Detangling IHOPKC: The Collision of Faith and Ego - An Inside Look at the KCF

Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I had my very special guest, Bob Scott, former co-founder of Kansas City Fellowship, and the author of some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickel, the Kansas City Profits, and the International House of Prayer. Bob, it's good to have you on again. We were talking yesterday about the subject matter that we're getting into today, and I have to say I'm extremely

excited. I have wanted to talk about this forever, but I've been waiting for the right moment with the right person to talk about it, because it is a little bit complicated and delicate, and the irony of this, after I spoke with you, I'm doing through this detangling IHOP KC, I'm working with Jed, I guess you know, and Jed wanted to do the same exact topic, and we're doing it later today, so I'm recording both today with two different people, so we're going to get three different perspectives, so on the same complex mess, we probably still won't untangle it, because

this is very complicated, but we'll get, I'm not sure which one will go out first either years or his, but we'll get a, you know, a consensus of at least three heads together on the same subject. Well, and plus you're getting a generational perspective, which is always very healthy, right, because what my generation saw and how we interpreted things and how our kids did, you know, he's the same age as my children, so it's always fascinating to hear their perspective on things.

Yeah, it's, and I have a unique perspective, I guess, you guys were actually closer to the situation than I was, you know, I was, I got to see it firsthand through certain individuals, I think you probably had a closer view on it. Anyway, the subject for the listeners, we're talking about the unusual things that we saw and heard and witnessed while being around these people who were so-called prophets, you know, growing up, we truly thought that these guys were the closest thing to God, at least in my sect we did, and what have come to realize, even back then,

always in it. I realized that many things that they said were not really prophecies. They were just randomly saying things and they would say it just, they had this knack for saying it just vague enough that if it didn't happen, you really didn't think about it. You didn't care that it didn't happen. But if it did, because of the way in which they said it, you went, oh my gosh, he knew how did he know.

Well, one of the biggest problems I ended up dealing with, with the prophetic eyes is people couldn't discern or separate between what was a prophecy and what was their personal opinion. Right? Absolutely. So I give you a classic example of that marriage.

Right? So if you, you know, because I've had a situation recently where this was the case, where somebody said, well Paul came, you know, prophesied to my parents that they should stay married and then I got abused. Well, I said, number one, you were child, so you don't actually know what really happened. And number two, was that a prophecy or was that Paul came's theology based on his assembly of God background, believing that divorce was a sin. So therefore he saying stay together. That was his opinion. That was his theology. That was his worldview.

But you know, people cross those boundaries all the time. Absolutely. And I've watched the same kind of thing, you know, if you can get the listener to believe that there is a consequence to the action that is spiritual. And then inject your spiritual ideas and beliefs and rules and boundaries around that. Well, then suddenly they're going to make the connection in their head and go, oh my gosh, I did this. Therefore, the consequence is now sometimes that's true. You know, if somebody is going to, I don't know, go go rob a gas station, the consequences probably they're going to jail

if they get caught. That's a natural thing. But these people add spiritual consequences. And it's almost like if you put it into the spiritual world, it's like if you rub a rabbit's foot foot, you get good luck. Well, these guys give you the opposite of rabbit's feet. And so you walk around thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to rub the opposite of a rabbit's foot. And I'm going to catch this bad luck and it's going to destroy my life. Well, one thing I think that's difficult about in our conversation, what you alluded to earlier is that we're trying to parse

weed and terrors. And I'm using a biblical reference because I think it's sort of a word picture of what we're struggling with here, which is weed and terrors look identical. Yeah, right, but ones a week and ones, you know, a week and so they're different, but they look the same So here we are the two of us trying to deconstruct our history with broken clay vassals Who seemed to have things happen that could be God?

We're good people's lives were blessed touched You know good things happen and at the same time really bad things happened Yeah, it's like how do we how do we you know, how do we unpack this right?

And so I think one of the things I appreciate our conversations are is we're like two guys Trying to look at something going what was that like what what did we see? What was this and what's hard about a lot of it is you actually have to drill down and get to the root of it Right, right, it's you know as I I've said before you know It gets down to the nature of a thing right a weed in a terracy probably look identical, right?

But ones a week ones a tear right they grew up they even look alike But what's the nature of this thing? And so that's what I've been trying to deconstruct my life and looking back at some of this and then I realize it gosh I good and bad Good evil they are happening at the same time. Oh, yeah And you know the same guys that were were Absolutely setting people free from their own inner demons, so to speak were the same guys being manipulative and Controlling people. Oh, yeah, and you know you have to humanize it also because

I'm certain it was this way maybe after you left and Kansas City and maybe while you were there, but The way that these men have projected their image and their stage persona They become greater than human and to the eyes of the people these guys are the next thing to God to call them the Apostles and whatnot But it's a human problem You we have in these movements we have taken the personalities of the people and associated them to God and so it's one or the other it's either all alone or all off and And you know, you could take a person who's who's spent an entire life doing really good deeds helping the poor

Their entire life if you were to sum it up was good things But they had this one moment in their life where they did a really really bad thing Maybe they so nobody was looking and they stole some money Well in the way that they teach the people in these cults These two can't coexist the person is either all good or they've and they've never done bad or they're all bad but One of one of the ways I try to explain it when I'm Working with people offline and it's a it's kind of a It's a semi-heretical thing to say, so I'm going to be cautious how I say this.

