Weaponized Religion: The Road to Latter Rain NAR and Beyond

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, the author of The Persuasive Preacher, The Gifted Profit, and the Noble Politician.

And together we're discussing weaponized religion, how Christian identity fused with early Christian fundamentalism and politics to form the foundation for the new apostolic reformation. Well, John, we're leading up to the culmination of all of the events that fused Christian identity and pentacostalism and fundamentalism and all of these other things we've been talking about into the explosion that birthed the latter reign, which is really the climax of the series that we've been doing. And if you look at the, you know, the leaders of the new apostolic reformation today, they referenced the latter reign as being one of the milestones, major milestones

in what became the new apostolic reformation, which it is. But they never really tell you how all of that came to be. And we have pieced together quite a big history of the dark side.

I know there's a lot more than just what we've talked about, but this is the dark underbelly that none of them talk about. And now we're talking about today, the birth of the latter reign movement. And again, it's not what people really think whenever you hear these stories today. They're really fables. But when you hear these stories of how God was moving and they don't tell you that it was mixed with clan and Christian identity and anti-Semitism and all of these things, because over time, like any movement that's trying to rebrand itself as something of God, they kind of erased that history. And they don't tell you. So I'm a little excited

today to get into this one. Yeah, John, I think this is going to be a good great show today. And you're exactly right. You know, this is, we're coming to the climax of all the things we've been talking about. And if the folks listening today just have a gone back and listen to where we started in the beginning with all this and followed it through, they really should, because we've really only scratched the surface. But I think we've followed one of the trails at least that's led to this and that broke out now into the in the latter rain revival.

which we're talking about today, which eventually has made its way into what your folks, you know, which is the NAR, say many, many of the aspects. And like you said, they've covered up many of it, much of the history. And I'm just so glad that we're able to bring this out and to show all these things that they just don't like to talk about in some of this dark history. But you've covered many of the aspects of the history, ladder rain, which Charles, I think, and as far as all the understanding I could offer, I've done it so much good

and did a very great job of explaining it. I hope I can offer just a little bit further the understanding of it. But I may mention a few of the names of the ministers that I'm familiar with. I know you're familiar with so many more. And try to show how what they did to influence the ladder rain, but I know you've covered it. So I'm going to try to focus more on the philosophical part of it and that part of the history. But our theme has been weaponized religion since we started this. The ladder rain group is just one of these movements

where we've seen the gospel message, the pure gospel message weaponized. And they're using their philosophy, what they, what was birthed out of that. And I guess it started off in a good way. I mean, they were seeking God. They were trying to, you know, have a revival.

Well, when things started happening, you know, it eventually morphed into a philosophy of a dominion mandate. And they take that dominion mandate and they want to impose it on society. And that's where it gets a little dangerous. It gets away from the gospel instead of just preaching the gospel. They're just trying to implement a biblical mandate into the government. And that only come about when Jesus returns some elements of these groups that just grew out of the ladder including maybe some Protestant conservative groups. I know that's being mentioned in a lot today in the news with the election coming up. And they're on the political side and they believe

they're called just to take over the government and institute, you know, the mandates of scripture and the very brutal penalties of the Old Testament. The church is called to be a light and preach to gospel. And we said this in the beginning, they're trying to impose a mandate across the lines into politics, just weaponizes religion. And us as fallen human beings were never, you know, never meant to impose dictatorships or mandates into the government. But I like a conservative minded government. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a good thing to have a limited government.

But power given to one group over another, you know, it'll cause problems. It's just our nature. An example in history, I would say, could be even the Roman Catholic church and how they were mingled with politics. And it caused a lot of people to die during that time. But they would believe they were ordained by God to rule the earth the same as these folks today do. So I just say the true church is called to preach to gospel and just Christ and Him crucified and just relying on the scriptures and avoiding taking those scriptures and weaponizing it so

who they can make it a political force in the world or a mandate to cleanse the earth so Jesus can come back. I know that's a lot of what they're trying to do. But I believe Jesus is coming back regardless of, you know, his own time.

That time's already been set. And it's not for the church to get the earth ready for Jesus to return, but to prepare ourselves, our hearts, you know, warning others to do the same. And being ready for the time, he's already set to return.

I believe that's where we should be. And you know, we've seen this, you know, history's repeating itself. We've seen what we're going to talk about today. We've actually seen it repeat itself several times.

But whenever you think about the culmination of all of these different events we've talked about, exploding in the mid-1940s, it's difficult to really untangle all of that because it's not just the white supremacy or the Christian identity.

It's not even just the Pentecostalism. There's a whole background that you have to fully understand. And I'm going to try to give some of the highlights of what I'm trying to say here in just a second.

But it really takes a person to dig deep into the era and understand what the religious landscape was like during that era. Because what we've seen today, and, you know, it always makes the news.

And then it turns into a disaster. It's whenever men and women try to force a revival. There's this underlying theme that if you can build yourself up into enough spiritual ecstasy, and then gather a bunch of people together, call it a revival, and then create that same feeling of ecstasy in their minds that something fabulous from God is going to happen.

And I know that's a dividing line in the theological landscape of our listeners, because some people think that's a good thing. Other people see the fruits of that. And they say, you know, it's a very bad thing if you look at a lot of the fruits.

