Lance Wallnau, God's Generals, and the Politics of Prophecy

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 very special guest, John Sawyer. And together we are discussing the weird and strange ways in which William Brandham is still being promoted by key figures in the NAR. John you reached out to me I guess it was when was it last month and we were talking about Lance Wallnow who is getting big into Brandhamism for some reason they're trying to spread it and it not

just you but I have had other people who are telling me the same things they're seeing it spreading from different areas. I'm just curious to find out why so I thought I would have you on and let's discuss Lance Wallnow and especially let's discuss God's generals again because this seems to be the backbone behind why these guys are doing this. Thanks again John for having me on your show. I've been following your work for quite a bit and it's illuminated so much of my own history with Pentecostal and Charismatic movements and in particular as we

talked about during our last time together I was involved with Robert Slared in Ministries who was the author of the series of books on God's generals and Wallnow, Lance Wallnow recently came to my mind because he had Robert Slared in on his live stream which was his broadcast to thousands upon thousands if not millions of people due to Wallnow's influence in the media sphere of the Charismatic movements today and during that broadcast between Laredin and Wallnow in fact Wallnow pointed to Laredin's God's generals books and said that of any books that he has on his shelf the God's generals books speak most

to how he thinks about our current religious and political climate and I'll say here at the out front that we're going to talk about politics today because there's no way to get around that with Lance Wallnow because he is such a figure in the political landscape and its enmeshment with the religious right today and what some might call Christian Nationalism.

and I found the episode so very curious on many fronts because Robert's layered in years ago was on the outs from the New Apostolic Reformation Leadership Networks because of a scandal that he was involved with a man in the church, a homosexual scandal, and it's taken many years for him to get back into the limelight and he's right back in it and people are now looking at layered in again as an authority which for me is very concerning given his connections to Brandon, Brandon Minism and various other things. Well I agree there is no way to separate politics out of this episode and I usually avoid it

at all costs because in this episode I'm not going to give my political leanings because I don't fight for either side I think that the whole thing is a mass but if you're listening and you hate a podcast about politics then this is the point at which you exit. I'll just say it like that but you're right Christian nationalism there's just simply no way because what these guys have done and have been doing for decades they're trying to merge Christianity with politics and they invent this new thing which is neither Christian Christianity or politics it's something new but it's also very scary if you really understand

the history of how it came to be I discovered it probably 2015-ish whenever I was studying the Brannum stuff and I discovered that Brannum was working with key figures in the clan and that was problematic enough but once I understood why he was working with them and what they were trying to achieve that led me to Christian identity which obviously is a component of Christian nationalism they're both not one the same but they both work together and then I realized that it has been a political political Christian mess for all of these decades. I had another guest on that said well it's always been that way John

you can go back all the way back through time and you're going to find the same thing but I disagree to some extent because there are Christian divisions Christian a denomination some different sects that strongly avoid politics and they try very hard to be neutral but these guys don't want to be neutral what's interesting is most of them are against the Catholic Church very very strongly and what they're trying to establish is what you had in the ancient world where the bishops had all the power over the kings and they're trying to set the same thing up in the United States where they're not bishops but in the

NAR fivefold ministry you've got the apostles and prophets these guys who are are the equivalent to the Catholic bishops way back in the days well let's Interesting you say that, having been raised in these circles, influenced by Leridon and others, I remember a strong anti-catholic element.

In fact, I remember hearing things about Catholic bishops and popes actually being infested with demons and those kinds of things. And yet, you're finding even among some of the people that come out of the lettering, charismatic, Pentecostal movements, a allegiance in some sense with some of the far right elements of the Catholic church today, because they are advancing similar political agendas in the United States, which I find to be very curious, given that when I was growing up, in some sense, there were conspiracies that were fused into the Christianity that I was raised on, in the sense of thinking

about a new world order and conversations about global elites and the Illuminati and all of these other ideas. And yet, and so as I was being raised, I had a fear of the government.

I had a fear of this one world order. And now, we're finding under the New Apostolic Reformation folks who came out of some of those ideas, a willingness to say, we're going to flip the coin here now, and we're going to take upon this dominionist, conquest-oriented version of Christianity, where we will exert our religious control over these various mountains, which they call the Seven Mountain Mandate, over family, religion, education, media, arts, and entertainment, business, and government.

