From Angels to Demons - Examining Spiritual Warfare - Detangling IHOPKC

Hello and welcome to another episode. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org, and with me I have 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 Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.

Bob, it's good to be back. Last week we, I think it was an explosive episode, but we talked about how to critically think, which is challenging the faith of literally millions of people around the world today, which is odd to me because the believers in Berea, what did they do?

They critically thought about what it was that they wanted to believe before they dove in head first, and the paradigm has shifted so much that it's like, I don't know, it's taboo to think, and for a person like me with an intellectual mind, I have to think, or I'll go crazy, and I have to believe that when I was in the movement that I was in, and I saw many people who I will quote it, but I will use the term crazy, actually I'll tame that down a bit, they were just a little bit odd, but I have to believe that many

of them were that way not by choice, but because they wanted to critically think and weren't really allowed to. So last, anyway, last time we talked about the critical thought as it applies to religion, and today I wanted to explore with you something that I'm pondering, and I think you are too, but I grew up in this world where there were angels and demons, and there were, we had this thing called positive confession, which I assume was similar with what you were in, but it was literally a biblical means of lying, because you would say that you're healed

when you're not, and if you didn't say that you were healed when you're not, then you got the disease that you had any way to begin with, which it was like this weird circular logic, and I'm trying to untangle that in my head, why did we do it?

What were we thinking? And even still today, I'm over a decade out of this thing. I went to the doctor, and as you age, there are things that happen to your health that happens to everyone, and my...

First thought is, no, I won't accept that. I'm not, I'm going to, I'm going to deny it to the doctor. Actually, the thought popped in my head and then I kind of held it back and I said, no, I'm just going to do what normal people do and follow the doctor's advice and see what happens.

But it was a real challenge for me. So anyway, I wanted to explore this with you and I'm curious to hear your thoughts on all of it. Well, one thing for sure, critical thinking tends to become more of an issue after you've been through disillusionment.

And what I mean by that is just you grow and up within the evangelical world since you were a little child, you were taught in Sunday school how to view the world. You were given a perspective, right?

It was handed down to you. I have worked with a lot of 30 year olds that have gone through a crisis of faith and they realize in hindsight that almost everything they believe didn't originate with critical thinking on their part.

It was imparted to them. And I say to them, I go, well, you met the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but he is at your God. And until you walk through this crisis of faith, he won't be because you're living under a whole lot of assumptions that people have told you.

So the other thing you notice, and this is something that was, again, this is, you know, we're just two guys trying to explore a lot of stuff. So a lot of the comments that we're making are observations on the journey.

So one of the things I'm very careful of is trying to not make absolute statements as though they're facts because I don't always know. The one thing I'm keenly aware of is that every week another expert opinion, even in the non-church world, is being exposed is not the true facts, right?

Things that we were told 40 years ago as dogmatic facts by the experts turned out to be wrong. So I've just got to a place in my life where I'm very, very careful, you know, about making absolute statements.

So the comments and the discussions we're having is we're processing what's going on. But one of the things I've noticed within the Christian world in having discussions with people when I push them a little bit about their worldview and ask them, where did you get this?

Nine times out of 10, they'll say, well, that's what my pastor told me. Yes. For guys like us, that's a little bit shocking. Like, it's like, what?

What? But it's true. The reality, if you go back and look at the statistics about how many people actually read their Bible and research it, it's minuscule, it's less than 10%. So 90% of people within the Christian world are echoes and not voices.

They're just echoing something that someone else taught them. Probably the one group that I found is the most critical thinkers are the Presbyterians. Because they tear things apart. Like they'll get in there. I'll get into the Greek and the Hebrew, right?

I mean, they'll just rip things apart to get to the root of it. So they're probably the most critical thinkers, but virtually everyone else just repeats what they've been told. And interestingly, in the laterane mess that was created, the Presbyterians were heavily attacked because of that.

The laterane did not want people to critically think and they had a very vivid, I'm just going to use the word mythical. There are some things that I'm still processing and there's some things that I can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt was not true.

But they created this mythical world where angels and demons were fighting in the arena where they were hosting these great healing revivals and I grew up in a world where we had positive confession just exactly like you said.

I believe this because my pastor told me, but we carried you to step further. My pastor told me because William Brannum told him in one of these fancy revivals and not a single person left that building without having been cured.

All of the sick came and everyone was 100% cured. And then I pull up the newspapers and you've got reporters who were literally dying to find one who was cured. One single person could not find it but they would report meeting after meeting revival after revival.

One article said they came on stretchers, they left on stretchers. And another one read, only cure that we found, I can't remember the exact wording of the headline but the only person that we found who was cured had pretended to be cured in a previous revival.

And so I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that that world is fiction, it's not true. However, there are people who believe in their healing

and they're maybe not cured but sometimes you can see where their body starts to get better. And they have physical effects that you can actually see. So in my head, I'm still processing this.

