Manipulation and Control - Detangling IHOP-KC

Hello and welcome to another episode. of the William Brannem Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannem Historical Research at William-brannem.org and with me I have my very special guest, Brantley Smith, former member of IHOPKC.

Brantley after we recorded the last one we got so much positive feedback and I'm actually I've got a text message up here from a person who's asking me when are we bringing Brantley back? You need to ask him this and that and the other and even I think even Charles chimed and he said you got to have you got to get this guy back is there's so much insight into that movement that you bring that your knowledge of it and your personality just kind of fits with mine and I think it resonates with a lot of people. I'm glad to hear that. I get a lot of

encouraging messages and that's that's the only thing I can hope for is that my experiences are helpful for someone. God knows it's been painful for us all like detangling all this and the fact that it can be helpful to people and help people on their journeys and maybe expedite the healing process for them brings me a lot of joy brings me a lot of joy. Yeah it's it's good stuff it helps people to see that people can come through this and come out somewhat normal on the other side so like one of the questions and I'll ask you now how did you

go through this and and keep your sanity. Man it's it's a it's a really good question. It's it's a lot of relationships and honestly how I was raised I mean there was some values and that's that's the always the trouble with detangling is that the good in the bad can coexist in spaces. My upbringing was was super fundamentalist but because of that that saved me from a lot of heartache and heartbreak and I think that anybody that's in a high control environment you hear people talk about the inner critic that's developed you become very emotionally intelligent but just by the side effect of always being

introspective and I think and I encounter that more and more in the cult environment with with my friend who who existed in those cult environments and I do with the Joe that I meet on the street.

I think we talked about it last time that we chatted just the intelligence of some of the folks that are wrapped up in the cult, like some of the smartest people I know were people I met in the cult, which is kind of ironic, but I think it was the support systems that I had my family and even friends and relationships I made within the cult.

Some of them kept me in the cult, but I think, you know, being seen in the different ways. I don't know. That's a good question. I'm going to have to think on it some more, but that's my initial gut responses.

Well, my response is, I didn't. I wouldn't call what I am in doing, saying, oh, for sure, let's talk about normal, what is normal? Yeah. How do I find this thing that you call normal, right?

The other question, so how and where did you meet your wife? Oh, man. So I met my wife in Kansas City, and it's kind of funny, and it's honestly, we look at it, and we feel like we're beating statistics right now that we're still, so we've been married for 10 years, and we met, I think it was in 2011.

She came out and did an internship at IHOP, and she was in fire in the night, so she did night watch for six months, and she audited our Book of Revelation class in IHOPU, and there wasn't enough seats in the classroom.

Two regrees taught the class, or what enough seats for the students, IHOPU students, and the interns in the class, so the interns all had sit in the floor. They were lower tier than the students, and so my wife and three of her friends were sitting in the floor next to me, and I went and added them all on Facebook, because that's what you did in 2011, and then we started chatting after she left IHOP, probably about a year and a half later, after I was out as well, and we got, we literally got mayor, it's like

started dating, I think it was December of 2012, and we got married in May of 2013, so it was very, very quick, which a lot of that is pressure from the purity culture and different things.

I had a job offer in Texas, and where our beliefs were, we didn't think living together would be right, and so our options were either, we were doing a long distance relationship, she had just moved close to me, and I got this job offer in Texas, and we were in Virginia, and we were like, well, we can either get married, or we're going to be long distance again, so we decided to get married, and we got two girls, and it's been, it's been working out, and it's been interesting, it's been an interesting journey though, John, because the way that

we've processed our past, so she grew up, I don't want to share too much her story, because it's her story, but she grew up in a super charismatic environment, an independent charismatic church in California, and her dad's a pastor, and so she has her own journey through all of this as well, where I had a little bit more of a pentacostle upbringing, and we met.

past that I hop. But the way that we began detangling was very different. Both of us started, I think, heavily. We'd always been asking questions and stuff, but in 2020, and I think I talked about this a little bit last time about, you know, me seeing how people were treating each other and it's people that we were told to demonize by the church. But my deconstruction and stuff was very much more theologically based. And so I started having these big theological questions for my wife. Her journey was very different and that it was more justice oriented and it was

more how people were being treated. And even it's not even been until like the past six months or a year that she started looking at her beliefs even. And so we had moments where I think I shared this publicly once before. So I think she's okay with it where we've had looked at her, we're having a conversation. And I was like, you know, if we get 30 years from now and I find out that all this Jesus stuff is a fairy tale, I was like, I think I'm going to be okay with the Jesus that I believe in, even if it's not true. And we're driving down the road and I thought she was

going to hop out the car on me. She would, she's like, what do you mean? What do you have her hands on the dash? And I was like, I'm just saying like, if it's not true, I don't know, like I'm not saying I don't believe it, but if it's not true, you know, and we had three or four moments like that where, you know, things came to a head because it was the bedrock of our relationship and, you know, the way that we define marriage and look at relationships. I mean, it was, you know, love your wife as Christ loves the church lay down your life for one another.

