Hero Worship in the Church: The Psychology of Idolatry - Bob Scott

Music 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, Bob Scott, former co-founder of the Kansas City Fellowship and author of three books, the latest is some say they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Pickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.

Bob, it's good to be back and I'm thinking through your title, that long title of your book, and comparing that to what I want to talk about today, the hero worship that has developed in all of these movements. If you, I'm studying all kinds of different histories, Christian histories, ancient mythologies, and what's weird is, you go back in Christian history, and yes, you can see hero worship during the recent years, but you go way back, and it's quite different. There wasn't a lot of hero worship, there was only Jesus worship, and there were famous people obviously in Christianity, but they weren't so much revered and respected

to the same level they are today. And my studies of ancient mythology, which fascinates me, study Hercules, or any of the ancient gods and demigods, the human parts, the human elements of those mythologies, they were worshiped. And I struggle not to compare what we see today with the hero worship and Christianity to the ancient demigods, because if you take all of the symbolism out and just compare the two equally, there's not much different between the demigods and these so-called Christian apostles and prophets.

Well, I mean, hero worship obviously is a historical phenomena that goes back to the beginning of time. And I think there's probably over the course of time what makes someone a hero or why they're a hero, or all that has changed rather dramatically. You know, in the early days of human civilization, it was basically the guy like Saul that was the head and shoulders over on everyone else and was the great warrior right, because survival, tribal survival, cultural survival, was...

that the epitome of everybody's priorities, right? We just want to survive. So the guys that were the greatest warriors ended up being all the heroes, right? Because they're gonna save us, they're gonna protect us, they're gonna do whatever.

And so you see amongst the agents, so many of the heroes are actually warriors, right? They're people that were conquerors or whatever. And of course they were immortalized by statues. And that was the way it was done.

We're in a new world right now with social media. It's really changed the dynamic significantly of what's a hero, right? I mean, we have something in our lifetime that I don't know has ever been quite defined like it is now, which is called influencers.

Like we got people making money and all they are is influencers, right? Who are they influencing? Yeah, I looked through some of that and it's, you know, people on the comment feeds that sometimes say, John, you're just trying to be an influencer.

Well, what is this? I don't know what this is. I'm just simply looking at history and comparing it to what I see today. And I would honor the title historian, but I don't know, I'm a makeshift historian, even at that.

But I study the ancient religions and compare them to Christianity and this idea of hero worship. What's funny is if you study the apocrypha, you can see that even within Christianity or I guess you would call it pseudo Christianity within the apocrypha, figures like Moses, they started to go off into error and worship Moses in some of these traditions.

And Moses was almost exalted to a divine being in some of them. But if you stay just within the Christian Bible and don't go outside of it, there is a strong drive not to worship the humans involved.

You worship y'all, you worship Jesus. And so you see how, you can see how splinter groups of religions have turned into hero worship, but not the core of Christianity or Judaism. You think that's possibly why in the 10 Commandments it talks about not making idols of stone.

It seems like someone, whether that be God or someone figured out that humans have a tendency to need heroes, right? We need things to worship and we tend to migrate towards things that are tangible.

I mean, you know, God's ethereal spirit, you can't see him, right? And so it's a bit vague, but in the ancient world, as we know, I mean, every culture had wooden idols, stone idols, some sort of tangible God or whatever that is.

influence that culture. So it's there. Like it's always been there. It seems like it's innate. It's like we humans have this understanding that we're weak or we're frail. Like when we compare ourselves to mother nature, there's not a whole lot that we can stand up against.

I mean, we've made incredible technological advances over the last 100 years that have helped us mitigate the influence of nature, especially in the world of bacterias and viruses and things like that, which actually pillaged the ancient world, you know?

But yeah, there's always this thing, you know, that's innate in us humans that we want here. I mean, when I was a little guy, I was a football fanatic, right? So my whole life was worshiping, and wasn't really worshiping though, but it was like wanting to be barred star or Paul Harning or one of the Green Bay Packers.

I mean, you know, in little boys, we live like that. We played in the backyard. We pretended we were those guys, right? We looked up to them, but they were sports athletes. You know, I didn't have the same thing, you know, when it came to movies, I didn't really, you know, I didn't have any movie idols.

I didn't even, of course, when I was little, I didn't even have music idols, right? But the concept of, you know, so, you know, this is kind of interesting. I was raised Roman Catholic.

So in our culture, growing up, it was fascinating because every immigrant family, whether it be German or Italian, it was an honor if one of the sons became a priest. And I remember as a little guy wanting to become a priest because I noticed that priest had special status, right?

When they walked in, they were other. Like everyone, like they were like the red seal, like the crowd just opened, like, and fathers known so it would walk through. And he got preferential treatment and all the ladies were waiting on him with food and whatever, so I kind of grew up in that world.

That religious leaders were revered. And so when it came to the evangelical world, you know, I saw the same thing, just a little different. It was expressed a little different, you know. My heroes were always Batman or Superman.

Usually Batman. So because Batman, he is the hero that doesn't really have any superpowers. He uses his mind, right? So Batman was always my favorite. Still is today. Yeah, because he was a tech nerd, right?

He was a tech nerd. I've got my back computer. He has his back computer. Exactly. And I came up with ideas and inventions, exactly. Yeah, so my heroes were like that, but I never really recognized that while we were in the movement, the hero worship that I did have was in...

in the profit, we would say our profit and we would give undue reverence to the profit. What's interesting is I encountered other cults. Even as a teenager, I would encounter people who had their profits and they would talk about it.

