Radical Faith, Violent Fruit: The Cost of Dominionist Theology - Jed Hartley

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed, it's good to be back and to talk about this big mess that we have today in the world. There are so many threads of mess. We were, you and I were discussing before we started this, what do we even talk about? We've gone so many different trails and they all seem to be

oddly converging because we're talking about this problem exists and here's the reason why it was created, whether it's Branhamism, whether it's Bickel, you know, all of these different messes. And then they start to show up in the news. And so we kind of decided that, yeah, let's just talk about maybe a summary of where we are and why we're in the mess and maybe it would help our heads not to spend so much. Yeah. Well, it was funny because we, a few weeks ago or, you know, depending on the, we record them different than it's always released. So I don't know if it

was just a couple of weeks ago, but we've been definitely talking about this sort of intersection between Christian, the new Apostolic Reformation, the International House Prayer of Lance Walnell, these figures who have been behind Christian Dominionism, and especially the Seven Mountains mandate. So if I think it was several episodes ago, we talked about, we talked about Lance Walnell and we talked about how he had his doctorate from a university. And I had done like a little bit of a deep dive into his doctorate to realize that it was phony. It was just, it was an organization that he had just quickly sum up what we had been talking about.

There was an organization that situates itself. It's called Prima's University. It situates itself as a real university. It has a website. It looks like it's a real university. It has pictures of a university complex on its front page, but then you kind of dive into it.

really it's just a diploma mill where people pay this organization money to validate their life experiences and the whole premise behind premised and like people can go to the website and see I'm this is not a fabrication of or I'm not portraying this in a negative light well I am portraying it in a negative light because it is kind of you know a shady but they explicitly kind of stated on their website that the that life experience and books that you've read for a book club and Bible study those can all count towards credit for a degree like

there it's very very loose there it doesn't seem to be any semblance of actual curriculum there it's just sort of a bunch of people specifically within the new apostolic reformation community have kind of gotten together and figured out a way to give each other doctorate degrees and then those who graduate from this university are then the professors where if you read any of their books that can count to to degrees so you know like if I went there and said oh I've read this Lance Walnut book and I've read this I can't remember some of the other individuals who are on

there but if I've read these three books by them this is the sort of things that I've written about on that topic they confirm me a degree well then John if you wanted to then come get a degree you could be like well I've read Jed Hartley's books and it just becomes a sort of multi-level marketing scheme where you know people bring others in and then they became a part of the staff and then so on so forth and what was really shady about it I mean there's a lot of shady things about it but what was really shady is that it claimed to be an accredited

university and the accrediting body was this organization that Lance Walnut and I believe her name is Karen Drake who's like the president of the school so president of the school Karen Drake president of premise university and Lance Walnut who is a alumni of the school creates this independent organization to a credit the very university that they are both either employed and have gotten their degrees from and they're the founders of this accreditation body and there's nobody else in you know it's not it's not pulling on any other like they're not bringing any other people them it's just them creating an organization to a credit the university that they attend

or that they are they created so anyway all of this to sort of sum up I'm not doing a good job of quickly summing up. But it's just talking about it, it just reminds me how wild some of this thing is, is that you have this, and Lance Wal-Naw isn't the only individual who is sort of doing this, where they're creating and fabricating credentials.

And it's part of this idea, the Seven Mountain Mandae. It's this idea of being the pinnacle, right? The idea, the metaphor of the mountain is not accidental. The idea is let's get Christians, specifically our type of Christians, our sort of dominionist, new apostolic reformation Christians, let's get all of them at the tops of all of these different mountains.

And instead of doing it by like, okay, we are going to invest in the arts, we're gonna invest in education, we're going to like send our children to the best schools and the best, instead of trying to influence those spheres of society by truly developing the best and the brightest to then go into those mountains.

Which is, that's how I always grew up thinking about it. That's how it was always sort of told to me is that you are gonna be our best and brightest, and you are going to go and you're gonna go into these mountains and we're gonna invest in education, and the Lord is gonna bless you.

And it was less insidious, I guess, because it was this sort of like a goal to flourish, a goal to just be the best and whatnot. But in reality, it's a lot about cutting corners.