But the religious landscape of the mid-40s was much like it was today, especially whenever you think about the weaponization of it against government or weaponization of religion against government. You have many of the same aspects.

And largely, that is flowing from John Alexander Dowey. When Dowey set up his kingdom in Zion, Illinois, he tried to establish a theocracy, and even created a political party trying to take over Washington, because he wanted to establish much like the New Apostolic Reformation today, the governance of the United States by the religious quote unquote apostles or prophets.

It's all under a different name back then, obviously. But he tried to do it. And the government, many people in the government were aware that he was nothing but a swindler. then many copycats were trying to recreate his empire and they were doing many of the same things.

So what happened was Dauyism was one of the contributing factors for the birth of the Azusa Street Revival. He had all of these Pentecostals who were building up to this spiritual ecstasy and there's this weird tug of war between the Dauy sack, the paramsack and then later the you know what birthed out of Azusa Street. But all of that by the forties had mostly died out and Pentecostalism was fading away and people who were of that mindset that they could bring on the end of days by getting into a spiritual ecstasy, they began very very destructive ways to bring themselves into ecstasy. One of the ways that they were doing it

was there were a whole sects within Pentecostalism that were handling snakes and drinking poison and I think you and I talked about this a bit. William Brannum and Roy Davis were collaborating with those sects and you can find that on Brannum's transcripts talks about Roy Davis getting up and drinking strict nine. Well what we didn't talk about was the fact that building up to this, this was becoming such a widespread thing by 1946 which is about the time that we're you know it's shortly after the period we've just discussed. By 1946 this was so widespread that it was making

government news and the government was cracking down against these quote unquote faith healers that were doing the snake handling and strict nine tricks. There was even a there was even a company I'm laughing because it's absurd but it's really sad. There were companies selling religious strict nine so that their churches could get could drink the holy poison and that's how bad this got in. So by 1947 court the court systems had largely started eradicating these swindlers because they were killing people and that ruling led to even further they were ruling against parents whose children were dying because they were withholding medication. So the

government was stepping in and governing the religion of the of the exact target audience for what happened with the birth of Latter-Rain. So if you think about where we where we started out you've got all of these groups that are coming together out on the west coast you've got the government on the east coast that is starting to rule against those religions and you know shortly after this shortly after this war starts to happen then the Christian identity moved into many of the leaders of who would become Latter-Rain, and Christian identity was already against the

government. So they saw this stepping in to govern against the quote unquote faith healers and the charlatans. They saw this as an act of war against the Pentecostals. So you've got this build up to the war. And then as we'll get into today, this builds up into a forced revival. And no matter how you look at it, the revival that was created was a mess.

Yeah, John, I'm leader exactly right. And I would just say that when you started talking in this segment here just now, I would say, well, you've probably got a little gift of discernment there because you've got a lot of what's in my notes already said. But we're going to try to explore the revival in 1948 called Latter-Rain. And that's a culmination of at that time of all the past revivals as you were just alluding to. We didn't live that day. So it's real hard to say exactly what was going on. But as you just said, there was a lot of emotion and a lot of

energy behind it. And the people, people got together and they were being really, they were real hungry for something to manifest. And usually when people come together for that common purpose, things will happen regardless. It may not be God, it may be God, but things are going to happen because people's minds, they've convinced themselves, they've got to have some revival, got to have some move of God. So they can almost bring it about in their own energy and emotion.

So their expectations can just take a life of its own. And we see that happen since the time of birth of a Zeus a street. There was many that thought they had a true gift of tongues went across the world to try to speak to the Chinese people and just totally failed.

You know, they couldn't speak to them. They had to come back. There are just many examples of things like that. Many, many examples of those who thought they were healed by the power of gods and died because they stopped taking their medicine or stopped seeking a doctor's advice.

So yeah, there's a lot of that that came out of this, but all because of that human energy that was generated from it. From our standpoint, since we didn't experience it so we can examine it, critically as we should, we just look at the fruit of it and compare everything with scripture and we can use our hindsight 2020 vision to determine whether it was a move of God or not and whether it's bearing good fruit or not. So really what should be done from the very start is use the word of God to judge what we are doing from the start and instead of us having

to come back later and pick up the pieces and say, well, that really may not have been a move of God or not. So we could be led in a lot better ways if we just rely upon the word, but it appears these types of groups, one in results so much, they tend to ignore.

the scriptures were where it's necessary. Sometimes they do it intentionally, sometimes not intentionally, but while that move is on and taking a life of its own, but that's a danger. Groups like this all along, they just tend to ignore scripture. As you said, it started with Dauy. He could probably call the father of all this and even goes back further than that. But it's been no different through time since it began. Past revivals, I looked at some of those and what could be said about past revivals is also true of louder rain. Sound doctrines usually set aside for the sensational

manifestations. Manifestations are taken as the Spirit of God working regardless of the way it performs. In America, we had, of course, the Great Awakening, even the second Great Awakening, most of the church world in those days believed. They were strong as they came out from England, believing in repentance, God living, and the revival didn't change those beliefs so much back in those days. But during the revivals, they still had episodes of the sensational. Some of it may have been the Spirit working. Some of it may have been human emotion, but I know many of the ministers,

