The Martyrs Who Weren’t: From Jonestown to Sean Feucht

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-Brandham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a false prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed it's good to be back and if you had told me years ago when I was a kid that I would have a podcast about one of these little smoke bomb toys that I used to grow up and throw on the sidewalk and watch the smoke billow up. I would have laughed at you

what in the world could you talk about and the fact that we're having to sit here as an adult man and talk about this as a actual situation that is happening in churches. It's beyond me but I have to say out of all of the things that I have talked about on the podcast this is weird but there's a line of weird things that we can talk about and this isn't the weirdest but it is very strange. I think that there's nothing as disconnected between my perception of Christian persecution when I was a kid versus these manifestations of so-called

Christian persecution that we're seeing today. I mean I really thought you know the world was going to end and fire you know and that people were going to come with guns to kill me for being Christian and instead we have smoke bombs which for people who do not know what we're referencing. Recently Sean Foy had a and we've talked about Sean Foy several times on this podcast but Sean Foy had a crusade campaign that was up north in Canada and he was speaking at several different churches and do it holding different worship events and the

longest short of it is that the Canadian government the local governments there's some a lot of protests and a lot of backlash towards having him host these events and a lot of his events were canceled he lost like permits to do these certain events and had to scramble and then in one One of the events that he did end up holding because he was able to find different venues last minute, someone released a smoke bomb that's like the gender reveal, smoke bombs that are all pink or blue, but then in this case that it was pink

and was protesting him and protesting his sort of dominionist Christianity, specifically his sort of like right wing anti-LGBTQ and just Christian dominionism in general. And so there was a lot of protests that were being held and there was a tweet that he sent out about basically him being persecuted and the church that he was performing at was firebombed.

That was the term that he used for it was firebombed. When instead it was a gender reveal smoke bomb and he took like a picture of it. He was like holding the smoke bomb in his hand and stuff.

So it's so silly. There's people who are, I understand people are similar people to me and individuals who have sort of spoken against like Christian dominionists like Sean Foy in the past and new apostolic reformation, pastors like Foy are being like, oh look he lied, it wasn't a firebomb, it was just a smoke bomb, but part of me is also like, yeah, this is just what they do.

Like this is just this is just par for the course is this idea of any sort of type of persecution and someone did release a smoke bomb and disrupting his worship service and of course he was going to just absolutely eat all of that

because any sense in which you can write a narrative in which Foy is not the aggressor, is not the part of the sort of dominion class that is taking control and domination over individuals and instead is the persecuting the persecuting, anytime they can kind of like flip that narrative, you better believe that that's gonna happen.

So I thought that this was just a wonderful foray into a topic that is very prevalent in right wing Christianity, which is this martyr complex of disbelief that you know, we all Christians are being persecuted presently and to be a Christian you must be persecuted and so I thought we could dive into that today.

I'm actually glad you did because I don't think this is something. that I have brought up much on the podcast, the ties of martyrdom to cults. It's not unique to brannemism or iHOP or NAR. You can look back as far as you want. Any group of people who rise up and are oppressing and manipulating their people, whenever anybody in opposition to the oppression comes forward, they act as though they're a martyr. And the sad truth of it is, whenever that happens, the people who are inside, even though the people trying to help them are pushing for their release, the fact that they're being presented

as martyrs, that solidifies their involvement in whatever is the sect. They believe, okay, this is the outside. Cult leaders will often say that we have a coming, the great persecution that's coming, they'll basically manipulate people to believe that in the brannem message we called it the squeeze. The squeeze is coming, the government's going to close in on us, they're going to shut our doors. Every cult has this type of theme. And what it does is it prepares the individual who's being manipulated to expect that there will be outside opposition to them being in a destructive cult, because without question, there always will be. However,

if you trace the lineage back from the NAR as we have done through various figures like Mike Bickle, like Bill Johnson, all the way back to the Laterane and its ideology, a lot of people don't miss this because when you go all the way back as far as Christian identity, you find that there was one book that was heavily used, and that was the anti-Semitic protocols of the learned elders of Zion, which we've mentioned. Henry Ford was publishing this through his dearborn independence. People like Gerald Burton-Winrod, who was distributing it all throughout fundamentalist religion, he was working closely with people like Charles Fuller, Fuller Foundation,

the same exact Fuller theological seminary that C. Peter Wagner came from. They're all pushing this anti-Semitic book, but there's another book they're pushing too. The Christian identity movement, if you understand the concept behind it, built on British's realism, it's the idea that United States and Great Britain are the direct descendants of the lost 10 tribes of Israel.

Well, with this comes the notion that the Americas and Great Britain are destined predetermined to be some sort of a spiritual elite realm that, you know, it basically is the kingdom, right? That's why they're pushing for the kingdom. And the idea of Christian identity was that the false Jews were coming into.

it, but they were coming in with the idea that it was the false Jews working with Roman Catholicism. That's why you see they were vastly strongly against Roman Catholicism. And so what did they do?