It's a lot about doing instead of Lance Walnell going to a university, doing the hard work, trying to become the preeminent scholar of whatever domain he wants to talk about, doing the hard work to, I mean, university, like getting a PhD as hard work, you gotta write a dissertation, you gotta defend your dissertation, and it's not, it's not easy.

And instead of doing that hard work, it's let's cut these corners to just insert ourselves. And it's this idea that God already has blessed us. We are God's chosen people, sometimes even in the like Christian identity movement way of like quite literally like the Aryan race has been chosen by God, but maybe metaphorically spiritually, like we are the chosen group, we are like with IHOP, we are for the forerunners, we are the church that God is raising up for the end times.

It's this idea that like we don't have to work for it because we already have it. And this is the same, we have some of this mentality coming out of Bethel, it's this sort of like we've been blessed.

with the goodness of God. And the gold is manifesting at our fingertips and people are coming with like diamonds in their teeth and these miracles are happening to show that God has really blessed.

It's similar in some senses, I think, to sort of prosperity gospel ideas, but it's the sort of like spiritual prosperity and political and really all domain prosperity is that like or maybe manifest destiny is a good like this is the world that the Lord has given us and that we have been anointed to take over all of these air. So anyway, so we've been talking about this, we talked about the cutting corners and we're really starting to see in the political sphere, specifically, we're starting to see the culmination of a lot of this coming to head. We're seeing

how much the Trump organization was really fueled and has leaned on the sort of new apostolic reformation movement. And we're also then kind of skipping a few steps with seeing what is happening with Vance Bolter where there is now a radical individual who who paraded some new apostolic reformation rhetoric clearly has deep ties to the new apostolic reformation movement, goes and attempts to assassinate and is successful in one instance of assassinating a government official and their spouse. And in acts of violence, political violence, again, we're still, you know, I don't want to speak, I don't know the personal psychology

of Vance Bolter, but I know that someone like just a few weeks ago, we were talking about the dangers of this rhetoric and the new apostolic reformation rhetoric and how this sort of dominionism is spilling over into violence and then not a week later, we see a manifestation of that violence happen. And probably one of the most clear and explicit, literal ways. So I don't know about you, John, but it's the last few months have just felt like it really is a culmination of a lot of the things that we've been talking about. It definitely is. And interestingly, if you do this

long enough, it'll go in cycles. So the last few months have been like this and then there was this dry spell. Well, I can't remember what year, a couple years back, it was like this again, it goes in these cycles. And it's exactly, I was telling a person this just on the phone right before I called you. It's Weird because what happens is these people have created this fantasy world and they can really do with it whatever they want.

It's like whenever you're a kid, I'm assuming that you were like me and you had all the little figures and toys and you could react your own battle scenes. For me, when I was a kid, G.I. Joe was the big thing.

So I had all these G.I. Joe's, but on this side, I might have them fighting Lego figures or something. Yeah. I could do with them whatever I wanted because they're my toys. They're my fantasy world I'm creating.

Well, what these people have done? And it is ingenious because whenever you want to target a political opponent and you have a ministry, you can't just outright say, we need to bring down this political opponent.

There are laws against this and they border, they edge towards sedition. You can't really overthrow people in the government. That's not how it works. But what you can do is you can have your little battle scenes with your Legos and your G.I. Joe's, but in a spiritual sense, what these people do is they'll start to associate political figures with enemies in stories of the Bible.

And once they have made that association in people's minds, they will preach that story to the ground, man. Over and over. Well, every time that the people in the seats here, that story, they know that they're talking about political figures, right?

And then take it a step further. So you have people who are indoctrinated with this is loaded language. You're loading the language of these names with the political figures. Well, when they hear the loaded language, they immediately think of the name.

Well, some of these scenes in the Bible are very violent. There are very violent scenes, especially in the Old Testament. There are bad things that happened, right? Well, whenever they see this and somebody's just slightly mentally unstable, well, then they start to reenact it.

And what they've done is they've started to enter into the fantasy world that was created spiritually, but they're doing it physically at that point. Now, I can't say that Bolter was of that mindset, but what I can say is, even just a few clips that you gave me of the rhetoric that he's preaching in the sermons, I was able to hear it just like that.