And some of those are good values, but whenever you start questioning these things and Christ was the bedrock of your relationship, like how do you start building a relationship outside of that? And so it's been a journey, it's been a challenge, but we're still going, we're still going, we still like each other. And so that's good. You know, there's a lot of people that are going through similar. We were so manipulated to have faith in our faith. And with the, with the elimination of critical thought, and so what you're describing, you know, what happens if we

discover something that makes us uncomfortable about Christianity or Jesus. Well, a lot of people, it's like walking a child walking through the graveyard whistling when there's an open grave. They can pretend all they want that there's no open grave. But inwardly, they're still thinking about it, no matter how many times they whistle. And it goes, for me, it's like going back to the believers in Berea who had to go out and prove all of the things. They were critically thinking.

It's not that they had faith because they had faith or because their parents were Christians, they decided they must be Christian too. They had the ability to question and think. And if you think about how that works, the mind works different ways. Like I have a critical mind. My mind tries to prove the true by first examining the false. So I will, like whenever I began to examine the message of William Brannum, I would assume something was false and then try to prove it true. So I would go down that path and then come back. Well, there's a lot of people that they think this way, and they've never,

ever done it with religion. And the first time they do it, they come unglued. It's true. It's so funny. I had one of those moments myself where I had heard somebody question the, if Jesus was actually a historical figure, which I believe that Jesus was a historical figure. But at that moment, like everything was, you know, all my foundations were crumbling, that had been raised on. Then luckily, I had a life coach. I had a little bit of wisdom at the moment. And I called him for an impromptu session because I was spiraling hard. And I was like,

Logan, I was like, I don't know what to do. I was like, you know, I don't know if Jesus was real, like at all. And this, and he's like, Brannum, you don't have to open that door unless you want to.

And I was like, really? And he's like, yeah, he's like, if you don't want to do that right now, you don't have to do that right now. It's all put it on a shelf for a while. I did for like two years. I didn't, I didn't go there, but it's, it's so disorienting, so disorienting. It is.

And the tools that they give you, like, I'll never forget whenever I, when you leave a cult like this, you begin to explore you, a lot of people de-churchify, they call it now, de-churchification or whatever.

But you go down the path where you start to explore the other side because you've never been familiar with it. And one of the first things that I did is I read this book called Case for Christ. And good Lord, man, if they were, yeah, at least robo, and nothing against Brannum, but if, I'll say my opinion, in my opinion, if there was a book that would help you convert to an atheist, that was the book. That was the book. It was the, if you're a critically examining anything, and you take what the way that that book said to critically examine it, it was written as though

a Christian were trying to corral other Christians. That's, that's how it read to me. There was no critical thought whatsoever. And so I read this and I was like, you gotta be kidding me. The best case for Christ is propaganda. And that's the challenge with it all is, is so much, there's so much group thing involved, even though I wouldn't, some days I wonder if all of evangelicalism's a cult.

But there's, there's not room for that critical thought. Like all my ex cult friends, I would say 80% of them have walked away from the faith completely. And it's not because they don't want to believe in God. Like some of them, like still, like probably call themself agnostic and still have like a spiritual expression to their life. And they want to believe these things. They still love Jesus. They still really like Jesus and the things that Jesus taught. But they can't find places where they can ask big questions. I mean, apologetics is all group thing in a sense. It's like we have this belief.

Let's see how we can defend it. And you start questioning that and people and all of a sudden you but the center, and they label you, and that's how they deal with you easily, is they call you a heretic or whatever, and now nobody can talk to you, so yeah.

Yeah, and probably that is probably a good part of the reason why I came to that opinion, because when I left the cult, I also got, I got deeply embedded into Christian apologetics. There were these, back then it wasn't Facebook groups, or anything like this, that these forums, and so I just joined one of the apologetics forums, and you could watch the back and forth between and atheists who's just angry at Christianity.

He's so angry that they've shut off critical thought, and you watch an apologetic, some of them who, I don't know, that maybe they were new and green to the field, but their answers were not, they were not answers, they were, well, you must believe this, because the Bible says this, and this guy is saying, well, I don't believe it, because, but you would get some real people who gave real answers, and so I could watch the dialogue, and I'm learning as I go, but the, my favorite ones were the ones who, whenever they got confronted with something

that they had no answer to, they just simply said, hey, I don't know, I don't know the answer to this, and that was an open and honest person, right? There were other people who would just try to defend it for the sake of defending it, and, you know, the whole thing, it was just so surprising to me, but it made me go back to my own history and think about the way in which I was manipulated.

We were, in the brand I'm called, we were completely brainwashed. We went through series of techniques, they had a series of techniques that they used to manipulate our heads, and as you're going through all of this stuff, you're basically trained to shut off all critical thought and you're trained to assume that whatever comes from behind the pulpit, you must agree with, no matter what.

And so anyway, I wanted to have you back on the show to talk about exactly that, because as you probably have seen through the videos and articles I've been publishing, I'm trying to examine IHOP KC from the standpoint of Paul Kane and Bob Jones and some of the others.

Basically, we're reinventing Brannemism, taking Brannem's name out, not telling people where they got it all from, but it was Brannemism 2.0 with a new spin on it. And so if it is, it must have these same characteristics and lo and behold, the deeper I dig, I find every one of them.