They chose the other book, which is widely... We talked about it in randomism. In fact, I think if you bought the random collection of literature, it came packaged in that, if I remember correctly, and that's Fox's book of the martyrs, which if you read this and you understand what it is, yes, it has some historical fact, but it is heavily, heavily swayed against Catholicism.

In the lineage of martyrs that they list, they ignore every Catholic martyr that is in the history, because they want to make the argument in the book that all of the martyrs were against Roman Catholicism and that Roman Catholicism developed as this separate entity. And because of that separation, because of that ignorance of history, you find that all of the white supremacy groups, the Christian identity groups, Brannum, Brannumism, Laterane, they all go back to this book as a...

Here's a history of our martyrdom, and we today are being presented as martyrs for all of the political opposition that is happening in the United States. I was just looking at this up right now because it's so... I had a sort of canonical text in my... a canonical martyr text that I read and that people in IHOP read. It was huge within our sort of circle, especially the young...

I remember this was one of the first books that I myself read, un sort of prompted other than the Bible and some books by Ted Decker, a Christian author, was the Jesus Freak book by DC Talk that had... it was a book of a historical account of martyrs and people who had been martyred for the sake of Christianity. And I remember it being like there was a lot of martyrs at the hands of Roman Catholics. And so I... when you were talking about the Fox book martyr, I tried to look it up real quick. I don't know if there's... I'm sure if I had those two books that there would be a

lot of overlap in between the narratives that they were talking about, I'm sure that the Jesus Freak book was heavily influenced by that. But that's really interesting that that has remained a theme of like the sort of laterane communities that there are these canonical texts about martyrdom.

And when you were talking about how this is true of all... a lot of cults. and not just sort of the new apostolic reformation cults. I was thinking of, I always forget that, but the Jones town, I was thinking of the Jones town and have you ever listened to the audio from the Jones town before you could probably put this mooring to context than me, so fill in and help me correct the story from wrong, but there's a sort of audio recording of a lot of the leaders

of Jones town and Jim Jones, like talking right before they commit suicide, mass suicide, and they have like, forcibly have the children drink the Kool-Aid where they, I might be mixing up stories, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but one thing that I remember is there's just this sort of idea you have this sort of martyr complex that's being like, the police are coming after, or like they, the other is coming to like take us away and attack us and because of the things that we believe, and it's so interesting because in that situation,

if you were a cult member within the Jones town community, then you had not sexually assaulted someone, there's obviously a lot of like criminal activity that was going on in there, but if you were just a member of that, the only thing that you should have been afraid of was your own community and Jim Jones and the community members, I mean, the individuals who are telling these stories were the ones who they themselves were what was threatening, I mean, it's sort of the self-inflicted wound and it gives like an example of like, who killed the Jones town people, the Jones town people?

Like that was what the threat was, but yet this, I think the martyrdom mentality in cult, cults allow people to, or it keeps people insulated within these cults because there's this perceived reality that some of the oppression that they feel and oppression that doesn't exist is like being perpetrated against them or would be perpetrated against them or is going to be perpetrated against them.

And so now there's this sort of like us versus them and it further works to insulate a community and terrify them. And it's sort of the like, well, if my life is gonna be taken anyway, I might more freely give it and I think that the Jones town massacres like is a great example of this that they were so afraid of the persecution.

coming externally, that they killed themselves, like what a great representation and a horrific representation of the ultimate end of some of this martyr mentality. I don't think we've ever talked about this you and I.

I know that we've talked about it in the Revival History series with Charles, but you actually hit one of the main points I wanted to get to before I was going to get to it.

I'll go there now, but the Jonestown massacre was more related to this than you might think. There is a connection, everybody pretty much now is aware of the connection to Brannemism, but they're not aware of why the Jonestown massacre.

I have listened to, they're called the death tapes. I've listened to the death tapes. I'm actually working with the Jonestown Foundation because we're piecing together all of the history that all of these organizations have covered up as it relates to Jim Jones and Jonestown.

So let's go there. Let's give a brief history because the martyrdom there is very closely tied to the martyrdom foundation that Sean Foyte's religion is built on. So what happened was the laterane movement caused this great schism in Pentecostalism.

They, the assemblies of God's first, I believe they were first, began to realize that this hierarchical structure of the, what's called the fivefold ministry, what they did was they took the biblical terms for apostle prophet teacher, et cetera, and they created it as a hierarchy doctrine, not in the biblical way.

So whenever you hear these people saying but the fivefold ministry is in the Bible, yes, but not in the way laterane presented it. It wasn't a hierarchy with an apostle at the top. They created that structure.

Assemblies of God saw that this was not only heretical, but it was enabling people to come into the ministry who had no theological backing or sound, or sound doctrine of history. Basically, the laying on of hands could introduce a new minister who might be a predator.

And so they said, we don't want this. We're disconnecting ourselves completely from this heresy called the new order of the laterane. Well, that caused the schism right down Pentecostalism. And interestingly, right down the middle of Jim Jones, the church he was attending and he was becoming a pastor in.

Oh, okay. So, and I've got this history on the website where you can go to johnstown.sdsu.edu and you can find this history. His church took the laterane side of the split, not the assemblies side of the split.