But the Apostle Paul was a human, and we regard him as an Apostle. And if you read the Bible, you can read about the Apostle Paul, but say that he did something like this.

Well, he's still a human. It doesn't mean that everything that he said was bad, it means that this one thing that happened, if it happened, would be bad, because he is a human like I'm a human.

But this religion has trained the minds to think of Apostles as this higher status than a human. And they can do no wrong. Well, that's simply not true. Then further amplify the problem. These guys have created stage personas for themselves where they want to stay in that level where they're above everybody else.

And so they enjoy when people are looking up to them. Well, once they get to that level, nobody can live perfectly. You're human. You're going to make mistakes. Now, that's not to say that the issues with Bickel are obviously long-standing, and there's a lot more than just a single incident.

But what I'm trying to say is we have to humanize the person to understand the problem that we're about to address, which we'll get into further. Well, even Paul admitted in Romans, I do things I don't want to do.

Like he was struggling with his own humanity, right? He was like, I do stuff I don't want to do. I'm going to add to your thought here, because I think there's two sides to this equation that creates the problem.

On the one side, what you talked about is the broken clavises who are insecure, who want to be adored and be seen as elite or at a different plane or whatever, right? But the other side of the equation is we humans have this need, it seems, for heroes.

And so I think it's a combination of two things, because it's not just in the church world, right? I mean, if you look at social media, I wrote about this. If you look at social media, the most popular people on Instagram that are being followed are people who are doing nothing to change or better the world.

They're all people who are living this idyllic, well, perceived idyllic life, right? And they're all famous and they sing or they're movie stars or whatever, right? And so you have 30 million people following every move they make every day.

And so I think this is particularly true in the Christian community as well. It's like, I know we're supposed to be different, but we're really not. I mean, that's one of my eggs now as I look back over things.

It's like, actually, we're just a Christian veneer because underneath, we're just the same people. Everybody outside our community determined by all the same problems and needs and desires, right? And so we have the same need for spiritual heroes.

And so you take that combination of this human need, you know, for, you know, a deliverer of Messiahs, right? People that are going to come and save us from our ordinaryness, you know, people who we can live vicariously through and pretend for somebody who are not or whatever all the motivations are.

We do that. We make people that need heroes with people who want to be heroes, and what do you have? A max. It's a collision, really. Yeah. And then to further complicate this, which we talked briefly, and maybe we'll explore a bit more, but the humans themselves are so complex.

And so we're talking specifically in this podcast about the unusual things, the prophecies, etc. Well, you can study this, and there are various studies if you just search on the internet, but people who have mental health conditions often have unusual things happen to them.

Are they supernatural? I don't know. Many of the books ask the question, is it, you know, could it be, and you look at, you know, some of the, some of the people who were regarded as non-Christian prophets, some of them had some issues, you know, mentally.

So there is this weird connection. It doesn't, for me, I still go back and forth between, are they really, do they really have some gift, or are they like the examples that I'm aware of?

Are they just saying random things because they're half crazy, and people are assuming that the half crazy things are coming to pass? I don't know. That's a question that will probably never be answered, but you have to also consider the fact that if it is possible that the mental health causes either the scenario of people believing that it's prophetic or they're actually having some sort of a spiritual insight, that further complicates this discussion.

Well, even historically, I mean, this may surprise some people, but it was 1500 years after Jesus left this earth before humanity even discovered there was a micro world. Like nobody in the Bible, not Apostle Paul, nobody in the New Testament understood there was a world of viruses, bacteria, nobody would have understood DNA, chemical imbalance, like none of that stuff, right?

They, if somebody had epilepsy, right, it was always a spirit, right? Well, the other thing where this gets sort of interesting is there are people who had, that were epileptic, that had visions. Well, to the, you know, the mind who doesn't understand the micro world, and they're watching this person suddenly start shaking.

and their eyes rolling back in their head, and then they come out of this thing, and then they talk about the vision that they had. Well, they think it's a experience from God, right?

In other words, they would have, nobody would have ever said, oh, they have epilepsy. Yeah. Right? No, a spirit came on them. Look, they're shaking. Look at their eyes. They're having a spiritual experience.

And look, now they even have a vision. So I've been saying he got to be careful here in contextualize some of this stuff. Nobody in the New Testament would have understand that Jesus may have been actually healing people who have had infections.

Oh, yeah. They all had a spirit, right? Yeah. So one thing that I think would be interesting to talk about

is Bob Jones' relationship with Mike. And here's why I want to share a story. I want to share a perspective on something that then we can jump off from there. One of the things that was really hard for me in the 1980s was Mike and I, we met at Bible school.

I was 18, he was 19. We were the two single guys, sleeping in the same house, having conversations, talking about our dreams, and everything. Up till Bob Jones showed up, everything that Mike and I talked about that we felt, we always talked about it in the context was, have this feeling, I have a sense, or here's a biblical verse, right?

And it was very real and all that. When Bob Jones showed up in 1983, I watched my best friend change.