especially I'll mention one is Jonathan Edwards. He was a little concerned about revivals of that of that type happening. He was all about preaching the word and when he saw these emotional manifestations, it caused him concern. He wrote about it. So about 1733, this occurred. And and also it reached such an intensity through the winter of 1734 and the following spring, threatened the businesses of the town. But 300 to a thousand young people were admitted to the church at that time and and it continued to 1735 and spread. And many criticism of the revival started beginning at that time and and many feared that Edwards and the started Edwards's own

church. He led his flock and fanaticism. So that's the church at that time was a little more cautious. There wasn't a cautious element, but there was that element that were these revivals broke out that they felt like there should be some caution urged toward that. But Edwards wrote that multitudes felt urge to take their own lives. Many took, did commit suicide during that time. It took a dark turn in 1735. Two people committed suicide in the depths of their spiritual distress. One came out of Edwards's own congregation. It was his uncle Joseph Hawley the second. But but a suicide craze ended that first wave of revival. So you see the fruit

of it. As we're looking at this, you see some of the fruits of these things are not very good when you get into the emotional excesses that come out of the out of the revival.

It's so it's better to stay with the word Jonathan Ebbers was encouraged by the repentance of the revival and heartfelt devotion to God Which we see that in all you know charismatic. They've had a heartfelt devotion He was bothered by the shrieking the trances the ecstatic deliriums that accompany the revivals That's what he was because he saw that on display Some of the things he cautioned against were those things bodily effects and these were like fainting shouting convulsing jerking He believed that these were due to a personality type or a tendency to act radically under emotional duress

He said there was a great deal of noise generated in the revival and errors in judgment He believed the revivals were mixed up with errors and judgment delusions of Satan and then the converts tended to fall away I mean if they were Truly converted in the revival they would have hung on but many fell away into serious errors or sins So he just considered any bodily effects that you would experience were just incidental to the real work of God Which he was all about the word so that's just an example from Jonathan Edwards And and his wife even experienced some things in that revival that made him have to

Look at it You know objectively and not criticize it overly but he he was very concerned about that and and I'll I'll mention another I'll let you talk here, but I there's another one even further pass out, you know Charles Fanny Which I'll mention some things that happened to him, but these are some of the early precursors to John Dowey to the the these revivals in the in the early 20th century and Pentecostalism they started you know way back in the 1700s You know you're right and one of the things that you really have to take into account is that

The era was quite different than what we have today the mindset of the people was different the worldview is different I just had a podcast released recently with Bob Scott who was Mike Bickel's brother-in-law and we were talking about the study of Eugenics which was a common it was a science quote-unquote science a pseudoscience that was taught in the schools about the cultures and races and it was a good way to Create anti-Semitism and racism white supremacy Essentially, but it was commonly believed and they were teaching it in schools So you probably seen the comments people are talking about the weaponization of religion like we're talking about the

Anti-Semitism the racism it was widespread so we can't really hold that against these people But I take an issue with this because These people proclaimed that these were movements by God and if the God of today is not Anti-Semitic and the God of today is not racist We have to also assume that the God of back then was not anti-Semitic or racist, but these men were claiming that these were moves by God And whenever you think about the explosion that is happening here. I mean, so we talked in the previous podcast all the way up to about

1940, mid-1947 when we're talking about Avoc. Well, after Avoc's revival was so successful, tens of thousands of people were coming to see it. Just like happened with Dowie, you started seeing all these copycats pop up. And it was about that same time William Brannum had his first major publicized healing revival in Vandalia, Illinois. He was June of 1930, Avoc has 10,000 people as he retrieves from the mountains from his little vacation. Right after that William Brannum is being sponsored in Vandalia, shortly after that, just a few weeks after, the first Billy Graham Crusade is held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And 6,000 people attended there. Weeks later, you've got

oil robberts who suddenly claims God appeared to him and he's supposed to be commissioned by God to heal the sick. And again, the people today, they don't tell you the weirdness that came with this.

When Brannum first did this, as all of this was spreading and all these copycats were coming up, Brannum claimed that he could have vibrations in his hand to detect a disease. And sometimes the disease was not, his hand would change colors, he said. And sometimes the disease was too powerful for God to heal it. And he would turn them away and said, you're not healed. And when oil robberts started his ministry, he, I can't remember which had which hand, but say Brannum had the right oil robberts had to left, these guys were working together and it's the same exact gimmick.

One of the tricks that these guys were doing to make their hands change colors as you could put a little rock under your arm and squeeze it tight. So you're cutting off that main artery that flows through there. So the people see your hand and they don't realize you're doing a bar trick.