Go listen to the rest of the sermon, and it's like, oh my gosh, man, this guy has been programmed. Now, I can't say that he was programmed to do what he did. That would be a mistake, but if you understand how the indoctrination works, what you have is radicalization.

So, then you're left with the question, was radicalization the reason why Bolter did this or was he doing it out of some other reason? We don't know, but we can clearly see he is radicalized.

And that's just Bolter. That's just the scenario we're talking about now. But now, spread that across several months. You have all kinds of things that are happening with weird things and Christianity and... all the tics mixed together and we're seeing it over and over and over again, each time that you see it, you are finding a person who is radicalized but has not yet had a climactic event.

Some of them may never have it, but they're radicalized and that's really a huge problem. I can't remember if it was, it might have been a comment on one of our YouTube videos or it might have been a comment on one of my Twitter threads that I've had, but I remember someone, a while back, it was either a thread that I had posted about violent language.

Oh, you know what it was, it was when I was talking specifically about the International House of Prayer's history in Uganda and how there was a movement, a political movement in Uganda that was looking to criminalize and punish homosexuality and that there was going to be this sort of like enforcement of this religious belief in violent ways where people, if they were found to be homosexual, they would be thrown in prison or worse.

And there was a documentary that came out that was tying a lot of that movement to sort of missions, movements that specifically the International House of Prayer had done. And what I was saying, and I said similar, we talked about this on one of the episodes we talked about, or one of the episodes that we had, we talked about this topic.

I've also posted about this and written about it. But there's this sort of, there was this sort of like defense that I remember people in the International House of Prayer had where they were like, we don't condone any political violence that is done like this persecution of people who are homosexuality, like we're speaking against it, we think it's immoral, we think it's sinful, but like we don't condone the state sort of backing of moral norms in this sense.

And they were like, we kind of wash our hands of it, we have nothing to do with this. And what I was saying, and what I still say is that when you use violent rhetoric all the time, don't be surprised when people take it literally.

Like all of these metaphors of violent rhetoric of warfare is so prevalent in the New Apostolic Reformation, like to an extent that you don't even realize it. I know that most of our audience probably has been in this world a little bit and probably doesn't even realize how much.

language, the spiritual, or spiritual war for it has become like the predominant language and rhetoric of this movement. So much so. Do you know what the Elijah list is, John? Yes. So for our audience who doesn't know, there's like a, this is, it was tied with Bob Jones originally, but the Elijah list is very like tied to the center of the new apostolic reformation movement. And it's all about kind of raising up voices of prophets and basically prophets or self-appointed prophets will get prophetic words. And then they will pay to have their prophecies released to this like network through email and and but they're posted online and

they're posted in like the Elijah list, new list letters. And this is, you know, I hope I'm not tipping my cap because a lot of people are like, oh, how do you know what's going on in the new apostolic reformation? So much like, I read the Elijah list like I keep up with a lot of what's being said there. And that gives me a sort of like, oh, I know what people are saying. And I know what's going on. So it's not, you know, for despite not being involved in the world and being a part

of that community, I am able to keep tabs on the community very well by just reading the Elijah list. And if people wanted to do it, like go to the Elijah list, go to the website, Google it, go to the Elijah list and they have their archives, just search through, search through the word invasion, search through the word warfare, do violence. I mean, whatever word that you want to think of that is that is violent sort of warfare rhetoric, bloodshed, blood, even all of these different things. And you will see all of this language, you'll see literally hundreds of

prophetic words that are being released by individuals who are talking about the spiritual warfare that's going on in the United States and in other countries and obviously in Israel and everything like that. And it will be explicitly violent language. Now it's done. I think that whenever we talk about it, even when we talked about it and when I had posted about it, I remember people kind of defending it and being like, well, you know what also has violent language is the old testament and the new testament. And this gets what to what you were just saying, John, which is

people will open up the Bible and read about political things that were happening and not understand the separation between sort of the United States and the our current sort of political world. Like we...

it is democracy now, like the United States is a democracy. We are not a theocratic, you know, we are not the ancient nation of Israel that's like fighting against other like kingdoms and Marnekes and and not fighting against the Philistines, but there's this sort of like reading of that language. I think that a particular thing that influences this a lot is the how much of the Bible is written in not first person, but second person perspective. It's a lot of like letters or prophecies that is like unto Israel or unto a church and Galatians or Ephesians or something like that. And so the word you

will be used all the time in the Bible. And it's like, you know, I think I've talked about this before on this, but like for when I grew up, Isaiah 60, arise in shine for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. And I'm reading all of these use and I'm just thinking as it's like God talking directly to me. And I'm not separating and recognizing I am reading a text that was written to a specific either church or about the church of Israel, specific ancient Israel.