And in hindsight, looking back at it was hard. I mean, it ultimately ended up in a relationship actually fracturing rather painfully. But what happened was, and this is me now looking back at six years old at this time, and what I realized was that on the one hand, you had Mike who comes from a broken double alcoholic family who's got an addictive personality, right?

He's obsessive, whatever Mike does, he excels at. Whether it was sports or anything, he was so competitive and addictive, right? So he's got this personality that's addictive. Plus, then he's also got this need to be a hero because that's how his dad wired him, right?

Then Bob Jones shows up in Bob Jones affirms the fact that Mike's a hero, that he's a spiritual warrior that's gonna lead a movement. Right? And and or my brain started to go in this thing, which is going to sound odd to people, but hear me out here. It was like, Bob Jones was like a prophetic drug pusher.

I know this is going to sound weird with people, but you have an addict over here, right? Who's desperately, you know, wanting to be this heroic sort of King David figure, right? This spiritual warrior, prayer warrior, you know, fighting for God. And then you've got this guy over here who has enough things happen that gives you some sense of like, he really might legitimately see things, right? Well, he's telling Mike everything Mike wants to hear, right? And I'm watching this whole thing going on, right? And I'm realizing there's this weird symbionic relationship developing because Bob keeps feeding Mike, right? All these things to keep both, you know,

bolstering up everything that Mike needs to be and wants to be. That's where for me it got, I felt like it got, they went off the rails, meaning that it's like, how can you trust any of this?

Yeah, right? Because Mike's got the platform, right? Mike's dynamic personality is so strong. I mean, there's, I don't know if I've ever met somebody that has a more powerful gift of influence that Mike, he can walk into a room, right? And completely turn people 180 degrees and, you know, and they go from, we don't like you to, where do we sign up? I mean, he's got that kind of hoot spot, you know what I mean? He's got that kind of charisma about him, right?

Well, then you've got Bob Jones over here that's sort of this orphaned human being who's, desperately trying to fit in somewhere, he doesn't fit in anywhere and any meets, he comes in meets Mike and suddenly there's this powerful connection because they need each other because Bob wants Mike's platform, you know, Bob wants, but it's driven by this need for acceptance, right? This need to be long, this need, I mean, and he was so honest with me about it, you know, it's like he just wanted to be a part of a family. Yeah, right? But in order to do that, he had to keep feeding

Mike these prophetic drugs, right? To keep Mike going. You know, prophetic drugs is kind of funny. I've been trying to find a way to describe exactly what you're saying. In my research, it's not just with Brandon, it's not just with Bickel, I see this over and over and over in the research and I get, you've probably seen it in the comments and you've probably heard it from people as well.

People will look at something like this that purely is off the rails, and they will say, well, that man got possessed by an evil spirit and he's a demon and all of this stuff, which maybe I'm not going to discredit that.

However, what I see is exactly what you're saying. I just haven't created a label yet. When you have a charismatic personality who's feeding on this from the other, from the people, and so the people are supporting him, lifting him up, pushing him up onto a platform, then you get another similar personality who is not only doing the same thing, but bolstering the other guy, then they start bolstering each other, well, then they go even higher, and after they go higher, they realize, hey, there's power in this.

We need more people. Let's bring in another one and another one, and they do this, and pretty soon what you get are the people, the prophets are affirming each other, and they're lifting each other up.

The people have no idea, because unlike you, myself, Jed, who see what's happening in the environment around these guys, the casual person doesn't see that, and so they think, oh, my gosh, God has come down and are missed, and as far back as I can go with my research, I mean, go back to just go back whenever Dauy began to lose his mind, he went off the rails, John Alexander Dauy, you had this swarm of prophets in Zion City trying to take over his, what was it, $10 million, there's a lot of money back then, so they're all

swarming in trying to get a hold of that money, and the newspapers reported the cities just overrun with prophets, and they're all doing this, well, what happened is you've got John G. Lake, Bosworth, Charles Fox, Paul Romm, this group of men band it together, and they did exactly what you're saying, and then they believed that they could physically cast out the evil spirits, and they started killing people in these exorcisms, and they call it, you can go look it up, it's the Zion City murders, the most horrific, this crippled, crooked woman, they tried to straighten her legs and snapped her femur, and I mean,

there's a terrible, terrible death that they caused on this woman, and so in the aftermath, you look back at all of these people, and you think, did they, were they so evil that they wanted to kill people? No, but they banded together, like you're saying, they got in this weird state of religious ecstasy, which is like a drug, it has the effects of being on a drug, they lift themselves up, they lift each other up, and the people who are suffering, in this case, suffering unto death, they don't see what's happening, but they think this

is God. Yeah, again, I'm one of these people that likes to drill down to the root of things, and there's a part of me that... It's just, what's the word? It's like I have compassion for all the components.

And what I mean by that is we humans are so desperate to know God sees us. You know what I mean? That God, He sees us, He knows me, He loves me, right? We're so desperate for some sort of affirmation from heaven that we matter, right?

So there's a vulnerability in all of our souls to, you know, this need we have, right? Then you have leaders out there who we want to be our heroes to reaffirm and see it, right?