So one of them is the manipulation and the brainwashing is too narrow of a term. They have many techniques to control your mind from the music, et cetera. So I wanted to talk about this.

What are your thoughts on just being manipulated in IHOP KC? It's such a hard thing to see initially. I mean, to see it, you literally have to wake up in a sense. and like you're saying with group thing, like to dissent and have a different opinion, there's so much at risk in doing that.

And I think that set up that way intentionally for you to even get into like the little things, I mean, the social impacts that happen and you're well aware of this because you see people come and go and you know when people leave, you don't hear from them again.

It's not that they died, it's not that, you know, the majority of them are still in church somewhere, maybe they left to go do ministry somewhere, but those relationships aren't existent anymore. Or that network is broken in a place like IHOP when you're so vulnerable and what I mean by vulnerable is financially having food on the table, stuff like that, a lot of people that they get away with it, I think, because so many of them are in a the young adult college age demographic, which is already, you know, known for eating ramen, so that's not unusual to hear a bunch of 18-20-somethings eating ramen.

I had friends that literally got sick from eating ramen too much, but they'd like, it was like something solid for three weeks that they ate ramen because they didn't have any money. And so I think that those, just knowing what would happen, if you were to come in and question eschatology or in the position you had, the higher up you were, the more you had to lose.

Myself, I never was a leader over anything at IHOP, really. I was an assistant to a group leader for the internship, which just meant I was a glorified RA, so I got to live with the interns and tell them to clean their dishes and stuff like that, so it wasn't anything too glorious, but if you were a teacher at IHOP or you were a worship leader on a worship team, or you ran an internship, any of those things, and you were to start questioning these things, I've heard so many stories where IHOP would remove their pay is what would happen,

like, and we're not talking like people who make, I highly doubt hardly anybody made more than 20 grand a year, like we're not talking big amounts of money. I think the biggest stipend IHOP stipend I've heard to date was $1,200.

a month. The majority of them were three to $500 a month. And you figure the whole time that I was there, renting a bedroom cost me around $3.350 to rent a bedroom in a house. And so if you were to dissent and start to question things and all of a sudden you lost that $500 a month, that was significant. And it wasn't that they were firing you, they didn't fire you, they would just reallocate you somewhere, it would reassign you somewhere. And unfortunately that position wouldn't have a stipend. And so there was, there was so much real subtle things like that

that just to hear that somebody moved from being a worship leader to to something else and that they lost their stipend because of it wouldn't make you think a whole lot. You go, yeah, because worship leaders in the backbone of this thing, they get money in marketing people adult or whatever it might be. And so that's like the initial things that come to mind is the social impacts of the relationships you lose. And that was just a threat. That wasn't even an outright manipulation, if you will, but I think that kept so many people in positions of powerlessness.

Yeah. And that was one of the things that you mentioned that really got me to thinking about the similarities between the two because there were, in Brannemism, there were multiple layers to this. The group thing is something that is normal across every, every group of people. You get a group of people together and they continually interact with each other. And if they're not interacting with diversity, you know, difference of opinion, they're going to develop in a certain way. And that's why that's literally why culture exists. You have people in South Asia who think differently than people in America because that's the way that the group thing works. But in Brannemism and

all of the different cults that spun off of it, there was another layer on top of that. There were men who realized the power of the group thing, but also realized how to manipulate the group thing.

So as the group, like you're talking about, so they don't have a lot of money. That was the case in largely the case in Brannemism. And a lot of the people, because they were a cohesive group of people, there would be employers who would employ people from the cult and only people from the cult. So they had their job because they were connected to cult people. And if they were to be kicked out of the cult, they would lose their job, lose their livelihood. And so you'd have these cult manipulators that would say, if you don't agree with this doctrine, the door is right

there. I've heard that. I mean, what preacher says this, right? But I've actually heard that statement from a church. Yep. And to the people. who are in the group think model, it's devastating, man, because if they're going to kick me out because I disagree, well, I'm going to lose my job, my house, my cars, my kids won't be, I won't be able to provide for my children, right? So they were manipulators that got into that. And the problem is it appears to be, for me, at least from what I can see, it appears to be a strategy.

There were so many messages that were core to IHOP that you talked about shaping the group think. The one that I'm seeing now, and I don't have, you're the research guy, I don't have all the research and stuff, but this is my opinion. But whenever I was a part of the movement, one of the things, the group things, group think topics that shaped us a lot was always who your enemy was, that was always a thing. And I've noticed, especially since Roe v Wade was overturned, I've noticed a subtle shift of what those enemies are. Whenever I was in Kansas City, it was always

abortion and homosexuality, like those were those were the enemies. You know, they're doing gay conversion therapy and they were going in protest and abortion clinics and standing on the steps of the Supreme Court House and such. And now I've seen that change to now. It's around, you know, and people have many different opinions around this issue, but around gender identity and trans people and bathrooms and all this, you know, we hear it, we hear it in the news all the time as well, like the, you know, the religious portion of society has so much sway in there.