And I would think, man, they're so crazy. Do they not realize that they're in a cult? And it's because I didn't rever their profits in the same way that I revered mine and vice versa.

They looked at me and they were trying to get me out of my cult to get them into their cult. So I could serve their profit, right? But it sees, you know, and I'm thinking out loud here, but it seems to me that sort of the hero worship culture is very heavily slanted towards the Pentecostal Charismatic world.

You know, when I became Christian in the evangelical world, that's like came to faith. You know, if there was a hero, it was Billy Graham, but Billy Graham was so humble. And self-effacing and not really somebody, you know, he wasn't sensational.

Like he wasn't drawing attention to himself. And some of my mentors knew him quite well. And all I heard was how humble he was. Like, I remember a group of them were telling me that they also were gonna have a time of prayer with Billy.

And of course, they're all sitting in their chairs. And the next thing you know, he's on his hands and knees. And they're all sitting there like, wait, this is Billy Graham. Like, what is he doing on his knees, right?

So, but there was that, right? But then when I came into the charismatic world, you know, into the Pentecostal world, it suddenly, it went from this, you know, even like in the anabaptist world where they don't really have pastors, right?

They have elders, but they don't have a lead, like this whole idea of a single figure that's leading a congregation who's other, who are leading a movement that they're on another plane. That was, I didn't find that in the evangelical world.

Now, not to say they don't have their stars, you know what I mean? There was John MacArthur and, you know, you had Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberts and some of those guys, right? But it seems like the whole idea of sort of heroes, you know, versus leaders.

You know, it's that thought that really drove me down to looking into all of the mythologies. Right. Because I got to thinking about exactly what you said. It does seem to favor the Pentecostal charismatic movement and why, and as I'm looking at it, what's funny is that as I begin publishing content, some of the content would have cross over to different figures.

So I'm publishing initially about William Branham, but then I would see, well, wait a minute, this other guy spawned off of Branham's ministry. And let's talk about him. Well, I would get that call following and what's interesting about it is they had no idea.

who I am or what I'm doing, what I do. So they, one of the comments that I made, they mistakenly thought that I was a hardcore Calvinist, which I'm not. And they said, you're just in the cult following of, and I'm not gonna give the name, but they just picked some random Calvinist as my cult leader because they're so indoctrinated to believe that you must follow something.

And I've even had them say that in the comments. If you're not following our prophet, you know, put a, put a blank for the prophet's name and just put one in there. If you're not following him, well, who is it that you're following?

And I was just, I was confused by this statement, well, why would I follow anybody? I just read the Bible, you know? But I learned over time it has to do with the authoritarian model that was developed by Pentecostalism and some of the precursors to Pentecostalism.

If you go beyond that authoritarian model where it is a, where to model where there is a equal balance of power and you have different leaders, no one can rise into a central figure.

Right. It's just impossible to create the hero worship model. Right. Fast forward into Pentecostalism and you've got Dauy and all of the big names of people who just literally created the most destructive authoritarian model as possible.

The ones with the most destructive models had the bigger volumes of hero worship. Yeah, so let's unpack it a little bit because you're bringing up something that's been an observation. I haven't really toured a part or unpacked it like we can in our conversation now, but I think you've got to go back to perspective or worldview.

In other words, the why? Why do Pentecostals fall into this trap? And I think part of it goes back to a default setting or a perspective which we've used the phrase the man of God model.

Right. Pentecostals have this worldview that God's spirit rests on certain individuals, right? That uniquely gifts them and uniquely calls them to fulfill a purpose. And so therefore, they look for who's the spirit on, right?

Like who has, and of course, you never hear the word in evangelical world, anointed, right? In the Pentecostal world, I remember as I got involved, there was always who's anointed, right? And I would listen to people talking like, oh, he's anointed.

Or he's, you know, and I'm like, what does that mean? Like, what do you mean he's anointed, right? Because I'm thinking anointing is oil like as a Catholic kid. an ash Wednesday or whatever, you got anointed.

You know, the priest will put little cross in you, all right, there was that anointing, but what is it? He is anointed, right? I thought you got anointed, you know what I mean? And so that really kind of twisted my brain around for a while because I couldn't understand what they were talking about.

Then I began to realize, oh my gosh, these are people who they see as on another plane. Like they're different from the rest of us. God has picked them out, right? He has chosen them amongst their peers to have this special purpose and these give them special gifts and they're special.

And so that whole idea of being special then gets reproduced across the whole spectrum and a costalism where it appeals to all kinds of men in particular who want to be special. We're looking to be special, right?

It's like a, it's like a, almost like a little addiction, right? It literally goes after addicts. I mean, that mentality goes after people who are desperate to be significant that are looking for significance, right?

Well, there's another, so you're edging toward psychology which also fascinates me in studying this because to have hero worship, you have to have a psychology mindset that is enabling that. Well, so think through this, I've thought long and hard about this because it's kind of funny if you think about it.

Picture the old days before radios and TV, you had these guys who were intense, revivalists and you got this massive crowd and the only way that you can address the entire crowd where they can hear you is you have to scream.

You're screaming at the top of your lungs. Now, I'll be the first to admit, I have Irish blood in me and if I don't control it, I can have an Irish temper. I don't know if you've ever lost your temper but think through the psychology of this.