On the one hand, I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that most of it, I want to say 99.9% of it was fiction. But then here's this little tiny group of people.

who say, hey, I get better. And the only thing that has come close to even solving this puzzle, there was a documentary, I think his name was Darren Brown. He was an atheist who was just fascinated with this whole thing.

So he staged a fake healing revival in a big city, called Everybody To It, cured all kinds of people. There were people who walked out and told the reporters that they were cured by God in that meeting through the healing revivalist.

And then on the last night, the revivalist, Darren Brown, said, I want to tell you, everything that I did here was 100% fake. I'm an atheist, I do not believe any of this. And so I have to know that there are scam artists involved, not all of them are, but then the people who are truly believing it, what happens with them.

I know for a fact that a large percentage of the people are not healed. They do not, this world of angels and demons that are allegedly plugging them in this revival meeting or whatever.

I know that's not the way it is, but then there's that one fraction of people that do get better. What do you do with that? Well, my view in this, again, is just me in the process of researching all of this.

What you're saying is true. There are people who get healed, right? So where I think we got to be careful is we tend to want to simplify everything down to this or that. And I think it's a multifaceted issue.

Meaning that I know people who had cancer or things like that, right? Who developed sort of an internal, I'm going to war with this, right? And through meditation or positive vibes or whatever you want to call it and some eating right and things like that, actually without going to a doctor ended up getting healed.

Yeah, right? So what all the dynamics behind the scene, the biology and whatever, there's something going on there because they did this and they got healed. I saw a video, I wish I could find it a few years back where they were doing research on laying on of hands.

And I don't, they were using some sort of spectrometer. You could see the person that was praying, you could see energy coming out of their hands onto the skin of the other person. Wow.

transference of energy, right? Again, this gets weird, but this we're getting into the into the Paul Kane Tesla world, right? Where no, what Paul Kane couldn't even wear a watch. He couldn't wear anything electronic. It would literally within 24 to 48 hours literally stop working. But Tesla believed we were walking batteries, right? His whole worldview was, you know, it's you know, that's what keeps our heart ticking is there's this energy inside of us, right? You hear people talk about auras, right? People emit certain energies, right? And there's a whole world around that and how much is real and how much is fake. I don't know. But here was this guy actually doing

a scientific experiment using a spectrometer proving the fact that when you have empathy and compassion for another human being and you lay your hands on them, there's a transference of energy. Yeah. Which is interesting because of the whole thing with Jesus and the lady at the hem of his garment, right? He felt something go out of him. So what was that? Well, I want to break in with just a brain dump of critical thinking about Paul Kane's watch. I do have to have to pause on that. So there were, I have been studying Paul Kane. I've been studying Mike Bickle, Chris Reed and

some others who claim to have this thing that Brannum had. And they do not want the people to know where they got it from. But they're totally plagiarizing. It's a knockoff of William Brannum what they're doing. It really is. So Brannum from Indiana and from that whole, I mean, he's a Brannumite in some ways in his roots. Oh, yeah. Paul Kane allegedly gave him his mantle. There's a video out there somewhere. Well, no, that's not true because Paul Kane didn't believe in mantle's getting transferred. So whoever's saying that is lying because I know categorically that

Paul said that could not happen. Yeah. I've seen the video and it's Paul Kane laying his hands on Chris Reed and saying go teach the world who William Brannum really was. And anyway, all of it, what what Paul, because I had conversations with him about it. So I know I kind of know this directly. His connection to Chris was he felt like Chris was the only person he ever met who received his revelation the same way Paul did. Yeah. Right. And it came in various, you know, things.

And so it's really interesting. So that's where the connection was. It was it was more the fact it was like over two pieces of the same pot. Yeah. And so, you know, in New York, I always say to me, Chris has potential. Like it was always, you know, we'll see.

where this goes, you know. But anyway, about the watch. So in William Brannum's early days, their photographs that exist, the cult has largely wiped them away. In the early days, he dressed like a Tom Cruise, Ritzi, Fancy, I think the old language of the newspaper said Natalie Dressed, which is basically, he's dressing like a Devon Air and you can find these photos.

But what happened was, when he rebranded his stage persona, this is William Brannum, he rebranded himself as a fake Kentucky hillbilly. And if you read any autobiography out there or any biography out there, you're going to find where he says, and they're quoting him directly, that he was raised as a hillbilly in the hills of Kentucky, which totally defied the census record that exists.

He was raised from age three in the booming River City town of Jeffersonville, was once a booming River City town. So all of that was fake. The problem was he got accustomed to the lifestyle and he had a extremely fancy watch that was given to him likely by the Kardashian family because we've tied all of this to the Kardashians.

