The Power of Perception: How Prophetic Movements Shape Their Own Reality

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org and with me I have my co-host and friend Bob Scott, former co-founder of Kansas City Fellowship and author of three books, the latest of which is some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence of Mike Pickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer. Bob it's good to be back and to talk all things in the prophetic and we're talking a little bit briefly about what we're gonna cover in this podcast and the funny part of it

is things just seem to go together by natural the natural process of talking to people. I just had another conversation I recorded yesterday that's somewhat along the same subject so as people are following along I think they're gonna get a variety of perspectives which is honestly that's the goal of my podcast is just to get different people with different ideas, different backgrounds, all talking about the same kind of thing and you may disagree fully with something somebody says but they may have some insight that you really didn't have so we can learn from everybody but let's dive in and

and talk all things prophetic. Well as we have told people in the past we're sort of experiential explorers. Right. Exactly. You know so we're turning off over rocks and you know kind of asking questions and don't pretend to have all the answers but we certainly we probably have more questions than we do answers yeah but all these things in one way or another kind of need to be looked at I'm sort of fascinated at how things tread as we were discussing previously the whole issue of data mining which has been around you know you know since the brand of years in the 30s people were complaining about it

right and here we are you know almost a hundred years later yeah and certainly it's a hot topic again right yeah and and I suppose social media contributes to the trendiness right because suddenly now we all can jump in and have this conversation where in the past you sort of had to be in somebody's presence to have it. Yeah.

There's a lot of people right now questioning a lot of things that they assumed were prophetic. Right. Well, the funny part of it is it's nothing new. You can go back in history. Most of the figures that are considered the quote unquote founding fathers of what we have is, yeah, I loosely use the term Christianity because there's so many cults mixed in, but the modern version of what we have now is based on different movements, some of them good, some of them bad, and they've all kind of converged.

But they, so we talk about the lists. Back during the Asuza Street Revival, a lot of people don't know this history and I would have missed it, had it not been in a documentary, but William Joseph Seymour is collecting the names and addresses of people who are visiting and attending.

So he is getting, he's creating his list where he can data mine. Now, most of the men who are involved with movements have a business-minded personality and that's why they grew their movement into what it became.

And as a businessman, you realize the power of having a customer, right? So as these people are coming to Asuza Street, he's getting names and addresses. And if I remember what was said in the documentary correctly and I've not been able to find it, I need to go back and see if I can, it seemed like I remember Lucifero stole that list from him.

And that's kind of why it turned into, you know, winning a million different directions. Otherwise, he would have been the kingpin, I strongly feel, but the lists are powerful, but the data mining of those lists turns into, I loosely use the term, but they, in some instances, they turn it into what they call prophetic, but it's really just, it's data mining.

They know the people, they know the customers. In some cases, the customer has written in and sent letters just opening up their heart. Well, they have those letters. They know what this person has and what they've been dealing with.

So it's very easy for a guy to come along and say, hey, I'm a prophet and sitting out here as this lady who, oh, by the way, wrote me this letter. Right. And it turns into this weird mess.

Well, I've had a couple that, well, one's a personal experience and one situation was conveyed to me. And the first experience I had, and I'm trying to be careful here, how I communicate this, but I was in a foreign country.

And I got called out in this huge auditorium and told that I would write books that would change nations by a very, very prominent American prophetic personality. But no one in the auditorium knew was that the...

person that had brought this person in to speak had given them my book. Right. Right. And so the whole place is going crazy. Right. Because you're like, Oh my God. This is Bob Scott. He wrote this book. Right. And how did you know that? Right. And so I was standing there. It was utterly embarrassing. Right. Because I'm sitting between a whole crowd of people that think that this person, you know, is prophesying to me. And I know for a fact that they're cheating. Yeah. And it was really awkward. Right. And I had seen this before, but I had never had it happen to me. I then had a friend of mine. This is

a little different, but it kind of gets to a core issue here that I think goes back to the laterane worldview. But this person was getting ready to go out and speak. And they caught them in the woman's bathroom putting gold dust in their Bible. Oh no. Right. So they were so stunned by this. And when they asked this person, like, what are you doing? Like that's cheating. Right. Their comment was, but I need to stimulate faith. Well, right. Well, that got my attention because in my conversations with Paul Kane about the laterane movement and some of

