18I went through a whole experience of losing friends over there, so I deal with a lot of
00:05:22racial reconciliation stuff.
00:05:24One of the key points in that is you've got to be able to hear people who have very different
00:05:30perspectives about the same thing.
00:05:33You see that in families, right?
00:05:35It's like you can tell a story about something that happened 30 years ago, and depending
00:05:40on where you are in the birth order, you have a completely different perspective of what
00:05:45that event happened, right?
00:05:48So as we've talked about, I've listened to a couple of your podcasts and I'm enjoying
00:05:55hearing your perspective because it's really different.
00:05:58I don't have what you have, right?
00:06:02So in fact, I was just thinking about this the other day because you had a guy on, I
00:06:08don't know when it was, but he was kind of animated and he made this statement, don't
00:06:12they understand that they're just repeating this?
00:06:17And I wanted to say to him, no.
00:06:20No, they don't.
00:06:22Nobody ever heard of this, right?
00:06:24In other words, what's so normal to you, what's so a part of your world, none of us
00:06:32knew it.
00:06:33I had never heard of William Branham, right?
00:06:35I didn't know anything about Ladder, none of this until I was struggling what was going
00:06:41on with Kansas City and started drilling down.
00:06:44But the vast majority of Christians out there never heard of William Branham.
00:06:49So you and I are similar in that we got to see some of both sides of the perspectives
00:06:57because you're in the room with all of the guys who are making the decisions, but you're
00:07:01also in the room with the other people who see the decisions after they're made.
00:07:05I was reading your book, so many things come to mind, I'm probably going to go down all
00:07:10kinds of rabbit trails, but I recall there was a really, really good person.
00:07:17This was a good friend of mine, he was a really good person, very sincere, praying
00:07:21to God that God would give him some sort of a, I don't know, I think he was praying for
00:07:27a leadership position, but he was praying for something better, I guess, in the church.
00:07:32I remember seeing his side of it because I was close to him.
00:07:35I also remember seeing the leadership side, and they just recognized that he was a person
00:07:41who was willing to help out.
00:07:44So two came together from the leadership side, they said, hey, yeah, this person looks like
00:07:49they may alleviate whatever stress or needs we have here.
00:07:53And then on this side, the guy is praying to God and he's thinking some great miracle
00:07:57that just magically chose me.
00:07:59Well, when you see both sides of it, it's all working together.
00:08:05Maybe that's part of God's plan and God is controlling both pieces, but my perspective
00:08:10is different because I saw the ends that led to the means, if you know what I'm saying.
00:08:16Darrell Bock Well, I think for me, one of the big challenges
00:08:19is can I see God in all the brokenness?
00:08:22You know what I mean?
00:08:23It's like one of the temptations for us because there's pain involved in it, there's destruction.
00:08:32Bob Jones destroyed my life.
00:08:36So when I write about him, I'm having to do something which is uncomfortable, which
00:08:45is park my emotions and step back and try to look at this objectively, which is really
00:08:54hard to do.
00:08:55So what's kind of interesting is that I think with our age, one of the things that I'm getting
00:09:08a lot of feedback on is thank you for writing a book that's layered, nuanced, and not reactionary.
00:09:16Because we're at that point in life where we've seen a few things and we just really
00:09:21don't need more gossip, more sensationalism, more hysteria.
00:09:26We're just trying to be somewhat analytical and unpacking this thing where some of the
00:09:33people that have just come out of the IHOP world in October, my meetings with them, they're
00:09:38in pain.
00:09:39They're hurting.
00:09:40Their emotions are raw right now.
00:09:44And so I've had to be very careful in how I'm interacting with these groups because
00:09:52they're both looking at the book from two very different perspectives, right?
00:09:58Both absolutely valid, they're just different, right?
00:10:00So I got a little bit of trouble because some of the IHOPers wanted me to crucify these
00:10:05guys, right?
00:10:06It's like, send them to the gas chambers.
00:10:10And I'm like, yeah, but you don't understand, there's good and evil going on here.
00:10:15This is way more complex than these.
00:10:20That's why I have a real problem with cancel culture, right?
00:10:24There's this whole kind of thing that's really, in terms of human history, a relatively new
00:10:31concept, but suddenly now we're intellectual and somebody because they did this one thing
00:10:37is they've ever done is evil, you know, for me, I don't see the world like that.
00:10:43Yeah, I don't either.
00:10:45And you know, back to the circus example, it's like you're walking a tightrope, right?
00:10:51The people who have been preyed upon spiritually, they have been sold a false bill of goods
00:10:57that God inspired this whole thing and that these were super humans in God's eyes, basically.
00:11:04But like myself, you had a different side of these guys.
00:11:09You were friends with these guys.
00:11:10You watched as people come together and work and collaborate.
00:11:16They often collaborate because there is a relationship there, sometimes a close friendship
00:11:22or a business opportunity, whatever it is.
00:11:24But there's a reason why these men came together.
00:11:27And then they pitched it as it was great as if it was greater than this.
00:11:32But you see that behind the scenes, you see all of these people, you become friends with
00:11:35them, they because they're humans, they can do human things.
00:11:40And sometimes they're not so good.
00:11:42So they turn on you.
00:11:43And I've had friends that I watched as they grew into the spiritual leadership under the
00:11:51different Branham organizations, and I watched them change.
00:11:55I watched them be really close friends to it just went straight to their head.
00:12:00I watched it go to their head.
00:12:01I watched them sever relationships.
00:12:04So I get all of that.
00:12:06Like I said, I'm reading your book and my mind's going through all these rabbit holes
00:12:10It literally took me days to get through it because I would have to stop and reflect on
00:12:15my own experiences.
00:12:16Well, one of the things I found interesting is that the average book, only 63% of people
00:12:24finish it.
00:12:27This particular book, what I'm hearing from people is they couldn't put it down and they
00:12:32read it through really fast because they wanted to get through all the like, what is he going
00:12:38to say next?
00:12:39Because it's just one kind of wow after another.
00:12:43Right.
00:12:44Then they come back and go, now I'm actually reading it very slowly.
00:12:49I'll read a chapter.
00:12:50I need a few days.
00:12:51I think about it.
00:12:52I start processing how did this impact me?
00:12:57Where was this positive?
00:12:58Where was this negative?
00:13:00So it's sort of it's doing what I had hoped to do when I didn't really ever even want
00:13:07to do this book.
00:13:08I mean, there's a whole story about how it actually happened.
00:13:11But in the end, the only reason I did it was if it could heal people.
00:13:16Like if in me sharing my perspectives at the end of this journey, reading this book, people
00:13:24could go, OK, I have closure.
00:13:27I have understanding.
00:13:28I can forgive.
00:13:30I can heal and I can move on with my life.
00:13:33And I'm no longer a prisoner of this moment or this decade of my life or whatever.
00:13:40So that's where I was.
00:13:41That was my motive.
00:13:42Yeah, absolutely.
00:13:44And I had when I wrote my big book on Branham ism, it was the same.
00:13:49People have sent me pictures where the covers are just all torn up or they've read it
00:13:54multiple times.