But in today's money, this watch would be which is tied to Demo-Shakarian. Demo-Shakarian, the full gospel business, right? Try to make an action for people. And for people who don't know this, Demo-Shakarian was the founder of Full Gospel Businessmen's Association, or Fellowship International, it's called.

There was a co-founder who lived, I want to say 20 minutes, that direction from my house right now, I live in Jeffersonville. The co-founder lived here and went to the Brannum church. So it's more deeply connected than people realize.

Anyway, they gave Brannum fancy things, like Cadillacs, et cetera. One of the things that he got from somebody, and I believe it was them, was a watch that in today's money, in today's money is like 10 grand, this watch was.

So how do you continue promoting this notion that I'm a poor country bumpkin who doesn't care for the things of this world? But yet I'm sporting a 10,000 dollar watch. And the only way you can do this is you come up with this ridiculous story how I have such power of God that my power will actually break watches.

And I've broken several watches, and that's what he did. Nepal came because he's carrying forward this stage persona of Brannum. He has to have the watch thing too, or otherwise his whole stage persona doesn't work.

But again, there are people, and this is where again, I don't know the answers to these questions, but there are people that aren't even in the Christian community, right? Who have these same dynamics going on?

their bodies. So I don't really know. All I know is Tesla believed it. Right? Tesla believed that we were walking batteries and some people had way more volts than others or watts or whatever you want to call it, right? I mean, he had some wild ideas, you know, but it was all around energy. So getting back to our topic on healing, you know, it was, you know, there's this guy and he's he's seeing an energy transference. So is that what what goes on? Well, 99 and 9 tens percent of the time, that doesn't do anything, right? So then what ends up happening is we all go to doctors.

So one of the things where this gets a little tricky and, you know, people are going to have to bear with us here because this is going to sound sacrilegious or whatever. But to circle back what we were talking about last week or our last session, no one in the Bible had any concept of a micro world of organisms and genetics that impact humanity. So everyone, and I mean every single human, everybody in the ancient world believed that all of life was being driven by a spirit or a God. Exactly. Anything you couldn't see was either a spirit or a God. So every battle that was one

was not credited to the army. It was credited to our God is greater than your God, right? The whole battle you see in the Bible where, you know, they put the Ark of the Covenant in the temple and then the other gods, you know, fall down and cry, right? I mean, that is such a world view of the ancient people. It's our gods versus your gods, right? It's our, you know, and or it's a spirit, right? So nobody in the Bible is going to have any other perspective than that.

Absolutely. Right. So here's where I get a little bit confused. Is we're in 2024. You know, we're 2000 years past all this and we now know based on critical thinking, religious guys like we've talked about Mendelssohn and all these guys in the 1500s in their search for understanding God who unpacked this whole world of science and actually discover, well, guess what? Our world isn't always controlled by spirits or gods. In fact, we can't find any gods and we can't find any spirits. But we can find You know, viruses and bacterias and you know, then later genetics, right?

So now this is where it gets kind of interesting because here we are in 2024 and there's there's whole worldview based on the Bible that everything's being controlled by spirits entities over city, right?

But this is a worldview that's based on an ancient people who don't know any different. So what are they doing? They're making an assumption. It's not a fact, it's an assumption. Well, where you get into trouble, right, is because it's in the Bible and it's the word of God, to say that's an assumption or that's a perspective gets you in all kinds of trouble, right?

Because God's written this. Yeah. And so this is where you get, you know, you get into the fundamentalists and people like that, they'll come at you because you're challenging the word of God and you're going, no, I'm pointing out the fact that the people that are writing this, who God is inspiring here, don't know any different.

Like God can't tell them about germs and bacterias and they don't have a grid for this. Yeah. Right? It's like, if God showed them a little microorganism, can you imagine how they would have interpreted that?

Like what's that? They just have no grid, right? One of the most eye-opening things that happened to me, when I first started my website, I had literally no idea how big and how impactful the brand name cult was.

I saw it as this little tiny group. For example, we were given here in Jeffersonville, we were given the directive to let our kids give them penny jars because we're such a small group and we need to help the small little tiny flock that's worldwide.

So have your kids kind of like pennies, all while they're raking in millions of dollars in this, in this endgones man, had no idea. So my view of the religion that I escaped was that it was one in a million people, just a little tiny group.

I had no idea how massive it was. And then after I started publishing it and it started spreading, I got to contact Christians who weren't in it, but were curious about it from other countries.

And I've made several friends in several countries at this point. Christianity in Europe, for example, did not progress in the same way that it did in America. In many Christian circles, and I'm not talking just the Catholic Church, I'm talking about mainstream Christian groups, they see the Bible much like you just described.