But those are one of the subtle things that I see that they paint a target and get us thinking one way and you never actually have conversations with these people. You never have a conversation with someone who had to have an abortion. You never had a conversation with someone who identified as gay or someone who was trans or, you know, the list goes on and on. But there was much more strategic stuff to the one I've been thinking about the most recently intimacy with God was a huge theme, which is a whole thing we could dive into with Bridal Paradigm and Song of Solomon

and all that kind of thing. But before even got into the weird stuff, like the things that most preachers in America would agree with whenever they heard Mike talk about it, is he would talk about the first and second commandment. And he would talk about the importance of the first commandment that we would love God with everything with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.

But what people didn't notice was the subtle pitting of the two of the first commandment and the second commandment, you know, the second ones like it that you love your neighbors yourself. And we see through the rest of scripture, again, my opinion, we see see through the rest of scripture, you see look at Matthew 25 and Jesus talks about whatever you do to the least of these.

went to me. But with a place like IHOP, you construct a whole world view and theology and system around this prayer room and intercession and worship and all these things. And whenever you hear that first commandment message, now prayer room worship, all this stuff becomes the most important things because this is how we love God. And what we've seen happen as a result was the neglect of people in the community around us. I'm not even talking about the homeless population of Kansas City or the food insecurity. I'm talking about the cult members. Like we saw that it was more important that you kept your sacred

trust prayer room hours. The sacred trust was like your 40 hours or 24 hours of your student that you committed to in the prayer room a week. That was more important than any relationship because first commandment was most important. Loving God was more important than your family. More important than your friends. And so I've had to do a whole lot of detangling in that regard. But that's one of those subtle manipulation things. You define something for people and you give them a goal to hit. Like they're going to do everything they can to do that. If you say that that's what's pleasing to God, that

it's pleasing to God that you do this. And there was a whole lot more subtle stuff to it around, you know, justice and how they define justice, which impacted the loving your neighbor portion. That if it wasn't prayer, worship, evangelism, you could go feed as many people as you want. But if you fed people and didn't tell them about Jesus, you were the anti-Christ. And they would say that verbatim from the platform. So there's so much subtle stuff like that that now, I mean, I left in 2012 or 12 years later and I'm just now detangling that whole message in the past six months or so.

It's a lot to detangle because like you said, they want to have an entity. They want, it's an us versus them mentality. They have to have an enemy. It's like, you know, it's not that that's limited to the quote, looking politics. If you can incite anger in a crowd and get them to hate something and then say that your platform is the one that solves the issue that's causing this hate, you've united the people and anger is very powerful.

Even even the prophet Yoda said fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. And the problem is they don't realize the last part of that hate leads to suffering. And you look at the similarities between the two, I hop KC, Branemism, and then all of the movements historically that spark Branemism, they begin with fear, which the prophet Yoda explained to us, you get the people to fear something, then you can turn them to turn anger against it and then eventually to hatred. And it's always that strategy to manipulate the crowd.

And, you know, I'm not going to say that Bickel and some of these others are listening to the Prophet Yoda, but there's a pattern that you can look through from politicians to just ancient history.

That's the way in which you take a group of people in a mind-think-type scenario and then turn them into an army. And that's exactly what they did here. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation?

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You mix in the visions of grandeur kind of idea that gets swept up to. There's so many big pictures painted. You mentioned Joel's army, and I start thinking about all the prophetic history and stuff.

I mean, one of the big parts of that was that there would be this big blue ridge procession is what they called it, where it was going to be apostles and prophets marching from four-runner church in Grandview to Arrowhead Stadium.

And that was a big thing, and they've tried to self-fulfill that a couple times. Just recently, like two years ago, where they tried to do a thing and did this big, they rented out Arrowhead Stadium, and it was kind of sad because they did a lot of image management around it.

I don't know how I'd hate to guess, but the stadium wasn't more than 20% full. They packed everybody on the field around the stage and stuff, and then you look up and you're like, man, this place is empty, but it was a huge, huge push.

But whenever you said, those were the things that were set in front of us, that kept us in the fire, like that metaphor, that you would be the big worship leader, you would be the apostle, you would be the prophet.

And there's so many friends that are coming to mind right now who had those exact things spoken over them, had a friend who they told, they're like, you're going to be one of the apostles in the blue ridge procession, like that's what was prophesied over him.

Or you're going to be the next this worship leader or that worship leader. And that's how they kept you there was that. Um, it all comes down to control. If you can control the people, you can point them wherever you want and make, turn them into your army and do your bidding.

And that's essentially what was happening here. You talked about. It's so subtle. Oh, yeah. You talked about running arrowhead stadium. I remember when I was a kid, most of the people who were in the random cults were probably not even remember this, but the end time was near because Bill Clinton got elected.

Yep. It's so weird how politics ties into all of this went through Obama and I hop and it was the same thing. It was the same thing. Yeah, same thing. So, and I think the, I think the brand of cults did too with Obama, but anyway, Bill Clinton was elected, so therefore the end is nigh and the, the saints are, they would use this phrase, the saints are gathering together and they ran to the, it wasn't nearly as big as the football stadium, but they rented one of the buildings over in Louisville and everybody from all over the country came and it was so packed, but yet so unfilled that they had

to put up like curtains so that you didn't see all the empty seats everywhere. And I remember, I was young and I'm walking in and this, this building's a little odd. Why don't they have those curtains up and now I'm sitting there in Brannemism, you're listening to this recording of this dead guy from the 60s.