So it's like, well, if we don't get that from God, then we turn to humans, you know, and so here we are looking for heroes that we wanna be associated with because we all wanna be around success and then you have heroes who wanna be heroes, right?

There's that whole type of personality that loves to be the center of attention and then over here you have people that are reinforcing all that, you know? And it's a mess, really. It's like a collision, I mean, this sounds funny, but it's like a collision of need, right?

It's like all these needs, all colliding together. And I think that's where we become vulnerable. And I think over the years what I've realized is I gotta find God for me. Like the reason I'm vulnerable, the reason I was open to so much is because I didn't have a sense of my own, I didn't have a sense of a strong sense of my own relationship with God, right?

In other words, it's sort of like when you're insecure and you feel like you need something, you go outside, right, and get it and try to put it, bring it in, right? That's what we do, it's like, when we feel empty, we go somewhere and we grab something to fill our emptiness and it can be good things or bad things.

But when you find God for yourself, you don't need it. And one of the things that I've been fascinated with with people that have read my book is some of the people that are my age are reading it but they have, they're sort of emotionally detached.

And the reason is is because they had their own walk with God, like Mike and Bob Jones, you know, they came, they saw it all, but they didn't need it, you know what I'm saying?

It's the need that makes us vulnerable and it's the need that a lot of these guys prey on. I mean, that's how common men work, right? They're so good at seeing the broken human side of us and the need we have, then they come along and they tell us just what we want to hear.

That's what makes us vulnerable. Like me, start going, wait a minute here. This is a little, this is getting a little incestuous here, right? It's like we're, we're prophesying about ourselves, you know what I'm saying?

It's like, it's like we're, it's like this isn't coming from the outside. This isn't, isn't coming from people that have no dog in the hunt, right? As they say, you know what I mean?

We're prophesying with prejudice. Yeah. If that makes sense. You know, when I was studying Brannemism, there were two key elements that I think the vast majority of Laterane just totally missed. The first one is they, he considered himself a great teacher towards the end of his ministry and that's how the entire movement spun up because now they're following his teaching instead of the Bible.

But he made this, he would frequently make the statement that gave people the correct warning. He said, I don't know the book real well. I just know the author and he's referring to the Bible, right?

I don't know what I'm teaching is what he's telling the people and the people like you said had such a need, most of them sick and needy. That's why they were in this healing revival.

So they were looking beyond their common sense because they were in this need and they were totally ignoring the man who's telling them, don't listen to my teaching because I know nothing. The other thing he said was, I'm not a prophet, you said that and he would frequently say this, right?

He is aware mentally in the early years at least that he's just randomly pulling statements out of his butt and people are thinking their prophecies and then people are saying, Oh, you must be a prophet, I never said I was a prophet, you said that.

And he would continuously say this, well, like you said, because there is such a need, the people, I mean, these people that were joining into the healing revival were suffering. Many of them, you know, they didn't have today's medicine, so many of them were going to die.

That's how bad it was. They were looking for anything that could heal them or their neighbor or their loved one, whoever it was that they were there for. So they're joining into these things and they're totally forgetting common sense because they have a need.

And the person that they're going to is telling them, look, I'm not this thing that you're telling me that I am, but the problem is over time because they're human, he's aware of this in the early years.

If you look in the later years, he was just bad, crazy. And he started to believe the things that people were convincing him of. And I see a lot of that also with Mike Bickel.

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Well, one of the things that's sort of eye-opening to me that kind of tells you how desperate people are, is even when people are exposed to having less than stellar character, but if they display any sort of supernatural, I don't even know what the word I'm trying to say, but they model any sort of supernaturalness, people just overlook everything just to get to that.

I see it all the time. It's like just people just, what's the word? They compartmentalize it. I'm so desperate for God, I'm so desperate to be healed, I'm so desperate to get a word from God, I'm so desperate for God to touch me or whatever, I don't really care if he's left with so and so.

You see what I mean? I know I keep saying this phrase, but I just see it everywhere. The end justifies the means. It's like, it's not like we have these core values, morals and ethics, right?

That govern us. It's the need that drives us. And we'll actually compromise our morals, values and ethics to fulfill the need, right? Yeah. Yeah, so when I look at that and I see that, I think of what Jesus did when He looked at the masses.

It's like He says He knew what was in their hearts, that's why He didn't give Himself to them. It's like Jesus understood the crop. I think Jesus dealt with that. It's like to work as another miracle Jesus. Do another signs and wonder Jesus.

I think Jesus understood the people were following Him because they were just desperate. And I don't freak half the time they even understood what He was talking about. I think Jesus is better understood in hindsight.

It makes sense later. It probably didn't make a whole lot of sense. at the moment because people are like, I'm hungry, feed me, right? I'm broken, mend me. Yeah. You know, the need drove it.

And I look at it now and I see the same thing in these churches, you know, it's like the need. So that's where my heart, that's why I don't get real judgmental about it because it's just like, let's just see this pain in people, this desperation, this need, right?

And they'll just do whatever. They'll root the roof off to get healed, right? Yeah. You know, it's a problem that whenever the men get into this position where the people start regarding them as a seer or a prophet, and maybe they have had some insight.