00:13:55And kind of like you mentioned, a lot of them came as thrill seekers.
00:14:00They're trying to quickly get through it and see what are the thrills in the book.
00:14:03And then they're like, wait, there's there's some actual substance here.
00:14:07I want to I missed it.
00:14:08Let's go back. And I think for me, that was as all of the things that I've looked from
00:14:14the Kansas City Fellowship through the literally all of these movements, I can talk
00:14:20about Wimmer. I can talk about the cares mania and talk about Bethel.
00:14:24There's all they all tie back to this framework.
00:14:27And like you said, many people have never heard the name William Branham.
00:14:31And I even though I call my website that it's not really so much that it's Branham, but
00:14:37there was a framework that was created before Branham that Branham just simply used and
00:14:43reused and taught other people how to do it.
00:14:45You get Paul Cain in this mix and Paul Cain is going around teaching all these other
00:14:49people. And it's really, you know, it's a false bill of goods, what they're selling.
00:14:56But in the end, they're they're really trying to bottle up and sell Christianity.
00:15:01And for me, that's the big problem.
00:15:03They have found ways to capitalize, to monetize and to bastardize Christianity.
00:15:10Well, as I said in the book, it's a trillion dollar a year business in America.
00:15:16And one of the things that concerns me deeply is it's so ingrained in the American
00:15:25church. It's so normal to us, right, that we don't even think differently, like nobody
00:15:31actually stops and thinks about it.
00:15:33And we just, you know, we're like Pink Floyd or another brick in the wall.
00:15:37Right. It's just we all go to church on Sunday.
00:15:39There's this routine we do.
00:15:41We never actually stop and critically think about it, at least the average person does.
00:15:46And it's like, well, that's what I'm supposed to do.
00:15:47Right. So my friends are doing.
00:15:50And so that's one of the things I was hoping the book would do is just start people to
00:15:57maybe reevaluate, hey, we got a problem here.
00:16:00And here's one of the things that talking about perspective, I've watched a few videos
00:16:07lately that have come out.
00:16:09And the phrase always is we are having a clergy abuse.
00:16:15We're having a sexual abuse epidemic.
00:16:19Right. So it's framed as though this is something that's, you know, that's recent.
00:16:25It's happening now.
00:16:27You know, it's bigger than ever before.
00:16:30Well, that's because you haven't really done your homework.
00:16:34You haven't really done your historical research.
00:16:38Just as a frame of reference here, I grew up in Milwaukee.
00:16:43When I was in high school, a group of deaf boys, well, now men come out and basically
00:16:50say, well, they were at St.
00:16:51John's School for the Deaf.
00:16:53Father Lawrence Murphy was abusing them.
00:16:56Right. Nobody wanted to believe them.
00:16:58Right. The papers wouldn't do it.
00:17:00The D.A. wouldn't look into it because, no, that just doesn't happen.
00:17:05Right. Well, long story short, it all comes out that Father Murphy abused 200 boys.
00:17:12Wow. Over two decades.
00:17:13Right. This wasn't like some fantasy in their mind, like some weird thing they'd made up
00:17:20because they wanted to be victims.
00:17:22This was a painful reality.
00:17:24Well, then, of course, you know, for the next two decades, it's just the stories get pouring out.
00:17:29Right. Well, then what ended up happening is the Protestants got kind of arrogant.
00:17:33Right. It's like, oh, it's those Catholics.
00:17:36You know, they're perverts.
00:17:37You know, it's because those priests aren't married.
00:17:39Right. And I remember a few people who were like you were historical.
00:17:46They were researchers.
00:17:47They'd actually studied things and they were warning people like, be careful here because
00:17:53you're making an assumption only because it's news.
00:17:57Yeah. There's a whole Protestant side of this that hasn't come out because of all the
00:18:04reasons we've talked about.
00:18:05You know, you can't you know, the leaders have created this whole shield around themselves
00:18:10using biblical verses saying you can't slander, you can't gossip, you can't speak against
00:18:16the man of God. Right.
00:18:17And so people have been holding these secrets, but it's all there and it always has been.
00:18:23Right. Yeah.
00:18:25It's almost like and I don't want to make light of the sexual issues because that is a big
00:18:31deal. Don't get me wrong, but it's almost like it has became a scapegoat.
00:18:36Because like you said, it's been going on for decades.
00:18:39It's in both the Catholic or the Protestant.
00:18:42But so one of the things that we experienced when we left the Branham cult, we started
00:18:46trying denominational churches.
00:18:48We went to several different.
00:18:50I didn't go to all of them, but I did try several of them.
00:18:53And I was a little bit shocked to find once we left how similar it was in certain areas
00:19:02and how unsimilar it was in other areas.
00:19:05And some of the areas that really matched what we came out of were the destructive
00:19:10qualities. For instance, I went I'm not going to name the denomination, but we went to a
00:19:15specific famous denomination and we actually had a couple of good years there.
00:19:20And then all of a sudden out of the blue, they wanted to institute this divine healing
00:19:26for the mental health issues.
00:19:30They set up a facility and literally started preaching that if you have mental health
00:19:35issues, it's because you have sin in your life.
00:19:37You need to submit to the authority of your pastor.
00:19:40We will wash the sin out of your head and then you will be healed.
00:19:44And, you know, I have family members with mental health issues and some of them
00:19:48require it's a chemical imbalance in some cases.
00:19:51It requires medicine.
00:19:53But they were preaching against the medicine.
00:19:55And I thought, good Lord, man, they're going to create a whole, you know, a whole
00:19:59society of insane people who are who could be helped without their, you know, if they
00:20:04had their medication.
00:20:05But what you're saying is correct, because that framework has invaded the other
00:20:11churches, they put this urgency in it.
00:20:15And that's it's the same urgency that was at Kansas City Fellowship that was in
00:20:19Latter Rain and many of the movements that Latter Rain developed from.
00:20:23There was this sense of urgency.
00:20:25It's right now and we're in the end time getting ourself hyped up in the spiritual
00:20:29state so that we can be the overcomers while the rest of the world suffers.
00:20:35While you're in that state of urgency, you are thinking about aligning yourself
00:20:39according to the doctrine closer to God.
00:20:42But the problem is once something like this happens, then suddenly you come to the
00:20:48realization, well, I was in this hype.
00:20:51Was the hype fake?
00:20:53Well, there was a sexual situation.
00:20:55It must be that that's wrong.
00:20:56And then they all point fingers at that instead of looking at the framework that
00:21:00really enabled the whole mess to start with.
00:21:03Yeah, I agree with you.
00:21:05I totally concur with you.
00:21:06And that's why I didn't focus on the sexual stuff in the book.
00:21:11Right.
00:21:11It's like, let Tammy and Jane don't tell their story.
00:21:15Right.
00:21:15That's their story to tell.
00:21:16Not mine.
00:21:17Yeah, mine was about the system.
00:21:20One of the things that I've tried to get people to understand is that no matter if
00:21:28you're in the church world, if you're in the business world, if you're in the
00:21:33military, anywhere you have hierarchical institutionalism, you have abuse.