When you lose your temper and you raise your voice, your brain disconnects from your mouth. And so you start speaking with your brain disconnected. You say things that you regret later, but the higher the volume, the higher the pace that your voice is speaking, the more disconnected it becomes from your brain.

So you have these men who and women who are in these big tents and they're screaming at the top of their lungs, they're getting excited, the people are getting excited, there's a little bit of euphoria happening.

Well, over time, what happens is, and I have seen preachers do this. So I speak some from experience with my temper but I've watched this happen as the minister is raising his voice and setting his pace faster and faster while speaking, his brain disconnects.

And he starts repeating phrases, he starts saying things that he would probably never say. And... admitting things that he would probably never admit. They're drunk. Yeah, so in the non-charismatic world, this is just a person who is edging closer towards insanity.

But in the Pentecostal world, this is actually what you call anointing. If your brain can disconnect from your mouth, that's God speaking, which is really interesting if you think about it, right? So in the olden days, there is no microphones, loudspeakers, they're screaming.

But now think about this. There came a point in time in which the microphone and the PA system was invented. It was now widespread. Ministers and Revivalists were speaking with microphones. And there was no need to continue screaming.

But that's what they grew up hearing. Right. So mentally, they think they must scream. And so they continue that pace and that, you know, the voice. Well, there's a female prophetess out of Canada that I've known for years.

And that's her whole MO, which is basically, you know, because in the old days, these are the word ecstatic, right? Like if you read some of the early Puritan or even, you know, the shakers and the Quakers and some of the early precursors to Pentecostalism and America, they were talking about ecstasy, like ecstasy would fall on a person.

And then they would just start, they would get hysterical, right? They get super emotional, right? Well, there was a whole thinking in certain aspects of the charismatic world, where that's what you do. It's like they kind of brought it all back again, and I watched it for years.

And just crazy stuff was set, like I just, like you, I sat there and I watched it anyway. Anybody else who doesn't have the same worldview would walk in and go, this person has severe psychological problems.

But the crowd was going crazy because they were told this was a God thing, right? But I saw something similar, not as extreme as a status, I've told you this story about in July of 89, I watched John Wimberg give my permission to put Paul Cain, Bob Jones and John Paul Jackson on a stage in Anaheim.

And there are certain crowd dynamics that come into play, right? There's an energy that begins to happen, and there was such expectation because there had been rumors about the Kansas City prophets and whatever, and so they start in, and the crowd is responding to their kind of things they're saying, well, what ends up happening is ego-start getting involved, right?

Between the three, because each one wants to be seen as the most annoying... the one with the most juice, right, whatever. So then they start competing. And nobody knows this is what's going on because nobody knows these people, right?

They're just sitting in a chair looking. I know these guys intimately. Well, I'm going, oh my God, this is a three car collision here and it just kept getting more hysterical and more hysterical and more hysterical until the point where things got just really extreme.

And the crowd just kept getting wilder and wilder. And the more the crowd got amped up, the more wilder the prophecies became and the more extreme and the bigger, right? And you're just watching all this and we get done and my pickle thinks that was so stunning and so amazing, we're on the verge of worldwide revival.

Like he thinks this is just such an incredible moment and we got into a big fight. In the green room afterwards, you know, because I said to him, I go off, you like PT Barnum and his three ring circus, I guess, you know, you're pretty, oh, he got so mad at me.

But from my perspective, watching it, it was just, I mean, I guess you could use the word flesh, it was flesh, like it was a meat market flesh, like it was just human ego everywhere and yet it all got interpreted as being spiritual.

And I'm like, okay, that's really interesting. You know, there's been a few, I was listening to a podcast the other day, somebody had sent me something and one of the questions that a lot of the younger generation are asking is not, anybody have discernment?

Like how come we not discerning any of this? Like we keep seeing all these heroes getting into trouble. Why? Why is nobody, where's the discernment? And so, that's got to be interesting to me because it just seems to me we're so caught up in the show.

That's another topic for another day, but in Brannemism, discernment had no relevance to what other Christians call discernment, discernment literally meant that you could guess a person's name and address on the stage, which is what they call it.

Interesting. You know, what you're talking about though is actually what I'm building up to, going back to Brannem. So, Laterane Revival breaks out. It starts spreading throughout the United States and Canada. Brannem's fame is overnight.

He's just suddenly famous and there's these big crowds like you're talking about. They see him on the platform. There's this euphoria that's happening. Well, he's screaming just like he has been trained to do in these audiences.

Microphone in the very first recordings he had, they were the old wire recordings before there was even magnetic tape. So, he's like on the very cutting edge of technology and had spoken in large crowds before this.

So, he's familiar with screaming. Now, after the Laterane Revival breaks out, he loses his mental faculties. He actually had to go off of the field for a period of time. The Voice of Healing magazine, which eventually evolved into Christ for the nation's institute, Voice of Healing Movement, was created initially to host information about Branham and his revivals.

When he loses his mental faculties, he goes off the field and they say, oh, no, Branham's gone. But what do we do? We've got this movement. Let's harness the money and power of this movement.

So he started bringing in additional revivalists into the magazine. So the magazine began to be a conglomeration of different ministries, different heroes that were to be worshipped. But here's where it gets interesting. So Branham comes back on after a period of time he's away.