I'm, you know, counting the ceiling tiles and looking around at everything that's going on. It suddenly dawned on me, oh, it's because there's so many empty seats and this would look like this little tiny crowd and I had, that level of critical thought, even though I had blocked almost all critical thought, but it's all for the appearance because if you can get the people to believe in whatever is the fantasy you're creating, then turn them to anger and hatred, then you've, you've empowered them as your army.

Yeah, I mean, that image management stuff happened all over the place at iHop, even in the day to day. I mean, it was, they would rope off aisles in the prayer room because they had their 24-7 livestream, which I mean, still going and has been probably one of their biggest recruiting tools.

I mean, it's such a resource for churches that want to pray. Like, you can go turn this on any time it's free, but they, they would give instructions to the media team, like, don't show empty chairs. We do not show empty chairs. It's not what we do.

And so they would rope off sections and if you went and set and one of the roped off sections, trying to get away from people, just trying to get, get some space to yourself.

Man, an usher would hunt you down and they'd make you move. They would. It was, it was crazy.

Yeah, the, the, the fear piece is, I keep saying the word, using the word subtle. But I don't, I don't know a way, another way to describe the techniques that they use. I think last time, whatever, I was on a time.

talked about, they don't drive up in white vans and black outfits and drag you away. Like, it's not what they do. But there's so many points of fear. It's not just fear of losing social circles.

It's not just fear of finances. It's fear of eternal destination. It was fear of, it had the whole Heavenly Rewards message. So it was fear of your proximity to Jesus. That's what Mike would teach.

That depending on how you lived in this life would determine your proximity to Jesus in the age to come, which would cause people to endure mistreatment in ways, I mean, if they let these people train POWs, like, I don't think people would break.

Like, the way that they teach them to endure mentally and even the stories that I've heard of, someone being mistreated by a leader and them just telling them, you know, well, you're just in Joseph's dungeon.

Like, that's just where you are right now. Or you're out in the caves somewhere, you know,

you're going through that tough season, you're wondering around the wilderness. And so that was another tactic that was used to instill fear was, you know, what was gonna happen in the age to come based on the way that Mike talked about it.

He said, we got this 60 year internship. That's what he would say. He goes, you got 60 years here to determine how you're gonna spend forever.

And you tell somebody that and they start doing the math. I mean, if you're in your smart person and you do the math there and you believe it and you go, okay, like short term suffering versus like eternity.

That really resonates with people and you'll see people do some crazy stuff for that.

It's all encompassing. And the longer I stare at it, the more I see it everywhere.

I mean, there's the fear with the eschatology piece. There's the fear of, with intimacy with Jesus, the way that it was put in front of you was, we talk about Matthew 25, not the least of these, but we would talk about the oil in the lamps and the virgins, the 10 virgins.

And back tied into that first commandment thing, you had to be, the only way you got oil in your lamp was through prayer and fasting. Like that's how you got intimacy with Jesus was prayer and fasting.

And so you had this constant thing of like, man, it's my oil lamp empty, like am I running on empty? And so you had this constant, just hyper vigilance as I didn't know that word then, but I now know it now that I'm processing trauma because I still feel it sometimes, where I just get obsessive and just do everything I can to for certain tasks and ideas and it's, it's, it's, it's crazy, crazy crazy. It is. And that's one of the things that really fascinated me from our last conversation. And you just, you hit the nail in the head. If the army could do this to

the troops, we would have, we would have an impossible to stop. There'd be an army that would be impossible to stop. I have been studying, as you know, a Christian identity, how it led to all of this. And I began to see patterns emerging from the early years of it, in that they were choosing people who were in the military to come and speak in religious arenas for this British-Israelism Christian identity. So you're getting military money. You're going to be in trouble, John. You're going to be in trouble. No. It gets, I'm leading you up to it, I think. But one of the things that I

began to notice this pattern, there's a pattern of manipulation of the body that ties into the manipulation of the mind. If you think military, one of the first things that you do when you enter the military is they want to break you down. And they're going to drill, you got a drill sergeant who's exercising you to death. Very, very little sleep. And your body is just, your body is going to a state, state of self preservation. And when it does, you become like a child. And then the drill sergeant becomes like your perennial figure, right? Well, they can't do that in a church because

everybody would flip out. But what they can do is manipulate the body in other ways, like the fasting. And in Brannemism, you know, you actually had it a lot worse in many ways than we had because they had long forgotten that technique. Brannem, when the latter reign began, it was William Brannem and Franklin Hall. And that combination of Brannem's mental techniques with Franklin Hall's fasting techniques was able to break the body down. You had the mental ways in which you engaged meditation with Brannem. And then with Franklin Hall, it was this power atomic power with God through fasting and prayer. They called it. But what it essentially did is it broke you

down from the fasting part. And then using new age techniques of meditation, which Brannem was bringing in, the combination of that is exactly what they would do in the military without the push-ups. The reason I said you're going to get me trouble before I get a chance to throw this punch because I want to. That's what was very infuriating to a lot of us was after all the might-bickle stuff broke. The guy who's the chair of the board now is a retired major general who had his own scandals that followed him. He was honorably discharged. But there was some very

suspicious stuff that went on and then, you know, I don't want to lie about.