This is a person who wrote in his time in the best way he could explain what he was explaining while being inspired. God. That's a common belief. In fact, I want to go as far as to say that's more common than not if you get out of the United States. And it began to puzzle me. Why is this? Why is the United States different? And that's what really caused me to deep dive into the Pentecostal faith. Because nine times out of 10, there's some kind of Pentecostal influence that leads to this. And it goes through Pentecostalism to Laterane, Charismatic, New Apostolic Reformation, etc. So I began to study

and interestingly, you can read newspapers way back in the 1700s, etc. There was science progressing in religion, even in the United States, in a good way that matched the other countries with the emergence of Christian science, which you had mentioned. There came this new breed of weirdness in the United States that was very financially profitable. And it attracted people such as John Alexander Dowey, who I've mentioned on the podcast. He saw America is this fertile ground to make money and he made a lot of it. And he came in with the same exact notion that they had in

the ancient biblical world. He was using that to his advantage because if you can take away the critical thinking and make people believe that there is a angel or a demon. And if you have the demon, the disease is because of the demon. Well, then there's no doctor that can prove you wrong. There's no proof evidence that exists of whether it's a demon or not. So whatever he says, he can say whatever he will. Well, then that carried forward into the into the laterane movement. Through Pentecostalism, William Brannum would stand in these big auditoriums and he would say, I take every spirit, every demon in this building under my command. And what he

was referring to was specifically the people who were sick, he would say that if you had cancer, it was a demon. If you had a, if you had polio, if you had even your common stomach ache, it was a demon. And I'm going to cast it out of you. So this appears to be the epicenter for all of it. If you take in today's world to NAR, we had this conversation right before the podcast, you've got all the spiritual warfare belief, which I'm not going to say it's right or wrong, but I can tell you where it came from. It came from laterane. William Brannum is standing there

literally saying, this is the battleground for spiritual war right here in this building. The news reporters who are reporting the critical information, which is by the way factual about my faith, they're filled with demons and they're trying to stop the angels of God from casting out the demons in the people who are sick.

So, a spiritual warfare in the battlefield was right there. Many of those ministers progressed into charismatic movement and then into the NAR. They were trained, literally trained, by Brannum and his associates, that it is a spiritual war and that the sicknesses were demons.

But here's where it gets really weird, and I wanted your thoughts on this. Most of the converts to the NAR or to, you know, in IHOP, etc. If you were to take them to a doctor outside of the religious arena, where they're actually thinking in terms of medicine, and the doctor says, it looks like you have a cancerous growth.

Maybe it's skin cancer on the side of your face, the cells, and they can explain how the cancer grew there. There is not a single one of them that would think that that is a demon on their face.

However, the core values that all of this progressed from was that it is a demon that's there on their face. So why is it, and this is a question for the whole world, anybody who wants to comment on the podcast can, why is it that if you take these people out of the NAR, out of the Latter-Rain, out of Charismatics, and get them to a setting where they're not thinking about religion, they will answer honestly, it's the science, it is a cancerous growth, the cells have a problem and the cells have grown a cancer.

Why is it that they think that way, but then get them into a religious setting and it's a demon? Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the Latter-Rain, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

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

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top, and as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I'm curious about something because I know you're a researcher. Is there any writings between the first century and the 1900s that have a perspective or a paradigm about the spiritual entities over cities and all that, right?

I don't know of any. Listeners know of something. But it seems to me, based on where my understanding at this point, what you're saying about the origins of this are really come out of the early 1900s discovery of Pentecostalism, right? The Topeka, Azusa Street, are the roots of it, then we get into the whole ladder rain thing. So this whole idea of entities, you know, spiritual entities over provinces and areas, seems to go from the Old Testament, and then there's like 2,000 years, and it suddenly pops up in the early 1900s again. I find that curious, right? It's not a, it's not like the Apostles

Creed or the Nicene Creed or anything like that that has a consistent historical influence for the last 2,000 years, right? The basis of our faith. It's suddenly this interesting little sidebar over here that pops up in one group of people. Now, I could be wrong, maybe I'm just ignorant. I just don't know, I've just never found it, and so I'm always like, gosh, this isn't interesting. We're this, to what we were talking about earlier, where this gets really confusing for me. And again, you guys don't hate the messenger. I'm just trying to tell you, I'm trying to process

all this, which is that if you're someone who is a very strong proponent of this whole idea of hierarchy of angels and demons over areas, which was the basis for the big Ingalls, million woman march thing that happened in Washington, right? Where you had all these religious leaders casting down these entities and these spirits and all that, right?

Based on this, we weren't good confused as Matthew 4, because in Matthew 4, the writer of, you know, the writer has the same worldview, right? That the devil controls the kingdoms of this earth.

And when he tells Jesus, guess what? I'll give you all these kingdoms. He just walks away.

He wants nothing to do with it. Then you see his whole life, right, where he's politically incorrect, right? He's over here being friends with the Nazis of his time, right? The Romans, the very people that are crucifying his people and enslaving them, Jesus is overhealing their people.

Like he's doing it all wrong. And so I start scratching my head going, okay, this is weird. Like we're over here casting down demons and principalities and powers so we can get our political figure elected, right?