He's not quite fully sane, but some of the things he says are coherent. And if you listen to it, you're kind of wondering, what is this that's coming out of his mouth? It doesn't really make sense, but it kind of sounds like the gospel.

The hype and the energy of the crowd was such that they ignored all of the things that sounded insane, listened to the things that they thought were spiritual, and couldn't really separate the two.

The insanity started to bleed over into what they claimed as a belief system. So literally as this is happening, you're starting to watch a hero develop who is struggling mentally and he openly admits this frequently.

He says that I think he said every seven years he was struggling with just deep, deep problems with, he called it neurotic. He said, I'm a neurotic. But what he would say is, so is the Apostle Paul.

The Apostle Paul was a neurotic and was Moses and he would go through the line of heroes, biblical heroes. But where I'm heading with all of this is there is so much hype in the crowd that whenever a hero starts to emerge, who is a self-proclaimed hero, the crowd begins to adopt that hero into their worship because they believe this is the voice of God, the spoken word, this insanity that's coming out in this form of screaming, they believe that that is the message of the hour or the message that's coming directly from God.

And what they did over time as they began to literally replace the reading of their Bible with this new revelation. And so if you have a new revelation, the new revelation's coming from God.

That's where the ancient mythology has fascinated me because essentially what you have created at that point is a demigod. It's a mediator between God and man. Yeah, here's my observation. And this comes from somebody who was in the church planting world for good to deck.

AIDS and just observing people. But the truth of it is, is that the Christian community and the people that go to church are desperate. And what I mean by that is, is that there's a common thread I see all across the Christian community, which is that people are desperate for intimacy with God.

They want to have a relationship with God. They have issues, needs, problems, things in their lives, that they need what? Deliverance, right? They need somebody that's more powerful than they are to help them fix this problem because they can't, right?

It's beyond them. And so there's a, I mean, this is gonna sound crazy to some people, but there I always, one of the things I always feel when I'm at church and this is just my soul, is there's this quiet desperation in the congregation, whether it be in the search for God, whether it be in the search for deliverance from something, mean and need, there's this, there's this desperation, right?

And so, and there's always this hope that somebody larger, bigger, more powerful is gonna come and help, right? You know, it's what the Holy Spirit does, right? You know, he's a helper, right? He comes alongside.

That's what his role is supposed to be. And so people are always looking for that. That's never changed. That's been the human condition since the beginning of time where it gets a little bit tricky is that there's a whole lot of people like we talked about, you know, particularly men who wanna be seen as special, right?

And so I watched this with Mike. You know, Mike, I don't know if he was, it was cognitive or it was intuitive or what it was, but he recognized there was this desperation. And what he did, which I saw happen over and over again by, it's a particular type of personality that does this, which is basically comes along, it says, listen, I know you're desperate, but guess what, I'm special.

God has uniquely called me. He's given me unique gifts, whatever, right? They position themselves. I don't wanna say superior, but at least other, right? It's like there's you guys, you know, the peons and the congregation.

And there's those of us that have this anointing, this special calling, this special deliverance, right? And Mike's proposition, value proposition was the people's, was, I'm special and I've got this purpose. If you are loyal to me and you sign up and become a part of my team.

you can be special too. Right? And God will deliver you from all this. And so it appealed to people's most basic fears, their most basic meat, right? In other words, it's in a way as I grew older and began to understand what was going on. It all looked so right at the beginning. And then I realized, oh my gosh, it's like we're just picking on people's most vulnerable places. Like we're manipulating them, right? Into these, with these false claims and false promises and false whatever, instead of getting out of the way and being a signpost on a road pointing them to God, right? And saying,

hey, let me help you. He's the one. It's like they became it. It's like they couldn't help themselves. They needed to be seen as the deliverer, right? They needed to be seen as the hero. And I see this over and over again. So there's not only a vulnerability in the congregation, there's a vulnerability with some people that are very gifted, right? You know, I mean, my vehicle, in my view, is probably, you know, one of the most persuasive human beings I've ever been around. I mean, there's just some people that are really good at this, right? Some of them turn out to be con men,

right? They know how to manipulate it, you know, in the worst ways. But then there's this sort of religion version of it, where they, you know, they present themselves like this and Mike was so persuasive.

Now, here's the one kind of tell tell sign that is, you know, I tell people, you know, as you get older, you kind of figure this out. Who is Mike's audience primarily? Young people, people that had very little perspective, no knowledge had been through a lot who were so vulnerable, right? And in a place in their life where they were ready to give him everything, right? And so it, but again, the same thing happened with the Jesus people moving. You know how many people didn't go to college, didn't, right? That because there was this eminent move of God. And so that's what happened

after the fall of Iowa a couple years ago. Suddenly, it was like this cold slap in the face, an awake up call to all these young people that were still there. Now, there was a generation before them, right? Because it started in 2000. Well, that group was already in their 30s and it been through the disillusionment, right? And so they knew already, wait a minute, you know, you know, there's a whole lot here that's being told us that isn't really true.

And if I, but it's the same thing, it keeps repeating itself, right? Go after the most naive, the most vulnerable. And that to me is a sure sign of, you know, if somebody that's a manipulator.

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.

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I don't know if you've ever managed people or not, but if you've ever managed somebody who is training other people, you can tell very quickly if they're going to be a good trainer or not, because the good trainers want to train others to be even better than themselves.