As I think about the Gospels and think about the parts of Scripture where Jesus resisted political and religious authorities, and stood on the sides of the marginalized, I see little in some of these current forms of, I would say, current forms of randomism that model what I see in the best parts of Christian Scripture.

There's a passage of Scripture where somebody is bringing Jesus a coin, and he looks at it, and he says, who faces this, and they said it seesers, and will give to Caesar that which is his.

In other words, I want no part of this system that you're talking about, this religious political system that they had established back then. But in today's world, they would be saying, Jesus, give me more bags, and we want bigger bags of these coins, right?

We want more coinage, and that's ultimately what it's all about with these guys. But you're right, I was raised in the same way, and this is not a, this is not a, O-Catholic podcast, so I'll head off those comments right now, but we demonized people.

We were trained and manipulated to demonize people, especially Catholics, and I thought the same way that bishops are infected with demons, they're spreading the doctrines of demons, and whether you agree with Catholicism or not, what it does to the people who are in the cult mindset that have been programmed and manipulated to demonize people, you're scared of them, man.

I'll never forget coming in contact with a Catholic person, and this wasn't a bishop, but this was a person who I think had some clout in the Catholic church, and I was just scared of this person, and then I got to know them.

They're a really nice individual, a human being that was not filled with demons. They actually read the Bible, they love Jesus all of this. I'm not a fan of the religion by no means, but I have come to realize that the way that we were trained and manipulated to be against them, that was worse than many of the things that they're claiming against the Catholic church.

Right, you know, there are so many aspects of institutionalized religion that I am concerned about, whether it's Catholicism or Mormonism, or parts of the evangelical church, or various other groups, I think once religion gains power, particularly political power, there is

a wave religion gets weaponized to hurt others, and I think it's undeniable that that has happened within the history of the Catholic church, though like you I interact with and work with folks within the Catholic church who are great people, and at the same time, a person's humanity and their living out of their faith doesn't excuse the harms that occur through institutions, through leaders, especially, which is why I'm fascinated in this conversation regarding Lance Walnut in Robert's Lairdon. You mentioned coins, and you mentioned profit.

In fact, Lance Walnut was one of, if not the primary motivators and galvanizers of the first election of Donald Trump among the charismatic Christian community. In fact, he went on the Jim Baker show, and he sold these little coins that were resembling Cyrus from the Old Testament Bible and said that if you buy one of these coins for $45, then you have a point of contact to pray, essentially, for or the election of Donald Trump.

And so, while now, in around 2015, he wrote a book called God's Chaos Candidate. And at the time, he wasn't saying that Donald Trump was a Christian, but he was saying that Trump was a kin to the biblical King Cyrus, who is a pagan king, who delivered the Jews and led them from exile back to Jerusalem.

And so he said, even if Donald Trump is in a Christian, he is our deliverer, essentially. And yet, at the same time, Lance Wal-Nau, his income, his grown exponentially, he has over a million followers on Facebook, close to 100,000 followers on YouTube.

He stands up in churches with this toxic brew of conspiracy and politics. And End Times theology also mixed with this dominionist, New Apostolic Seven Mountain Conquest-oriented religion, infused with ideas about demons and territorial spirits that are actually ruling over atmospheres and are directing political affairs in all of those things.

Now, I'm not criticizing anybody who's listening here that has a sincere belief in the scriptures, who has a sincere belief in God, in Satan, and the workings of demons and those kind of things.

What I am criticizing is using those ideas to dehumanize others, and to stigmatize others, and to ultimately not view other people as human beings deserving of dignity and respect. I would agree. And if you take it back to, so my latest book is examining the Christian identity history as it relates to the NAR.

And if you follow that trail back, you find the same things. They didn't have Seven Mountain mandate back in, as the Christian identity doctrine was being formed, but they had all of the different elements.

They just didn't have a name for it. They were trying to invade the political system obviously, but they were trying to control and manipulate the entertainment system. They were just like today. They were boycotting different things and lashing out at people, especially like the I Love Lucy show was one of the things that they were attacking because it was showing two different people of different races, and they were harshly and strongly against interracial marriage.

So you had very much a similar thing as the Seven Mountain mandate back then, but I wanna say it was about probably in the 1950s when it really started to shift where they were trying to bring in the element of the demonic forces having controlling our...