00:21:40Right.
00:21:41It's so it's, this is not a uniquely church situation, right?
00:21:46I have this whole concept called the Joseph company where I move sort of
00:21:50seamlessly between the church world and the business world.
00:21:54Almost everything I've seen over here in the church world is also
00:21:58over here in the business world.
00:21:59It's like, there's, there's very little difference other than terminology, right?
00:22:04But I see all the same dynamics, right?
00:22:07In fact, in the book, did you notice I put that whole thing in there about,
00:22:11um, you know, about narcissism, right?
00:22:14How in the business world, narcissism is considered an asset in
00:22:18fortune 500 companies in the CEOs.
00:22:21Yes.
00:22:22Right.
00:22:23In a marriage relationship, it's like a death sentence, right?
00:22:28So again, different environments, different perspectives, you have a completely
00:22:33different point of view on the same concept.
00:22:36Yeah.
00:22:37Like I said, my mind was just going a million places when I read this.
00:22:41So I was a businessman for, I've been a businessman for 25, 30 years,
00:22:48ran my own consulting company.
00:22:50I'm working with C level employees and C working with C working for C level
00:22:55clients, and, um, I, I read exactly what you're saying into what I experienced.
00:23:03Usually it is a person who has a narcissistic personality disorder who
00:23:07rises to the top of these things.
00:23:09But then more than that, so my mind went even further.
00:23:12Think of just the normal operations of a church.
00:23:16And I'm not talking, you know, these little town churches in the middle of
00:23:20nowhere where the community gathers.
00:23:22That's, that's a little bit different, but take the bigger churches for the
00:23:26bigger church to keep the lights on.
00:23:28They have to keep the revenue up to keep the revenue up.
00:23:32They risk losing their tax status.
00:23:34So they have to have expenditures.
00:23:36As a businessman, I know how all of this works and I don't see it as problematic
00:23:41because I know how a business works and a church like it or not.
00:23:45A church is a business.
00:23:46Once you grow to a certain level, you've got to, got to keep the lights
00:23:51on, got to keep the people coming.
00:23:52Well, then once you get into that rhythm of running this business,
00:23:57well, now you have to maintain it.
00:23:59There's what's in business.
00:24:00We call it retention.
00:24:02So you have to have retention.
00:24:04And so your sermons have to become more and more appealing and more fascinating.
00:24:09I'm reading through what you're saying with, you know, Bickel and the rest of
00:24:12these guys, it is a three ring circus to run a business like it or not.
00:24:17If you, if you just simply preach the simple gospel, sad to say half your
00:24:23crowd is going to disappear because most of the people who are growing into these
00:24:26mega churches, they're not there for the gospel.
00:24:29They're there to see the show.
00:24:30Right.
00:24:31And like it or not, that's the way it is.
00:24:34Well, I think these personalities feed on this because they
00:24:38have to keep the doors open.
00:24:40Well, yeah, that's, uh, I actually about three, maybe it's two or three years ago.
00:24:45I actually did a podcast about the crisis of narcissism in our culture.
00:24:52And, and it, uh, it, again, it was controversial, but I was actually,
00:24:59you know, deconstructed this whole thing back to Ayn Rand, her lover
00:25:03Nathaniel Brayden, the whole self-help.
00:25:05Right.
00:25:06And so in the sixties, right, we discovered this whole culture of
00:25:11self-help self, this self, that right.
00:25:13It's self-accused actually, actually, I can't even say it anyways, which
00:25:18ended up then getting, then taught to my kids generation and my grandkids
00:25:24generation to now we have technology like Instagram, where we're all
00:25:30taking pictures of ourselves.
00:25:31We're the star of our own show every day.
00:25:34Right.
00:25:35It's like narcissism.
00:25:36Like my grandparents would be rolling over in their grave if they saw Instagram.
00:25:41Right.
00:25:42Because in their whole world, right.
00:25:45Your value, your sense of belonging was your sacrifice for the greater good.
00:25:53That's why when world war two happened, 2 million young men, some as young as 15
00:25:58and 16, all rushed down to sign up, to go fight in Germany and in the Pacific.
00:26:05Right.
00:26:06For the sake of their country that all got switched in the sixties.
00:26:11Right.
00:26:12And it all became about me.
00:26:13That's why I've said to people in my lifetime, the gospel went from, I exist
00:26:20for the purpose of God to God now exists for the purpose of me.
00:26:25Yeah.
00:26:26Very much so.
00:26:27The whole thing is switched.
00:26:29When, um, I wrote my first book, saving Zimbabwe about martyrdom.
00:26:33Right.
00:26:34I went into a Christian bookstores to figure out where it was going to fit.
00:26:39And I walk in and there's the 20 top selling Christian books, and they're
00:26:43all about how I get something for God.
00:26:46And I'm like, oh my God, my book doesn't fit anywhere in the modern
00:26:52world of Christianity, because it's all about what do I get?
00:26:55Right.
00:26:55So to your point, now we have churches and what are they doing?
00:27:00They're selling services, right?
00:27:02There's there.
00:27:03In other words, you know, people go to these mega churches
00:27:06for what they get out of it.
00:27:08So these, what happens is, is there's this cycle now where these churches and
00:27:14these superstars got to keep producing, right?
00:27:17We got to keep, you know, we got to come up with another thing, another angle.
00:27:22You know, there's so much pressure on these preachers to come up with
00:27:26a new way to say something, you know?
00:27:28And so you get into this, this very dangerous area where you start fabricating.
00:27:34Right.
00:27:34You start manipulating, you're trying to write all so we can keep everybody happy.
00:27:40Yes.
00:27:42You know, a lot of the younger generation don't remember any
00:27:45of the things that you just said.
00:27:47And what's interesting, some of the, a large portion of the older generation,
00:27:52they have been so coerced over time to forget many of the things that you've
00:27:57said, and those of us who study history were appalled at the things that you've
00:28:02said, because the Instagram example, I call it the rabbit's foot God, because
00:28:09they have flipped God upside down to, like you said, it's a God for me, not a
00:28:13me for a God, but it's more than that.
00:28:16It's a rabbit's foot God.
00:28:17You rub it and you get a healing.
00:28:18You rub it, you get a prophecy.
00:28:20I've seen people try to rub it to get a parking space.
00:28:23And it really has turned, you know, it's not a biblical God that they're,
00:28:27they're pushing.
00:28:28And when I talk about the framework that has been copied and over time into all
00:28:34of these various movements that have these connections on the website, I'm
00:28:37talking about specifically that they have turned the Christian model completely
00:28:42upside down, exactly like you said.
00:28:44And it in doing so back to the Instagram example, there is a, there is a real
00:28:51problem with mental health for these people who are so caught up in theirself.
00:28:56They're worried about, so they take the picture of themselves and they put it
00:28:59out for the world and they want the world to come see them.
00:29:02Well, when people stop coming and their views go down or whatever, I can't
00:29:06remember what it's called on Instagram.
00:29:07I'm actually not on there, but there's a psychological problem.