They want to... Basically, they're a leader who's creating leaders. That's what a good trainer is. Right. Very quickly, because you'll get some people on the job who are training other people, and they enjoy that messiah complex of training them and then them still being attached whoever it is they're training.

So when the person leaves, they want that link and that connection. In other words, they want to control the information and the power and they want to be seen as the one who did the training.

Well, what happens in this movement whenever you've got all of these men and women who believe that they are the ones with the authority from God or the spiritual revelation, what happens is that messiah complex takes over and they begin to think that it isn't just that the people who are under their authority or they're in their congregations are seeking God and finding God and they're creating new spiritual leaders for the next generation, they want that connection to them so that they can always have them come back for more information.

One thing that fascinated me about Mike's Ike is that whenever we had family get-togadders, Mike was like a fly in the wall. Like he was quiet, didn't hardly talk. The siblings were all kind of circling around.

They were all looking for him to take a lead. He didn't want to. He refused to take a leadership role within the siblings. But then we'd go from a family event to church and he'd walk in.

And he just sucked the air right out of the room like everything was him. It was all about him, right? He just dominated and I just always found that really fascinating and it's like you just went from, you know, totally passive to totally aggressive like it, you know, and it's like, wow, what just happened here?

I mean 20 minutes ago you couldn't get anybody to you know get you say a word and now you've got to dominate everything on a very small scale. You can see this happening whenever somebody, somebody who's timid, who wouldn't otherwise say anything get them angry and social media and they start commenting on the comment feeds. Yeah, you find these people who would never ever speak out saying the most absurdly angry things, right?

Well, there there is this type of complex where whenever you are entering into your stage persona, you start to disconnect from your authentic self and some people can't handle this. They start to build up as the, as the stage persona begins to grow, they start to favor it because they feel empowered in that stage persona.

While their authentic self is still maybe this timid humble. Branham was this way. Everybody who knew Branham, they said he was the most timid humble person, but get him on the platform and watch what happened. The power of God, right?

Well, what happens is they have put all of their emotions and energy in the stage persona. And while in that stage persona, they think that they are Batman or Superman. They're full with these power that that they don't ordinarily have. Well, this leads to the Messiah complex. People start to think that they're more than a human, they're if they're in a Christian setting, they start to feel that they really are filled with God. And therefore everything they say is God speaking.

I'm going to go down a little bit of a bunny trail here because one of the things that I noticed that was very similar between the music business and the ministry world was exactly what you're talking about the stage persona.

In the music world, it was very common especially for the superstars to walk on that stage and then something come over them. And they suddenly kick into this persona. And then for the next couple hours, they're caught, you know, like the Pentecostals say they caught up.

Well, they're caught up like they are in the moment. And what they're feeding off of is the energy in the crowd. And this person who could barely function is suddenly now this live dynamic persona that's singing and pouring their heart out in the crowds with them and whatever.

Then they walk off the stage and they're wired, right? And they're wide awake at 3 a.m. I can't go to sleep and that's when all the drugs and the alcohol, whatever, they come down.

There's a coming down, right? Because it's like they're away from that energy. I watch the same thing in the ministry world. I watch that coming down. In fact, if you want to know the kind of little secret, it's the coming down phrase where a lot of these preachers guys get in trouble.

It's after the meeting. And what ends up happening is is that that moment that you're caught up in with the crowd and the euphoria leaves. And suddenly there you are, just you. And you come face to face with who you really are, right?

Because you know that what just happened on that stage was this other thing. And when you got to come back to you, it's like, God, well, I'm this feeble. And people get, they get depressed.

They go down the rabbit hole. And so they seek out things to an emphasize that, whether that's sex, whether that's drugs, or that's alcohol, whatever it is. And so I watch that same dynamic.

My point in all of this is, again, it gets down to this personality. These personalities are addicts. They're addicts to the attention if that makes sense, right? And that's true in the ministry world, just as much as it is.

If you look at the athletes, a lot of these athletes will push themselves to extraordinary levels of physical achievement to get attention. That's about getting attention. I mean, what is the whole of social media, right?

The whole world of social media. And I watch this all the time, this competition where people are climbing all over each other to have more likes, you know, to have more followers, right?

It's like, I'm thinking to myself, wow, that's where we are as humans now, that my life is about being liked.

I'm glad I don't have that problem because people come who have escaped cult. They learn everything that they need and they want nothing more to do with it. Yeah. So there's this high turnover rate.

Yeah. So there's another aspect to this, though. I don't know if you've thought through this, but this is, again, I've studied psychology and ways that enough that people would be shocked at how much I've actually read, but there is an actual addiction.

You're talking about the, you know, the addicted to the crowd or whatever, but so charismatic movement. Well, they're, it's the crowd, but they're addicted to the euphoria, is what they're addicted to, the energy, right?

Well, it goes deeper than that. So the charismatic movement, it got its name because people who speak, it usually favors people with charisma. People who can speak charismatic, that's why the name. you know, and the group got his name.

But in that type of personality, there is a people, whenever they have this charisma, they actually become intoxicated by their own egos. And what happens is, whenever they get into that speaking euphoria, they enter into that stage persona, they start to feel the crowd, they feel the emotions, like you're talking about the musicians.

They get it serotonin buzz. It's actually, you know, it's serotonin, but it's also a heavy dopamine hit. Dopamine, they take a big dopamine hit, and that rush, it gives them such intoxicated feeling. They feel like literally they're on, they're high, right?