Who knows? I'm not going to say that they didn't, but say that the people accept that they did. Well, then they begin to expect it. And as a human, the human wants to feed that need for those people.

So, you know, we've had this conversation offline and ironically, I've had the same exact conversation with probably 10 people who knew Paul Kane at this point, you get into this rhythm of you have to come up with something and what do you come up with?

And these guys, what's going on there, right? There's an expectation put on these guys. Absolutely. And it's coming from two directions, right? It's like, so if you're a Paul Kane or a Bob Jones or any one of these guys, you are stuck on a state.

Like, you know, and this gets back to even how we do church and why we do, right? It's like there's this whole model. That's one of the things I'm wrestling with in the butt, right?

It's like a whole model of church. This whole idea of a stage and an audience, right? Because it creates all kinds of vulnerabilities. So now you're sticking a guy out there, right? Who's got a perceived gift?

Yeah. And he's actually sandwiched. And he sandwiched because in front of him is 5,000 people all going, work us a wonder. Oh, yeah. Show us the supernatural, right? So he's got a whole audience out there sitting behind him is a whole group of leaders going, work us a wonder.

Yeah. Right? We affirm who we are, right? We need a big offering. I actually had somebody send me an email the other day. It's crazy, but it's Mike telling Paul Cain that if you'll come here and prophesy to people, he can make lots of money.

I don't doubt it. But you see the pressure? So again, I know people want to vilify about Jones that they want to vilify a Paul Cain or whatever. I see it differently. I see this as these poor insecure human beings, you know what I mean?

That are so desperate to be lost. who might have something unusual going on. There's no doubt about it, right? There's something odd that's different that these guys have, and yet we're putting them out there.

I think I told you this story of a supposed prophetess who got caught putting gold dust in her Bible.

And when she was confronted with it, her argument was, well, I need to get the audience into faith. So as we've discussed, this may be interesting for your audience, but most of the charismatic Pentecostal laddering guys all had a worldview.

And the worldview was, so their theology was faith unlocks the supernatural. So therefore, the object of the exercise is to get the audience into faith. Well, if God's not moving, right? If there's not something already there, what they did, it was they faked it.

And the justification was, if we can fake it and get the people to believe, they'll be in faith. And so the end justifies the means. So there was this whole thing that entered into the ministry world.

And it's everywhere, and I see it all the time now, is the end justifies the means. So we can cheat on the front end because it'll all work out on the back end, right?

And I think what's that's gotten so infiltrated, the ministry minds that I think we're in a dangerous place right now, because I keep seeing it everywhere, right? I keep seeing it's like, we're going to present something.

And if we can just get everybody over here. And yeah, it's a complicated problem. Because like you said, these people, they had something, whether it's a mental health issue or whatever it is. They had something that was inspiring them to do this.

Then they got up to the next level. And it was like they had to feed the need of doing it. And the comma point in which the conscience became seared. Because once a person gets to the level where they are knowingly misleading people, there's a point in which your conscience is telling you don't do this.

This is wrong. But because of the stage act and all of the people feeding on it, the comma point in which the conscience just was completely shut off, I'm going to continue doing this.

And like you said, I can tell you sermon after Sherman Titles from Brannum, where he's saying exactly that. You got to get into the faith and that unlocks the door for these great miracles and prophecies and whatnot.

But on my website, if you type in, I think it's Darren Brown. You can find there's this famous atheist who creates a f***. fake stage act of a faith healer. It's all of these people in here.

He is an atheist, but he's doing the same exact rhythm, style, charisma. And there are people who are actually getting healed in his meeting. And at the end, he calls them all in the room and he says, look, this whole thing was fake.

I just wanted to show you. Well, you couldn't even convince them that they didn't get healed. So there's this element where it's almost like a numbers game. You get a bunch of people in a room.

Well, one out of 10 is going to have something happen because you're human. And you don't know God heals people without the stage act, you know what I'm saying? So you can't really tie it to the person, but these people have, they end up having a seared conscience where they don't care if they can get them into the hype.

Then they're going to believe it's them. And here's the problem that I have. Like I said, I mentioned that I talked to several people who knew Paul Cain. The guy was doing things like reading stacks and stacks of phone books.

So he could get names and addresses and phone numbers. And that was one of the same gimmicks brand I'm used. I know your name. I know your address. I know your, you know, I don't know if you use phone number, but he would always have something that would elevate their faith before he would issue a quote unquote healing.

And there were people who actually got healed. I know people who got healed in these things. So was it mind over matter? Was it God? I don't know. I'm not here to say. But when we can clearly identify that these guys were using fraudulent gimmicks to elevate their faith, what I can say is they did have a seared conscience.

You know, my view of it is it's mixture. I think they all had something. Again, I'm still trying to figure out what that something was. Because the same something they had, there's all kinds of people outside the church and have the same something.

And so it's kind of like, OK, well, wait a minute here. If that's true, which it is, then what is this? Because it's always assumed that it's the Holy Spirit. And I'm like, huh, that's interesting.

Because they don't have the Holy Spirit over here. And they're doing the same thing. So it's kind of like, that's a head scratcher. But you know, and people have to forgive me, but I'm sort of fearless.