We're connecting spirit to warfare to politics, and Jesus didn't want anything to do with it. I can't reconcile that in my head right now. And again, and again, for people that are listening, I'm not saying I've got a conclusion here, I've got a question, I cannot reconcile this.

Maybe somebody else out there could do this for me, but I just don't get it, right? What's even crazier for me is that when you actually get into the gospels, you discover that Jesus isn't even focused on the church.

Like he's not building an institutional church, he's focused on the kingdom of God. And when you read the sermon on the Mount, it's completely upside down from everything that's our current church world, like our values and the way we do things, it's completely upside down.

And I cover a lot of this in the latter part of my book, I'm going, wait a minute here, I'm confused, because I'm over here reading what Jesus said is the morals, values, and ethics of the kingdom of God.

And I'm looking over here at the American church and I'm going, these are those things don't look alike.

So where's the disconnect, right? So to your point, there's a lot going on right now that I find myself standing back going, huh? I can't reconcile these things, you know? And so I sort of take this position, we'll wait and see.

But yeah, it gets kind of crazy, you know what I mean? It's like, and again, people don't challenge this. This is, you know, one of the reasons I'm enjoying our conversation is even though we're probably going to get ourselves in a world of trouble here, at least you're somebody that we can have this conversation and go, yeah, what is this, right?

It's like, this isn't making sense to me, right? And of course, then I get this one. Well, you have to have faith, brother.

What do you mean, you know what I mean? It's like, what, I just have to have faith that this whole concept and all these things that are out here, I'm just, well, it's the word of God.

Yeah, but it's the perspective of people influenced by God who have no grid for these things, who have no concept, right? That's why, you know, we were talking earlier about Christian science. You know, it's like Mary Baker, Eddie, I'm getting back to the Bible, right?

Well, nobody in the Bible went to see a doctor. So, doctors are out. Yeah. And then all these people under her die. Whenever somebody comes at me with that argument, you just have to have faith, John.

You just have to have faith. What it is telling me is that this is a person who has not yet critically thought about what it is that is their argument. And they don't want to argue about it.

They just want to stop it right there. You must have faith. I'm not going to tell you anything more. I'm not going to tell you what I believe. I'm not going to tell you why I believe it, how I came to that conclusion.

You know, one of the things that's dynamic there is you all the Africans, right? And I don't say, oh, that's too sweeping of a statement. A significant part of Africans that go to church, go home and practice their indigenous ancient rituals, right?

They cover both bases, right? And I sort of laugh because it seems like, to me, penicostalism is the same dynamic, right? I'm going to the doctor, but I got to go for prayer and get healed too, right?

It's like, I got to have my bases covered. I'm hoping God's going to heal me, but 99 and 9, 10% of the time, he doesn't. So therefore, my plan B, because I want to live, is I'm going to the doctor and I'm getting medicine.

You know, Mary Baker, Eddie tried to, you know, to cut the other half of that equation out and all these people died. And she went down in infamy as being another Charlotte, you know?

Oh, yeah. You know, as you alluded to, one of the things that is, it's a gift and a curse, is that I study things far beyond what other people will. And it's, for me, like I'll find the little tiniest grain of a detail and it'll unravel a whole line of thinking that many foundations are built upon.

When I left the Brandham call, and again, I lived in this world of angels and demons, spiritual warfare. We had, we had spiritual warfare before the NAR got it. I believed it, hook line and sinker.

But when I left, I read the Bible over and over and over and over a lost count, probably 10 to 15 times, covered a cover, washed all of the nonsense out of my head.

And there were little phrases that caught my eye, that unraveled large trails of doctrines and doctrines built on top of doctrines. One of which was, if you read the Old Testament, you can find many times the prophets are condemning the idols made of stone.

And for most people, they think, well, what does that mean? Idols made of stone. Well, in the world of spiritual warfare, this presents a huge problem because in the way in which those passages are written, the prophets is, the prophets, and you know, they're literally, they're mouthpieces for God.

So God is telling the people, those things are made of stone. They're not real. Why are you serving the thing that's not real? Serve me, the real God. And one thing led to another.

I'm going down this path of study. I think I either mentioned it with you or I mentioned it with Jed or maybe both, but I came across this documentary of hero of Alexandria who was a architect, a inventor, and he created these fascinating ways to make the demons seem like they were alive in the stone temples.

and you can go type in that name and you can find his schematics of how he did this stuff. And I knew, you know, I know a good bit about how pneumatics and hydraulics work. I'm looking at this and I'm saying, wow, man, this guy was pretty smart for his time. But also on top of this, when you think about the Bible, which says, those are idols made of stone. They're not real.