And the state of Indiana became a rogue state in the assemblies of God in that they were allowing the laterane and defending it while the whole rest of the assemblies was sanctioning it. Jones, because of this, he joined what became...

known as the independent assemblies of God. It was the faction that broke off. And that faction had leadership in Chicago, Illinois. The, his name was Joseph Matson-Bose, he was one of Brandon's many partners.

Matson-Bose ordained him into the independent assemblies. And Joseph Matson-Bose sent letters, you can find them on our website, connecting and introducing Brannum to Jones, Jones to Brannum. And essentially setting up Jones to be a new leader after this faction had split off because they needed new leadership.

So Jones was becoming a leader in what is called the message, right? Well, Jones starts hosting Brannum in multiple states, these big organized campaigns and conventions, et cetera. One of them is in Chicago.

And Brannum rattling off his fear and doom and gloom, doom's day concepts. He uses the British Israelism doctrine, which allowed ministers to take passages from the Old Testament and say it is taught in shadow and the Old Testament and it applies to us today.

And he says the book of Nehum is describing the destruction that is coming to Nineveh, but also it is directly describing outer drive in Chicago. We've talked about this. So Jones began to fear that there was this appending doom, this basically everybody who's in this area is going to become martyrs.

And Brannum started saying what would happen is there would be atomic bombs that would go from Chicago all the way to Indiana. Well, that's where Jones is at, right? He's right, people's temples right there in Indianapolis.

So early on, Jones goes to, what was it? I think it was Argentina first seeking to escape all of this. And then after a few years, he realized, well, the atomic bomb hasn't hit.

So he comes back and goes back a second time and that's what sets up the scenario that you're talking about. But it was the doom's day, the coming martyrdom that Brannum had predicted. And Jones himself began insanely predicting some of these things.

This martyrdom is what drove them into South America and eventually it became overtly political. You may not know this, but they had this radio station where Jones is talking about the current news and the impending doom, gloom, basically what he's doing is he believes he is watching Brannum's prophecies come to fulfillment right there in South America where the communists are invading everything Brannum was saying.

And the reason why all of this is important is because early in my research, in fact, what drove me to a large portion of my research as I was listening to the death tapes and listening to the sermons of Jones, I began to hear Brannum has him in it.

And that's what connected it all together for me. That makes a lot of sense, and it's also fun because I'll be talking about this with you and I forget that I'm talking to one of the best historians who have studied all of this.

So that it is really nice to have that sort of concrete background behind what I kind of, because I had also listened to the death tapes and had picked up similar on that like, man, these, because I remember listening to the death tapes before I even stumbled into your research, like I listened to it a long time ago, and I found certain phrases and just like some of the rhetoric was very eerily similar to some of the IHOP stuff, especially some of the like Bob Jones IHOP stuff, and some of that early 80s and 90s rhetoric where

it was like, like, there's the sort of dominionism Christianity that is a little bit more like, I don't want to say positive because it obviously is very dangerous and scary, but it's more optimistic because it's like, like the Bethel is all kingdom here now, and it's like, this is our domain, and we were going to bring it in, and so it's less like doom and gloom, and the world is going to end because it's like, we are going to take control of it.

I think Foy is a good example of like playing both sides of that. He both is like the dominionist of like, we're going to take it over and make this our world, then on the other end, he also is like, but the woke, left's commies are going to take every child and turn them transgender or whatever, like whatever the fear mongering is, or like, depending on what, you know,

I will say that it does feel a little bit different now because now it's more into grounded in like, at least for the sort of IHOP community, it's more grounded in like contemporary politics, where in the 80s and 90s, it was more eschatological like, n times apocalyptic, like, this is going to the end of all humankind and civilization, and I remember hearing, I mean, so many of my like early memories of Bob Jones and of this community was formed by this sort of impending doom that we, that was being sort of imbrewed.

raced within our community. In a way that was like, we really believe now, now I don't know some of the people who are like, they talk about impending doom and stuff like that, but they don't, I don't know if they believe it or they don't believe it, but like, we believed it, we had, I don't know if I've told this story before, but have I told the story of what happened during Y2K with me and my family?

Okay, so Y2K is coming up and I'm, so I was born in 91, so I was eight when this was, or I had just turned nine or something and I remember there was this sort of,

really impent because there was the only time that there was sort of overlap between the apocalyptic rhetoric of the community that I was in and sort of apocalyptic rhetoric of the larger community, like it wasn't just the Christian community that was like, hey, the world's gonna end, it was also news organizations were talking about like, oh, this, everything might shut down.

And like we were stocking up on barrels of water and we had food that was non-perishable food that was shelf stable for 10 years and that we were putting in our basement and all of which has gone to waste now, of course.

But like, it was, we also, my family with a couple other families bought a farm out in rural Missouri. And it was sort of like, cousins of cousins had owned the farm

so it was sort of like within the family and we were gonna like, go out to this farm and this is where our sort of like, doomsday, I don't know what we were thinking.