his issues, right, that are funny because he ended up in some ways doing the very thing he didn't like it. You know, he left it for some of the very reasons he ended up doing. Right. But this is what he said to me. He said something really interesting. He said, all of these preachers operate from a theological perspective that faith unlocks the supernatural. Right. So that's the equation. Faith unlocks the supernatural. So it doesn't really matter how you get people into faith. You just get them there. If they believe it will happen. Right. Exactly. So there

was this very interesting ends justifies the means perspective. Well, that got passed down through various generations of Pentecostal preachers who just assumed that was the norm. Like, if you talk to them, they are like, what do you mean? This is what, like, this just how the way we do things right yeah and and so anyways um that was shocking to me

you know I had not heard that before but it suddenly made sense why so many people ended up faking miracles fake right and it's always on the front end of the meeting right they'll give their message and it's usually the first one or two people often are fake and the justification was is if I could pull this off right and everybody gets excited do they get into faith then God's going to start moving which I just find a very warp thinking well becomes a religion that is concentrated and fully about faith rather than about the gospel in Jesus Christ in

Laterane William Brannum had a whole series of sermons that were the most popular and they were with titles like faith is the substance and they would always go to that passage from the Bible that says faith is the the evidence of things unseen I can't remember the exact quotation but they would go always go to that and that became literally the foundation instead of the gospel being the foundation that verse that passage was the foundation and they had all of these I don't know what you call them but they had all of these ways in which they would

elevate the people's faith and many of the faith healers had some sort of mythology surrounding them and in the mythology God is telling them if you can get the people to believe you'll do great in mighty miracles and so it was always focused on the if you can get the people to believe and Brannum himself he claimed when he revised his stage persona for the Laterane he said that an angel came down and said if you can get the people to believe in you you'll do these mighty works and that became what they claimed to be the mantle and so everybody

who's building upon this platform that is the mantle that they're trying to achieve it's interesting how you know a perspective you know starts with a key leader right and it just gets passed down and nobody challenges it right they just repeat it and it gets you know it goes on to the next generation and the next generation and the next generation right and what's hard in one of the things I've you know I've been dealing with in the last few months is the further you get away from the original person the more difficult it becomes to challenge things in some ways because

you know it's like in the iHop world right all of those iHop kids got a Scrub narrative of what was happening during what I'll call the prophetic years at KCF

Right, and so they ended up developing a whole world view a lifestyle a Ministry all based on this scrub narrative That they had no first hand knowledge of yeah, right and it just got that they got embedded right And then they are telling it to other people and you get way fired out, you know, it's like each Generation of it. It just gets further embedded to where nobody actually knows what the root story is anymore and things You know these sensational stories get passed on there aren't even real It's the same way I think in every movement especially the ones where the leaders have

Either revised their stage personas as happened with Mike Bickle or in in brand-um's case he died There are many different groups that have contacted me interestingly enough whose leaders has passed or is no longer doing the thing But what happened is the leader and their close associates created the movement Then they had offspring and the offspring are the ones now leading those movements So they offspring have no clue what was actually happening at the time They also don't know the gimmicks that were used to create it all they know is whatever was the mythology, right?

So they're they're basically regurgitating the the mythology as it was told to them instead of what they actually could see or hear Yeah, that's interesting. I it's you know based on my study of church history Typically even now what's a denomination, right or what we could call a movement had a founding dynamic personality right they had somebody with enormous energy and A capacity to communicate and a charisma You know, they're like a light that attracts people right once that person dies All the people that were underneath this person who are basically worker bees as it were that don't have

That same level of charisma You know communication skills all that kind of stuff right are trying to preserve This thing right like they're trying to preserve the movement so the only way they can do that without the without the person being there is what I know if you guys use this phrase, but I remember it being in 80s the glory stories We didn't have that phrase, but I know exactly what you're meaning when you say that So the second generation becomes all about telling the glory stories because we don't have the actual purse, you know, you know, star of the show is gone, but we got to keep this

movement going, you know, is you and I both know, the business of church or the business of the movement, the economic side of it because there's a whole group of guys whose livelihood depends on this thing continuing, right? This thing perpetuating. Well, when you lose the star of the show, all you have left are their film clips, you know, or the glory stories. So that's what becomes the thing. And I saw that happen with IHOP, right? All those kids got the glory stories except for the glory stories were all manipulated, right? Right. To make a point, to reinforce things.