But it was interesting. I mean, it was a civilian casualty type thing that was,

it was ruled that it was necessary force and stuff, but it's very suspicious. But this guy's come in here and, you know, tried to, and nobody knows, and that's the thing. Like, the IHOP leadership team, like we all know who these people were, and as soon as the scandal broke, all of a sudden we had these new faces and foresters coming in who were going to save face, who had no connection to the community. They didn't know us. Because that's the thing, like, all these leaders, like, I don't know that Mike would know who I am. But all the other ones,

Dave, Sikers, Stewart Greaves, like if I were to walk up to them right now today, they would know who I am. Just because I spent four years there, I was in their classes at IHOP. You, I've had conversations with them on social media through the years. But there was this huge distancing, but that's, that's an aside. But you, you mentioned atomic power of prayer and fasting.

Are, are you familiar? So they're, I used to have like five copies of this book. I think it was Derek Prince, I think is who it was, shaping the world through prayer and fasting or something like that. Yeah. Lou Engel went on this kick, who is in the IHOP sphere, Lou. He's been a part of IHOP and not a part of IHOP in and out. And he's the one who does all those big stadium Christianity stuff, the one doing the call events and stuff and big fasting guy. But he would give this book out for free. It was out of print. And he got thousands of this book printed. And you would go to conferences.

I mean, they were, I got my first copy in Alabama at a youth conference. I'm in a place called the ramp, which is a whole other, probably cult in itself too. And then whenever I got the Kansas city, they were handing out those books again. And it was, it was just talking about the, you know, the atomic power prayer fasting, like that's because some of the words that were used.

Fasting was, was used at IHOP in, I don't think that I've processed that in the ways that I have other areas. But there were leaders, Alan Hood, who has shown himself to be doing the work of trying to become a healthy leader now post IHOP. But I remember him talking about an encounter he had with God at one point. And he looked at us, I can't remember if it was a service or an IHOP you like chapel service or something like that. But it was room full of people, all the students were there. And, and he said that God told him if he didn't fast at least two days a week that he would

be useless to him in the in the days to come in the in the last days. And Alan put that as a charge to all of us and it was, there was a couple of things that happened there. If you didn't fast, you had the guilt and the shame over your head for not fasting and knowing that you weren't going to be useful to the Lord because God told Alan if you don't fast at least two days. And we believed that. And that was reinforced in the four runner commitments which was something that shaped, I think probably around 2010 or so, they did a big one thing

conference on it. And they came up with the seven commitments of a four runner, which I think actually have the books still sitting here from the other day we were talking about it. So they got the seven commitments of a four runner by Mike Bickle. And one of them was fasting was the thing, trying to see fast weekly positioning ourselves to receive more from God. And that's the way that it was pitched is that if you jump through these hoops and you do these certain things, you will get more of God than somebody else. And that was kind of the goal that was put in front of

us. But the thing that wasn't talked about is in something I'm glad that you've brought up time and time again is the mental and physical impacts of fasting. So we had that fast weekly thing that was a part of the culture. Tuesdays was most everybody's fasting day. That was kind of like the quote unquote, staff fasting day. I can't remember if it was the first three or last three days of the month that we would do the global bride cream fast, which is something that Mike created. So I think it was January through November, we would do three days a month and then in December, they would

do a week. And then if you add that up, it's 40 days over the year. So they would do this broken up 40 day fast over the year. And it was, I mean, nobody was going to kick you out if you didn't fast, but it was an expectation that you fasted for these things. And I mean so much to the point, I think it got better in later years. But there was a point where the kitchen for the interns and stuff didn't serve food on fasting days. I think it got a little bit better later. They'd put out

PB&J sandwiches and stuff or leftovers from the day before or something like that for interns who couldn't fast. And they got a little bit better around that. But those were the things that were already just built in. And then you add the dynamic of say, I hop you had a ministry trip coming up, which happened once a year or so at least. Where the whole school would get deployed somewhere, we went to Boston, we went to Peoria, Illinois one time, went to San Diego when I was a part of it, and I went to Jacksonville once. I went to a couple of different places on trips like this.

And a lot of times they would call fast beforehand. So they would do like a 21 day meal fast or something. like that, you know. And I remember so many times trying to take on these big fasts. I never I never could do it. I was and I don't know if I, but I didn't care enough to do it. I don't think it was part of it. But but then you would have guys like Lou, Lou Engle, who was a presence in the community. If Lou, and it was always a joke to whenever Lou spoke and then people knew

ahead of time Lou was going to speak, we're like, well, here comes a 40 day fast because that was just the way that it went. And so I feel like there was always like a fast going on always.

And it wears you down. It does. It wears you down. It causes, you know, I mean, you just go read a benefits of fasting and side effects of fasting from a medical journal and you can see the brain fog and all the stuff that happens. Like it's not hidden information. But if if somebody doesn't help you connect those dots and see that connection, I don't think people see it. I've caught a lot of heat over the years whenever I talk about fasting as a tool for manipulation because the Bible talks about fasting. And what people in these types of movements don't realize is that it's not

limited to Christianity. You can go study Eastern mysticism. You can find they use fasting as well. And there are techniques to enter this state where your mind is not as present in this world as as it could be. And that's what these cults have tried to do. They capitalize on the fact that your mind does go into this cloudy state and you're not thinking clearly. When you're not thinking clearly, you cannot engage critical thinking. And it's not that I'm even against fasting. In fact, few years ago, I did a, I fasted for 40 something days. I lost 44 pounds and 44 days basically.