But that's what these guys were doing. And so I've had people also, you've probably seen in the comment fees, Billy Graham was disconnected from this and he was nothing like these people. And they don't understand that it wasn't, you know, even though Billy Graham, I think he was preaching to the Baptist churches and Brannum to the Pentecostals. This was presented as a worldwide revival movement that was inter-denominational. So all of these people can come together under the same umbrella and we're going to force a revival. And Billy Graham is, you know, he's just as much a part to blame as the rest of them. In fact, you can do a search and you can find a picture with

oral Robert, Billy Graham, William Brannum, you can find pictures of these guys all together. Billy Graham did disconnect himself from Latter-Rain, but he'd never really disconnected himself from the anti-Semitism that was growing from Christian identity. He actually got an bit of trouble because as late as the 1970s, in fact, I'll read the quote. He said, the Jewish people swarm around me and they're friendly to me, but they don't really know how I feel about what they're doing to this country, which is Christian identity 101. So you've got Billy Graham who starts his crusades in the 1940s and he remains Christian identity influenced anti-Semitic

up until the 1970s. You've got William Brannum. He was working with the leaders of white supremacy and he's of the same influence. Gordon Lindsay, he's speaking at the Christian identity conferences at the time in which they had became racist. So this racism was spreading throughout the throughout the nation and they were teaching that the Jews had invaded the government and the government was cracking down on the religious sects that were trying to force this revival. So it becomes religion versus government. And that's a theme that, you know, even if you look at the news today, you can see this theme continuing to today. And like you just previously

said, it happened before this. It happened again in the 40s. It happened again now and it's going to continue to happen. This is a cycle that will repeat and repeat and repeat. Yeah, I think you're right there about it. Repeating, we looked back, you know, Jonathan Edwards was the 1730s.

I'm going to mention Charles Finney. He was 1825, around 1850. And then a hundred more years later, we had the 1920s to the 1950s of the healing revival. So yeah, about every hundred years. So we're right at the time of another, you know, a hundred years later, John. So it's just going to be interesting to see what let's come up with next. And we're armed now with knowledge, which should help us be very discerning. So all of the listeners of these podcasts should be able to discern, you know, not be overly critical, but just be concerned if things start happening again,

because we're at another hundred years from the time of these revival cycles of every hundred years now. But Charles Finney was in the second great awakening and he was criticized for new measures and allowing too much emotional expression in his revivals. So it just grew from Jonathan Edwards. And now you've got Charles Finney, you know, having even more emotion. So people were always prone to that. And it tends, I guess it tends to, these revivals tend to come out of times, hard times for the country. You know, you've had, you know, after the war, you know, people, people

are beat down so much, they're looking for something to give them some emotion, give them some happiness. And you know, these things come along. And when people are most vulnerable and these are good people, and they get swept up into these things. But he was all about emotional. He used a little bit different language that it was not, you know, keeping the dig- to the pulpit intact. He used scare tactics, which we know fear tactics are very much a part of what we've been talking about, but he would try to scare people into giving their life over so

he could gain converts. He departed from the church's established creeds, and he did a lot of things that are different. He's really known as the father of modern revivalism, so a lot of the techniques that we've seen in from 1906 onward came out of Charles Finney's version of revivalism.

His ministry just created schisms within the church there. He had an argument that if men have an experience of a change of nature before they can become Christians and it's only a change that God can affect, then no center can be responsible for his unbelief. If God's the one that has to change a person in other words, then you can't hold somebody accountable for their unbelief, but the Bible, he said, plainly teaches our duty to come to Christ. How can God command us to do what we cannot do? So he was all about a human ability to do things. He was less concerned with letting God

do the work versus forcing people into a decision, and that's where you get the altar calls and singing for hours at a time to try to get people down to the altar to make a decision.

And so forth, and that's how he did things, and that just carried on through the next 100 years even to today. But in the past, the success of the preaching was judged by people's behavior afterwards. And in Finney's version, it was judged by how many people made a decision. So you referred to Billy Graham. I mean, he'd have hundreds of thousands of people come to the altar and make a decision, and then go back out. I think even William Brannum said, you know, I can go and make 10,000 converts today, come back a month later, and I might not find 20. So that's sort of the

results. But their proof that things were happening was how many converts they may have got. A lot of range is a continuation of these revival fires in America, and it became a unique branch, you know, veered off from the turn of the centric pentecostals, veered off from the assemblies of God. And in fact, they wrote their statement, you know, condemning it, and saying, we need to stay away from this type of revivalism. I have to hand it to the assemblies of God. They did try to stay in the middle of the road with their beliefs, and not veer off into these strange things,

and things like the latter reign was doing. So I do have to hand it to them for at least trying to give some stability, you know, to the revival, whereas latter reign went to the more extreme version. They took more of the supernatural signs, wonders and gifts, and, you know, as you said, you know, anybody with a gift there, and they could demonstrate something, and allow them or copycats. They just learned, learned the techniques, and went out there on the revival.

field and that that's what allowed it to become a real bedding ground for, you know, becoming a control group because it invited men that may have not even been converted and men with that had charisma had, you know, very strong personalities to become a domineering force.

And we saw that happen, you know, Jim Jones was an example, you know, he was part of the latter reign and his group became a very high control group that ended in disaster. The message itself is a pretty high control group and, you know, one word against the prophet and you're out of there, but it's very high control as far as your lifestyle, you know, you're not allowed any grace, you know, that God gave us to live out your life, you know, you have to, you have to meet the rules or if you don't meet the rules, you're going to get preached at from the pulpit any little

deviation from those rules. So over the years, as they developed these dominion mandates, you know, they formed Joel's army, dominion theology, and then the apostles and prophets became the embodiment of this teaching that they were manifest sons of God. And in fact, William Brannum was probably the start of that. He became so much like that that people were taking him as the adopted son of God or, you know, a manifest son of God who could demonstrate the power because whether these things happen or not, he did mention things that happened by the spoken word in which

they were, you know, very, very likely not happening such as creation of squirrels, you know, common storm, you know, speaking things into existence, speaking life back and so forth. But people believed it. So they took him as a manifestation of God. And as I stop here in just a second, but when I come back, I want to talk about William Brannum's version of adoption. It's totally anti scriptural, but he basically set it into a system of works, you know, that you had to achieve.