00:29:12They start feeling depression and then that sets in and gets heavier.
00:29:17They get burdened and counseling, but you know, you can read these reports.
00:29:21The counseling offices are overflowing with people because of the social
00:29:25networks will now take that concept and apply it to a minister who probably
00:29:31many of them had good intentions when they started.
00:29:34They get up to the platform and they start growing this instant mega church
00:29:39and they see all these people coming.
00:29:41Well, it's the same way for them.
00:29:42They have to get the likes and they have to, they're feeding on
00:29:46this as humans, they feed on it.
00:29:48So they build themselves up to a place where when they crash, I don't care if
00:29:52it's the sexual thing that brings it down or many, there's many other human
00:29:57problems that can topple it, but it's going to topple once you get to that level.
00:30:01Yeah, I agree.
00:30:02One thing we got to be careful of here, it's sort of like autism.
00:30:07We're talking about a spectrum here.
00:30:09And what it goes, you know, we're kind of talking about the
00:30:14Pentecostal charismatic side.
00:30:17There's more of a circus environment in those circles than there are
00:30:22in more of your evangelical thing.
00:30:24So I want to be careful here that we don't paint everybody with the same brush.
00:30:28Right.
00:30:29You know, we're, we're, we're talking about a spectrum here, but the show, the
00:30:34circus is very much in the Pentecostal charismatic sort of world.
00:30:42Now I'm going to say something that's going to surprise some people,
00:30:47but again, understand my world.
00:30:49I have spent 40 years of my life behind the scenes working with most of the most,
00:30:56but many of these guys that are the superstars, guys that have fallen,
00:31:01guys, whatever, that's my world, right?
00:31:04One of the things that I have come to realize, and again, it's my perspective.
00:31:09I am surprised.
00:31:12The big surprise for me is how many men go into the ministry to get whole.
00:31:20Right.
00:31:20It's not what people think.
00:31:22It's like, they're aware of their inner demons and what they're hoping for is if
00:31:28I can be more dedicated to God, right.
00:31:30If I can be more holy, if I can be more separate and in order to do that, being
00:31:36in the ministry, right, is the, you know, that's at the top of the food chain.
00:31:42That's where you have, you know, that's where you're the holiest and the most
00:31:45dedicated because my whole life now is focused on this thing.
00:31:49I'll get well.
00:31:51And so one of the things that I've noticed in the ministry world is a lot
00:31:55of guys preach against their own demons.
00:31:59They're actually up there having a battle with themselves.
00:32:03Yeah.
00:32:03I've seen it so many times.
00:32:05The number one sin that they harp on from behind the pulpit is
00:32:08usually the one that gets exposed.
00:32:10But, you know, back to your earlier comment about the Catholic issues in the
00:32:15Catholic church and the Protestants, like you say, they point, they both
00:32:19point fingers at each other, which is kind of ironic, but it's a problem
00:32:23because you have many priests who enter the ministry because they're also
00:32:28suffering from their own internal conflict.
00:32:30So they become a priest.
00:32:31Well, they're assuming that this is going to change them without
00:32:35them having to work for the change.
00:32:37And that's not how it happens.
00:32:39So it ends up in a catastrophe.
00:32:42Well, it happens in the Protestant church.
00:32:44I'm certain it happens in all religions.
00:32:46If you have bad people who get in positions of leadership, where they
00:32:50can abuse their power is going to happen.
00:32:54Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how
00:32:57the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,
00:33:02charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?
00:33:07You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's
00:33:11website, william-branham.org.
00:33:14On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of
00:33:18John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John MacKinnon, and
00:33:23others with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:33:28You can also find resources and documentation on various people and
00:33:32topics related to those movements.
00:33:35If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by
00:33:39clicking the contribute button at the top.
00:33:41And as always, be sure to like, and subscribe to the audio or video version
00:33:46that you're listening to or watching.
00:33:48On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:33:53Something else I'll circle back on.
00:33:55We were talking about the sense of, of, of immediacy, you know, that's
00:34:03characteristic, a lot of, of these movements, there's another side of this.
00:34:08And, and I was really proud of Tammy Woods cause she talked about this in her
00:34:14interviews, which was when Mike left St.
00:34:19Louis for Kansas city.
00:34:21The thing that she was overwhelmed with was I'm going to be left out.
00:34:26Oh, wow.
00:34:26Yeah.
00:34:27Right.
00:34:28In other words, there's this move of God.
00:34:30It's going to be in time, hardcore, high level apostolic.
00:34:34Those were the four words we used right in Kansas city.
00:34:38And I'm stuck over here in St.
00:34:40Louis, I'm going to be left out.
00:34:42Right.
00:34:43And that's another one of those really manipulative perspectives that these
00:34:48guys use all the time, which then, um, I, you know, in business we call it, you
00:34:54know, keeping a relationship sticky, right?
00:34:56In other words, you want to have a sticky relationship with your client and you
00:35:00want to get them so meeting you, right.
00:35:04That they don't really want to go anywhere else.
00:35:06Well, that happens all the time in the ministry.
00:35:10They're creating this sticky thing and there's various manipulations that they
00:35:16use.
00:35:16And one of them I watch Mike do all the time was this thing.
00:35:20Well, if you leave, you're going to be left out.
00:35:23Yeah.
00:35:23Right.
00:35:23So there was this fear that people had, right?
00:35:27If I go somewhere else, if I do something else, you know, there's things going to
00:35:32happen and I'm going to get left behind.
00:35:35And you talked about the Pentecostal charismatic world and why they are the
00:35:40ones that most, most resemble the three-wing circus.
00:35:43Well, if you trace the histories of those movements back, you can find that that
00:35:48false sense of urgency that they're pushing today.
00:35:50It's the same false sense of urgency that they pushed years back.
00:35:54Charles and I, we haven't put it out yet, but he's compiled this list of ministers
00:35:59for decades.
00:36:00We're saying we don't have, but five years left.
00:36:03That's it.
00:36:04Five years folks.
00:36:05Well, when you're pushing that kind of agenda, everybody's going to feel like I
00:36:08don't want to be left out.
00:36:09If there's only five years for my life to live, then I want to live it here with
00:36:13this guy who's telling me there's five years left, which is the irony, but I've
00:36:17dated it back.
00:36:18I mean, as far back as you want to go, 1600, you're going to find predators who
00:36:23are saying the same exact thing.
00:36:25I'm going to be 60 when it's 69.
00:36:27So I was, you know, I'm a middle of the boomer generation, but the book that was
00:36:35so seminal to our, uh, even evangelical thing was the late great planet earth.
00:36:41Right.
00:36:42Yeah.
00:36:42You know, the whole thing that came out of Calvary chapel with Hal Lindsey, right?
00:36:46There was this thing that was going to happen right within a few years and we
00:36:52all had to be ready for it.
00:36:53Right.
00:36:53I mean, that one book framed a whole generation of Jesus people.
00:36:59Right.
00:37:00And here we are now we're either dying or we're in the, at the end of our, our,
00:37:06our, our lives and it never happened.