Well, they get up into that high, and they start to feel superpowers. They feel better than they normally do, right? They start to believe that they're filled with God, because, hey, my body feels great when I'm doing this, but they're actually getting that dopamine hit.

And what happens is, like you said, after you go off of this, you have a bit of withdrawal, because now all the dopamine's left your system, and you've got to turn to drugs or alcohol or sex or whatever it is.

That's why you see so many of these leaders falling like this. Yeah, that's right. That people don't understand it's what happens after. It's not before, it's after. And again, I've been doing this for 40 years plus, you know, so I know all the stories.

And it's always when they come off the road or when they got it right, it's the coming down. That's where they're so vulnerable, because that's where they have to deal with their broken humanity.

And it's just hard to face that when you've just had this euphoric experience, where like you said, your brain chemicals are all, you know, basically injecting you with all this energy, right? And then it all gets defined as the spirit, right?

So I watch this with Paul Kane. I don't know if you've seen any of his videos, but he was terrible preacher. He was. Well, you know, he had hard issues, right? And so Mike had sticky monstead.

And if I didn't give him notes or something, you know, that had formed to it, he just rambled, like incoherently, right? And then suddenly, like he'd get to a certain point and he would just kick in.

And then it was like he was a different person. He was just like real articulant, right? And he was just go, go, go, go, go, go, right? And then, you know, everybody get all wired and then he'd get off the stage and he'd go back to being sort of this bumbling idiot again.

And I was like, oh, that was weird, right? It was like somebody just slapped him and he just kind of woke up and then he woke up. It was like 10 minutes and he was done.

Yeah. So you'd sit there for an hour to get 10 minutes. We get that dopamine hit and you get on this high and it engages something in your brain that he's obviously feeling. So what's interesting about this and the point that I'm building up to?

These leaders, they go through all of these things that we've mentioned. There's a different psychological aspects. There's different techniques that were adopted from Pentecostalism, et cetera. All of this combined creates the hero worship of today.

But what happens is once they get up to that point where they're getting that dopamine hit and they feel empowered, they feel high, they're on that high, right? Well, whenever they leave and they get off of that high, they want more, just like any addict.

They are an addict to that dopamine hit. So when they want more, they have to have it. They have to get back up there. That's why when you see a leader fall to sexual immorality or whatever, they've got to get back because they are an addict.

So here's where it gets really odd for me. The movement itself, I call it the cared on the stick religion. They tell all of the followers, rank and fall members, you too can do just like me.

Come join the prayer center, come do this, come do that. And they're trying to give the idea that it's not hero worship. We're building a new legion of heroes. You're part of the new legion.

But because they are so addicted to that dopamine hit, watch what happens if one of them, one of the people that they're leading were to rise up and say, hey, I'm ready. I want to take over the pulpit.

There is no way in heck. They're gonna let them take over the pulpit. Yeah, that's true. Well, again, they don't want to share the ear in the room, it's like, I saw that over and over again.

It's kind of sad for me. This is kind of personal, but I've known Mike since I was 18 years old. And we've had hundreds of men that have joined us,

you know, that joined us from what was in 1976 all the way up till when I ended up splitting with him which was in 89. And you know, there's not a single person from those 20 plus years that has a relationship with Mike or the other way around.

Which is really my, again, this is the sociologist, the psychologist, like you. See, I look at that stuff and I go, wait a minute. What is going on here, right? How is it? And you see this often, you know, and again, I'm gonna make a wild statement, but I've seen enough firsthand that I kind of believe this, which is I think almost every one of the mega church pastors are narcissists.

It's like they are incredible. Once they walk through that door and stand on that stage, right, and the attention's all on them. But you get them off of that stage and their ability to relate to people as humans, as friends, as family.

It doesn't exist. And I don't know of a single friendship, my cast, from all those years. Not one. And it became real clear when my book came out, because a lot of them circled back with me, thanking me for writing it, but every one of them had the same experience, which was they got caught up in Mike's charisma, his dynamic personality, right, his words, his whatever.

Sold everything, moved, joined him, only then to realize they were just sort of a cog in his machine. Right, they were a commodity in building his world. And that was such a disillusioning, painful experience for people to deal with, right.

Many of them ended up leaving the ministry there, like, I don't want any part of this. Which was sad for me, you know, it's like the relational side of this is whatever. So that's to me.

I mean, it's interesting, because it's like, well, what's wrong with having heroes? Well, it depends. I think there's healthy heroes and unhealthy heroes. I think to your point, healthy heroes inspire you, right? In other words, they're laying their lives and sacrificing for your benefit, for you to get somewhere.

The unhealthy ones are, it's all about me, right? And you can feel it if you're halfway discerning, right? Again, these are my soul, you know, now that I'm nearly seven years old, I kind of understand my soul a little bit better.

But I can tell now who's sucking my soul and who's pouring into it, just sitting in a chair in a church or in a pew, right? I can feel whether the guy that's preaching is sucking something for himself out of me, like he's there feeding almost like a spiritual vampire, right?

He's like sucking my energy, right? Versus somebody who is a true bondservant, who loves people and loves to see other people succeed, then they pour out, right? You can feel the difference. Unfortunately, there's not many mega church pastors that I know.

In fact, I don't think I can't think of a single one I've ever met. Well, there's a reason for that. And that's what I was building up to. The model that was created, and it goes back to something you said earlier, you don't find this much outside of Pentecostalism or charismatic movement.