I'm a little bit like Poto on the Wizard of Oz. It's like, don't mind the man behind the curtain. If you say that to me, I'm going behind the curtain. Like, I just have the same way.

I'm like, have this need understand, right? So I just keep tearing things. Like, I can keep killing the onion. Because I'm going to keep going at it until I get to the root of it.

Because I want to know what this is. I want to understand what's going on. And I'm not afraid to challenge a lot of the assumptions. There's so many assumptions. It's one of the things that's really dangerous.

And I think it's tear. point, you know, the Christian community is very siloed. And the Pentecostal Charismatic World is an, it's an echo chamber, right? It's like you're in this isolated world where you're with a whole bunch of people that kind of think the same way.

Well, then break that down even further and you get all these leaders together, right? And they have, well, I, it's called groupthink. I mean, I'm an amateur sociologist. So I kind of understand how it works.

So you get all these leaders together, right? And they start, you know, they, and there's a packing order, right? There's always a packing order at these leadership meetings. And, you know, and so if the guy at the top with randoms and end justifies the means guy, right?

Then everybody underneath becomes an end justifies the means guy. And then a whole movement, whether it's KCF or whether it's ladder rain, all starts thinking, okay, well, I guess it's okay to fake it on the front end.

Yeah, right? And they'll keep faking it, right? Until they think the real thing happens, right? And it's always the thing I always heard was the angels going to show up.

That was waiting for the angel to show up. Yeah, that was the other thing that was really telling for me, you probably saw it too. And I'm curious to understand if, if Jed had the same experience.

But these guys would make these claims, right? And they truly believe what it is they're claiming. That's the other odd thing. Whenever you're looking at these guys and you think with their complete frauds, I don't see it that way.

They really believe some of the things that they're saying, even though it's fraudulent, that's, that's the where it gets really weird. But the thing that was really telling for me is whenever they would say it and it happened, they were as shocked as could be that it happened.

It was like, oh my gosh, that thing I just said, wow, so you can clearly tell that before they, before they said it, before they announced it to the people, they really didn't believe it themselves, but they said it.

And then it was like they were trying to command it to happen. And then it happened. They're like, oh, wow, did you see that? And when you're there to see all of this, it looks entirely different than if you only see the quote unquote prophecy in the fulfillment.

When you see all of it, you're like, I don't know about that man. Well, to your point, when Mike and I started, right? Like when he recruited me to come with them to Kansas City, and he's telling me about his experience in Egypt.

I had this impression while I was in Cairo, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm tracking it. Well, by time we get to the late 80s, now Mike had a word from God in Cairo.

Yes. And, and I think you understand what I'm going with this because But here's why and this is this is what I'm saying. This was the hard thing for me to watch. It was like as You know that you know Bob Jones's influence on my was it was no longer Good enough to say you know, I had this feeling God was saying something to me to now I have to say God spoke to me and I was taking to the third heavens You know I had a dream You know what I mean the whole thing got you know it it what's the word it just got accelerated

You know or elevated into this whole thing. We're we're now Mike's a prophet, right? Yeah, because he's wanting to you know Even though I got Paul can and Bob Jones telling me Mike's got zero discernment like not like it's like doesn't even register Desermot right and now suddenly Mike's got all these spiritual revelations and I'm looking at this going what's happening to my friend That's what I'm saying. It was like he he's added this addictive personality and he became addicted to this thing Well, it's the same thing with the prophetic eyes on the other side, right?

You know, it's like Bob Jones when I first met him All Bob Jones. This is what so it's it I almost get cry about this because it was so sweet All he wanted to do was heal people like he was just this blue collar dude, right?

I mean, he was just a dude like he just wasn't special and he didn't see himself a special Right, he just saw himself as this blue collar guy that somehow or another had his bizarre experience and like he started knowing things And he didn't really even understand why he did he just know it started after he got struck by lightning and Whatever it is that he felt seemed to touch people's hearts and that's what he wanted to do like he wanted to heal people The minute he got connected with Mike and Mike started to put him on a platform because Mike needed to elevate Bob Jones, right to what elevate him?

Self, that's it. You know, that's the equation that people don't fully understand It's the same thing if you go back and study history in every civilization You have government and you have religion, right?

And so it's always the king and the pope the king and the high priest king or whatever king of the prophets and it's like These are the two power structures, right? And sometimes they're fighting each other and sometimes they're in bear with each other Well, and this you know Situation we needed the prophetic and the priestly you know if you call Mike the priestly side of the those two things had it come together And so there's this weird symbionic relationship that I think was like drug induced like this whole supernatural prophetic thing That's why I watched Mike change

Right to where he ended up in my view having an overinflated view of himself right? It's like, you know, all these guys were coming to Kansas City and telling Mike how wonderful he was, especially how unique he was, how he was going to, you know, be this leader of this movement to change the world. Like they were reaffirming everything Mike wanted to believe about himself. So he just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Like his ego just got so huge. That's why, you know, a lot of people now realize how narcissistic he was, right?

And even the way he ended up not listening to people like who had expertise. Like people that were really gifted in other areas, he always believed he knew more than they did. I used to have constant conversations with these guys. Some of them, you know, super successful business guys going, I don't get it. I don't understand. I say, you know, there's no room for you in his soul.