And it's not clear on what what he means, except what he, the way he referred to it is packing everything in the box car that you can think of that will be perfection. It could be a senseless life living perfect, doing what God's called you to do. And everything had to be just perfect before this event, you know, what happened. And he may have been referring to the baptism of the Spirit with that box car, but personally, what I'll obviously have to pack everything in prior to being adopted by God, you know, he had to live perfectly. So William Brannum's version

of all this and adoption, you know, it's more like a system of works. And I'll read some quotes here in a minute to really demonstrate that. 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?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Branum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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It was, it was a system of works and a combination of spiritualism. And that's really the key thing to understand. It wasn't only coming from the Bible. They were also taking themes from spiritualism.

And then they would walk this fine line. You can probably come up with quotes off the top of your head. I'd have to look them up. But, Brannum would often talk how he was in tune with the spirit world.

And that what he's describing when he's, when he talks about these things, he's talking about the dark spirit world as well as the good one. And he, he's like in tune with both, he claims.

And so before he started these meetings and revivals, he would say, I take every spirit in this building under my command. And the audience would sit there and think, oh, wow, there must, there's invading spirits.

And they're, they're about to get me. And he, this powerful wizard is taking them under his control. And the wizardry wasn't just happening on stage. It was happening in the private quarters. And I think that's the key thing to understand here because many of the men who were working with Brannum, and I'll just call it the dark arts, are men who spawned off the charismatic movements.

And one, so Ern Baxter, for example, Ern Baxter was involved with all of this that we're talking about. He was from Vancouver, British Columbia. He was one of the early, when Brannum started the, the movement that began that spawned off the laterane revivals.

And Brannum was working closely with men like Ern Baxter. Baxter joined in, and you can go see photographs of this, but all of these men would be on the stage backing Brannum in these revivals.

And what they were trying to do is spawn off a worldwide revival. And Baxter, so Baxter was with him from, I think it was nineteen, it was either forty-seven or forty-eight, Baxter became involved with Brannum.

And one of, I've been in touch with men who were affected by that flavor of the Pentecostal Laterane movement. One of them, I've had communications with his Scott Haas, and his father was the head of the assembly of the body of Christ called.

And here, I'll just read one of the things that he shared. He said, one of Brandon's teachings was the ability to use the spirit of God to make things move on their own accord.

You and I think talked about this in our spiritualist episode, but his dad, when he would talk about these things, he says, whenever this happened, he said, it scared his dad and he never tried it again and he rejected that particular teaching of Brandon.

He didn't reject the whole of it. So you've got a man who, an evangelist, William Branham, who's teaching the dark arts of the spirit world, whether you believe that's real or not, it's anti-biblical.

And you've got all of these men who say, okay, he's doing this very anti-biblical sorcery gimmick, but the rest of what he says must be of God. That's how weird this was. And so when you've got that combination, you've got a man who is literally performing the dark arts and they're lifting him up as the head, as the leader of the Revival, you've got a problem here.

And so you have to ask yourself, was this really a move by God? And then carry that forward into today's world. You've got all of these apostles and prophets who are doing exactly the same thing as before.

They're trying to recreate the religious empire that Branham and Dowie created. And they're using Latter-Rain as their stepping stone. Most of these men are aware of the sinister things that were happening from the early years.

And what they'll tell you is that William Branham and his cohorts strayed from the truth in the later years and therefore we can discount everything he said after a certain year. But what they don't tell you is it started out in the same way as it ended.

It was very, very wrong things that they were doing and saying and teaching. And it in no way aligned with Christianity, but the men gave them grace in their error because they were united against the government because they felt like the government was cracking down on their religious freedom.

So they were banding together, good and bad, good and evil against the government. And that's really what sparked the Latter-Rain Revivals. Yeah, John, you're exactly right there. You talked about the wizardry, hardly said that word, the supernatural was the focus.

And then occult teachings, of course, were part of that. You have the pyramidology, you've got the zodiac and things that Branham mentioned very often. And which were also mentioned by those other ministers within this movement.

They were all focused on these things, even the UFOs. Anything that could be weird and out there, they were focused on and a lot of that had dived into the occult. So they were deep into the spiritualism.

such minister that I've talked to, I tried to question them, I tried to throw this question out to them and I've talked to a few when I've had the opportunity, the ones I've known.

And I've asked them, why do you think Brannum was the prophet? And the only answer I ever get, the ultimate answer when you get down to what, why they think that it is the supernatural gift signs and wonders, you know, not that he taught the Bible correctly because you could find so many examples where he didn't teach it correctly.

Obviously, you know, he would say very things that were very contrary to the scriptures, but it's only the supernatural signs give some wonders. And so they're relying upon that to vindicate who they're putting their trust in.