The model was created such that the people come into the audiences, whether it's an auditorium or a convention or even just a simple church. They come in with the idea that they are coming to see something greater than a human on stage.

Whether they want to admit it or not, that's what it is. And there is a concept and psychology, I can't remember the exact name of the condition, but this basically is the same thing as there exists a narcissistic feedback loop.

So an average person, and I have seen it just like you have, average person who has no intention to become this mindset, starts getting in front of a crowd, they basically they're creating a performance.

And they're really excited, they're really proud of their work, they study the sermon, they get up and they watch the crowd react. Well, if the crowd reacts well, they get on this emotional high, the dopamine hit starts to kick in, and they feel something, they don't know what it is, they don't understand the dopamine hit.

Well, they go back and they want to recreate that. That was great. Let's do that again. Well, it starts the cycle, the crowd is expecting it. The person who's giving the speech is launching more, they want that hit again, and go back rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

Well, eventually what happens over time is you could take a person who doesn't have narcissistic tendencies, eventually they will develop what it looks exactly like narcissistic personality disorder. Interesting, yeah. Well, one thing that always fascinated me when I kind of crossed over to the Pentecostal world was people would say, you go to a meeting, right?

God showed up, right? And their definition of God showed up was somebody spoke in tongues, there was some prophet, right? God showed up, and I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, if God lives in us, like isn't he there, just because we're there?

Yeah. And that's exactly what I'm talking about, right? They're going to see something great. Yes, but then God showed up, but I'm thinking, well, wait a minute, the body of Christ is God in us.

So what do you mean? He showed up like he's already there. You know what I mean? But it's the mentality you're talking about. It's like, I realized, wait, they're going for the show, right?

They're going look, instead of looking for God in others, right? They're looking for the show. They want the circus. They want to see something extraordinary, something special, right? They want to go, wow. And I think that whole mentality makes us incredibly vulnerable, not only to get...

bond and used and abused, right? It also distorts us from what's really God. In some ways, it's like somebody, you know, you hear this phrase, well, it's right in front of you. The reason you didn't see it, it's right in front of you.

I feel that way often about the Pentecostal world. It's like, wait a minute, you keep going to these meetings looking for God, you know, and you're defining it as this supernatural thing. Well, he's right there.

Just turn around and love the person next to you. Like, give him a hug, say something kind. Like, why is that not as equally important as any of this other stuff, right? So we're so focused on the sensational and the cool thing to get another dopamine hit that we miss what's right in front of us, which is God.

And I think that's where I think the church has got itself in trouble. And I think social media and sensationalism and all of this is just making it worse. Because now it's all about getting attention, right?

Getting likes, getting, you know, and, and, and, and, you know, it's what I saw back, you know, to your point earlier, it's like you get a bunch of leaders on a stage and then they're out doing each other, right?

And so it's like every meeting, I have to come up with something new so that I can keep the crowd coming back, keep the buzz going and it's, that's where they get into trouble then, right?

That's where I see the prophetic guys start stretching stuff. And I see something that was a level one discernment turned into a level 10, I was, right? I mean, Mike did it, you know, Mike in 1976 walked me across the church parking lot telling me about this impression he had about how God wanted to impact Christianity.

20, you know, 20 years later, was he was taken to the third heavens and had an open revelation. I mean, I've seen this over and over again, if you were there in the beginning, you know the humble beginnings and how something was just this simple thing.

And, but that doesn't sell, right? It doesn't sell and so it's, but again, I don't want to just, the thing I'm, I'm trying to be careful of here. It's, it's a both and problem, meaning it's not just a leadership issue.

It's a congregational problem. We're the ones that keep coming back, wanting this stuff, right? We, we create the soil or the environment for these type of personalities to take advantage of us. Well, it's another podcast for another day, but that same dopamine hit that the minister gets on the platform when the people come expecting this and they see the emotional high of the minister and they get caught up in that emotional high, they get the same hit.

So what happens is, as they're, as they get this high that they don't understand what is, they, start to mistake that high for the spirit. And you'll find, I've even had numerous cult members tell me this, ex cult members, after they left, they say, yeah, I don't understand it, John, but when I was there, I really felt the spirit.

I felt something, I know I did. Well, that's what they felt. They felt the dopamine hit. And I'm not saying that God wasn't in the present set all times or whatever, but you have to understand that it's like you said, it is this and the other.

There are both things happening. Again, as a sociologist, I want to study human behavior. So guess what I was watching? Taylor Swift's Aras tour. And the reason was because she was packing stadiums out just like all the preachers.

It was a spiritual experience for most people. They were in a stadium with 70 to 90,000 other people all singing together, hi, just on the moment, right? All this humanity congregated together, singing these songs.

And people walked out of there just like Pentecostals, a revival meeting, right? I'm watching all this going, wait a minute. She's doing the same thing. God isn't even on the menu, right? And people are walking out with the same exact phrase out, you know what I mean?

They're saying the same exact thing coming out of a Taylor Swift concert as they do in any sort of revival meeting. I'm like, ah, that's kind of interesting. Is this why my brain works?

I'm like, two things, completely different worlds. Everybody's having the same experience feeling the same thing, right? Only in this one, God's not even involved here. Well, back in the days of the healing revivalists when the Beatles were touring, there was this top point in time in which people were claiming to be healed after having attended a Beatles concert.