Yeah, and that's really the problem, the mythology, births, additional sub-mythologies because they have this mythology that is the glory story, however you want to call it. Well, doctrinally speaking, that became, that becomes the foundation. And then from that foundation, the way the mind works, especially for a minister and don't hate me for saying this, but ministers like to take the, what, what is their doctrine foundation? And they like to find ways in which the Bible supports that foundation. So when they come up with new and exciting stories, they often don't look to see is the foundation really valid? Or can I just build upon it? And most people

just choose the path of, okay, we've, we've accepted this for a long time. Let's just build on it. So they build mythologies on top of the mythologies. And then because it's a movement instead of just simple gospel-based Christianity, the movement itself has events in the mythology that can be tied to new mythologies that are created. So for example, one of the things that happened, and I'm not going to give the specifics, one of the things that happened in the latarine movement, some significant event, people will find a scripture that supports that event, started doctrine based

off of that, and then go back to other instances in the mythology that seem to be kind of like that. And in doing so, they have created a new mythology. And as the generations progress and people do this, then the next generation of people will bring their so-called spiritual experiences and supply it to the mythology. And in doing so, what happens is you get variations of mythologies, and usually that develops into splinter groups. So as this thing is growing, it's also splintering.

creating more mythologies and more messes. So less people think that what we're talking about is unique to the church world. This same dynamic actually happens all through history and one of the things that I remind people of from time to time is that while events are happening, the information that you're getting so often is just propaganda. And then the next generation carries on the propaganda. And then the third generation carries on the propaganda. Then everybody who's involved in the events is dead.

And then the historians take over, right, who have no, they're not to be cliche-ish, but no dog and the hunt, right? And then they begin to break it down and look at the facts.

And so what happens is that you get a more well-rounded perspective on people, events, you know. I remember having a conversation with David Pitches about his book, you know, some said it thundered. And then it was a difficult conversation because David's heart was wanting to promote the prophetic, right? Because he, like so many other guys, saw a dynamic prophetic ministry within the church world as being very important. And so he saw these giftings, he saw the dynamism of it all and wrote this book. Except for the problem with the book was, it was all propaganda, right? And what I mean by that, it wasn't the whole story, right? It was

the glory stories. You know, it was the scrub narrative. And he and I had an initially very awkward conversation, but turned out really good later on because I brought in the human frailty side of the whole thing. They said, yes, there's this, right? There's this one side, but there's this other side, right? These are broken dysfunctional human beings. And if you don't tell that side of the story, you end up creating this surrealistic, almost fairy book, perception of what's going on. And I think it's unfair to people because they don't get the complete picture. Well, that's when he said to me, well, I hope you'll write a sequel, which is what

some said they blundered was. It was like, okay, let me take me to years to do, I put it, you know, eventually I did it, you know, what I like most about the book is that it puts into perspective the human mind because the everybody, as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, everybody has their own perspective and sometimes unfortunately because of the nature of this deceptive movement, the perspectives of the people aren't really based on fact, but to them, that's what they saw, that's what they witnessed and you can't take it away from them, they're going to believe it and carry

that step forward like we're talking about, many of us children grow into adults, those adults grow into pastors, leaders of the movement, etc. Now they're telling their witness story is though it was real and like you said, some of it is a large part of it can be propaganda.

Well, I got a question for you, it's not really changing gears but sort of because this is something that is really intrigued me, it seems to Paul the Apostle that prophecies a very important part of the New Testament church and I've wondered why, right, that's one of the questions I've always wondered, it's like why is this so important? Well, here's a question, what didn't the New Testament church have? The Gold Dust. No, you know what they didn't have? The New Testament, it sounds funny, right, but the New Testament church didn't have the New Testament, right, so you think this true, you've got a group of people who

are gathering around stories, right, you have Apostles, right, the original 11, right, and then they added it, dude, and these guys are, you know, Apostle means ambassador, right, so they're, you know, they're telling, they're ambassadors for the kingdom of God, they're telling the story, but this is all oral.