00:37:09Yeah.
00:37:09Right.
00:37:10And so what, what you as a historian, what you're aware of is this has happened.
00:37:16Like you said, this isn't just something that happened in our lifetime.
00:37:19This is something that's happened, you know, over and over again, right?
00:37:24There's every generation has some sort of a group of people that have this sort
00:37:28of apocalyptic end time worldview.
00:37:32And there's this immediacy that Christ is going to return any minute now.
00:37:37And, you know, and so where this became a big concern for me and where it got
00:37:43really complicated was in the late two thousands or late 19 nineties, early
00:37:50two thousands, all of the kids that had been raised at Kansas city fellowship
00:37:57who had gone through dominion Christian school, who were all programmed right.
00:38:02With this urgency, right.
00:38:05And this fear of being left behind suddenly came face to face with the reality.
00:38:10I got to get a job.
00:38:11Like I got married, I produced kids.
00:38:14Like there's people over here, depending on me, I have to go face the real world
00:38:19now, and I don't have an education.
00:38:22I don't have any marketable skillsets.
00:38:24Right.
00:38:25I'm over here.
00:38:25I'm 10 years behind everyone else.
00:38:28And so I ended up getting this whole flood of 30 year olds, right?
00:38:3330 old guys who are just going, Bob, how do I, how do I do this?
00:38:38Right.
00:38:38And so there's a terrible transition.
00:38:41I call it the terrible transition from out of this sort of urgent worldview to
00:38:46having to face, you know, what I call normal people have to deal with every
00:38:51day because you didn't see yourself as normal, right?
00:38:54You were in Mike's world, extraordinary.
00:38:57Everything had to be extraordinary.
00:38:58It couldn't be ordinary.
00:39:00Yeah.
00:39:01And it's so deeply ingrained into them that after they do escape and after they
00:39:06enter the quote unquote normal world, they're still looking to fulfill that
00:39:12urgency so much so that they, many of them do not reevaluate where they came from.
00:39:18So all of these great things that were supposed to happen in the years gone by,
00:39:22many of the members who left those movements, they're still
00:39:25looking for something similar.
00:39:26It's like, I'm a star Trek fan.
00:39:29And I don't know if you're familiar with the Borg concept.
00:39:32They try to keep plugging back into the hive.
00:39:35And the problem is it creates a scenario where.
00:39:40Often they get assimilated into a different cult because they found a
00:39:44different hive to plug in with the same level of urgency.
00:39:47Well, in my experience is rooted in fear.
00:39:51So it's kind of interesting to me because even though there's a bit of
00:39:56disillusionment, right?
00:39:57Cause it didn't happen.
00:40:00There's this residual fear in your soul, but what if it might, like, what if I
00:40:07missed it?
00:40:08Right.
00:40:09And it doesn't go away.
00:40:10And that's why, you know, what I was trying to do in this book, it sounds very
00:40:15mosaic, but it was like set my people free.
00:40:18Right.
00:40:19Because so many people still have this little seed or this little place in
00:40:24their soul where they're fearful.
00:40:26Like, what if I got it wrong?
00:40:28What if, you know what I mean?
00:40:29And they're still hung up.
00:40:31And to your point, then what happens is when the next thing comes along there, it's
00:40:35almost like they're prone to it.
00:40:36It's like, if you're an alcoholic and you go to a bar, guess what's going to happen.
00:40:41Yeah.
00:40:42Right.
00:40:43So there's this, there's an addictive culture.
00:40:47Even in the church world.
00:40:48Yeah.
00:40:49I had this conversation just yesterday.
00:40:51I was recording podcasts.
00:40:53It probably come out after this one, but they, you know, in the Bible, you read all
00:40:57of these examples of the parent child relationship with God.
00:41:01God loves his children, that kind of thing.
00:41:04And they preach it behind these pulpits.
00:41:07But unfortunately, that's not the God that they present, even while trying to
00:41:11preach that, because the same people that are programmed with the level of fear
00:41:17that you're talking about, the fear and the urgency, that combination is disastrous.
00:41:22So I'm a father and picture my son who's coming to see me.
00:41:26And suddenly he realizes he goes on a detour and he, he gets sidetracked.
00:41:31Maybe he wants to stop at McDonald's, get a hamburger.
00:41:33I don't know, but he gets detoured.
00:41:35He goes a different direction and he's on his pathway and then calls me up and says,
00:41:39Hey dad, I meant to meet you for lunch.
00:41:41I'm sorry.
00:41:41I didn't make it.
00:41:42Well, I'm not going to chastise him because he went down a different pathway.
00:41:46And, you know, in the end, I'm going to want to draw him back to my house because
00:41:50he's my son, but the God that they have presented isn't a God that even allows for
00:41:55this.
00:41:56So if these people leave these movements and suddenly they get caught up in a
00:42:01different urgency, they're, they're thinking, Oh my gosh, I don't want to miss
00:42:04it.
00:42:04I don't want to, I have to keep this level of hype and this level of urgency
00:42:09because God's going to smite me dead with the rest of the world who is doomed to
00:42:13hell.
00:42:14If I don't keep, you know, keep this thing that they've programmed in my head, it's
00:42:18a huge, huge problem in my experience.
00:42:22And again, this is kind of my perspective.
00:42:25I see con men as people who actually have great insight into the human soul, meaning
00:42:33that they know exactly humanity's greatest fears, right?
00:42:40It's like every comment that I know actually is a psychologist, you know, a
00:42:44pseudo psychologist, right?
00:42:46They understand, you know, like in, in, at the Casey, in the KCF world, if you want
00:42:51to add another piece of the fear and the urgency is what I talked about in the book
00:42:56significance, like every one of us is so desperate for God to see us, right.
00:43:03To know that God sees me, that God not only then sees me, he sees me as valuable.
00:43:11Like I'm just not a commodity in the kingdom of God.
00:43:14I'm a son.
00:43:15I'm a daughter, right?
00:43:17I have this, right.
00:43:19And so again, this, this whole thing where these guys come along and they go, well,
00:43:23guess what?
00:43:25I'm a special son, right?
00:43:27I have a, I have something unique, something again, extraordinary.
00:43:33Like I'm at this elevated status here, right?
00:43:37And here's all my stories.
00:43:39And in my case, he elevated all these broken men to the status of profit.
00:43:44So they would then reinforce his special status, right?
00:43:49Who then he would sell to people going, well, if you associate with me, you can be
00:43:53special too, right?
00:43:54Cause I have a special calling.
00:43:56I have a special purpose.
00:43:57There's this end time revival.
00:43:59Hang with me.
00:44:00You're going to be on the forefront of this thing.
00:44:02Right.
00:44:03Well, that's because he understood that there's this need we all have.
00:44:07We all want this.
00:44:09And so con men tell us exactly what we want.
00:44:12They capitalize on the fear.
00:44:13They capitalize on the egos.
00:44:15They want to sell it because they can make money from it.
00:44:18I know exactly what you're saying.
00:44:20And the interesting part that I think you and I share this based off of what we've
00:44:25talked about and what I've read, I have seen good people because they're human,
00:44:30because they have human problems.