He's coming in, and they said, this is the battle of the minds, and they were basically pitting the battle of the mind of the Christians in this Christian identity movement against the people who they opposed, and that might be the Jews, the Catholics, people with black skin, the wide swath of people in the United States that they were attacking.

So the end result of this, once it blended in with Latin reign, now they tied it into a system where it became so common place to think that other humans were in an army against you that you began flinging curses at people and openly that you would never have done before.

So I grew up in the world where it was like this, you felt more righteous if you cursed your enemies, and they may be other Christians too, right? But if you're saying bad things about what they believe and really offending them, you felt empowered to do it, and you felt very righteous to do it. And this has sadly become amplified over the years. Now with the NAR, it's like what I grew up with on steroids.

Well, it's interesting you bring in the Latin reign, and as we're discussing, Lance Walnell, Lance Walnell was raised and brought up and mentored within the Latin reign movement. In fact, his first church was associated with a woman by the name of Esther Mallet, and she was influenced by the Latin reign movement, and he had a church in Rhode Island, which I believe it was called Word of Faith Christian Center. And you find within Lance Walnell's history a strong connection to many of the, I would say, conspiratorial ideas that William Branham advanced, and an infusion of Word of Faith prosperity gospel ideas alongside the

more amorphous charismatic movement. And Lance Walnell, in fact, didn't come on the scene within these new apostolic leadership networks until around 2001, which was at the time that Robert Slaredin was essentially kicked out of these leadership networks because of the homosexual scandal that I referenced earlier. But you also find at the time that Paul Kane was being disciplined by people like C. Peter Wagner, Jack Deere, Rick Joyner, among others.

And you found a lot of scandal that was happening among these apostolic leadership networks. And I can't help but see that some of the most intense rhetoric against people today who may identify as lesbian, gay, transgender, among others is rooted in the very scandals that were happening in ladder ring circles among leadership, in early new apostolic reformation leadership.

I'm not here to be someone who is saying that you shouldn't believe that homosexuality is a sin, et cetera, but what I am saying is that these charismatic NAR ladder ring influenced people need to come to terms with their own hypocrisy and their own tendency to point fingers at others and not reflect upon themselves and the damage that they've done to others through their own hypocrisy.

So since you and I have spoken last, I continue to dig and there's just so many different mountains to dig in that sometimes I get lost in the weeds of all the details, William Brandham's campaign manager is of key interest in helping establish all of this from the seven mountain mandate to the, you know, the ties to the government to all of it.

I mean, he was really, really influential and his name was Ferry von Blumberg, William T. Ferry von Blumberg. He was working closely with the Full Gospel Businessman's Association. He was a homosexual. The men who knew him knew that he was a homosexual.

This was openly known. He was William Brandham's campaign manager and took William Brandham all over the world. What's interesting that I found since speaking with you, I knew all that, but I found declassified documents about him and he was under the government's watchful eye because he was also instrumental in spreading the fellowship international.

Whenever you hear the term, the family, the cult, the family, the one that's got the national prayer breakfast and has was invading Washington. I think it's been somewhat dismantled a little bit, but he was instrumental in spreading this in other countries.

So they established this network of these things globally, right? And he's working with all of these Christian leaders, such as William Brandham, helping them bring their revival tours to whatever country he's setting up these national prayer breakfasts.

Well, the government caught on that this guy, as he's touring, he's bringing a lot of men in his hotel with him. And they're doing things that I'm not going to say in the podcast because this has to be clean so YouTube doesn't cut it.

Sure. But it was enough that the FBI realized this is not a Christian man that's doing this. The very things that these guys are condemning, he's openly doing, worse, the men who are connected with him all know he's doing it.

And some of them are participating. And so the FBI document basically says he's under the watchful eye. He even got caught in one of the hotels, I think it was Memphis, somewhere in the south he got caught.

But this has been going on, the hypocrisy has been going forever. There were key figures in the movements that openly were this way. And I have a feeling that's why Paul Kane and Lance Walnall, some of these guys are so easily restored because they recognize that pattern has existed forever.

We can condemn it openly, but in private we can do whatever we want. We don't care because we are the elite. We're in the upper tiers of that, you know, fivefold ministry order. So as long as you've made it into this tier, so it doesn't matter what you do.