And the Bible would not be canonized for years later, decades later. Right, so the question then becomes, okay, when you don't have the written word, you basically just have the Torah, right, you have something, you know, what's left of the Old Testament, you don't really have any New Testament theology, right, developed, this is all brand new, right, when you're gathering together, right, and people are trying to understand what God's saying and what's happening here, you begin to realize why prophecy ends up becoming important, because in some ways that's what the Apostles are doing, right, they're speaking for it,

they're prophesying, right, they're, all right, so then the next question is, where Or did that encouragement of prophecy and using prophecy lead to, where did they end up? And you already just mentioned it.

Splinter groups. Chaos, utter chaos, right? People may not, people who are not church historians may not understand this, right? But by time, I mean, you already start to see it in revelations, right? The writer of revelations is already talking about gnosticism, right?

So you're not, what, 70 years from the time of Jesus and we're already wrestling with, you know, new revelation, right? New prophetic revelation, new understanding, right? Well, what people may not fully understand, this went on all the way up to the 300s, right?

The reason why Constantine pulled everybody together in Nicaea was he wanted to know what the heck is the truth here? Exactly. Right? And so you had Uranus and Tertillian and, you know, the Apologists, right?

So you start seeing, you know, in the hundreds, 200s, right? You're getting guys that are trying to, you know, to argue what's new testament, the alleging what's not, right? And, you know, and funny enough, they're writing from Africa, like they're not in Jerusalem or Rome.

You know, they're in Africa, right? And so I always tell my friends in Africa who think Christianity came to Africa in the 1800s, you don't know your own history, you were actually the theological foundation for the early church, you know, it was your guys from Carthage and Alexandra that were driving all of the, you know, all of the theology.

Oh, yeah. So the reason I bring all this up is because as wonderful as prophecy can be, it created utter chaos for the first 300 years. That's why, finally, everybody sat down and decided, okay, what is true?

Like what do we even believe here? Like what's our theology, right? That's where we get the nice scene creed, right? Here's the fundamentals, like here's the basics, right here, boom, boom, boom, boom, right?

But this is being driven by a Roman emperor, not the church. Right. So there's a few funny things to think about. of the mind that wants to explore like you and I do. I watched as one of the former members of the movement, I'm not gonna say which one, was commenting as we're talking through the podcast and they were saying that they no longer go to church.

They don't feel secured in a church, they've been to see you for so long. They're still a Christian, they wanna stay at home. And I watched in the comment feeds as they were just getting blasted for that statement.

And you've probably seen or heard this expression that people will try to force other people to go to church based on a single passage that says, forsake yourself not together, together, together for the reading of scripture.

And in the context of history and in context of the timeline that we're talking about, like you said, there was no new testament. The reading of scripture meant the Torah. Number two, a vast majority of the people could not read.

So had they not gathered together, those who could not read would never have heard the scripture. And that was the way you gathered and learn. And then further complicate that. There is a statement that is made in the book of revelations who, whoever adds to this book or takes away their part will be taken away from the book of life.

I cannot tell you how many sermons I've heard where ministers are blasting other ministers saying they're adding to the Bible and they'll go back to that verse. Well, remember, the Bible didn't exist. It wasn't canonized when that was written.

That statement literally meant, don't go mess with his prophecy I just wrote because there was a common problem. People, as you were writing books that you wanted to deem to be important or scripts or letters or whatever, when people would get their hands on it, they would add their own thoughts to it and then pass it to somebody else and they would add their thoughts and just turn into a huge problem.

So these guys, if they wanted to keep their text clean, they would put curses upon the heads of anybody who would do it. So the writer of the book of Revelation literally wrote that as this warning statement, don't add to this book because if you do, you're gonna be doomed to hell.

Basically, it's what he's saying. It doesn't apply to the canon because the canon doesn't exist. Now, does that mean that you should add to the canon or take away? I'm not saying that it means any way that you should or should not.

I'm just saying, in context of history, it means something different than what they're saying. 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 Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.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.

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So people understand this. I have a passion for the prophetic. And I probably have probably a little bit different understanding of it than maybe the average Christian does because I don't see it as solely a church thing, right?