00:44:32I've seen really good people who take the same advantages with other people because
00:44:38they can use it to get themselves further ahead and whatever is their agenda.
00:44:43And they don't see it as evil because they, they see the end.
00:44:47They're looking at the end game.
00:44:48They're not looking at here and now and manipulating people.
00:44:52Sometimes you can manipulate people for a good cause.
00:44:55And so I have seen good people who do this, not even really realizing that they
00:44:59are, but then you take a con man who can use that same exact framework and then
00:45:05they can push it.
00:45:07The two examples, interestingly for me, I've seen both examples end in the same
00:45:13place.
00:45:14A good man who's manipulating people gets to a destructive nature or a con man
00:45:19who's manipulating people gets into the destructive nature.
00:45:22So you can go down both pathways.
00:45:25And from reading your book, I'm thinking through all of these names that you're
00:45:28mentioning and what it would have been like to be close to some of these people.
00:45:33And my mind is wandering, you know, I'm going back to my own past and I knew some
00:45:37really good people who did some really bad things.
00:45:40How do I reconcile this?
00:45:42Well, in the book, I use the phrase, the end justifies the means, right?
00:45:48Which is, as you know, in your world, that's so prevalent in the thinking of a lot of
00:45:53ministers, right?
00:45:54In the Pentecostal world, we know that the thinking is that faith unlocks the
00:46:02supernatural.
00:46:03So therefore we have to get people into faith because if we can do that, God's
00:46:09going to move, right?
00:46:11So the end justifies the means means, oh, we can fake it on the front end because
00:46:18if we get people into faith on the back end, God's going to show up.
00:46:21I know of a situation, I won't mention names, but if somebody who got caught putting
00:46:27gold dust in their Bible, the justification was, well, I need to get them into a place
00:46:37of faith, right?
00:46:38So in her thinking, it was like, this is okay.
00:46:42I had this conversation ad nauseum with Paul Cain.
00:46:45That was one of the reasons why he got out of the whole thing was he saw this happen
00:46:50all the time and he didn't like it, right?
00:46:53But in Mike's case, what concerned me was most of these men who never said they were
00:47:03prophets, that Mike needed them to be prophets, right?
00:47:09We're all very insecure, broken human beings, right?
00:47:13So you have this situation where you have somebody who's got a platform, right?
00:47:18Who's got status and stuff.
00:47:20I call it, right?
00:47:21They've got platform, so they've got status, they've got an audience, whatever.
00:47:26And you're just this insecure human being who wants to be loved and valued and
00:47:32whatever, right?
00:47:33And you've got this guy that comes along, right?
00:47:36Who's going to give you all the things you sort of dreamed of.
00:47:40You then also then become vulnerable, right?
00:47:43In other words, he understands all your weaknesses.
00:47:46So one of the big conflicts that I had with Mike that, I mean, and this is what's
00:47:51hard about this book.
00:47:52People got to understand, we were 18 and 19 year old teenagers when we met.
00:47:57This was my best friend.
00:47:59This is not just some sort of historical figures in a story.
00:48:04This is very real.
00:48:06This is raw.
00:48:07This is my buddy, right?
00:48:09Who we go on this journey together through all this stuff.
00:48:12And here we are in the 1980s and our, and our worldviews are separating.
00:48:18It's painful.
00:48:20It's a divorce.
00:48:21I went through a divorce with Mike and the, one of the big points of our divorce
00:48:26was Mike, you're going to destroy these guys.
00:48:32That's hard.
00:48:32And the phrase that kept going through my mind was a phrase that I got off a Saturday
00:48:37night live, which was not ready for primetime players.
00:48:41I remember that phrase.
00:48:43Yes.
00:48:44And so I said to Mike, I go, you will destroy these men.
00:48:49Wow.
00:48:50Because your need to be extraordinary is causing you to do an end justifies the
00:48:57means, elevating them to a status of, of mythology, almost mythological, like you
00:49:05want to be seen right.
00:49:06As this extraordinary human being.
00:49:08And they will never be able to live up to this.
00:49:11That's why I wrote about in the book, when the event happened in Anaheim in 89, and
00:49:17I, where the three ring circus came from, right.
00:49:21I said to Mike, it's all downhill from here.
00:49:24Yeah.
00:49:25And he got so upset with me because in his mind, right.
00:49:30He was thinking the sensationalism of this was going to be the catalyst for this
00:49:36catalyst for this revival, right?
00:49:38In other words, he's so focused on the end, right.
00:49:43Which is, you know, causing this, you know, this revival to happen that he doesn't
00:49:48see what's actually going on and how this is destroying these guys, right.
00:49:54Cause none of them could live up to the image that he was creating because
00:49:58everybody sitting in the pew didn't know who they really were.
00:50:02Yeah.
00:50:04And it's history repeating itself again.
00:50:06And again, when I, when I left this thing, I started studying Gnosticism because it
00:50:11really was so similar to what we came out of.
00:50:13It was something that wasn't Christianity blending with Christianity to make
00:50:17something new.
00:50:18And there was a Gnostic group that believed that you could, it was okay to
00:50:24have lies for the sake of a holy end.
00:50:27And there was another, I can't remember the word that they use for that, but the
00:50:30word basically meant lies for the sake of a holy end.
00:50:33And I got to back to thinking just in my past, all of the people that I knew, the
00:50:38stories that they were telling behind the pulpit, I knew exactly what happened.
00:50:42I was there many times I saw it and what they said was completely false.
00:50:48And, but it was told with a spiritual purpose so that the people would be, you
00:50:54know, coming to the altar, whatever it was at, at the occasion, but they saw the
00:50:59lie and saw the result, which they thought was a salvation.
00:51:03And maybe it was, I don't know.
00:51:05I can't say that the people weren't saved when they did come to the altar, but the
00:51:09men knowingly lied about it.
00:51:11And I had huge problems with this.
00:51:13And then I started studying all of the groups that spread from Branhamism and I
00:51:18started seeing this pattern emerge.
00:51:20And the question that I had was, is this a trained thing or is it just the human
00:51:28problem?
00:51:28Because humans do this.
00:51:29Humans will tell things that aren't true, which is it?
00:51:32And as I'm reading your book and I'm going through the things that you're talking
00:51:35about with, you know, your conversations with Mike Bickle, part of me thinks it's
00:51:41not trained.
00:51:42Part of me think it's just the human condition.
00:51:45Yeah.
00:51:45Well, they, again, when, you know, one of the, one of my struggles in the whole,
00:51:52Warren, this will get me in trouble is that I find particularly in Pentecostalism,
00:51:59but even more equally in some other areas is that we are, we have very tunnel vision.
00:52:06Like we just focus on the Bible, right?
00:52:10And we don't contextualize things, right?
00:52:13There's a whole, like, I'll show you, I got this book.
00:52:18Oh, where is it?
00:52:20I love this book.
00:52:22The reason I love this book is because what it does, it tells you what else was
00:52:26going on in the world at any given point.
00:52:29Yeah.