Like his ego is so big. There's no space for anybody else, right? And then you see Bob and Paul and all those guys, you know, so desperate themselves and Mike's putting him on a stage and they're all thinking this is wonderful, not realizing they're being used. Yeah. Well, and it's even more complicated than used. So this is another thing I've been trying to, I've been wrestling how to explain it.

And there really isn't a good way. I'm gonna try here. But there's this other problem that exists. You talked about the Cairo thing, you know, how you were there. He came back and then it grew into this wonderful, fabulous, nonsensical thing. Well, anybody who, any of my peers who are studying Mike Bickel and the whole thing, they'll just say he outright lied. He lied about that. That's not true. That didn't happen. But it's not so simple as that. Whenever you've got people that are like we explain, they're feeding off of each other. Best example I can give, it even happens at a much

lower level in these movements because they're looking for, they're looking for something that is far beyond the understanding of the human mind to exist because they're wanting a miracle. They're wanting this thing. So I have a cousin who I've mentioned him a few times in my podcast.

I would not be alive today if not for him. He saved my life. And he unfortunately died doing COVID. He caught COVID. But he was no longer a member of the Brannum Church. And he is one who, as I was struggling through the worst of it, he was calling me every day to help me out. And I was asked him, Marcus, why aren't you a believer of the prophet? Well, long story short, years after all of this happened, he explained to me the exact reason why he left the church.

And he said that he and a group of the brethren, it's how we call each other, they went on a tripped and they got caught in some very swit it wasn't rapids but it was you've been in water that's just really gushing right so I got in this place where it's going really really fast and it got dangerous and my cousin was a huge really built guy he only had like I want to say 10% body fat big ol guy black building karate he almost single handedly saved everyone I mean it was a collaborative effort but there was a lot of muscle involved with keeping these

people alive or or from disaster whatever was would have been the outcome so what happens is after this the guys are together on you know going out to eat or whatever it is and they talk about this event that happened and then one guy just happened to say well this happened and I prayed to God and yada yada yada I started this that element of the story grew well then another person started feeding off of that element you know I had the same exact thought as you and I don't I don't know how all this came to be I'm just giving an example

over time after feeding on themselves as one person is planting a seed of thought into another person's head that person is watering that seed accepting another seed from another guy will the story grows in their minds and you cannot convince a single one of them that this is not the way it happened in the end one guy got up in front of the church and told the testimony and basically presented himself as like the spiritual savior of the whole crew because he had had this divine thing happen in his head right at the last minute and so my

cousin who's the one who actually saved them is sitting in the church and here's his guy gets on the platform and says that God worked through him a miracle and he's like well heck no man that is not what happened got up and walked out and never came back he said so the irony of this so you've got one person my cousin who left never came back and says all those guys are just liars but he wasn't among the groups where they were talking to each other then you've got the spiritual leader who's on the platform saying God worked this miracle through

me we've got all of his supporters who are still in the church that were part of this unit that were collaborating the story in their heads they believe it man that's exactly what happened a man brother you can't convince them otherwise then take a step outside of this entire church to anybody who's not in this charismatic Pentecostal weirdness they're saying those guys are crazy man and you can't convince the guys that are that experienced it they experienced it that is their experience so when they're telling it they're telling what they believe to be true the people on the outside think they're

lying through their teeth and you got one guy who's He left that religion, he did not become atheist, but he left that religion, so to them he's there atheist. Totally doesn't believe it, because he knows the entire series of events.

So you and I are kind of in a unique perspective, because we have seen things like this happen. And how do you explain this to somebody? You try to explain it to people who were caught up in it.

You can't convince them otherwise. Well, I know from sociology and psychology that your present state of mind impacts how you tell a story from your past. I mean, this is, you know, this isn't even debated in those circles.

So you can, you know, people sometimes are shocked because somebody will tell the same story about the same event. And it sounds like they're like, wait a minute. The last time you said this, it was something totally different, right?

But what we, what science is discovered is is that where you are at the time you're telling the story impacts how you then interpret the data and your experience in your head. So you'll change your story, but it's really you're changing your perspective.

Yeah. Right. If you would have asked those guys what had happened within eight hours of that event, they would have all told your cousin's story. Oh, yeah. Right. Then go, then you get time between it and then they get on the other side of it.

The fears gone, the paranoia has gone. I saw my life flash in front of my eyes is all gone now. And you know, I feel and really, you know, like pretty good about myself.

And then suddenly now the story all shifts and you get another whole different perspective happens all the time. It's a psychology thing. And so that's people don't understand that. I mean, it gets frustrating, particularly where you'll see it as in families.

That's, you know, and I think everybody that's losing will understand what I'm talking about because you can talk about Christmas in 1965. And, and you'll, you know, if you're a family of five, you'll get five different stories about what that Christmas look like or what happened or the Thanksgiving fight of 1984.

You know what I mean? And it's like, well, it's, you know what I mean? It's just, we all, it's just that's what I think we talked about the last time. Perception perspective paradigm, right? We, our senses, we, we see things that data gets put into our brain.