I think there are men and women that are gifted outside the church world, right? But the testimony of history, whether you like it or not, is that for all of its wonderful benefits in terms of where I've seen it heal people, where I've seen it encourage people, you know what I mean?

Where I've seen it have some really wonderful things. When you start getting into the bigger picture, it just created chaos. And it's, I mean, the evidence is even there from the very beginning. It was like prophecy is what created the problem.

It was the very thing that created such a mess that we had to get everybody together and go, what the heck is true? We got all these people claiming that they are speaking for God, you know, it's like I had a post the other day where I said, for those looking into the church world right now, they would think we have a schizophrenic God.

Oh yeah, I thought that off. In other words, because they're right now we're in a situation where we've got diametric worldviews of what God's doing and they're like colliding head on, right? So if you're looking at this from the outside and you're going, your God's schizophrenic.

Well, in the early church world, if you get to about 150 AD, you would think God had multiple personality disorder. Yeah. It's not two things colliding. It's like dozens of things all colliding. Yeah.

In each group claiming they've got the insight, right? They've got the revelation. I've often thought about whenever a latirane was spreading, there were many developing nations and it was very popular in those developing nations because they did not have the same access to information.

So when these guys were telling their nonsense, people would readily adopt it. Many of those nations now have gone beyond developing to develop and now they have the information infrastructure. And I've often thought some of the worst of the nonsense It goes to still to those nations.

In Africa, for example, they're a part of Africa that have a much larger concentration of Brannamites than there are throughout the whole United States. It's that big. But now many of those people are starting to understand and get access to information and be able to have enough real information to critically think.

Yet these guys were presenting this as God. I've often thought they have to think that this is the wackiest God that they've ever heard of. Why would you serve a God that's that confusing?

Well, I know right now there's a course correction going on in Brazil over IHOP. There was a, IHOP had a massive influence because of like in the latter reign, I think it was Tommy Hicks and some of those guys, I think they were down in Brazil and holding big crusades down there, right?

And so they were very influenced. So it was the same thing with IHOP. There were some key leaders that went down there to Brazil and created a whole, because Mike's original vision was he wanted IHOPs in every nation around the world.

So now there's a whole lot of backlash from that whole world. Yeah, it's sad. In fact, I just had a conversation with somebody who was in, I think it was Mexico, but they were influenced by IHOP.

And as well, because like I said, these cults like to target developing nations and they target, even though Mexico's, I would not consider it developing, they still readily adopt cult theology in parts of Mexico.

So this lady was in Mexico and it was a blend of IHOP KC and some of the, ironically, some of the background cult religions that made up IHOP KC. And they were taking the Laterane Joel's army doctrine from IHOP KC, mixing it with the other doctrine, and they were preparing for war like physically with weapons and stuff.

Because once those two doctrines mixed, if you follow it out to its logical conclusion, it means you better get yourself a gun. And that's exactly what they were doing. Well, that's something that concerns me right now because you've got one group accusing the other group of being demonic.

Yeah. Right? And that's where, like you were saying, you know, gosh, I gotta wanna be careful here. I have a lot of first-hand experience in the Muslim world.

I actually worked as the only Christian and a completely Islamic company. And we got a great. Like these guys weren't radicalized, you know what I mean? But there's a whole thinking in that world, right?

That if I'm right, you're wrong. I have the right to kill you. That was the same world view that the crusaders had. To your point, we've been there already. institutional religion always falls back when they feel threatened to the justification to go kill everyone else. In fact, I hate to say this, but I sometimes wonder if the majority of premature deaths in humanity have been done in the name of God. I mean, we think of all the wars, right? I mean, even some of the justifications for the world wars, right? You know, that whole thing, well, we're

God's chosen, you know what I mean? You're the devil. I mean, it's at the root of so much stuff. And it concerns me because I look at Jesus, who's this peacemaker, who's cross-cultural, right? Who's healing the most, you know, the Nazis of the early world, the Romans, right? He's over there healing the centurion servant, right? He's over there interacting with the Samaritans, you know, they're the cult, you know, for the people in Jerusalem, right? The Samaritans are a cult. So it's this whole thing, you know, I do a lot of thinking because I'm, you know, I like to see people reconciled, you know what I mean?