00:52:30In 1986, I had the opportunity to travel Israel with Dr.
00:52:34Israel Stockman, who is the leading anthropologist in the country who basically
00:52:40gave me a whole cultural education on what was actually happening at the time that
00:52:47the Hebrews and the Israelites were going on, right?
00:52:50There's a bigger picture here.
00:52:51There's a context.
00:52:54As an example, people don't stop and think this through.
00:52:58You know, it was 1500 years after Jesus left this earth before humanity even knew
00:53:04there was a microorganism world of, of, of bugs, right?
00:53:12So everything in the Bible is written from the perspective that it's a spirit.
00:53:17Yeah.
00:53:18A demon.
00:53:19Because they can't see it.
00:53:20Right.
00:53:21So, you know, you were talking earlier about mental illness.
00:53:24Nobody in the, at the time of Jesus would have ever thought
00:53:27somebody had a mental illness.
00:53:29They had a spirit.
00:53:30Yeah.
00:53:31Right.
00:53:32So again, we gotta be really careful here and context and
00:53:36contextualize a lot of this stuff.
00:53:38And so I ended up finding my, myself struggling a little bit because even,
00:53:44you know these stories in the old Testament, the whole concept of prophets,
00:53:49right, every time I hear people talk about prophets, it's always in the
00:53:53context of the church, not understanding that prophets predate Christianity.
00:54:00Oh yes.
00:54:00Predate, you know, Israelite culture, everybody in the whole
00:54:05of ancient civilization had prophets.
00:54:08Prophets were, you know, in the, in our American culture,
00:54:13the president has a cabinet.
00:54:15Right.
00:54:15In the ancient culture, the King had his astrologers and his
00:54:19prophets and his soothsayers, right?
00:54:21Every culture had it.
00:54:23Every Greek ruler went to the oracles at Delphi before they went to war to get,
00:54:29right, and the whole concept of false prophets and true prophets were based on
00:54:35if you prophesied for Israel, you were a true prophet and you've prophesied for
00:54:39another culture, you were a false prophet, right?
00:54:42And the oracles of Delphi, they've dug up and they have found the methane gases
00:54:47that would have made them high before they prophesied.
00:54:50They were high, exactly.
00:54:52They were on peyote, you know, it's like, so that's what I'm saying.
00:54:56There's a lot of stuff here that needs to get unpacked, right?
00:55:00It's, there's, things aren't contextualized.
00:55:03And so one of the things I, I do appreciate about you, and this is
00:55:07typically how history works, the people, the first generation that experienced
00:55:12it, most of the time, what they have is propaganda, right?
00:55:16Cause they're in the middle of it and they've got a worldview and a perspective
00:55:22and they got a message and they're, you know, they're propagandizing.
00:55:26The second generation is always caught between, right?
00:55:30Because they end up experience the fallout, right?
00:55:36Right.
00:55:37Where history, and what I mean by that pure history doesn't get
00:55:42written until the third generation.
00:55:44Because the third generation doesn't have a dog in the hunt, right?
00:55:49Yeah.
00:55:49They're looking at it objectively, right?
00:55:51They're trying, they just look at the facts, you know?
00:55:55And so what I find interesting is you're kind of the third generation in
00:56:00your particular, you know, culture here, right?
00:56:03So you're doing exactly what has been going on since, you know, the beginning
00:56:08of, of history, which is you're now looking back without a real dog in the
00:56:13hunt, even though you were a part of this, but you're looking at it more
00:56:16objectively, you're analyzing the letters, you're looking at the videos, right?
00:56:21You're, you're pulling it together.
00:56:23And you're, you're, you have a more objective point of view, but what happens
00:56:27is you run into the old timers, right?
00:56:30And they get upset.
00:56:31Yeah, you're right.
00:56:32I've become so disconnected from even the Brandon movement, even
00:56:36though I came out of this.
00:56:37It's so I, so far in my past, I've kind of disconnected myself from it.
00:56:41And you'll see in the comment feeds every now and then a brand of my idol
00:56:44suddenly discover my site and just go ballistic.
00:56:47But like you said, I really don't have a dog in a fight.
00:56:50I'm just more trying to document what it was and document the parts that they
00:56:54aren't documenting because it's a severely imbalanced scale, especially now
00:56:59that you have the NAR people who, for example, NAR people have painted
00:57:04Branham as one of God's generals.
00:57:06They don't even talk about the fact that he's working with the second in
00:57:09command of the 1915 clan who rose up to become the Imperial wizard.
00:57:14I mean, they, they leave all of that out conveniently.
00:57:17So it's a balanced scale and they've, they've tipped it this direction.
00:57:20So I just tip it back.
00:57:23Well, I noticed you've talked a lot about the whole issue of racism, you
00:57:29know, that was kind of at the roots of this, and that's an interesting
00:57:34conversation that we can have because obviously with me in and out of Africa,
00:57:40me having to go through a racial massacre, tribal massacres, this is kind
00:57:46of something that's sort of on the forefront.
00:57:50I don't know if you've even touched on this, because I haven't had the
00:57:54opportunity to go back and look at some of the older stuff, but one of the
00:57:58things that I don't think people in the modern world understand is that the
00:58:051920s and 1930s concept of racism was based on science, not ethics.
00:58:14And I'm going to tell this story because I think it's important for people to
00:58:19understand how people in the twenties and thirties got programmed because see
00:58:25today, when we talk about it, we talk about it in the context of morality and
00:58:29ethics, like this was wrong.
00:58:31Right.
00:58:32And, and, and we can't fathom the fact that anybody could think differently,
00:58:37but they did significantly different.
00:58:40Right.
00:58:41And so let's, we can unpack this a little bit, but you know, in ancient
00:58:47cultures, nobody thought in terms of race, they thought in terms of
00:58:54culture or civilization, right?
00:58:56You were a Babylonian, you were a Syrian, you were an Egyptian, nobody in
00:59:01Egypt, even though you had a mixed culture of people from what's now
00:59:06Nigeria that were black mixed with people that may have a more European
00:59:11Caucasian look, nobody talked about black Egyptians and white Egyptians.
00:59:17Yeah.
00:59:17That wasn't even a concept.
00:59:18Right.
00:59:19They didn't care.
00:59:20They didn't care.
00:59:21Nobody cared about this.
00:59:22This only becomes an issue in the 1800s.
00:59:25And the root of this is Charles Darwin.
00:59:29Yeah.
00:59:30Right.
00:59:31So this is really interesting.
00:59:32You know, that on February 12th, 1809, two figures are born on the same day that
00:59:40would go on to impact our world, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, both born
00:59:47on the exact same day, February 12th.
00:59:50The irony is unbelievable because it's really bizarre.
00:59:54It's sort of in the same vein as, as Thomas Jefferson, right.
00:59:58John Adams dying on July 4th, exactly 50 years after the declaration of independence.
01:00:06You sort of look at this and go, whoa, you know, it's like, what is that all about?
01:00:12Right.
01:00:12Yeah.