And Jesus specifically told us not to rely on signs and wonders as a vindication to determine if it's man's of God or not. So really, their very foundation is their own shaky ground, the sands, it's not on the rock.

But, you know, getting back to what Brannum said and how he was connected with this latter reign so closely, he put this adoption, you know, when we're adopted by God, after we get born again, you know, we're automatically adopted.

There's no further works that we've got to do to so God can take us up there on a high mountain and show the world that he's adopted us. But this latter reign teaching and the manifest signs of God teaching puts you into that position to start teaching that, that, oh, you've got a greater work coming.

So now, how do you get there? So Brannum's version of how to get there is, he gave the example of Christ, of course. And this came from his sermon in 54 December 31st, everlasting life, how to receive it, which he preached.

He talked about, you know, Christ being carried up on the Mount Transfiguration. You know, we got to understand Christ was a special person. He was the only Son of God sent to the world and he was so special, we're not like that.

We don't get a, you know, transformed into some Transfiguration to show the world that we're from God. That was only special because the Son of God was God and we're not. So that's not what happened to us.

But according to Brannum, it is. He says, and now when these Pentecostal church and these people in the last days is beginning to find the new birth, that's a strange statement, beginning to find the new birth, being born again.

I mean, the church has always had the new birth, what, what do you mean beginning to find the new birth? They thought they settled, that settled it. He said, no, sir, you're up some downs, ins and outs and things like that.

God can't place you as a son. And he's already given the example of Christ and here he's talking about God placing you as a son. He says, but when you stay in the kingdom and stay in the gospel, that's, stay right.

And that's probably his teaching. One of these days, one of these days, God will call you out and set you aside and adopt you as his son before the people. He said, and give you something that will shake the nations with it.

See what I mean? It's the adoption into the family. And that's totally contrary to scripture that please teaching there. But that's that's ladder rain teaching 101. You know, you're gonna be a very powerful being here on Earth.

You're gonna be adopted before the people. But all you gotta do is stay in the kingdom, stay in my teaching. And one of these days you're gonna be caught out there and be adopted.

Now that's what every message believer, even the NAR, you know, they're gonna become some powerful man of God, the Joel's army that can go out there and do whatever they want to on this Earth just by speaking it or maybe calling him fire from heaven on people.

I mean, they believe they're gonna be acting as God on this Earth.

You know, a man or woman with a manifestation can become influential in these movements without proving that they even teach sound doctrine. We found so many cases of unsound doctrine being taught. The signs and wonders just become the evidence to prove that, you know, God's working through you.

Eventually, this moved into the teaching that, you know, their brand of Christianity now becomes the people that will do the greater work. So the apostles and prophets rise up and they take leadership. We've talked about that how now you've got the fivefold ministry, so-called restored.

The apostles and prophets become the leaders and you have to listen to them. One word against them and of course you're speaking against God and that's how you get these men rising up. So the gifted men just set the stage for, so they can step out and lead the people, convince them, you know, that the man of the hour, the hour has to correct interpretation of the scriptures and they're ordained to lead you.

So the patterns are already set laid out there and that's what people follow. I'll mention one other message, random taught in 55 and January 16th and believers position in Christ. He talks about Galatians the fourth chapter and that's mentioned about a child.

And I'll tell you how he teach this. He says, but now when this child was born, he became a son. The very moment he was born in the family and he's referring that to the new birth.

You get it? Now, there was a tutor over this boy to educate him and raise him up. Well, he was no more than a servant, said the Galatian letter. Now here he's trying to teach the New Testament as if Paul's referring to somebody being born again and now you're turned over to the Holy Spirit to be educated and to be tutored.

But if you repose letter to the Galatians, he was talking about being under tutors and governors. He was talking about the Jewish people in the law and that was the tutor and the governor that was over the people until Christ came.

But Brannum's taking it to another level here and taking it totally outside of scripture to try to prove his point of the latter rank doctrine that you're gonna be adopted at some point. And the tutor and governor was somebody that's working on you, working on your character until you can reach a certain age that God can trust you as he says.

So he says until he came to an age of certain limited time that was said and this tutor would always take the father's word, your son is progressing, right? Or whatever it was. And he said, I'm not disagreeing with your brother, but here's here, take it from one who...

He said, that's where Pentecost fell to see this. And he's referring to probably the assemblies of God because they didn't move into the latter reign. He said, if the Holy Spirit may be not willing to give it then, you know, what do you say my Holy Spirit got to give you?

He said, look, when you were born again in the Holy Spirit, you said, that's that brother. He said it was. You was a child. You was just as much a child as you ever could be.

You were born the family, but yet the tutor, which is the Holy Spirit, has watched over the church as it's been maturing. So now at this tutor in the natural winter of the Father, now this boy is not going to be very good.

I try to teach him, but he just won't listen. He's got a headstrong way. He won't listen. He's going to be this or that. The Father realizes right then that boy can't take over his domain.

So he's talking about taking over the earth, you know, and taking over the domain, the Holy Spirit giving you power at the right time. He says, because what would he do? He'd run it through the return of the prodigal son, gives a picture of it.

He said, what he would do would be mortgage the farm, sell it all, drink it up, and run around. So he's talking about if God's going to give you this special power, he's got to trust you with it.