I feel like one of Jesus' most beautiful characteristics is that he was a peacemaker, right? He was trying to bring diversity together in harmony, you know? Yeah, and the real irony, if you actually understand the culture that he was referring to, he's coming, like he said, as a peacemaker, but he's also coming to topple the religious leaders who thought that they could take authoritarian control over the people as their subjects and were exploiting them. That was one of his, that when you hear the story about the money tables overturning, a lot of people don't realize, but

that's the reason why they were. It was because they they had established an authoritarian structure and were exploiting people. The irony is, in today's world, you've got these big mega churches, many of which have the exact same personalities and exact same structure of what Jesus was coming to overturn. I am under the suspicion that the whole story of Jesus healing on the Sabbath was a strategic maneuver on Jesus' part to expose the religious hypocrisy.

I've thought this any often, right? Because if we want to rebuild the scenario, we've got a whole group of poor people in the hood, right? We've got a buddy, is what? Is crippled, right? Or something, right? And they've been taking care of me.

Somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's friend, right? So we're in these little communities where everybody knows each other and they know this happened. And Jesus purposely on the Sabbath heals this guy. Well, you know what's happening in the hood, right? It's killed the fatted lamb. Let's party. I mean, God has shown up and delivered us, right? Our friend is well, right? I mean, you can't get any more excited than that, right? I mean, you talk about, I mean, it's a different kind of overcoming oppression, right? This is a physical oppression that Jesus is just set this guy free from. Everybody's super excited because they're living under

oppression, right? And then what happens? The religious leaders come from down from the mountain and start telling everyone, or especially Jesus, well, you can't do that. You broke the rules. Yeah. Right? You broke the rules. And Jesus doesn't have to say anything because it's just so you know, vivid what's going on here and everybody's mind because all of a sudden the poor people begin to realize that the rich guys up in the mountain actually really don't care about them.

And it's really sad to think about, right? He's coming to a people who are oppressed. The leaders don't care about the poor people. And he's saying, don't forget the poor people. Lift them up. And the the sinners, one's right. He actually does that. The sinners, the ones who are being despised. He he goes and he sits with the tax collectors, which in today's world, we think tax collectors like the IRS, but this was the most despised person in all of Jerusalem because they were considered traders. They're working with the Romans and collecting money for the Romans. So he's

sitting with the ones that everybody hates. And in today's world and today's Christianity, they further push the people down if they have, especially if they have the sins that are political, they will attack the person instead of lifting them up and helping them.

Well, the famous phrase that gets often repeated by the self-righteous institutionalized leaders is, you can't do that. Yes. Right. You broke the rules. Right? It's like, you know, I've always thought, then again, I'm going to use a word picture here. But I struggle. And I got to just be honest with our listeners. I don't see Jesus trying to start something new.

No. He's trying to put something that exists. Right. And the word picture that I want to use is from the Wizard of Oz. It seems to me that the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz is sort of symbolic of the institutional church world that's lost its way, right?

It doesn't have a heart, and it seems to me that what Jesus is doing and what I get when I read his words, he's just putting a heart and soul back into Judaism. It's like this thing has become so legalistic.

There's so many rules and regulations. This thing has become a millstone around people's neck, right? They're drowning in ritual, they're drowning in religious oppression. You're stealing from them financially, and he's wanting to set them free, and he's wanting to put the heart back in, right?

He says things like there's no greater love than to lay your life down for your brother, right? He's at the last supper washing the feet of his disciples, telling them, this is my example.

This is how you live your life, go serve other people, right? You know, humility, tenderness, caring, all these attributes that he's, you know, and the religious leaders just can't deal with it. And I think part of the reason for that is not only have they become so institutionalized, I think there's another issue in play here, and that's preconceived ideas, right?

They have a theology, again, based on the prophetic, right, that this messianic figure's going to arrive and deliver them from political oppression. Everything is framed in a national way, right? Exactly. It's like this empire against our nation, right?

And so the whole, their whole religious worldview is the messiah is going to come and save us from this. The disciples believe this. Go ahead. Even after three years of being with Jesus, I don't think they fully got it.

No. I mean, I asked this question to myself, these are my turn over the rocks questions. If you fully understood that the crucifixion was probably the most significant day, maybe other than the resurrection, in human history, wouldn't you want a front row seat?