Right. The healers just went nuts that you can't say this. This was not God. We're the only place to have this. But what they're talking about, you know, people as you get that dopamine hit, you do feel better.

And if you have an ailment that is causing you pain, well, that dopamine hit's gonna take away some of your pain, so. Well, you just mentioned something that's another red flag which is exclusiveness, right?

It's that thing. Wait, you can't do that. That's exclusively us. Like we have ownership. That belongs to our tribe. You can't have that, right? Which is again, another thing that's so revealing about motive.

It's like Jesus was over there giving everything away, feeding people, healing them, right? He didn't care if you were a Samaritan or a Roman or whatever, like he's just, you know, given it away.

And we're over there going, wait a minute. You can't do that. You're not part of us. Again, another sign that, is this really God, you know? It's like Jesus wouldn't act like this. Jesus wouldn't have this.

So again, you know, I have the, the, the, the. ache and give thing that goes in my spirit, then the other one is a minute I see exclusiveness. Like you can feel it in the person that's preaching or whatever that somehow they're exclusive, they're unique.

You know, they have something no one else has. I'm like, okay, I'm out of here.

This is so dangerous. It is. And I think that's really the point I'm trying to make. If people would just stop and think about what's going on, how it doesn't resemble Christianity, but it doesn't resemble the ancient mythologies.

Why would you want to stay in this? But then it's like people, right? Then people start bragging. And you see, you saw this in your world, right? They start bragging that they're a part of this unique thing.

Right? And so it's like in the same way the preachers fallen into the trap of arrogance, then the people in that group. I mean, it's what you're seeing right now at the Bickel family and some of the, kind of the synchophants in their world.

Like, you know, they have the truth. They're loyal, right? They're, it's them against the world, right? And there's an arrogance. And you saw it with Mike's sister belittling everyone, be raiding people. You're all idiots.

You don't see. You're not, you don't have no insight, right? You don't know. I do. You see it, I mean, it's just all these attitudes and motives that come out in these moments. And that's why, you know, I think discernment to me.

And I think I've mentioned this before as we've talked. Discernment to me is just understanding the nature of a thing, right? Discerning its nature. And if you're wanting to start a, you know, an orchard, you need to make sure that you understand that that little twig there is actually an apple tree.

That's its nature. It's going to produce apples. And I think one of the things that people sometimes with me, they'll say, well, you're so prophetic, you predicted where Mike would end up, or where I, like years ago when I went, no, I'm discerning.

I looked at the nature of this. And given that this is the nature, this is what's underneath, these things are in play. And if they don't get dealt with, this is where it's going to end up, you know, this is the nature of it, right?

And so it's the same thing. It's like you can see this coming a mile away. Now, the problem is, is it takes a little time and experience and getting burned and some heartache to kind of wise up and become more discerning.

You know, the sermon is sort of like perspective. You gain it looking in the rear view mirror of life. Or in some cases, like some of us, like with me, I just have a six sense about things and I don't even know him.

I had why. All I know is I get something inside me, it goes, ah, ah, ah, ah, something's off here. And then it sends me down this bunny trail of research going, why am I so uncomfortable?

And that's when I began to uncover what's really going on. So it wasn't that if I had a spiritual revelation, it was in the intuition, something's wrong, but it's just by hard work and research that you end up getting to the bottom of why.

Why is this wrong, right? So we, yeah, we're in a very difficult situation. I'm kind of wondering what's going to happen with future generations and this whole hero thing, because truth be told, it's always been there, right?

It's like you see it from the beginning of time. Humans have this need or this want to, you know, to worship somebody greater than themselves. Well, it's like you gave the example with a Bickel family where you have the worship of Zeus, you're going to have the Helen of Troy.

So there's so much more that I could say and go into. But I, like I said, I just wanted to get into this and think through it from an IHOPKC perspective, because it really matches for me what I see in the ancient mythologies, not Christianity.

Well, Mike, I know he was, you know, whether it was as an athlete or whatever. It's like he always wanted to be the hero. Like he, I know if there's such a thing as hero syndrome, but if there is, he certainly had it.

But then of course, I met a lot of guys like that in the ministry world that were at a certain level, right? They were all had this drive. But again, they're, they're like spiritual vultures.

They're feeding off of the adulation of the congregation or the crowd. That's what feeds it. And if that doesn't get met, right? There's either they'll come back the next week with something more sensational and manipulative or they fall off the wagon and they get into an affair.

It's kind of one or the other. It's like there, it's, no, it sounds crazy, but it's true. Like either they get their dopamine hit from preaching on Sunday or they go get in trouble because as people know, you know, breaking the rules is a dopamine hit.

There's a lot that I could say with that too. With in psychology, whenever a person gets into one of these emotional states, they have a hyper sex drive. So that's, you know, it's part of the problem.

But anyway, thank you so much for doing this. This has been, this has been a lot of fun. But hopefully it's helpful. I mean, I know we're kind of processing this out loud. So people need to be very generous in their critique because we're just kind of talking it out as we go.

It's not like we came with a pre-plan of, you know, of, you know, we're gonna, you know. I think we already have all the answers, we're just kind of giving our observations, going, here's what I've seen, and this is where I'm at, so it's a process.

To those who don't know our process, I literally called Bob up right before this, and I said, hey, let's talk hero worship, go. Exactly. And so we're doing this as we go. We've even enjoyed a 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 Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.