I was trying, I was pre-diabetic at that time and I was trying to head it off at the pass. And it didn't, eventually it didn't work, but I lost a lot of weight and I've kept it off. So fasting has good aspects, right? It's a both-in thing. I mean, it's what we started the conversation talking about. That's what's the difficult part to see is that the good and the bad can co-exist together. That something good can cause a lot of harm, a lot of harm. Oh, yeah. And speaking of that, I said beforehand I wasn't going to mention John Wimber, but you mentioned Derek Prance and

his fasting book. And I put, I put John Wimber in the same category as Derek Prance. Everybody, anytime I mention Derek Prance, they say, well, he's distanced himself from the shepherding movement. He washed his hands. He's clean. And my response is, man, if I were to go at the top of a hill and find the routiest group of teenage boys who are angry at the world and start up hand them the keys to a bulldozer and start it down the hill towards a neighborhood.

And then jump off halfway through and say, okay, you guys have fun, but this is wrong. I'm not going to do it. Who's guilty, right? And you've got men like this who they're doing some very bad things, and the fact that they step away and say, no, my hands are clean. It doesn't clean their hands. And this fasting thing began, you know, you can go back through time and you can find it through cults predating this. But it was very, very effective in igniting the latter-rain movement. And they were igniting a movement with Christian identity, with the intent to reclaim the so-called mountain of government.

They were unhappy with the U.S. government whenever all this was going on. So they like today, they're very similar, there are a lot of similarities, but they were creating a Christian army to reclaim and take dominion over the, you know, over the nation. It began to change over time, obviously, but one of the ways in which they did that was they had everybody in this fasting whether you want to or not. And it was extremism. It really was. Yeah. It's crazy because I agree 100%. I mean, as a teenager, before even going to IOP or anything like that, like I experienced

the shepherding stuff. I don't know if it was to the degree that prints and different ones were engaging in it, but our youth group operated in a way that we didn't do anything without our youth pastors permission, whether that was friendships or jobs or relationships, dating relationships.

That was the big one. You had to go ask the youth pastors permission before you could date someone.

All of that definitely impacted us. And that's, you know, and even like with Wimber, I tell my that's one of the, you know, the conundrum of being an occult is you see people who you know

have good intentions get swept up. And I don't know Wimber. I don't know that he had good intentions or whatever, but you just because they are good people with good intentions doesn't mean that they don't have a trail of bodies behind them. And that's the hard thing to reckon with.

I mean, you talk about Wimber. I mean, he platformed the profits. Like that's what he did. We were, I sent you before yesterday. One of my friends shared it with me of a rock opera album that was made. Yeah, called The Great Profit. You can look it up on spotify by a band called LS Underground. They used to be called the Life Savers is what they were called. But then they got booted out of Christian bookstores and stuff. But it's the music is about this guy's experience with vineyard platforming the profits, the Kansas City profits and Mike Bickle, and then coming to

town and the havoc that it wrecked. And you can find like liner notes and stuff online about it, them sharing the stories and stuff of that was said to some young women that they would end up prostitute out on sunset boulevard if they didn't come and join the movement if they didn't give themselves to these things and that's like Mike was talking about the house of prayer stuff like there's so much stuff that he says he never intended to do that just you know what's God it was divine that I'm like now like he was trying to do the prayer and worship stuff for a

long time and he had worship leaders he was training and grooming and he was starting his little model back then a prophetic singing and but all that's a whole tangent but all that say like that wouldn't have happened if Wimber wouldn't have given them access on the back end like Wimber tried to discipline them and and if you look at Wimber's response comparatively to how we see you know iHop KC responding to the Mike Bickle allegations or gateway church in Texas handling the Robert Morris stuff for any of these contemporary examples like you look at what Wimber did

and i can say i go man he responded really well and he dropped a hammer on those guys but the fact of the matter is he was the one who opened the door to begin with and it didn't close it by doing that yeah it's so it's so crazy i i looked at that video you sent it reminded me i didn't mention this in the last episode but they're the the way that this thing has manipulated the heads it is messed a lot of people up and one of the themes that we talked about last time was

overcoming this and i'm not going to say that this is the best example of overcoming but one of the people that the laterane movement messed up greatly was actual rose i began really i was i was reading yeah i was reading um what was that it might have been rolling stones anyway i was reading and said he came out of a pinnacle of church and i'm like the curiosity got better me so i started digging to find where it is i actually have a research page of actual rose on my website i found the church and i found um one of the speakers and it was the speaker that linked it to

laterane because this was a laterane speaker that was coming to the church that he grew up in and i started reading about the similarities you know they had the choir and the singing and he did the fake falsetto whenever he was in that church because he he's got bored with the music i did the same exact thing man so so whenever he he hit it big he was just using his his church choir laterane church choir falsetto voice got him famous so again it's it's not the best example of an overcomer but he did you know move past this i'll say it like that

yeah man and it's so this is an interesting dynamic too though it's it's so funny to see how these groups laud certain individuals whenever they start ascribing to some of the beliefs or some of the things like i remember there was a there was a huge thing back when the transformer movies were coming out.