Exactly. Where were they? Right. The guy that's there is John, and he's there because he's got a tender heart for Mary and the family. He's like, he's taking care of Jesus' mother. He's there because he's, it's about compassion.

Well, it's this weird mixture. And again, the comparisons today are just unbelievable, but you've got these authoritarian figures who are politically aligned with the one, the very politics, the very nation that's oppressing them.

They're politically aligned and they're trying to be advisors, spiritual advisors to some extent, and Jesus is coming in. They're all hypocrites, right? They're working with the enemy. And he's calling him out for oppressing the people further while politically being a part of this system.

And when you look at what's happening today with, I don't talk about politics much, but just look at the leaders who are joining themselves together and making a bigger mess of things than already exists, which I never thought possible.

Well, you know, the dynamics that we see now, we're going on in first century Jerusalem, right? You had Sadducees, you had Pharisees, you had a scene, I mean, there were multiple groups that had very different worldviews about theology

and the existence of Israel as a nation, right? They weren't all on the same page.

And you can see them all trying to understand Jesus and probably initially trying to possibly recruit him to their worldview. And he frustrates everyone because the one thing he keeps talking about is the kingdom of God, right?

The kingdom of God, a whole, a worldview that's from eternity, not from human up, but from God down, right? Not from time and space, but eternity. Like he's got this worldview that's transcendent. Does that make sense?

It's like you're down here fighting about all the crumbs here. There's a bigger thing going on here, right? And it just couldn't get it. Because they just, they're, you know, and again, this is where I sometimes get a little frustrated because we get all caught up in these things and we have these big fights and we have these big arguments about all this stuff.

And then you know what happens? We sit on our deathbed and we get ready to face eternity and suddenly all these things that were a big deal

mean nothing. Right. You know what I mean? And partly the reason I know that is I have a body who's transitioned about 6,000 people into eternity, right? And it's fascinating what happens in those moments.

Like all these things that people have so many regrets for things they said or did that in hindsight now. When facing their transition to eternity, oh my God, it's so stupid. I can't believe I lost the friendship or I did this over something as trivial as this when I'm getting ready to face the creator of the universe.

You know, back then, it wasn't the same version of dominion theology we have today, but it was very similar. They were wanting to work with the Romans and establish the kingdom and they believed, like you said, the Messiah is going to come and restore order to this.

And that order is our kingdom theology, right? Now in today's world, we have the same exact thing and they've missed the point where Jesus said, no, the kingdom is within you. Exactly, and then all of his teachings are pretty much, I mean, this is an oversimplification, but it's basically Jesus recognizes that because of our fallenness, we have a propensity towards selfishness.

We are self-centered human beings. All of our conflict as James 3.16 talks about is based on the fact that when you're driven by selfish ambition and greed, right? The lust for status and stuff, you're always gonna end up with chaos and evil.

As a historian, I go back and I undo, you know, I work my way back and always at the root of all these conflict, is somebody's ego and somebody's lust for stuff. Yeah. At every conflict, somebody wants to be the big dog and somebody wants more of your stuff.

And it's the root of everything, even in marriage, it's the root of it, right? And so you see this, right? And then Jesus comes along and he comes with this kingdom of God worldview that basically says, right?

Love your neighbor, right? If you've got two, give one away. If somebody asks you to do this, go even further, right? These are all things that are 180 degrees opposite of self-centeredness, right? That's the kingdom of God.

Yeah. It's a way of life, right? That's why, at the ear point, the kingdom of God is within us, right? I think that's what Jesus was trying to explain to everyone. You don't understand.

It's the way you live. It's your values, morals, and ethics. It's how you treat one another. And we're off over here and taking this thing into this institutional world and hierarchies and millions of dollars.

And it's like, we've sort of forgot the simplicity of this whole thing. In fact, I was telling some of the other day, I think Christianity is fundamentally the simplest thing, simplest religion out there, that humans in their need to be seen as significant have complicated back to the original.

thought that started the podcast. My opinion is that the ways that these deceptive people have presented their prophecies has caused the mess. Because if you look back at the latter reign, many of these prophecies had only one purpose to make the prophet appear to be prophetic.