And if you falter, we'll lift you back up and restore you, just as has happened. You know, John, I, since our last podcast, I was looking at some of the comments and whenever we began to talk about some of these things, I saw a few people shut down right away because they, they saw you as somehow affirming of the quote unquote homosexual lifestyle.

And I had to chuck a little bit because I'm a single man who lives at home and, you know, has a mom that I helped take care of and aging parents and I get up and go to work like anybody else and somehow in people's mind whenever you hear the word homosexual, you don't have this idea that somebody is embodying all of the tropes and stereotypes that we hear about and forget the humanity of a person and their own life and their very regular parts of their life that may not even involve relationships and same-sex marriage or anything

along those lines. But what I do find concerning as you talk about the full gospel businessmen's fellowship is, A, I don't know that Lance Walnow has been caught in any type of scandal along those lines.

I do know that Robert Slardin has, I do know that Robert Slardin in his early days in ministry, he was in a word of faith church in Minnesota and he was in a homosexual scandal of sort.

And as a result of that, he moved his ministry to Southern California when he was in Southern California, he actually was in a building with the full gospel businessmen's fellowship. They shared a building at the time when he was establishing his church and in fact the in a relationship with that led to the downfall of his church in California by the name of John Caret, his father is an influential leader in the full gospel businessmen's fellowship in South America. And of course, when the scandal happened between Leridon and John Caret, whose father is influential in the full gospel businessmen's fellowship, what did Leridon do? Well, eventually he

in his ministry packed up again and they moved to London. Leridon moved to London and he was involved in a Bible college, which was part of the Edelham Pentecostal networks under a gentleman named Colin Die. I don't know what happened in London, but he left London again at one point.

It moved his ministry to Sarasota, Florida. And he started a church in Orlando and that church and then he started working his way back into the inner circles of people like Kenneth Copeland and Lance Walneau and other people like I've seen him on the broadcasts with a gentleman named Hank Cuneman among others. And now Leridon is on the prowl again. He is preaching in large churches and his ministry is going full steam ahead and at the same time, I tune in from time to time if I can bear it because I can only bear so much. But in his sermons, he continues to spew hatred

about particularly the transgender community. Now, I understand that transgender folks is a topic that is very sensitive among probably your listeners and within our political climate today. But I also want to emphasize that it's less than 1% of people in the United States that identify as transgender. But I do want to say that you see Leridon using this issue as a way for people to rally behind him and to support some of the vitriolic othering demonizing rhetoric that he continues to spew, which is quite concerning for me, especially as he's gaining power and influence again. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the

progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven 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 Bramham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So I saw the same comments that you saw, but what you didn't see, and this is kind of funny and sad all at the same time. What you didn't see is I had been in talks to be on a rather famous podcast with another person. And the moment that this famous individual saw that I had the podcast with you, he immediately called me and cut me off and said, you will not be on my podcast.

I'm like, okay, what's wrong? And I guess people have been manipulated to be of the mindset that you must spew hate speech against somebody. And I'm not that way. I could care less. In fact, that I think my exact words to him were something to the effect. Well, if that's the way you feel, that's really not my personality anyway. So it's probably better than I'm not on your podcast.

Because I've never given my opinion and I will continue to do so. It's some people's opinion who are watching this that I should attack, but I don't care. That's not my opinion and that's not not what I do. You know, it's very clear if somebody wants to understand what the Bible says about it. Go read the Bible. And that's as far as I'll go with the advice, right? Sure. But beyond that, what I find really interesting is, like you said, the hypocrisy, but more to the point, many of the men who are respected by those who are attacking have been in either a situation like

this or they have restored somebody back into position who have struggled with the same issues. And you can't have it both ways. What's really, really odd is, and again, we're going back into politics, which I usually avoid, what I have found is that right now, that is the hot political topic. And so people are going to fight it because Christianity and politics have blended.

But go back in time just a little bit. So back during the years of my Christian identity research, homosexuality wasn't so strongly condemned in political Christian realms. In fact, there were, I think there were laws against it in some states, etc. But what was was the interracial marriages.

And so what I see happening today and whatever is the political Christian topic to attack of today, I see happening back then with the, with what they called the primary sins of the 60s, the ones that they most strongly and openly condemned people for.

And they behaved much the same way. What's interesting is in today's world, many of those people came from the same backgrounds. Well, they don't condemn the same things that they did in the 60s and they would never treat somebody with such disrespect for the same things that they did in the 60s.