Like I'm not separating my self from it. And I'm taking these things and I'm thinking about me. So like kings will be brought to the brightness of your dawn. That wasn't about Jed Hartley. That prophecy wasn't about Jed Hartley.

Now I can get that people can like be inspired by it and whatnot. But like that wasn't about me. And inserting myself into the center of it, I adopt a lot of like really dangerous mentality and language. And this is this is also a huge thing when Mike Bickel was being criticized. So Mike Bickel is criticized for sexual violence that he's prepared, that he's been you know grooming women for decades. I mean we've talked about this extensively, but Mike Bickel kind of gets exposed for being an absolute charlatan and predator. And you know in the early stages,

the defense of Mike Bickel was like well King David, think about what King David did to Bashiba and Uriah. And like even though King David sin got still used to him. And I remember getting so angry and being like Mike Bickel isn't King David. Mike Bickel doesn't like who is Mike Bickel to insure hurt himself in this like grand biblical narrative and be like, God will still use me.

You are not one of God's chosen, like we are not gonna have a lineage where you know, tracing the lineage of Israel to Mike Bickle, like it's just so, it's so egotistical. To even compare Mike Bickle with a king of ancient, Israel is just so absurd.

Also, it was also a terrible metaphor because like King David repented and when he and in Sackloth the Nash's, you know, he repented for everything that he did. And literally, there was punishment. God killed his firstborn, you know, depending on how you interpret that.

I don't know if there's multiple interpretations of that passage, but that's always how I understood it is that because of David Sins, God, the death of David's firstborn was like the indirect punishment for his sins.

And so not only were they like inserting themselves and bringing parallels that were absolutely ridiculous, but they weren't actually even doing the full parallels because they were like, oh, forget about the like repentance and punishment aspect of it.

Just like we want to still laud and respect this and worship this man. And we don't really want to deal with the sins. So it was just an excuse. But anyway, all of that to say exactly what to reiterate kind of what you were saying and is that would you use this sort of biblical language and you use this specifically when you pull out the militaristic language of the Bible and you use it to talk about spiritual warfare and talk about, you know, even quasi political warfare and then violence is perpetuated on behalf of like people

then take and actually fulfill that violence. And then you throw up your hands and you're like, oh, this didn't have anything to do with us. I just think that it's ridiculous. Like I think it's, this is clearly the fruit of the tree that we're dealing with, with Vance Bolter and just sort of this violence that's rising up in general.

Like I so wish we talked about this a couple episodes ago. But like, is it crazy for me to think that Bill Johnson should like use his platform and be like we are, when we talk about spiritual warfare, we are not talking about real warfare.

Please do not ever enact violence in the name of Jesus to per like the talk of invasion. Like should he be explicit of like we are peace. We believe in democracy. We believe that America shouldn't just be an ethno state or a theocratic state that only Christians are allowed to be here and live here and practice their religion.

Like would it be crazy for us to expect that some of these leaders reaffirmed that like the United States is for all people and not just for white Christian nationalists and that the persecution of other individuals is never, never ought to be the agenda of the movement.

Cause like they, they will act like that's given. Like if you, I don't know about like Lance Walnut but Bill Johnson will be like, of course. Like, you know, of course this is the thing.

Like whenever they're criticized, it's like, oh no, no, no, I never would do any of this. But yet do they, do you ever see them speaking up against sort of the violence that their own community is perpetuating?

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You know, I was thinking as you're talking, whenever I was a kid, I was sitting through these sermons and I would hear the Bible stories over and over, which was a good thing. I mean, I learned a lot of my Bible from them.

And interestingly, even though as a cult, I could, in a cult, I could say that I learned some things from it. But what I never knew as a kid was that I was supposed to take what he was saying about the Bible and apply it to actual people living today.