So now in the spiritual sense, after we're born into Christ, we become children of God, but God knows best. Here's where I say reverently, disagree with my latter reign, brethren. Even he was disagreeing with latter reign.

At some point, he said, you think I'm persecuted in the church? No. He said, now this boy, after he got to a certain age, he had to be adopted into the same family he was born into.

So he's got all these types, and that's how he's bringing this in. He said, any minister knows, that's the placing of a son. He had to be adopted into the family he's born into.

And he said, can you imagine that? But that's Old Testament teaching. He said, Paul's referring to it. So he said, now the thing of it is, brethren, we've tried to make each one here, each one this, one that by laying on the hands, setting apart, but he said, God has to do it.

The father became aware that this boy was not worthy. He never disowned him. He was still his boy, but he couldn't put confidence in it. So there you go. He's trying to bring it to a place to where God brings you out.

He puts special clothes on him. He has an adoption ceremony, and then you become this powerful person. But that's totally opposite of scripture. But he does this to try to show that he's becoming that.

He's gotten the full power to speak things into existence toward the end of his ministry. And people are saying, well, we're under that ministry, so we're going to receive that same thing. But then he says, your name is good on the check.

It's good as God's. You sign your name on the check. And we've seen that taught many times in Pentecostalism. You know, if God's got a bank account, all you've got to do is sign your name to it and get anything you want from God.

It's not all about the sovereignty of God. It's all about the power of the individual, the power to get things from God, the power to be something on this earth, you know, worst of humility and all that, and it's all about your powerful anointing.

And that's preached in and out, you know, through the NAR. and starting with a latter rain, but that's what brings on this bad fruit we've been talking about, John. It's funny, we've done this a few times now, but we did not compare notes before when we started this and we keep hitting the same milestones and main points.

So I guess I'm gonna twist what I was gonna say just a little bit because you hit that nail on the head much better than I could have, but I guess I'll re-emphasize that.

So for me the problem is that the men were seeking the power.

And whenever you look at the new apostolic reformation you'll find all of the people who are speaking out against it they'll say they're seeking the power. So this is really setting the stage for this and it's setting the stage from the early years, not from the later years, from its inception when all of these very evil things were coming together that was setting the framework for what became the new apostolic reformation.

And I'll explain it to you like this. Say I've got a cousin in Kentucky who they need some help around their house, whatever it is. And I tell you, I can't come today, I'm going to send my son and he's gonna come help you.

And they say, okay, thank you, we look forward for him to come helping. And then they get eager because he's not showed up so they call my son and my son says, yes, I'm on my way, I'm gonna be there, I'm gonna help you.

No, regardless of what they do from their end, I've said I've sent my son, my son has said he's coming. He's going to show up. So if they gather a bunch of people together and start partying and screaming out into his name and saying, oh, my son, I'm not gonna name my son but giving his name and saying, please come, please come.

We're showing ourselves worthy, please come, please come. It doesn't matter if they do this, he's still coming because I said he's coming, my son said he's coming. What these revivalists were doing were exactly what I'm describing.

They believed and were teaching that if you band all of the people together, you can hasten the return of Jesus Christ to earth. Even though it's promised in the Bible, even though Jesus himself said, I will return to you, all of these things, they're completely ignoring because really when it all comes down to the final result of what they're teaching, they don't care about the Bible, they care more about the emotion to bring the people into a state of summoning Jesus.

And the problem is, as we've examined, these people studied the spiritualists who thought that they could summon by banding people together. You gather the people into a seance, you summon the evil spirit and that's exactly what they're doing in teaching.

So you're blending this weird, Steve calls it the converging apostasy. You're blending this weird apostasy. us to see together calling it revival and saying that this is necessary to hasten the return of Jesus, which is anti-biblical.

That's not what the Bible teaches, but that's what these people were doing. Then, take it a step further. You had people like William Brannum, who spearheading the whole thing, who's joining with Baxter, earned Baxter as the Baxter Brannum campaigns, Baxter who later spawned off the shepherding movement and literally helped birth the charismatic movement.

These people were teaching that if you summon this evil demon that they're summoning, then you too can be in dude with power, and we're going to call it the manifested sons of God, the Joel's army.

Just like the spiritualists and devil worshipers, they were teaching that you could summon God and become more like God. We're on the Lateran side, they're teaching exactly spiritualism 101, and then you had ministers who were stepping out and speaking out against this thing saying, this is not of God.

Come out of this, and this turned into another war wherein the Lateran guys were weaponizing their religion, not only against politics, but against Christianity as a whole, saying if they reject our revivals, they are part of the evil plot by the dark Jews to invade the government and the religion.

If you think NAR 7 Mountain Mandate, that's setting the premise for what would come out in the NAR. From its inception, from the very beginning, this was structured as the opposite of Christianity, but it was branded as Christianity, and from there birthed everything that we see today.

Yeah, John. I mean, we've not compared notes at all, and in fact, we're doing this off the cuff a little bit, and even not comparing notes, we're coming up with the same ideas, it's kind of amazing.

People taking objective looks at things, you tend to come to the same conclusions. You may differ a little in the things we've found, but my, you come up with the same things. It's amazing.