And here's the architect who's making them appear real. He's tricking the people. Well, I have to question, how can you apply spiritual warfare to those temples? And that one thing led to another led to another. I'm leading up to your question about the history of what exists between the early days after Jesus until now. One of the most fascinating things that I came across and I recommend any Christian, if you are a Christian and you truly believe your Bible, you need to read the early church fathers. You need to find just how the people thought in the days after Jesus because it will look like a generation. It will pull

generation after the apostles. Exactly. These guys, these are people who came out of the pagan worship. And remember, they had a worldview that was pagan. We call it pagan, but to them, it was just we believe in these other gods. And so their writings and their belief set, this is literally what formed Christianity today. You can follow this trail. Their writings and their worldview is not a worldview that I share because they had the worldview of the angels and demons in the temples, right? But I came across a guide by the name of, I think it's pronounced

Eusebius. He's the father of church history. Yeah, yeah, he wrote a long Jesus and the whole thing. Amazing book. It's really hard to read. It took me a long time. And not all the history is quite accurate, but it was as accurate as he could make it at the time. But for example, and I'm paraphrasing greatly and I may even get the God wrong, but he said, for example, Christianity changed the world. He said before Christianity, I'm going to give you an example in this remote city. And he gives the name. He says in this remote city, the people were suffering.

Famine had hit the land. Nobody could eat. The children were starving. People were dying. And this man came up out of nowhere and said, I'm going to save the city. And he was the first person that anybody in the area knew of who took a log or something and went out into the water and he fished. And he caught some fish and brought it back. And he started feeding the people and teaching them how to do what he did. Well, then he died. And after he died, like any city would This is the savior of our city. We're going to make a memorial for him.

Centuries later, the memorial turned into, we're going to bow down and pray to this thing. Centuries later, we're going to sacrifice our children to this thing whenever there's famine, so this thing can make us eat again.

And then I want to say it was Zeus. It was either Zeus or Poseidon, one of the two, probably Poseidon. Anyway, he gives the history of how these cultures developed from fake gods that didn't exist, that were literally human situations, human history, but just morphed over time into what they believe was angels and demons.

And he says, Christianity changed all of this. After Christ, there was this slow transition away from sacrifice. He mentioned that soon they began sacrificing grain instead of humans, because they realized it was wrong.

And his whole argument for, as either the chapter or maybe the set of books, he said, if it is wrong for you to sacrifice your children to these fake gods, how then is it right for you to sacrifice grain to it?

And thank you for doing anything good, right? This was a brilliant, brilliant book. I love this book. But if you are of the mindset of spiritual warfare, this book will unravel your entire worldview, because even back then, they realized that these were not angels and demons.

Man, these were guys who were tricking us. None of this was real, and it was a very human problem, because the humans started tradition, and the tradition turned into human sacrifice. That's how bad it got.

So for me, I just, I can't have to walk away from it for a while, because I was still in the worldview of angels and demons, yet this whole thing is changing my life, man.

Well, Dan Brown said they're real. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, he's the movie with Tom Hanks, angels and demons.

Dan Brown said it's true. So here's a question. Do you know anyone who has ever actually met one of these principalities and powers? The closest I've come is what I dreamed about it, which in my world, because I understand how dreams come, right? That doesn't cut it for me.

I have yet to meet anyone who is actually had a tangible encounter with anything at this level, right? So again, you know, we've got a whole worldview. There's, you know, there's a whole group of people have a whole worldview that's not based on any actual first hand.

experience. Secondly, how many things can we say tangibly changed based on our prayerful warfare against these things? Right. I've just been watching this now for 40 years and I can't think of anything. Like when I when I look back and I see if there's any change in our society, it's not some sort of revelation suddenly that you know they spirit it goes back to decisions that humans make choices that we make, right? So one of the things that I find a little bit disconcerting I guess is one of the reasons why I'm a little bit lary of this

world is the old flip Wilson joke. Well, the devil made me do it. Right. There's this abdication of self responsibility. Right. It's like, well, it was a demon who made me do that. No, you made a choice, dang it. They see what I mean. There's this weird avoidance that we humans have. We don't like to be wrong or we don't like to be held accountable. And I the only place you see this is in the in the Panacostal Church world where when something's uncomfortable, all it was a demon.