Yet it all has the same background. So I just find it fascinating that the way that the history has shifted and the way that the politics have shifted, whatever is the current hot topic of today is what people will attack. And I, like I said, I'm not of that mindset, but more to the point, I also want to know more about the history and why it changes. And I think if you do that and you understand how people were being manipulated against certain demographics of people or topics, the way that they've been manipulated through time has been

consistent. They just choose different targets for that manipulation. Yeah. So many thoughts, John, I guess to begin, I'm sorry that I lost you a platform on the sizeable podcast. If that person is continuing to listen, I'd love to speak with you. I'm more than willing to speak from my own experiences and hopefully see each other as human beings rather than demon infested folks. I have a couple of thoughts. One, the very categories that we use today to describe these topics are categories that have been created based upon people's own experiences.

And the reason that these categories have been created, again, not to

compel any of your listeners or anyone else that you need to somehow agree that this is the right course of action, but categories have to be created for people's experiences in order for people to have rights and for people to be protected from governments and from hostile states, etc. And there are parts of the world where you could be a single, celibate person who confesses that you have quote-unquote same-sex attraction and you can be targeted by the state.

And you can be scapegoated by the state and even criminalized by the state. And as I think about, again, I don't know if the podcast that you were invited to that was then removed that invitation was a Christian-oriented podcast, but I would ask the Christian podcasters and the believers that are listening to me speak right now when Jesus saw the woman in adultery and there were people who were seeking to throw stones at the woman.

Did you see Jesus pick up the stone and throw the stone at the woman? Right. I feel like we have in holding up the cross alongside the American flag. We even meshed the message of Jesus to such a far degree that the parts of the gospel that are about reaching out to the least of these have been totally eclipsed.

And as I think about our topic around Lance Walnut and Robert's Lairdon, among others, I can only remember my own experiences as a little boy being raised in overtly hostile environments where I'm hearing horrendous things about the afterlife as it pertains to homosexuals. Hearing horrendous things about the destruction of society because of a person's gave visibility, for example. And I think that you hear so many people who have this idea of somehow homosexuals are out to recruit children and those kind of things. And yet you have the very churches where children are being influenced by rhetoric

that causes much harm and probably confusion, which is why even as I am vocal about Robert's Lairdon and his own past, his own scandals, there's part of me that speaks from a place of compassion because he was mentored by people like a guy named Lester Summerall who was a Pentecostal preacher. He was popular back in the mid to late 20th century. And I know that Lairdon sat under some of these deliverance sessions where homosexual demons were attempted to be cast out of him in a very physical way. And I experienced that when I was a student at Robert's Lairdon

School with Robert's Lairdon sitting on my chest attempting to cast demons out of me. I'm sorry, you can disagree all day long doctrinally with homosexuality. You can read the Bible and the verses that speak about homosexuality. You can believe in traditional marriage. I concede that and I think that is a person's freedom of religion. But to physically abuse somebody because you're trying to cast a gay demon out of them, I don't see...

is acceptable either for society, and I don't see that as a true practice of Christianity. So you're throwing out all these names very quickly, and I'm trying to write them down as fast as I can, but Lester Sumeral is one I didn't have to write down, if you go to my website, type them in.

I came across his name first when I was doing my Jim Jones research, because he was one of the guys, I think he was the main figure who came from the assemblies of God to dedicate the church, the, it was called the Laurel Street Tabernacle.

I think that's where I first came across his name, but he was also, as you know, big in the Laterane movements, he hosted William Brandham several times, FF Bosworth, some of the other guys, and he was, you know, like I said, part of the assemblies of God, from the state of Indiana, a lot of people don't realize this.

So the assemblies of God have historically kind of wiped their hands clean from the Laterane. They said, we denounce Laterane, and they point people back to the minute notes of, what was it, 1949, I think it was, that they said, this is a dangerous sect, we want no part of this.

And so anytime somebody asks, they point them to this, and that's a simple answer. And what they're not telling you is, there were several states that participated in Laterane with the assemblies of God leadership, and Indiana became what was called a rogue state.

And in the state of Indiana, many of the key figure like Lester Somrall, some of the others, were hosting William Brandham and defending William Brandham on the House floor during future conventions, whenever the assemblies would gather together.

So Lester Somrall is tied to all of this. And to your point, it explains why things have gotten to where they are today. Because the same patterns of behavior has existed back then, it's existing today.