That really didn't hit me until I was much older. And I began to realize that, oh, when he talks about this Bible figure, I'm supposed to think about this person or this other Bible figure.

Even that, you know, maybe that's okay. I see that as very insidious. But say that that was a good thing. I'll just put it like this. Say that it was a good thing. Well, what happens is politics does not stay static for the rest of the world.

of your life. So whenever politicians come and politicians go, well, then you have to associate the same Bible figures with different politicians. And so your head is, like you're in this weird mental gymnastics, trying to say, okay, wait a minute. I was supposed to think that when I'm hearing this Bible story, it's person A, and now it's person B, and then it's person C. Well, what is it, man? You start to realize that the whole religion, I hate to say it, but it was a political religion. It was not really a Christian religion.

They had a reason and a purpose for doing it. And it goes beyond even just the people. They like to get in embed in politics with trying to create doctrines that surround policy. And in some cases, I'm going to say that in some cases, that's not that bad because if you're a Christian, you have some certain ideologies that you believe in you're aligned with, right? But the way that they do it is bad. It's wrong because if I have to be brainwashed to believe their theology, well, what happens when I'm no longer brainwashed, do I still believe it? This creates a huge problem whenever people walk away from a cult

because they're instead of being taught the morals from which they should learn the policies and which they should apply their morals to the voting system, instead they're being brainwashed to make the votes. And I have a huge problem with this because I grew up with, I have a very strong moral code that I live by, but I know people who came from the same religion who don't and they will walk all over people if they get the chance.

And they just, they don't have the same moral code. I got my moral code not from the religion. I got it from myself from my, I read the Bible myself, which many people do not, sadly.

I got it from some from the Bible, some from just being around people. When you're around people, you want to be nice to people, you want people to like you back. That's how life works. So you learn things just by examples. But when your brainwashed and indoctrinated and forcibly coerced to do something, it doesn't build your moral character. And so what you end up with, I've sadly, I see a lot of people who just have no character who come out of these systems. And for the people who escape, this is another huge problem. I've, some of the people that I've worked with who've escaped the cults go through this weird period

of time that I call it the post cult adolescence. Because all of the things that they never got to experience, they'll go do them right or wrong, they'll go do them because I never got to do this.

The rest of the world did, right? And they do it somewhat with the, you know, some many of them are adults. So they do have a little bit of grounding as being an adult.

But the problem is because they weren't taught them moral code, then how do you apply a moral code to it if you have none? And so as they're developing what they like and what they dislike and the rights and the wrongs, what the same time they're developing the moral code. And then you end up with the situation where they have no boundaries. So if you have no good boundaries, what happens? And nine times out of 10, what will happen is people who are in the cult will point fingers at those people and say, see, look, they left the cult

and this bad thing that they did. And it may not even be bad, but that's that's how it is. So all of that to say, if you were to instead of indoctrinate people, just give them the reasons why they should vote one way or another. This is a moral code. This is what we live by.

I can't tell you to do this, but make up your own minds to do it. That's how normal life should work, man. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it is so much more work and dedication and requires character to build a community around moral character and about the moral character of the Bible and using that sort of inform your politics. Like, you know, you can't, I'm going to say something that'll make a lot of people mad. I don't understand why it does, but you know, those people who are like, I'm a radical Christian and they're radically political.

And what are they going to be radically political about homosexuality, abortion,

anti-immigration? You know, what are the hot button topics of that sort of political organization? But then if they were radicals, then they would also be radical about like wealth accumulation. Like the Bible, Jesus speaks so clearly about like, the rich man comes to Jesus and he's like, how do I get into the kingdom of heaven? He's like sell everything that you have, give it to the poor and come follow me. And you know, there's the eye of the need. It's easier for a rich man to get through and I am needled than to get into the kingdom of heaven.

And if you're radical and you're really like, man, I am taking all of Jesus' everything that Jesus said, everything that I was said in the Bible and I'm living for it

wholeheartedly, well, then you're going to have these sort of character things of like, no, I shouldn't accumulate a lot of wealth. And what would happen, and there definitely are people like this, like I met a lot of people in my way, I'm who like, I might not agree with some political stuff with them. But when I'm like, hey, the land's well-knownst of the world are abusing people by trying to like a crew wealth and and you know, deceive people and the Jimmy Bakers who have their sort of stick where the process- parody gospel and get people to donate, they're like, yeah, this, I can see that this is

wrong. And they're not blinded by their sort of political association of being like, yeah, well, this is in the good group versus the bad group. And that's the, that's the difficulty is that like, you know, I can't go to any members. I genuinely, this is not me being metaphorical.