It has nothing to glorify God, nothing to further the kingdom of God was within them. Instead of helping them establish that kingdom within them, it developed into the kingdom theology because every single one of this prophecies was about building a kingdom established with a fivefold ministry of prophets. Yeah, I concur. It seems to me that the true or maybe the authentic prophetic is healing and encouraging people to love better.

Right? In other words, heal our brokenness, using insight to heal some of the core issues in our souls so that we can love better. The encouragement isn't so you can be over more people.

It's so you can serve more people. You know what I'm talking about? I've been in so many meetings where people are wanting prophecies because they're wanting to be affirmed as being something special. Right? You see what I mean? It's all the whole things distorted. It's like, no, that's not what this is about, right? You know, because we always see it as well, the prophets are knowing the kings, right? It's like, so you're like, what's a prophet? You know, this was such a trap at Aihat, right? Mike's whole world, you know, his whole ministry is based on all the prophets

reinforcing how special he is. Yeah. And the very sad part about it is a religion that is set up and designed that way, where it can, where instead of helping empower the little people, it wants to create authoritarian figures. Unfortunately, and sadly, it attracts other authoritarian people with that mindset, people who want to govern, people who want to control and be powerful.

Yeah, you know, I sometimes wonder, you know, you go, you know, it's kind of like, I mean, again, this is my weird way of thinking. If I was going to want to understand an artist, I look at his paintings, right? Because his paintings are his ascites. It's what's inside of him comes out, you know, as a musician, right? You write songs, but you write songs about things that are inside you, right? So your songs reveal a whole lot about who you are. Well, I look at the same way at creation, right? Creation is the display

of God. And so I look at a lot of things out there. So one of the things I think a lot about is in nature, there is a renewal process that's based on fire, prairie fires, forest fires, right? And the front end of the renewal process is not pretty. It's destructive.

It's going backwards. Everything appears, right, to be negative. And you, if you don't understand what God's doing, you're looking at it going, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that, right? Yeah. And yet it seems to be God's way to let things burn down so that He can bring up something new.

And so that's one of my encouragements to people out there that have gotten discouraged in the church world through either the disillusionment with IHOP or Morningstar or Bethel or you know, later any of it is that just remember there's a there's a natural process of going backwards to be going forward. Maybe something new and good is coming, you know. So don't lose hope.

Don't lose hope. I think that's the, if there's a message that we can give people, it's that there is hope. God is the great redeemer, isn't he? That's like his nature. He redeems things. He takes things that other people think are unimportant and not valuable, right? He takes things that other people think are ashes and he redeems them and makes them something. I mean, that's the whole history of God's way. He takes broken people and redeems them. He takes broken situations and redeems them. That's the power of God. So it's, it's, I think we've just got off,

it's like we've gotten so focused on the sensational and the show, you know, being entertained, you know, we've gotten so caught up into that culture that I think we were missing the simple things right in front of us, right at our feet, that actually would change the world. As an example, there are people in a early church, church historians that talk about the plagues in Rome

and the expansion of Christianity during that time period. And the reason was, is as these plagues were going through the Roman Empire, the wealthy, the religious elites were, had the capacity to leave the cities to avoid the plague. The poor stayed there. They had nowhere to go. They had no way to leave. Who went in there and nursed them.

and cared for them, and died doing it. And that's what it's all about. I think the one of the biggest problems that was created with the Latter-Rain movement is that it advertised itself as signs, wonders, miracles.

You can look through the newspaper articles, you can listen to the speeches. They're all talking about, come see the miracle, come watch, it's like a circus. Come see the entertainment act, right? Step, step right up, step right up.

But it trained the people to look for that instead of what was the simplicity of what Jesus said. And that blossomed into the movements we have now through the charismatic movement. They wanted the feelings.

They wanted how to remember, call it the feel. They wanted to have the experience. And in doing so, it created a new religion that was just simply based off of the experience. A lot of food for thought, brother.

This has been fun. There's so much more we could talk about. We only skimmed the surface of the prophetic things we were going to talk about. But you've kind of had to have this as the, you know, established to understand some of the things that we're about to get into.

So next time, we'll dig in deeper into the prophetic. It's gonna be a plan, Stan. Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.Williamdashbrandom.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

You can find us at www.Williamdashbrandom.org.