People were being demonized for many of the same reasons, but different political agendas. And figures who are influenced by these characters are now the ones who are pulling the strings in Washington. As you mentioned, Jim Jones, I've probably far too much time reading books about him and thinking about his own ministry and his connections to Laterane and the divine healing movements.

And he himself, as you've probably come across, had at times solicited men in his congregation. And, you know, we think about the movements that have come out of branimism and have influenced people's lives.

I'm not... I'm here to essentialize and say that every single person who's been associated with randomism or with lared-in or with wal-now has somehow is drinking the coolate to use an appropriate term, but the fact that a almost a thousand people died by suicide under Jim Jones, because of a combination of religion infused with politics infused with classic control cult-like mechanisms, is something that I think we need to consider more as a society, especially as we are putting people in power, in governmental power, who have been influenced by these movements. For example, again, I am not here to promote a political agenda. I'm

here as much as possible to speak facts, but Donald Trump created a White House of Faith Outreach, and Paula White is a charismatic Pentecostal leader who is at the helm of his White House Faith Office. Paula White is connected to many of these Pentecostal movements. She promotes ideas of spiritual warfare, and if we're thinking about religious freedom, in my view, we need to think about religious freedom for all irrespective of whether you are in a church influenced by the NAR, or whether you're in a Catholic church or a Baptist church. Our society was set up in such a way

that the church and the state, because of centuries of religious oppression, the founders believed needed to be separated. And some today will say to me, well, actually what they meant is it's only about protecting the church from the state. Yes, that's part of it. However, even people like James Madison wrote about the infusion of money into what he called sectarian religion, and the amount of money that then creates power that then creates privilege and creates the ability for one particular religious ideology to dominate. And that is my concern as I continue to see the flag and the cross upheld together so tightly is that when money gets involved in

exorbitant amounts of money, inevitably corruption is the result. And I think that's the root of the problem, right? The corruption has become so commonplace that people have focused so heavily on in the agenda and demonizing other people, that they've been trained and manipulated to ignore the corruption, and many people know it exists.

What's really odd is it goes beyond just corruption. You also have many of these guys who are claiming to be prophets while now included. And when their prophecy fails, what happens? People look beyond just like they do the corruption, they look beyond the failed prophecy, and still regard these people as prophets, which is really, really odd, because it's like, you know, if you're a baseball player and you can't hit a ball, but you continue to uplift the baseball player and say, well, he said he's a baseball player, so let's let him keep swinging.

And you're never gonna hit the ball, man. Well, it's funny you mentioned that because at the beginning of the episode, we talked about the conversation between Lance Walnut and Robert Slayard and on his episode recently.

And on the episode, almost to a nauseating degree, Lance Walnut was promoting Leridon's books and continuing to push Leridon's, what I view as propaganda. And one of the things that Leridon said in this interview was that William Brannum was, and Lance Walnut said this as well, but said that William Brannum was essentially killed by God in order that the charismatic movement wouldn't be impeded because of his powerful gifts.

So let me say this another way. Essentially, they were promoting this idea, and this is a very Leridon type idea, having been raised in part on Leridon, is that you can have these gifts of this spirit that operate, whether they be through prophecy, through words of knowledge, through healing, through deliverance among others.

And that those gifts, these supernatural gifts, are, and they'll point to that verse that says, are without repentance. And then they'll separate that from a person's life, from their teaching, et cetera. And so the idea that Leridon and Walnut were talking about is, well, essentially, William Brannum was killed by God because his gifts were so great.

And Leridon even said he is the greatest prophet he's seen in 500 years. And so God needed to take William Brannum out, because if he didn't take him out, the true charismatic movement would have been stifled.

And all the while, these guys have to know, because if you spend any amount of time looking at what William Brannum, quote, unquote, prophesied, first you find the problem that, wait a minute, nothing he said was ever before the event happened.