I literally cannot go to the leaders of the community that I was raised in and talk about sexual abuse. I can't talk about financial abuse. I can't talk about fraud. I can't talk about deception because they're going to be like, well, you're a communist, you know, and you're like, they're going to find some sort of political reason to do what, you know, slander me and say that I'm a part of this different group or whatnot. Because the basis of the community has not been built on moral character and moral consistency. It isn't about the edification of the body. It's

about finding the political principles and positions that can best leverage them into greater positions power. It's what, what moral principles can I hold that is not going to require me to change anything if, you know, that's not going to require me to give up my third house in the Cayman Islands. What, you know, what is the thing that is going to, that I can get angry about, that I can get my audience angry about where I don't actually have to suffer at all. I don't have to

hold myself accountable to it. And I think the biggest example of this is the way that sexuality is treated. And how, you know, people like, like, rejoiner, treat Mike Bickel's grooming and sexual sin, which is like, as intense as you get, like just, just habitual over years and years of grooming women. I mean, and already, rejoiner, not two years after all of this information came out, rejoiners already being like, well, we need to get Mike Bickel back on the pulpit sometime. And we need to redeem him. And it's this so, because again, it's not moral consistency. There isn't a moral basis. It's just because if you had, if you had

this sort of radical puritanical, I don't know, I don't know if that's the right word. But if you had this purity, let's talk about purity culture, like, if you were like, I really want our culture to be pure. Peer from all sort of sexual amor- morality. And then you're only sort of talking about the sexual immorality that doesn't have anything to do with you in your community, like that, oh, well, it's just about homosexuality or transgender issues or something like that. And it isn't about sexual abuse that's happening within your own community. Then like, that's just politics. That's just you using politics

to put yourself in power and to give the thumbs up to the people that you love and thumbs down to everyone else. And this is another thing. Oh, every time we talk about this, the way, if we're talking about, like, Sean Foyte, we just were talking about Sean Foyte. And I'm getting people in my Twitter mentions and on Instagram and people will message me who are just so livid about the fact that I'm like tearing down Sean Foyte. And it's this sort of like how dare you speak, like, who are you to judge? This is the whole thing. Like, who are you to judge? As if

Sean Foyte doesn't preach the most judgmental version of the gospel in like contemporary American society. Like, the new apostolic reformation is quite literally the most judgmental subsect of the American church right now. I mean, you could say like Westboro Baptist church and you could maybe say that there's others who have sort of similar things. But like, if you ask Sean Foyte, who's going to be tortured for all of eternity in hell,

it's going to be like 90% of the people. Do you understand the position that we are in when, like, uh, and also like, are people just okay with fraud? Are people just okay with lie?

And I wonder about the people like Mike Bickle and Bill Johnson and, um, Chris Falletson and Lance Wall now. Like, are they not terrified about what happens when they die? Because like, they've let false prophets in their midst and they've preached gospels like they've had the word of the Lord on their lips, especially like with people with Mike, like Mike Bickle and Bob Jones, who like, use the word of God and use their authority to sexually abuse people.

Man, do they not operate with a fear of the Lord? Because I can't imagine. And which is why I don't understand if these men really believe in the God that they preach, I don't understand why they aren't the ones who are coming forth and telling about all their sins and, and pleading with God sort of publicly to forgive them for their sins and making that sort of like very large gesture, like David.

did love like sap cloth and ashes and like I don't understand how they aren't feeling this like fear which you know maybe just means that they don't have fear of God because they don't actually believe in the things that they're saying.

One of the reasons why I have voiced my opinion a few times that some of the people who are in this type of ministry in my opinion are atheists because they have no convictions.

You can't have Christian convictions and preach about a Christian God who is against the very premise for the thing that you're doing that doesn't work right if you don't have any convictions you can you can just go ahead and do whatever you want.