It's not like my dad knew anything about farming or anything like that, like there's zero sense in which we would have actually been prepared for the end of the world, but that was this sort of idea is that, okay, we gotta be ready and it wasn't necessarily that everyone was convinced that it was gonna happen during Y2K because that wasn't really what the profits were saying in it, but it was just sort of like, well, might as well be prepared.

This is sort of a dry run at the very least for the end times. So anyway, we got all, and I remember it being like, this is one of my early childhood memories or a period of time that I think that sticks in my head where it was just like, I really thought that we were gonna face the end of the world, but I was all- So a deeply unserious child.

And so on the night of the Y2K, I was with my friend Sam Salier. And I think that we were either at the farm or we were, I can't remember who's house we were at, but we were all together like several families had gotten together and we were in the same house.

And the kids, of course, went to bed before midnight. But I snuck out of bed with my friend Sam and we went downstairs in the basement where the breaker was, I might have told this story before, but and we could hear people and they were like counting down to midnight and it was always this idea like when midnight strikes, it was all the electricity and everything gonna shut down.

So the adults are upstairs counting down and when they get to zero, we flipped all of the breakers in the house off and I heard them screaming and everything like that and we waited like 30 seconds and then flipped them all back on and ran upstairs.

And like for decades, my parents never knew what had happened. They thought there was some spiritual something had happened. They had no idea that it was us, but anyway, one of my very formative memories, but this idea, this idea, like throughout my entire childhood, there was like, we were always preparing for an impending doom and it very much painted

my understanding of Christianity and just my understanding of the world in general and I always felt the sense of like I felt other in the world. I felt because of my religion, I was different than the rest of the world.

Only to like grow up and be like, what is it? 80% of all Americans are Christian in the United States. Like I was a part of the vast majority of religion within it, but like that wasn't the way that I felt and perceived the world around me.

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, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, You can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top and as always Be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching on behalf of William Brannum Historical Research we want to thank you for your support So I've never told my Y2K story publicly either And I'll tell it right now. So early in my years This was before I had my IT business. I was doing hardware and networking IT and we had

Clients that were in legal systems medical systems some of the paralegals worked out of their house And so I had to go to this house and Whenever the Parallegal called us she said now you got to be careful when you go Come to our house you have to enter in through the back door. You'll have to go through a gate But we have a dog and don't go near the fence Which is kind of odd right? So I walk I'll walk up. I'm with my partner and we're walking in and And as we walk through the fence she walks us through

All right, not she but her husband walked us through he as we're walking past these great Big old dogs that look like grizzly bears He smacks him in the face right in the face with a newspaper or a board or something and the dogs just rare Lunge in like I can see the chains tightening as they're lunging at our faces and I said what's that for?

And he said he said well, you know what's fixing to happen right why 2k is about to happen and I need these here because it's going to be every man for himself Really so Walk a little bit further we go around the house The dude literally has a sniper's position in one of the trees and I look up there and I said You're not deer hunting in this neighborhood. We're right in the middle of a city neighborhood You're not deer hunting here. No, that's for whenever it happens when why 2k the moment it happens I'm going to be up there in my sniper's position and I'll be able to pick them off from

I'm like really so the the kicker was we walked into the basement They had they at one point they had a remodeled basement But they apparently built shelves around the entire perimeter of their basement and Floor to ceiling were canned goods and I say you guys sure like canned food, right?

I already knew at this point Right you you're playing dumb on purpose. Yeah, so I get into the office of the paralegal and I can't tell you how many times we were there in this was the case Daystar TV is up on her screen as she's working Continually man daystar TV all day long and See I was in the cult so I didn't connect all of this at that point But there are so many Branching connections like part of the reason I zoned out as you're talking about Missouri Missouri is a hotbed for this stuff man rule Missouri

So I mentioned this I think in my latest book from Christian identity to the NAR, but there was a national state's rights party, which was breaking off to try to overcome overtake Washington. The PO box for the headquarters just happened to be in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where William Brandham lived, where I live now.

Now many people know this. One of the leaders was, I mentioned Gerald Winnrod earlier, his son Gordon was one of the directors of the civilization. Gordon went down to, through the Missouri arc and saw, and there's this big Christian identity standoff right there.

But the other key figure, there was in, not a Missouri, but right across the state lines in, what's the name of that city? There's a big, no it's called Christ of the Ozarks, there's this big Jesus statue.

That was planted by Gerald L. K. Smith, who was a leader in this and connected to Roy Davis, who was Brandham's mentor. All of this is connected. And especially if you go back to Missouri, you're going to find, it was like, Missouri and Arkansas was a hotbed for all of this.

So the fact that, IHOP KC developed from this, it's not surprising the fact that Bob Jones is so tied to this, he may not have been directly even tied to Brandhamism. I don't know yet, we don't know his past, but he's right there in the hotbed.

So he was indirectly at minimum, influenced by Brandhamism. So all of this is connected and they all were, this was a very militant thing. They were all preparing for the coming war, the coming war because they were martyrs.