So the key things we've learned in these movements is, and this didn't start with a ladder rain. It started way back. There was a few things that I've found. You go back to the Mormon church, and it got Joseph Smith, and there was another one, man named Irving, who started a Restorationist movement.

These groups are believing they are restoring the power of God back to the church, just like the book of Acts. I think that's what their key focus is, and they believe that, since we're at the end time, or what we think is the end time, that they're going to become manifest sons of God and become so powerful, I know the Dominion teaching is that the church is going to have to become powerful before Jesus will return.

Like you said, you know... those times already said in scriptures, we have no, God's gonna do it regardless, and he's not out to make us powerful, so he can come back, cause the church is not to be shown that way.

The power resides in us to live a holy life and to preach the gospel, not to run the governments, but so we have those restoration movements, and then the supernatural was sought so much, people want to see those demonstrations, they want to have those emotional experiences and ecstatic, transes and things.

That's been going on for a very long time now for the last 100 years. I think a lot of that started with Franklin Hall's book, Tomic Power of God, so they use fasting a lot, they try to bring themselves into a state through fasting, and you can go back and, the other religions in the Eastern parts of the world and find that same thing happening, but they have those same ecstatic experiences too, transes and fallen into that, but they use fasting as well.

Fasting has a purpose, but they were using it here and using Franklin Hall's book to show that we can get in touch with the spirit by fasting, and you see many times, and I'm sure Brannum, I had many quotes there, I won't have time to read now, but he talked about, he fasted all the time, he's been fasting the last three days, but he'll do that before his meetings, so he can be very in tune with whatever the spirit that's leading, that meeting that he would talk about, and then you've got the occult teachings that came in,

and you and the other person you've had podcasts with, I can't think of his name, but you all went back in Jane Leeds, teachings, EW, Echanian, all those that talk about the power, positive confession, all those teachings there became a part of this, and so that's what you end up with, and you've got a conglomeration there, it's not very healthy, and it doesn't make for a healthy church.

No, it does not, and I'm just picturing myself as being one of the people who have now escaped the IHOPKC, they're listening to everything we said, and suddenly they realize, wait a minute, this sounds eerily similar to what they were trying to teach us as new divine revelation, as starting the Joel's army, the spiritual warfare, the fasting, the praying, and they're looking back and saying, wait a minute, this came from a very dark and sinister place, how did this happen to reemerge in today's world?

And that's why I focused, as soon as I learned that Paul Cain, who is William Brannum's protege, was trying to reenact all of the latarine scene, literally recreate the latarine revival in today's era.

I realized that nothing is new out of under the sun, he's trying to reestablish the kingdom that was created by these guys, and it wasn't a kingdom of God, that's the problem. problem. And that was a critical milestone. If you look at what became the new Apostolic Reformation, I realized it was happening in tandem with many other things. But at its core, that was what was being recreated. They were trying to recreate Latter-Rain. And somebody, C. Peter Wagner gave it the name New Apostolic Reformation. It's really not that. It's just a repeat of the history that we've been talking about over and over and over. So when I was

writing my book, Weaponized Religion from from Christian identity to the NAR, I took you from the British Israel history that morphed into Christian identity and ended up, I stopped about the International House of Prayer focusing on Paul Kane and his trying to reestablish the fasting framework, the summoning framework, the Jules army, you two can be a manifested sons of God framework. So that people could understand where exactly all this came from because it is the hub of the new Apostolic Reformation. Maybe not I hop KC is the hub, but the framework of doctrine is the hub. And it came from these guys. They openly admit

William Brannum was this great prophet of God and right across the river, you find these people who are coming to grave soak on his pyramid tomb laying on it going, Oh, I feel the power. They don't realize that even doing that is trying to summon in the same way the spiritualists are trying to summon a demon. They're summoning the demon of William Brannum is what they're trying to do. It's the same exact thing history just repeating itself over and over and over. So I don't think we could say it any planer. This is not Christianity.

Truly. Well, this was fun. We've covered a lot of ground over the past. I don't know how many episodes we've done now, but we've taken you basically. We've walked you through this book. We went a little bit deeper in some areas than the book went in. Basically taught enough information that if anybody wants to dig deeper and find they can see that what we're talking about is not a movement from God.

And no matter how many times it repeats itself in the future, you can go right back to this and you can see that's not the way God wants you to do it. So thank you for doing this, John. That's right, John. There's there's several topics, you know, in some of the books I've written that I know we could dive into more detail. And I have started a podcast. I would appreciate anyone that wants to to subscribe. It's called Truth Matters. And I believe John can link that in the description. Just go to it. And I'm not putting a ton of content out there,

but I'll try to put things out as I as I study them out. And I try to be very succinct and quick. And not so you won't spend all your time trying to watch that. But you can get I'll try to get to the very point very quickly. And so you can come away with some good information that you can share and use as usually fit, but hopefully show some of the things that I've found and a lot of the things we've already covered, but I just like to deep dive in some very key topics.

Awesome. Well, I will link it in the description, and if you want to hear more from John McKinnon on his podcast, you can go into the description that's on the YouTube video and you can link directly to his podcast.

So, 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-Branham.org. For more information about Roy Davis and William Branham, you can read The Persuasive Preacher, The Gifted Profit, and The Noble Politician.

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, Audible.