And that's what this has turned into. This is a do as thou wilt type of religion right because even the doctrinal framework itself doesn't match Christianity. Jesus said my kingdom's not of this world that I grew up hearing that over and over I would read it over and over and I would think about that that is a significant thing for Jesus to say and as a young adult it was molding my entire lifestyle.

My kingdom's not of this world I don't care if somebody misuses me or mistreats me. My kingdom's not of this world their kingdom is if they're if they're wanting to live that way. And so I just kind of rose above it and I didn't have to fight back because why would I?

My kingdom's not of this world but these people who are saying that passage they try to take dominion over it and how can that be if you have convictions if you truly believe what Jesus said.

And yet I see entire ministries built on top of it. So I have to wonder are they do they really have convictions? How can you read the verse and not apply it to your life and that's what I'm seeing.

However, there are some people who have mental challenges and so I leave a little bit of wiggle room for people who just mentally can't make the connection between A and B. And I think there's a lot of mental health issues if that's the case with the people in this movement but I'm with you you have to have some sort of conviction if you're going to be a preacher because if you don't and you're preaching all kinds of different directions, it's like trying to hit a target at 50 yards with a scattergun.

Well, yeah, you might hit it but what all it's are you going to be hitting and is it correct when you're hitting it. So I just kind of took a step back from all of it.

The way that I can talk about people like when we had the discussion of Sean Foyte got nothing against him. That's you know, the way that he is doing his preaching and singing and all of the little other things that he's doing along with his ministry, I just don't see it as something that I would put my children under his care because this isn't this is not a good direction for my kids, but that's my life.

That's my kids. He's welcome to his opinion, I'm welcome to mine. But there are people who are, like you said, there are people who are very dangerous in the movement, who from the beginning were praying upon people, and how can you not speak out about this?

Whenever you see that ministry is connected to all these other ministries, and many of those other ministries have doctrinal frameworks that only exist because of the person who was clearly not aligned with anything spiritual.

How can you support any of those doctrinal frameworks, but people do? And I think that's why they have to restore people back into the ministry even after they've been caught. Because think of the house of cards that would come trembling down, man.

Yeah, and they use all of each other to validate each other's ministry because there is not a denominational sort of authority in this non-denominational world. There isn't like a central church body that ordains and lifts up. It's this sort of network of independent kings who all validate each other's kingdoms, and their power and authority is predicated on the power and authority of others.

And if you start pulling on that thread, you don't want to suddenly find yourself pulling out the very fabric in which you stand. Like there are people like Mike Bickle who are very aware of this and use that to their advantage.

So Mike Bickle was like, when he was being attacked, he was like, this is an attack against it and times prayer movement in general. And when I say he was being attacked, attack is a very obviously his word that he would use where I'm just like it being held, oh no, the consequence of my own actions.

Like I'm being attacked by consequences. It was just people holding them accountable for the like predatory behaviors that he had done. He framed it as like, this is a demonic attack against the whole sort of body of Christ, meaning not the larger body of Christ, but his specific branch of the body of Christ, the new apostolic sort of reformation network, and that this was an attack against the end times prayer movement.

And in some ways, it is kind of true, like because the more that you realize that Mike was a phony, the more you realize the movement itself was fundamentally flawed. And it's sort of this house of, like you said, house of cards situation.

And it is one of those things that you like, you can't start pulling on the thread without all of it sort of falling apart. And this will really hurt a lot of people when And I've seen this because everyone will have their little area that they have found to appreciate.

So like when we started talking about Y-WAM, I had people who I love and care about who are like, oh man, I love what you're saying about I-Hop and Bethel, but like don't bring Y-WAM into this, like Y-WAM is good.

And like I understand that people have good experiences with these worlds. Like I understand even with I-Hop that people had good genuine experiences at the International House of Prayer. And I'm not trying to negate or diminish that.

But you don't get to hold a false narrative of the way that your community was structured. Like it just isn't, you know, especially now in which those false narratives are leading to like real political and real consequences in real life.

You know, you don't get to just close your eyes about these things. I mean, I suppose people can choose to do that. But like with Y-WAM and stuff like that, like you can't just take all of the good without looking at the Dominionist structure in which it was formed.