So it wasn't an actual prophecy or not, but he claimed to have prophesied beforehand. And even after the event happened, and he claimed to have prophesied, he still got it wrong. So these guys, I mean, they've written a book on it. They had to have studied to some extent, and you can't really, you can't study Branham at all without realizing that number one, his prophecies had a lot of problems, significant problems. But number two, there's a big question, where are they prophecies at all? Because, you know, in today's world, I could walk up to somebody and say, hey, back in the year 1989, I

prophesied that the twin towers would fall to a terrorist attack. And they're going to say, well, show me the proof, man, I don't believe that you did this. And in the religious world, you don't have to show the proof. That's what's really odd about this. And so these guys have to know and they're promoting it. But, you know, to the people who've been manipulated in this mindset, they really don't care. You know, if William Branham was a false prophecy or not, as long as he's making prophecies, and they can be twisted or strained in some way where he can find even one

little single detail that maybe seems like it might be accurate. That's how they've been manipulated to think. And so I look at, you know, I think Walnut was one that was predicting the reelection back whenever Biden got president. And, you know, these guys, some of them have said, well, it was robbed. And so my prophecy, my prophecy was correct. But the election got stolen. Well, no, man, if your prophecy was correct, you would have prophesied that the election got stolen, not that the opposite thing had happened. And these people have been manipulated to just say, okay, well, he's a

batter. He swung. He missed. And he's going to continue to miss. Let's let him keep swinging. Well, the challenge here is that when you miss it on a prophecy, you can then hold on a little bit and find some other event that happens and then say, oh, see, this proves that actually, I had it right. And in fact, in this episode, episode between Walnut and Laredin, Walnut alludes to being disheartened when the reelection was certified. And Trump didn't take over the White House in 2020. And he's saying, oh, Lord, did I miss it?

Et cetera, et cetera. And now because Trump is back in the White House, he's saying, see, I didn't miss it. I was right all the time. But yes, he was actually scheduled to speak at the January 6th uprising there at the Capitol in 2021 and was on the grounds when the folks started to break into the Capitol. And so he wasn't actually able to speak on stage, but he was supposed to speak alongside political representatives like Marjorie Taylor, Green, among others. But this idea of prophecy.

interesting because as I have studied a bit of the history of Brannum, certainly not to the extent you have, it seems like prophecy had this idea of forward-looking and thinking about political events in the world. The way that prophecy was often played out in my own life in the charismatic early NAR circles was personal prophecy and so you would have prophets that would offer these words over you that were supposed to dictate the direction in the course of your life.

Was that something that you've seen among the the Brannum groups, these types of personal prophecies? So personal prophecies is kind of a funny thing because William Brannum would hold these big revivals and these big conventions and then there were a lot of people who came because they wanted to see the revival and hear the preaching etc. But there were a larger number of people who came because he would hold these special private meetings and people would come and he would give personal prophecies to them in private telling them what basically it was like a fortune teller. He would come and can you tell me my fortune? What

what should I do? I'm in this situation. What's going to happen to me? Literally he was fortune telling which was an abomination in the Bible if you understand that. What's interesting is he was doing the same thing and I think he mentions it on recording. He gave the personal prophecies which was the fortune telling to the people who were working who were in the people's temple whenever he had the convention with Jim Jones.

So before the people who committed mass suicide he gave them all their personal prophecies and some of these people went on and he apparently didn't tell them the big event that was coming in their lives.

You know obviously and some of it we have confirmed he definitely got wrong one of his most famous stories is that he prophesied that this mother's two children would be saved and to my knowledge I think they became atheists whenever they left or they weren't Christians at all.

What's interesting is one of the personal prophecies given to my grandfather was that all of his children and his grandchildren would be saved and the cult has by and large condemned me to hell because I'm speaking out and what how do you do that man because I'm in the category of the saved, right?

Yeah you know as I think back to my own involvement with Leridon I was a child at the time and so I was immersed in this world of prophecy and the reason that I even decided to go to his bible college was because I had received a personal prophecies from somebody who knew that I was thinking about going to his bible college and so they said thus say if the Lord you are supposed to go to his bible college and I said oh this is a voice from heaven telling me to go and join up with Laird and it was such a profoundly difficult and even

enlightening experience to be part of that group because it was an immersion into what I now see as classic cult-like dynamics if we're thinking about Steve Hassan's bite model of behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotion control. All of those were playing out at Spirit Life Bible College, which was Laird in school. We had things as students, for example, even living off campus where you would have people randomly come up to your home and unannounced, come into your house and start looking through books and discarding any books that they believed to be violating their idea of right doctrine.