Yeah, and it's, I mean, so like, especially when you have roots in Christian identity movement, and like a lot of the rhetoric that led to sort of the fascism in Germany and this, you know, it's so to be the aggressors, to be, or be, have a lot of the rhetoric behind, because wasn't, wasn't, um, Winron was the J-Hawk Nazi, right, and so, and the KKK, like a lot of it, you know, it's some of the fuel behind some of the most evil things that were going on in the world at the time.

And yet, this pervasive sense of their coming for us, which I think it, it makes a little bit of sense because I think that you have to have this sort of cognitive dissonance where you believe that you are being persecuted to validate the persecution that your community is doing on to other individuals, and like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I think that that's a common trope with sort of any time you have individuals who are on these sort of persecution crusades where they're harming and literally genocidal movements in the past have had this sort of sane validation of like it's actually us who are being oppressed

and it's because of this that we must do X, Y and Z. But yeah, like it makes a lot of sense how that was sort of birth and it also makes a lot of sense how that was what was really festering within the community at the international house prayer. And one thing that I think with this is when you are able to construct, when you're in a community that is a cult community that is where the members of the community have a boogeyman, whether that's one individual or whether that's a community, whether it's the Jews or whether it's the whoever, like whatever is being

villainized, whatever group is becoming the villain, it provides a way to disconnect the legitimate abuse and persecution that you might be feeling from the very leadership of the community that you're a part of. And it sort of takes the villain hat and it moves it to somewhere else and it diminishes the abuse in the villainy that's going on within your own community. And I like I've seen this in in family structures too. There's this sort of like external scapegoat that is used to displace the discontent of the group towards something else so that those who are

actually perpetrating abuse within the community or within the family or whatever structure it might be

are not held accountable for the abuse that they're doing. So Mike Bickel and Bob Jones are not going to be held accountable for the abusive behaviors that they are doing because their abuse they contextualize it as just so trivial in the grand scheme of everything else that's going on.

And I also think too like I remember being an eye hop and feeling like the world was going to end at feeling like oh man there's so much anguish. There's so much discontent. And I myself felt like, like, if you had asked me, is the world in a good place right now? I would have been like, no, well, a lot of my own discontent was because I had an abusive father. And I had a abusive sort of community that I was really growing up in. And I wasn't getting proper education. And there was like, there was a lot of symptoms

of the central disease of growing up in a cult community that I was feeling, but instead of having the language and understanding of knowing where the source of that discontent comes from, I had to displace it on, like, it must be outside. And I think that this is what is happening in, not, I mean, not just cult communities, but just sort of mainline Christianity, too, is like, I think there's a lot of a lot of discontent in like, you know, it's getting harder for the poor, the lower class to find jobs and to own houses. And

there's sort of a lot of a lot of real genuine, like, hey, turmoil that is growing, like the buying power of of salary to homeowners, I'm going on a tiny bit of a tangent, but I will, I will stop after a second. But the, you know, in the last 20 years is like the median salary versus the median home, the disparity between that has like grown pretty exponentially over the last 20 years. And I think that there's a lot of other things where it's just like, you know, healthcare and different things. There's a lot of issues

that are plaguing the American people that are problematic. But instead of addressing the symptoms of it, it's turned into this sort of spiritual warfare, at least within the communities that I grew up in that externalizes it and talks about other forces and the sort of boogie man, there's all these sort of boogie men that are placed in there where it keeps from like addressing the actual problem. Like, okay, we have people within our community who are sexually abusing young women in the community. But yet, that's not going to be a dress within the community because there's the boogie man that we have to face that

are outside of it. Exactly. And it's a boogie man of conspiracy theories, basically. So you mentioned, and ask the question was Gerald Burton, when Rod the Nazi guy, he was widely infamous as the J. Hawk Nats Nazi or the Kansas Hitler, because he had gone to Germany and had counsel with Hitler and comes back with a ton of money and begins after this, distributing this protocols of the learned elders of Zion. Well, one of the most interesting points of history, as The intersection with Pentecostalism is that the Sunday after the night of the broken glass, the crystal knot in Germany, when all the Jews were persecuted, the windows burst

out, you know, taken to the streets, etc., etc., the Sunday after this, Amy Simple McPherson let Winrode speak at her church, and it's significant because the whole world is watching as this is happening and she is making a public statement. We support this. Winrode was one of the strongest defenders against, or one of the strongest opposition against the gold standard. So in today's world, we would laugh if we thought we were going to get rid of the gold standard because that's how we standardize, that's how we measure how much money is worth. Well, before the gold standard, he was creating this conspiracy theory that

this was an attempt by the false Jews to take over the economy of our country. And that was widely popular among the fundamentalists. So he's spreading the conspiracy theories, he's spreading this idea that we're about to be martyred by the Jews and the false Jews, he would say, and the Christian, the Catholics who are Christian coming in and taking over our churches, our politics, our family structures, basically our seven mountains. He said our seven mountains are being threatened. He didn't use that phrase, but that's what he was saying.