And like I personally, I spent some good time with Lauren Cunningham. And as a person, he's passed away now. I really only have good things to say about Lauren Cunningham, the person. Now there might have been some shady stuff that was going on behind the scenes.

But nonetheless, like he really was involved and Y-WAM was really involved with like the launching of this Dominionist seven mountains mandate that has led to a lot of political turmoil in the United States.

And it has like the God loves Uganda stuff, like the implications that it's had in various different countries, like the impact that it's had is pronounced. And we have to be able to address it.

And I think that there are, I do think that there are organizations like Y-WAM that could restructure and could find a new basis that isn't based in this sort of new apostolic reformation, Dominionist sort of mentality, because I think that there's a lot of that going on already.

I don't think, I think that with IHOP, it's just, it's done, it's crazy to me that that church still exists or that network still exists, because it's just like that all, the whole foundation of that from bottom to top was built, like there just is no.

If you want, if you liked the 24 hour house of prayer, go do it with a different brand and start from fresh up. but leave the prophetic history at home. Like Mike Bickle purposely put his own prophetic history into the history of IHOP as this sort of like Mexican standoff.

Like, you know, if you shoot me, I shoot it sort of like he, he always made it so that if he went down, he was bringing his ship down with him. Right, like the ship that he created, he, he tied himself to so that you couldn't separate him from it.

And, and so I think the whole thing needs to be sunk and whatnot. But it is this sort of structure where you start pulling on this and then it all sort of bottoms out.

And it's so uncomfortable. I totally understand like I've had to do this. You had to do this, John. People in the community have like that. I've been seeing, I have to lose things because you have to look and see, hey, I was deceived here.

I know that when I'm talking, I'm here and I'm talking about things that are close to people's homes and close to people's hearts, like Y-Wam or Bethel or parts of IHOP or anything like that.

I know that it's going to hurt a lot of individuals, but like, that's, that's sort of the mentality. That's what they're doing. That's the strategy of these narcissists who are creating the world is that they create a narrative and they place themselves at the center of the narrative and so that you cannot remove them or question them without the whole thing sort of falling apart.

And we are now in a state where I like, I genuinely think it's starting to all fall apart. And I would love for it to be the case that it all falls apart and that things like Y-Wam have to fundamentally restructure to avoid this and and Bethel and Morningstar and IHOP are forced to sort of reckon with the violence that they have created and abuse that they have perpetuated and the fraud and the lies and deception that they have perpetuated.

But as long as it is profitable, it just won't happen. Like there isn't going to be no matter how much external pressure there is or internal pressure from people within the church as long as it keeps making money, you will always have Lance Wallace.

You will always have Sean Foetz, who are like, see it as an opportunity to build their own kingdom. And Bob Hartley's and other individuals who are going to... like create, you know, these fraudulent practices in order to like bring in as long as it's profitable things aren't going to change. At least that's my perspective.

You know, it's kind of funny that you landed there because as we were talking through this whole thing, I was trying to think, how do you end a random conversation about the sum of several conversations? Right, right. How do you end that? And no better way than to end on a financial game of thrones. You and I walked away from the financial game of thrones and it was very difficult to walk away from it. You know, my family was well-respected in the random sector, your family well-respected in yours. And it takes a lot to walk away from it. People have no idea

how hard it actually is because you don't retain most of your friends and family. They will cut you off. So it was really hard to walk away from it. But at the same time, everything that we have just spoken about, it explains it. The reason why people are in this and the reason why people stay in it is because it's hard for them to walk away from it. There are some people, sadly, whenever they discover the truth and they come in contact with the fact that they're in a false religion, they don't have any means to overcome the difficulty in leaving. And sadly, some people

just stay in it because it is an easier path to choose. If you stay in the wrong thing, then it is to do the right thing. So I think that's how we ended it. This was a financial game of thrones. You and I came from different kingdoms, but we had very similar structures in our kingdoms.

And I hope that many games of thrones can be overturned so that people can find freedom. And for somebody who's struggling to get out, I understand it. Many of the names that you've mentioned, I'm certain that if they really could get over, if it wasn't so hard, I think they could walk away, but it's hard to walk away. So maybe something that we said will make it easier for somebody to walk away. So thank you for doing this. Yeah, my pleasure. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org.

For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Automore.