No, you were driven by self-assambition or lust or envy, right? But we can't face that. So it's got to be a spirit, right? And so again, I'm trying not to be facetious here. I'm just trying to unpack this. I was laughing at your, you were talking about how things happened to you. I have the identical thing. And this is where it gets interesting to me because my clues come revelatorally, meaning that almost my whole life, something out of nowhere pops into my soul or my heart, like this thing, right? And I call it a breadcrumb. And in fact, I tell you a dream I had. I had this dream when I was younger,

where God opened the top of my head, like this hand comes down and opens the top. It was just my head was a side profile. It opens the top of my head and he drops a seed in. And my eyes light up because I'm so excited that I got this revelation, right? Except for I opened my mouth instantly. And this little seed comes rolling down off of my tongue and just falls into the ground and nothing happens. And I'm like, really disappointed because what was it dropped into my head was significant, right? But it had

impact then a few minutes go by and the same thing happens in this dream and instead of me opening my mouth right away I do this you know that pose the thinker you know where he's bent over and I'm pondering right and then I open my mouth after a period of time goes by and that whole tree slides out with and it was not a little way of explaining to me just shut up and ponder things and wait right it takes time for things to develop so what's happened my whole life is I'll get these little clues that lead to another clue that lead to another clue

and it's like a whole bread come trail right yeah well what I've discovered is like most people out there aren't insanely curious like we are it's kind of like they just they're just echo what somebody else tells them they don't actually get curious right until they go through a terrible betrayal a terrible disappointment a terrible situation where they get you know rejected or whatever within the church world suddenly because their whole faith is based on other people's perspectives and not their own personal journey of discovery they collapse it's a house of cards so in my world we're ideal with a lot of people that are in crisis we always get back to why

and it always gets back to the fact that they actually didn't know God themselves they were just merely like they were little they were programmed right they were programmed as little kids whatever and they just were repeating the subculture worldviews right in on it and so you go through this thing so it's kind of funny what the oh I hop thing right now the younger I hop kids are having a crisis of faith well the older people aren't and the reason was the older people already had their disillusionment from KCF back in the 80s or in the 90s right and

they went on this journey of critical thinking and trying to you know discover who God is for themselves so I guess you know despite all the things we're kind of chewing you know we're chewing up and kind of discussing the one thing I hope people can take away from this is don't assume anything that you've been told by some spiritual leader is the truth right it's a perspective find out for yourself like go on your own journey you know what I mean there's a ton of books out there about spiritual warfare I know all kinds of people that are in that

tribe but it's a few people who have a perspective from years ago, that's just repeated, right? Over and over and over again, and people wanna be long to it and whatever. But go on your own journey, find out for yourself.

Don't just assume because somebody that's on a stage tells you this is the way it is, that's the way it is. As we were discussing earlier, if we haven't learned one thing at our age, is the experts aren't always right?

I mean, we're discovering in every phase of our culture, the church isn't immune to that. There's a saying that we use heavily in the IT world, which is kind of funny, if you think about it, but if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

One of the biggest problems that I have with all of this, and I'm gonna try to say this delicately, because I know that this has the potential to anger a lot of people, so I'm gonna try to tread very, very lightly.

I have a very hyper active mind, and I think people can realize that by now. I think about everything, and I think a lot, I think a heck of a lot. People accuse me of being against the signs and wonders, the gifts, et cetera.

I have had dreams that have told me things that I thought could not possibly be true, and it was. So off to the side, I have experienced what everybody is saying, John doesn't believe, I've experienced it.

I also, like I said, I have a hyper active mind, as a child, even though we were largely not allowed to, my family was for some weird reason. I loved the Batman comics and cartoons, love Batman.

As a child, Batman was on my mind. I love to think about it, I love to play the little toys. I think somewhere I've got a Batman toy up here, even, but I was constantly thinking about Batman.

So what am I gonna dream about? I'm gonna dream about Batman. Whenever I'm having conversation, what's gonna come out of my mouth? I'm gonna think about Batman. I'm gonna talk about Batman. The Bible says, when I was a child, I spoke as a child when I became an adult, I put all the child's thing.

So I grew up in a world where I learned that if you focused heavily on something, that was gonna manifest itself in all kinds of ways, psychologically, physically, et cetera. And I know this.

I also know that there are people who do not have hyper active minds like mine, but I also know that those same people who can't critically think about what's happening to them, if I can make them focus on something so heavily, it's gonna manifest itself in their life.

And I can literally, if I... I were the wrong type of person. I could create a weird following of people who I could manipulate to think that the fictional world I create for them is true.

In other words, if I was a kid and I had 50 kids around me and I said, okay, we're gonna say nothing but Batman, the whole for the next week. We're gonna talk about Batman.

These kids would be dreaming Batman, they would be speaking Batman and tongues, all of that. I'll kind of weird stuff. But the time it's in sociology actually confirms everything you're saying. Absolutely. And that's what we manipulate humans.

Absolutely. I got a question for you. Why do you think you have an affinity for Batman? Because I think I know. Because he's the master detective, man. No, but what makes Batman different than all the other superheroes?

Because he's a normal guy with no super powers who uses his mind. And it's all technology. Absolutely. Right? He's the master of tech. But he's got no super powers, right? That's so you. Yeah.

Only he, I just wish I had his money to do the things that he does with it. Bruce Wade's side. I need a little more Bruce Wade in the Batman, right? Yeah, exactly. No, that's really interesting.