But then there's filters that it goes through and how we then interpret that data, right? Yeah. It's very helpful. So what happened with Mike was the filter he had in 1982, right? Was, was, wait a minute, you know, I felt something and it's as well.

I felt God told me. I mean, it was all an impression. Bring Bob Jones, Paul Kane, all these prophetic guys into the mix and suddenly his peridim I mean his perspective shifts. So now he's telling the same story through this whole prophetic thing and now it's all of a sudden, God, you know how the whole voice of God or whatever, I'll ever tell this story now, right?

But it's everything's exaggerated. So there's a situation right now that a lot of people have been talking about which is kind of interesting, you know, I hopped, bought some land not far from it that was once owned by the Truman family, yeah.

This whole thing is so interesting because, you know, Harry Truman, because of the fact that he was the one that basically told our, in the U.N., you know, it's like voting for the statehood of Israel and the Jewish people of all has been very grateful for him.

That somehow Harry Truman is this saint, like he's saint Harry Truman, right? Because he was the one that was during his administration that Israeli came in Asia. So out of that, there's all these things that have been extrapolated.

So now this formal land that is father owned in Grandview, Missouri somehow is got a special destiny on it. No, I'm just saying, it's sort of, you see how this stuff goes? It's like, it's like we're so desperate for something to mean something.

That suddenly now this formal land that Harry Truman formed when he was a kid with his family, you know, they bought it from the Jewish family that owned it and now they're all waiting to, you know, and Mike's going to have this great big comeback and, you know, this land is going to be, you know, because it's God's land and it's consecrated and it's, right?

This whole drama now around this piece of land. It gets crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. No, but I'm just saying it's like we're, it's like everything has to mean something more than what it is.

So one of the things, you know, getting back to the old Bob Jones thing, here's something that really bothered me. So Bob Jones comes to the church, right, and suddenly, you know, Bob's, you know, Bob spends so much of his time telling people how he got his, you know, I had this dream, but everything was parabolic, right?

It was like, I had this dream about this pumpkin and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it would do this and the seasons, right, anyways, and then out of that, you know, there was this spiritual interpretation of what it meant.

Well, suddenly, and this is so fascinating, was we were a church of so many young wannabes that suddenly now everybody wants to talk. and bebab Jones. Right? So now I'm in a community of 1,500 to 2,000 people and like a huge portion of them can't carry on a conversation with you in ordinary human terms. It's like you walk into the church, well I had a dream about you in the pumpkin patch and blah blah blah blah, right?

But it's just like, you know, and then, well I saw the number 13 and it was here and it means, right? And so it was like every conversation was into this realm of trying to interpret these weird dreams and visions and numbers and, all right? And it really bothered me because it's like we forgot how to like just be human. Yeah. Right? It's like the whole thing about Christianity is our love for one another and our humanity and caring for each other and suddenly our whole culture became this weird world of dreams, visions, revelations, numerology, you know, nothing meant

what it was. Yeah. What I mean by that is everything had to mean something else and it was the spiritually elite who could interpret it. Yeah, that's one of the things that really hit me as I was beginning to make my exit. We were so caught up into the spiritual ecstasy trying to look for things that weren't there numbers. I can't tell you how many, if I saw three doves, I was like, oh, it's a sign from God or if a 13, 12, all of these weird numbers, you're like, oh my gosh, God is speaking to me because I can do simple math in my head. And I started, I started to

realize, man, this is not the way it's supposed to be. We're losing touch with reality. And I think that's really the problem for people who've never been in this and they look on the outside, they see all of these people as, you know, lying through their teeth or whatever. But in some extent, maybe they are, but there's more, it's more complicated than that. These people are so caught up in this hype and this like you call it a drug, it has the effects of a drug on your head. So they're caught up in this and what they end up with is not reality. But to them, it's very real. So

on the outside, you're looking at this fantasy world and they're living in the fantasy world. So we go on. Just to close this, close this up, I think there was two things going on. It's like and this is where I think Jesus comes, God's compassion comes at because they are all thinking they're spiritual giants by, you know, by communicating all this, their spiritual revelation.

I think God looked down from heaven and goes, oh, you're so cute. It's like, you little children, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like, you don't understand. These are not toys, but you're so You're so childish. You see, and that's where I think the collision is. I think if we really understood back in the 1980s that God was having mercy on us, because we were so broken and insecure and needy and whatever, right, that we had to suddenly be 10. We were something we weren't. Like we were all, you know, we're all want to be apostles and prophets. And in God looked out for him and

heaven and goes, I love you guys, but this is kind of embarrassing. People are taking it too far.

Well, this has been fun. We're going to have to break this one and pick up where we left off. There's there's so much more that we could talk about. But thank you so much for doing this.

No, no, I'm enjoying this actually. It's fun to have somebody that thinks like I do that's not afraid to kind of deconstruct all this. Yeah. I'm not it's it's not really for me even a fear thing.

It's the more perspectives I can get from other people, the more I can understand what has happened to this Christian world as we know it. It's it's tainted it in many ways. It's just not it's not what it should be. Like you said, they've turned it to a stage and not audience and that's not what it's supposed to be. So thank you for doing this. Yeah, 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.

From more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Horrible.