It became very popular among all of the early Pentecostals because of the connection to Amy Simple McPherson. So this began to develop and later reign was really, if you look at the doctrinal positions and the reasons why those doctrines, it was basically a highly politicized version of the birth of Pentecostalism re-birthed as a political movement. And it's crazy now, too, because so much of eye hops, contemporary, and over the last two decades, a lot of this sort of victim mentality comes from like a preparation of Jewish oppression in the

during the Holocaust. I mean, this is a whole different subject, so I won't, you know, maybe this is a topic of on its own day, but so much of this and times is coming and so much of it was rooted in Christian Zionism in specifically in context with like Harry Truman, like Bob Jones and Mike Pickle, so much of the prophecy.

is in rhetoric that fueled the international house prayer, were this sort of like, it was just basically rooted in like, look how the people of Israel were persecuted and the Jewish people were persecuted in the Holocaust and during the 30s, 40s, 50s.

And it really was the sort of appropriation of that pain as if it was like us too. Like the Christians were also persecuted in the Holocaust and so like, while not recognizing that the direct lineage of the sort of Pentecostal community that birthed or the offshoot of Pentecostal and the laterane community that birthed the IHOP movement was like some threads of it was directly involved in stirring up anti-Semitic rhetoric

within the United States. And this disconnect, I always thought it was so weird because the roots were not in this very like, let's appreciate the Jewish people and let's appreciate the persecution that they have experienced.

We too, so as the like Jews were persecuted during the Holocaust, like so too, we as Christians were are going to be persecuted and continue to be persecuted. Never mind the ways in which Christianity was used to perpetuate that persecution.

That is a whole different topic, but it's this whole idea of flipping the sort of abuser and abused in order to have this martyr complex to excuse and validate the most like radical ideals that you can fabricate the most radical beliefs

that you can come up with. The it's just using genuine persecution, the same with that martyr book, like the DC talk one, which it's funny in a very bleak sense. Do you know about Michael Tate and what's been going on with him?

Yeah, and so for people who don't know and I don't know much about it, but the one of the lead vocalist of DC talk

has now come forward and there's a lot of sexual abuse allocations. I think there's eight different men who have come forward with abuse allocations against Michael Tate and Michael Tate even confess to several of them.

And you know, to what extent all of that is is I haven't really... got a whole lot of research on it, but he was perpetuating a lot of this abuse and it's a sort of tragic and bitter irony and bleakness to the fact that like this book that I was reading about the persecution of Christians was really just appropriating a lot of the like historical context in which Christians very genuinely were persecuted and were killed for being Christian, and it's taking all of those stories and sort of making it a present-day reality and acting as if that is the contemporary politics. Like I remember thinking that it was going to be a thing,

there are two things that I thought that I was going to have to encounter in my life growing up were quicksand, like I thought that that was going to be a big deal that I was going to just suddenly be swallowed by quicksand just because of watching Princess Bride or something like that. And the other thing was that I thought that like there was going to be shooters that came to schools and were like tell me if you're a Christian and if I said I love Jesus they would shoot me like and I and I

mentally prepared myself to be able to have the courage and bravery to tell them that I was a Christian because I like I thought that that was happening on a daily basis in the world that I grew up in.

And it's just such a bitter and bleak irony that the I mean he wasn't the author of the book but the way that it was sort of sold in this marketed as like this DC talk Jesus freak book was actively abusing and sexually abusing individuals. And it just it shows this sort of like appropriating the pain and suffering of people groups and peoples of the past as if it is the identity of the president in order to sort of excuse extreme ideology and to excuse sort of some of this or minimize some of the abusive behavior that these leaders were doing. Well and it's a

one-sided martyrdom right they don't so in the Christian circles they're often opposed to science especially if the science disagrees with whatever is the doctrine the you've got the flat earthers out there who disagree with many of the scientists that that can prove otherwise right people like who Galileo Galileo was persecuted I think he was if I remember right he was condemned to life and prisoned in his house house arrest and it's not limited to just a lot of these names might be mentioned in the anti-catholic circles but you have Um, what's a good example?

Michael Surveitus. Michael Surveitus, who's put to death executed by John Calvin. Um, Surveitus was a physician, a theologian, and there's a lot, that's a very complicated execution, but his medical discoveries, you know, is not the primary reason he was executed, but the fact that he was a man of science kind of opposed this whole thing.

So if you go down the path of who is a martyr, that door opens up everybody. You can find Hindu martyrs, if you want to look hard enough, you can find Buddhist monks who are martyred, right?

The claim to martyrdom is not unique, but what is unique for this foundation is the fact that if you trace it all the way back down to his lineage, Sean Floyd included, trace it all the way back to this Christian identity.

Where you end up is that they believe that the Catholics and the false Jews were invading and they were teaching this manifested sons of God theology. God is going to rise up this Joel's army, we've talked about this, that was deeply rooted in all of this.

And Sean Floyd, oh, what's the name of his book? He's got a book that he wrote with Andy Bird, I think, it's called The Culture of Revival. He says something to the effect, there's a new breed of Jesus lovers on the earth, they will be the manifested sons of God.