I think, you know, as I said he wants before, I was warned not to have these conversations with you because you're an anti guy. And that's the funny part against everything. And I was like, okay, well, I'm going to find again, if I do what the normal Christian thing is, okay, well, I'm not going to talk to John then, because that must be true because some leaders said it, right?

Yeah. So I'm going to blow, I'm going to blow everyone's mind right here on this podcast. So the way my mind works, I mentioned this on the last episode. The way I prove something true is I assume its faults and come to the truth.

That's the way my, but my head works like this. People, I have that with the detective. What am I thinking of the process of deducting the nation? Exactly. The process of elimination, Sherlock Holmes, yeah.

Yeah, that's exactly how Sherlock Holmes operated, right? He had all these possibilities and he just one by one and ended up telling what was left. Yeah, when I was writing this book, weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR, I was seeing huge significant problems with exactly everything we're talking about on this podcast, the spiritual warfare, the whole bit tied to Trump.

And so my deductive reasoning, the way that my process works, I wanted to take the negative side and I wanted to talk about all of this stuff, right? And I got slammed by people saying, you're a flaming Democrat.

And so here's the irony. I'm one of the people who put Trump in office the first time. I voted for the guy. And to the, you know, to the people who say John's against the gifts and the spirit, all the stuff I've had spiritual I'm reading. I know how they work, but also I know the cycle, the psychology behind. Right.

So maybe there's a true and there's a false. I don't know. I'm still forming an opinion, but I know there is a false. And if I know there's a false, then why in the world did that become the focal point?

Like speaking in tongues, it's only one of how many gifts they're mentioned in the Bible. They want to go to that one. Why just that one? Why not the gift of, you know, humility or there's all kinds of gifts that I can talk about.

Why is it that all this intrigues me is Solomon. Solomon says in many dreams and visions is emptiness. Yes. Rather fear God, right? I always thought that interesting. It was like, wait a minute here.

He's not against dreams and visions. What he's against is the absolute sure volume. And one of the things that it gets me in trouble with my peers in the Christian world is that I think God speaking a whole lot less than everybody claims he is.

I think I think we are literally, I'm sorry, but it's out of control. I mean, if you sat down in any one day and and counted up all the people that are telling other human beings that God's talking through them, it's absolutely astounding.

And you know, it's even weirder about it. If you put it all together, you'd think God was schizophrenic because they're contradicting God. He's contradicting himself. You know what I mean? So this is where I'm sort of like you. It's just like, stop the noise.

You know, it's just too much for me. And it's like, it's like pushing it all away. And then where's that little still small voice? You know what I mean? Where's that? That pure thing that's God. And so what I've discovered with you is you're not that you're anti. It's just that what you've done is you've pushed everything back over here.

And you're just trying to filter through all this to figure out where's the golden all this, right? It's like you're doing your little thing. And it's like, okay. I've got all these rocks in this big pan, but somewhere and there's a flake of gold. What is it? You know, and I admire that actually.

I wish more people were like that. I think we would be in a healthier situation in the church world if people were like that. Unfortunately, we got a whole bunch of people staring at us. What do they call that a shoespan or whatever those things are called?

You know, it's loose pan, you know, or they spin all that. There's a whole lot of people out there claiming the whole thing is filled with gold. Right. It's all gold. Yeah. So to the people who are saying these things about me, I guess you can give them a little bit of credit because couple of people are saying these things about me.

I guess you can give them a little bit of credit because couple. with my critical thinking, I have this sense of humor that goes far beyond what other people have. For example, everything that we just talked about in this last little segment, I've created this YouTube channel called the Cartoon News Network for the NAR, where I do these little satire clips.

It's either today's episode or maybe it's one next week, but everything that we just said, I created a whole satire out, and people see this, and John's against the gifts because he's using satire. If you critically think, a lot of it becomes funny because you realize that the way that your own brain worked wasn't quite right, and there's humor in realizing that you're wrong. I think that's what people miss. They're afraid to make fun of themselves. In a lot of my humor, I'm actually making fun of me. I'm not making fun of other people.

Anyway, hopefully somebody's got something good out of this. This is a fun casual conversation that we're having, and I'm glad that you did this. And people don't get upset with us because we're asking questions out loud. We were basically two guys on a journey just trying to search what is true and what isn't. The thing I'll enjoy is reading the comments from people because maybe they can fill in some gaps here for, and they always enjoy the feedback. It's like, I remind everyone, we don't have a truth. We have a perspective. We're not going to get the truth

until we're dead, and we get on the other side, and we see everything from the perspective of eternity. Right now, we're frail little human beings that live in these very weak physical shells that only have the capacity to see things from sometimes a single perspective, and there's a whole lot more out there that we don't know than what we do know. So, everyone needs to stay very humble. Absolutely. Myself included. I need to tame down the humor just a little bit. Maybe in 10 years, I'll do that. 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 www.William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponizer Relics.