As pertaining to thought control, speaking in tongues was held up as the gold standard of spiritual maturity, and in fact Laird in his church, which was associated with the school, would have these altar calls, but they were less about people running up to the front and giving their lives to Jesus or whatever. It was more about these speaking tongues. In fact, in his mega-church of almost 2,000 people, he would sometimes point his finger up into the audience to someone who maybe he didn't know and he'd say, do you speak in tongues? He'd command of them to come down to the altar to speak in tongues. Sometimes he would have the entire

congregation in this roar of speaking in tongues together, and then he would demand that you turn to your neighbor and demonstrate that you could speak in tongues, and if you couldn't speak in tongues, you were supposed to drag your neighbor to the front. I see that is classically aligned with thought control because I see that mechanism as a control mechanism to stop your critical thinking, and then emotional control was very present because we were commanded at all times to be joyful. I remember even Laird and his mom, who was part of the ministry and sort of

the dean of the school, and by the way, so many of these groups have a nepotistic feel to them. It's sort of a family mafia driven, a group, but his mom would stand up there and she would say, I command you to be joyful in the name of Jesus. If you were walking around and you were having a bad day, you'd have people say, buck it up, you'd have to lift your head high. It was all surreal and it's something that just fits every model of Hassan's work.

speaking in tongues, so William Brannum, he tried to distance himself from the Pentecostal notion that the evidence of the Holy Spirit was speaking in tongues, because there was more money in it for him if the evidence was the healing.

So he chose that pathway, and largely thanks to F. F. Bosworth, who came out of John Alexander Dowie's cult, which also had the same money-making gimmick, right? There was one instance where he goes to, I think it's Jamaica, and he hears this phrase that everybody's saying, and he didn't know what it meant.

So he asked somebody, and it was, I'll probably slaughter the translation, but he said something like, humel and rawha, is what he heard. And so he asked somebody, and he learned what it is, and he likes the phrase.

And he mentions liking that phrase on a recording. He comes back to the States after having heard the phrase, mentioned that he liked it, and there's this prayer line coming through, and somebody comes up, and he says, humel and rawha, wait, what did I just say?

I spoke in tongues, and he pretends that God had spoke through him, rather than, you know, he's just repeating the phrase that he mentioned that he had heard. So it's kind of funny, but yet to the bite model, I would say that the emotional manipulation is probably the strongest.

And as it progressed from branemism into Karsmania into the NAR, I would say the emotional manipulation became even more heightened in these groups because they wanted you to experience a feeling. And if they could get you to experience the feeling, they've got you hooked.

And so they really, really target the emotional manipulation. Once they get past that, they bring in the others, the control of information, the behavior control, et cetera, but if they can just get to your emotions, they can drag you into this thing.

Well, and as I mentioned, Lairden, he wrote these books that I view as propaganda, but he puts himself up as sort of a historian, and people call him Dr. Roberts Lairden, even though he didn't earn a PhD through the traditional means, et cetera, yet I've heard him say recently that part of the reason he's gaining clout again or is having success in his ministry is because he's leaning back into flowing in the spirit.

And so the flowing in the spirit really is all about that emotional control and creating a feeling, and that sells. Absolutely, it sells. So people who are listening to this podcast, who are now coming into contact for the first time with this information, and suddenly realize that, wait a minute, God's generals, is it what it's cracked up to be?

What is your advice to anybody who describes it? covers this book. I would be very careful about the seductive nature of the books, because they are propaganda. They tell one side of a story.

And yet in a very insidious way, they present themselves as very serious, because the book is titled, God's Generals Why They Successed and Why Some Failed. And so there's this narrative throughout about these great generals having these great struggles, and yet somehow being used mightily.

But what is concerning about that is, it makes you trust the books more, because you're saying, oh, wow, they're not just telling one side of the story, they're telling both. But the sides of the story that they're telling pertaining to miracles and healings, and all of these very sensationalistic things about halos around Brannum's head and the visions and revelations, so many of those things are easily debunked as frauds.

And these books are holding them up as truth in saying that the character of these people don't really matter, it's the gifts that really matter. And I think that's the most dangerous part of those books.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing the information with me and talking through all of these things, there's so much to think about. And now you've given me, I don't know how many, 15, 20 different names that I need to go dig into, find some more information about.

So thank you for doing this. Great to be with you, John, and I hope I haven't prevented you from being on another podcast with this episode. Well, I'm busy enough as it is, so it's all good.

Okay. 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, you can read Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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