If you study foights theology, Bethel's theology, I hops theology, how they have shifted and separated. You've mentioned that it's no longer the impending Doomsday, it's more about the dominionism. And I've had this conversation with the John Wimber people too.

There's a progression, layers upon layers shifting away from Brannumism towards this. But what where you end up is that Brannum taught this apocalyptic, pre-tribulation rapture Doomsday theology. But towards the end of his life, many people deified Brannum.

People like T.L. Osborne said that William Brannum was Jesus, Tabernacled in the Flasher. I can't remember his exact words. He even went so far as to say at Brannum's memorial service, you're going to think I'm sacrilegious for saying this, but this was God coming again through Brannum.

Well, through Cognitive dissonance, Brannum's teaching rapture theology and he's Jesus Christ and or his messages, Jesus Christ, which is what was widely believed by this movement. And then you have, he dies, well, how does this work?

How do all these prophecies work? Through Cognitive dissonance, they make them both merge. So two different opposing theologies begin to merge. Over time, it shifted to the kingdom theology, which Wimbartot, kingdom now theology, then it developed into the NAR's version.

It's all the same roots, though, because if you trace Panifested Sons of God through all of these layers, you can find it everywhere. It's just the way that they... represent these manifested sons of God and that theology differs from layer to layer.

But where it ends up, people like Sean Foyte, who you can't really even say that he's definitely not directly influenced by randomism, he's got that same foundation that everything that he believes is built upon.

You brought up the culture of revival book that Foyte wrote, and it peaks something in my memory, and I had to Google it to make sure. But so the authors of that are Bryant Brent, Sean Foyte, Andy Bird.

Do you remember that I've told it a couple of different times, but there was that metaphor that was preached to me at one point about the apartment being on fire. You know that metaphor of just like, okay, if your apartment's on fire, you're not going to knock on your neighbor's door, you're going to bust it down and bring them out, even if they're kicking and screaming, because it's on fire, and that was sort of the image that was given to me as a sort of tool of evangelism.

That was Bryant Brent and Andy Bird, like this is like just, I'm just coming to you, I'm just remembering who it was that spoke it, because that Andy Bird was there in Konohwaii when I was in Konohwaii, and that was his sort of message, and it's just like sort of clicking for me of this sort of that analogy of this sort of like, let's bust down the doors, and it's the fire, like this is the idea, it's more of the martyrdom complex of like someone that's lit the fire too, it's not, the fire isn't just amorphous

you know, and times, it's sort of like culture, community, like the fire can be different things at different times, what it is, and it evolves via prophecy during this time, but it's this sort of viseal and radicalism that is like, we're not just doing this because we want to save people, we're not just doing this because we have the good news to share, it's not just good news, it's, we are in danger, and everyone else is in danger, and if we don't, if we don't, even if we're cracking noses and you know, having put in people

and headlocks and abusing people physically to sort of get them out of this, it's because raider sort of danger that's coming and I think that's just such a perfect metaphor

for what they're doing except the fire isn't except they're making up the fires like it's not real. It's so the bigger that you can make the fire, the bigger that you can pretend and the more dangerous it is, the more life threatening, the more you get to excuse the abusive behaviors that you have and the way that you can detect it that you use to save these different people because this is the same thing with foys. There's this crazy, I really don't understand even how it works.

I mean, I guess it's cognitive dissonance and that's it, but there's this big idea of like I'm just an innocent, I'm just trying to share the love of God as if he wasn't like crusading and campaigning against all these different ideas and ideologies, whether it's Islamophobia, whether it's just xenophobia in general, whether it's about demonizing the immigrants, like he's explicitly on this sort of get the legal immigrants, get all these illegals out of here and let's not even get started about the LGBTQ community and how much they demonize the LGBTQ community.

And I just don't understand, even for people, I know that there's people who listen to this who are against some of those things and are like, I want the legals out of my country and I want, you know, LGBTQ to be criminalized or something of whatever, maybe not criminalized, but you know that you can't marry or whatever it is, but like you can't be against people, you can't continue to be antagonistic, you can't have one of the most judgmental gospels that is being preached and then have this sort of like, what did I do? Oh, I'm just innocent, you know, like I am,

oh, these people are coming after me, of course, because you are like waging war with identity of 90% of the population, like because like Foy has like explicitly said that Democrats don't go to heaven, like he is explicitly stated that where like everybody is going to die and be tortured for all of eternity, besides his like small group of people, and this is what I just don't understand the same is, I got the same rhetoric from Chris Falatin where it was this sort of like, we're just trying to, you know, why, why us?

Why is there so much attention towards us and what we're doing and why are you coming at? We're just trying to preach the love of God. And it's like you have the most judgmental gospel of any group of Christians in the United States.

Like it is apocalyptic. It is exclusive. It is political. It is judgmental, like it is harsh, you know, sinners and the hang-ins of an angry God type of punishment that deals with those who are not saved.

You can't preach that gospel and not be hated by people because it's a hateful gospel. It has so much judgment towards everybody who's different than you. And I hate this rhetoric. And I hate that it works.