01:00:13So anyways, the reason why this is so important and people that need to
01:00:16understand this is that Darwin right before the civil war sort of happens in
01:00:25the United States comes up with this concept, right, of the, um, what do we
01:00:33call the, what does he call it?
01:00:34The, um, you know, the origins of species, right?
01:00:41So suddenly Darwin who's a scientist, this is why this is important.
01:00:46He's considered this great scientist.
01:00:48Right.
01:00:49So Darwin comes up with this, this concept, right.
01:00:54Of, um, of, uh, you know, origin of species and natural selection, right.
01:01:02Meaning that those that were the more dominant, the stronger ended up
01:01:07surviving the weaker get eliminated.
01:01:12Well, Darwin has a cousin, a half cousin, actually, whose name is Francis, Francis
01:01:18Geltin and Francis Geltin takes Darwin's thing even a step further and says it's
01:01:24genetic, right.
01:01:29And it's racial meaning that different races have different genetic makeups
01:01:36that make them superior to others.
01:01:39Right.
01:01:39So the whole concept of superiority and racism is actually rooted in these two
01:01:44guys and their view of science.
01:01:47Right.
01:01:48Now here's where this gets crazy.
01:01:50What ends up happening is, is Galton becomes the father of what we call eugenics.
01:01:57Right.
01:01:58Which is a con we don't hear that word talked about, right.
01:02:01But in the twenties and thirties, this is a huge thing.
01:02:05It's a big deal.
01:02:07It is right.
01:02:08How big of a deal is it?
01:02:10Let me tell you, let me just give you a list of people who were proponents of
01:02:14eugenics, Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States, Alexander Graham
01:02:20Bell, father of the telephone.
01:02:23Here's one odd one.
01:02:24Helen Keller.
01:02:26Yeah.
01:02:26Right.
01:02:27Who's deaf and dumb Winston Churchill.
01:02:32Right.
01:02:33The big one, Margaret Sanger, the founder of plant parenthood.
01:02:38People don't understand that in her mind, she was being scientific
01:02:45by eliminating the weak gene pools.
01:02:48Absolutely.
01:02:49Right.
01:02:50So this is how convoluted this gets right now.
01:02:53This one's going to blow people away.
01:02:55W E the most, one of the fathers of the civil rights movement, a black man.
01:03:02Yep.
01:03:02Believes in eugenics, right?
01:03:05It's widespread.
01:03:05Clarence Darrow, Bernard Shaw, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jacques
01:03:10Estelle, one of the great figures in our childhood, right?
01:03:15All of these people have this concept, right?
01:03:19So that's why when you get to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, what you have here
01:03:27is you have a whole ideology that came through the Nazis, right?
01:03:32What's they think they're being scientific.
01:03:35And they're going to prove to the world, right.
01:03:38That eugenics is a real thing.
01:03:40You know, that the whole theory of superior genes is a real thing.
01:03:45And Jesse Owens just upsets everything.
01:03:48Like people think of it as just a sporting event.
01:03:51They don't realize that what was actually going on was there was a massive collision.
01:03:58Right.
01:03:59Because Jesse Owens should not have been able to beat everyone based on the whole
01:04:04eugenics thing.
01:04:05Yeah.
01:04:06So guys like Branham, right.
01:04:09The, the clan.
01:04:11Right.
01:04:11They're not thinking this is a moral ethical issue.
01:04:16They're thinking they're on the side of science.
01:04:18Oh, absolutely.
01:04:20Right now, again, it gets all convoluted, right?
01:04:24Because we have people driven by selfish ambition and greed.
01:04:27And so now they can, you know, they can pursue their selfish ambition and greed
01:04:32under the justification of science.
01:04:34But you have guys like Charles Lindbergh, right.
01:04:37Who are so caught up in this.
01:04:38He actually goes to Germany and ends up starting two families, right.
01:04:43Because he believes he's got superior genes.
01:04:47Yeah.
01:04:48Right.
01:04:48Nobody believed this until DNA came in and the kids that had claimed he was their
01:04:53dad who were laughed at for decades ended up actually being his kids.
01:04:58Yeah.
01:04:59You know, it's, it's, it's, you have to realize that a lot of these people
01:05:03got sucked up into this, this false science.
01:05:06Yeah.
01:05:06It wasn't just based on, we don't like black people or we don't, right.
01:05:11They were actually being told by the scientists, this was a reality, right?
01:05:17Yeah.
01:05:18The irony is it, it became the DNA of the world.
01:05:22If you really think about what happened and you talk, you think through
01:05:25World War II and all of that, but it also became the DNA of the church in this book
01:05:32that I just released, weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR.
01:05:38I actually, I mentioned eugenics.
01:05:39I did not mention Darwin because I didn't want, when you mentioned the name, people
01:05:43go down a different path with their minds.
01:05:45Instead, I mentioned what was created from it, but British Israelism coming
01:05:51into the United States during this era, mixed with the racism in the United
01:05:57States, formed Christian identity.
01:05:59Like you said, it was a science eugenics.
01:06:01They thought they were on the side of science.
01:06:03It got embedded into the Angelus temple.
01:06:06And from there you've got Charles Fox Parham was a, was into Christian identity.
01:06:11Father of Pentecostalism, Amy Semple McPherson into Christian identity.
01:06:16First mega church.
01:06:17She funded the Sharon orphanage from which latter rain would birth.
01:06:21Trained in her school is Chuck Smith.
01:06:24Chuck Smith started the J Jesus revolution.
01:06:26All of these guys.
01:06:28You know that Chuck Smith was Paul Cain's business manager.
01:06:31Absolutely.
01:06:32I just, I was shocked when he told me that I was like, what?
01:06:36Yeah.
01:06:37Oh yeah.
01:06:37When he was young, he was my business manager.
01:06:39I was like, holy cow.
01:06:41A lot of people don't realize it, but the key, many of the key figures in what became
01:06:46the Jesus movement, either Cain or Branham had a direct connection to all of them.
01:06:51It was very much a, it wasn't latter rain, obviously, but it was very much
01:06:56continuing many of the fundamental elements of it, but well, we could continue
01:07:02that I could talk to you for probably the next three hours, but maybe today we'll
01:07:06wrap it up lives.
01:07:07Yeah.
01:07:08Maybe today we'll wrap it up and maybe come back and, and do this again, because
01:07:13there's so much more to talk about.
01:07:14So thank you so much for doing this.
01:07:17Yeah, you're welcome.
01:07:18Yeah.
01:07:18We can drill down a little bit more on the individuals, you know, and we can, you
01:07:23know, we can go there again.
01:07:25I have a personal relationship, so therefore I have a different perspective
01:07:31that most people do on those guys.
01:07:33Yeah.
01:07:33I'd love it.
01:07:34Let's let's play on it.
01:07:36Well, I've enjoyed this thoroughly.
01:07:38Yeah, I've enjoyed it too.
01:07:39So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on
01:07:43the web.
01:07:43You can find us at William dash Branham.org.
01:07:46For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, read Weaponize
01:07:50Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:07:54Available on Amazon, Kindle, and soon Audible.

Recommended