And there was articles released that Megan Fox spoke in tongues. And because Megan Fox spoke in tongues, all of a sudden everybody was going nuts. And the same thing happened with Katie Perry whenever she went on her rise.

And she came out with these sugs. People started talking about she's demonic this and that because she had left. I think her dad was a pinocostal pastor. I think so it was. And because she had left that and now she was singing about a black horse, you know, or dark horse, whatever her song is.

Everybody's like, ah, David, Steven. People ask me if I speak in tongues. And I say, usually when I'm under my car working and I hit my hand with a wrench really hard, you might, you might hit it.

All the joking aside, they really have these techniques to control your head down to an art. It's a fine science for them. And in fact, I would my opinion, and it's just my opinion, but my opinion is they actually study the techniques of how to control you more than they study the Bible.

And that's evident from the sermons that they preach because most of what they preach is not even in it. And I question whether some of these guys even have cracked the cover open to see what's in the Bible.

But anyway, the manipulation techniques there, you use the word subtle, I use the word devious. Like these, these minds are thinking how to manipulate you at all times and they want to get in your heads.

When I went back and I began to analyze the sermons and even still today, people will send me things to analyze. And I look at it and I think, good Lord, man. If I, if I were a normal person who came out from any of the other churches and wanted to visit this place, it's so evident that they want to manipulate your head.

A normal person is not going to sit there very long. They're going to say, this place is whacked out and just get up and leave. But the shocking part for me was that while I recognize that in the Brana movements, I start looking at Mike Bickel and some of the others at IHOP and they're doing the same exact things.

Yeah, there was so much lack of original thought from leaders there. Everything is same came from Mike. Everyone, and it was funny, we, this is totally unrelated. We were talking about earlier this week and in one of our support groups, about we had this guy who was kind of like a flat-earth or creationist.

But we all got obsessed with it and kind of latched on to just because it was something new. It was something novel. It was, you know, but everything was re, Mike regurgitated and repackaged.

And there was a couple people that you would just say were many mics who were still there today. Mike had this subtle thing that made this possible. And they made this happen. Now, may have mentioned it before.

I can't remember, but he would always say this phrase. And I think I've heard you talk about this with Brandon. He would say that my copy. right, you're right to copy. And he had a Times New Roman teaching template that you show it to any I hopper or XI hopper today, no cringe, because that's how we were taught to make teaching notes. And we knew that Mike, whenever Mike put his teaching note to, they would talk about it like in back rooms and stuff. I don't know if he ever talked about it from platform.

But Mike would literally just copy and paste pieces from other messages and piece them together to make new messages. So you might see from four weeks ago that he talked about

sin or that the impacts of sin on the world and he had to have his three things, rage of Satan and all this kind of stuff. He would use his explanations and then you would see it three weeks later or paste it in another thing. And so we were taught as I hopper you students that we could teach right from Mike's notes that we could take it. We wouldn't have to come up with stuff on our own. And so that caused you to own it in a way. It caused you not to engage things critically. But Mike would turn around and say, you know, to check things out for

yourself and don't be so open-minded that your brain falls out. Like you would say subtle things like that that would make you think, okay, I'm being critical. I am. And one of the other phrases that came up recently that I didn't realize was a little bit of a gnar phenomenon in AR

was the meat and bones little phrase to eat the meat and spit out the bones. One of my friends was reading the Holly, I think her name's Holly Pivic book that she did on the NAR. And that was one of the phrases that she talked about in her book that they would say to eat the meat and spit out the bones. And what that did, it was shut down critical thought again of if I had an objection to something Mike said. And then he turned around and he knows, I mean, he was a socially intelligent

guy. So like if he said something, he could read a room and know that it didn't set right. And he would say, well, you know, just just eat the meat and spit out the bones. Like eat the good part that you agree with and just ignore the rest. But we realized ignoring the rest was what kept the system afloat. That's that's what did it. So yeah, that's that's some stuff I've been chewing on and spit out the bones. In Brannemism, it's eat the cherry pie and spit out the seeds. But it's

concept. This pies the pits. But I'm really glad that you brought up that topic because a lot of people really miss that as a manipulation technique. The fact that you have to own it.

That is one of the most powerful techniques of manipulation in a cult that exists because if you can get a group of people, lead them to what you want them to say and then have them say it and own it. Well, now they have to back down from it or otherwise.

they have to humble their pride and eat some, eat some humble pie. Yeah. And so that is the best manipulation technique. Then you get a group of pillars who are lifting you up and very few of those pillars are going to fall because there's, there are very few people that will admit they're wrong and they know that.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for doing this today. Like I said, we had so many people asking for you to come back and I have a feeling there'll be quite a few more topics we'll have to get into.

Sounds good. Sounds good. Thank you for having me, John. Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Branum in the healing revivals, you can read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branum and his message, available in Amazon, Kindle, and Automal.