This is another thing, too, like it's so silly. The foie, holding up the smoke bomb and being like, we were firebombed in because it's just like you were not danger. Okay, yeah, your worship surface was disrupted.

But it's going to work. Like he's going to get more money because of it. And this is where I'm like, I don't know if it's the best strategy. I don't know how you combat these things because any sort of resistance against these people and these individuals kind of plays into their narrative of like I'm being attacked.

And this is the whole thing of like you know this as well as I do. I'm trying to talk about Mike Bickle and how he abused people. And of course, oh, this is a demonic attack against the end times prayer movement.

And I think at some point, it doesn't work as well when it's like, no, you guys are abusers. And I think so, like I think with foie and with Bickle and like no one, I think that the rhetoric should always be like do not hear all of the instances of abuse within their own community and like these are the things that they are doing and and continually people should be like reminding individuals about that.

That is like my strategy of dealing with these individuals. But it is really, really hard to combat some of this because it just plays into their narrative of persecution. I literally just had this conversation with a theologian we met for coffee he's wanting to help people in the cult escape had the same exact conversation with him.

The problem is Not just the foundation that was laid, it's the fact that the way that the gospel was presented. While all other Christians see it as a gospel, this is what Jesus did for you, it's not what you do for Him.

That argument goes completely away with this type of religion we're talking about. It's instead a gospel of war. There is a war coming. We are the good people. We're the good guys. Everyone who's not part of our group is the bad guys. They're either working with the enemy or their support.

An innocent bystander who's doing nothing in there for supporting the enemy. You get this us versus them mentality. So we need to conquer those mountains that those people are on. That's the concept that was created. That concept goes all the way back to Christian identity.

Before that, it was the clan, which this is also built upon. All of these ideologies basically birthed this new thing that they called the gospel. It wasn't the same gospel that other Christians hear.

When they use these phrases like Jesus died on the cross for your sins and they have various pieces of the gospel. What they're teaching isn't the gospel. It's very hard to distinguish. Even if you go and try to attack it from a theological standpoint, you hit a brick wall every time because the words that you're saying that are in the Bible, they have different meanings to the people who have been indoctrinated like this.

You hit this brick wall. How do you stop it? That's the question we were discussing over coffee. It's very, very hard to stop when somebody's been literally brainwashed to believe something. Two things are true at the same time, one of which is completely false.

Yeah, and that's an aunt, any attack against their sort of belief just reaffirms the belief in general. It becomes this very difficult and possible situation. I will say, and this is just as a sort of final thought, the one thing that I know the best way to combat the New Apostolic Reformation leaders is to attack their pocketbooks.

Because I do not think that foight would be in it if he was not making millions of dollars. Because he has his sort of crazy how it's all the same. Build your sort of ministry, get this sort of fame and infamy, continue to build it and then buy a bunch of properties and be a landlord.

It's crazy how that's the arc of all of these different, like that shot foight, shot bowls, my dad. This is just use your ministry to get seed of money and then use that money to buy property and be a landlord.

That's the game, the playbook for them. And as soon as it's... stops being profitable. As soon as they're not like, if they're having to just live off of 30 grand a year while traveling around and speaking these things, like the juice is not worth a squeeze.

And this is something that happened with Freud was that he was invited. So all of these churches and venues were canceled on him. And then someone else was like, oh, you can come here and come to our place.

And he was like, just as long as give us some bed to sleep on, and he shows up and the accommodations were not to his liking. And so he cancels on this group that, and this just happened, people should look at it, you know, I, this probably will come out in a little bit, but it's just so funny because it's like, make the bed uncomfortable, make it, make it a little bit difficult.

And these men are like, I don't want to do this, I saw this with my dad too. It's like, you know, as soon as they have to actually suffer for the sake of their gospel, they're out of there.

And so as, like, if you truly think that it's, it is true, you know, then you should be, if, if, if, Freud really believed in his gospel, he should be able to do it without profiting off of it.

And then, yeah. So, and the way to it, attacking, so, so the way to attack pocketbooks is to go after donors. And like, I think people should blast individuals who are donating to these groups.

Like, I think that that's a much more effective way is to be like, hey, here are these people who are donating to this, here's the businesses that they run, here's to these sort of things.

Like, I think that that's a much more, like if people felt like they were going to be held accountable for funding these individuals, you would see that funding dry up. This is what happened at IOP too, is like, it became a liability.

And so the only time you've seen sort of, some measure of like accountability in this world was with Mike Bickel, which again, it's not nearly enough. And I hope, hopefully there are going to be lawsuits and civil suits that taken for all of his worth financially.

But that really is the way to fight back because it genuinely is a money-making scheme. Even for those who are in it, for the love of the game, in some respects, like, and love the power, it's still about money for them.

I've been thinking, how do I in this? And honestly, I think the best way is I'm going to quote Jim Jones, that's the end of this. This is Jim Jones before he left this movement.

He said, they won't tell you the truth because the black book is... the easiest gravy train they've ever been on. And with that, thank you for doing this. Thanks, thanks for having me, John.

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-Pranum.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 Audible.

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