Weird Doctrines: MineCraft Creeper Demons

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, and friend, James Goad.

And together we're discussing the very weird things that preachers say, why they say them, and how they relate back to the latter-rain healing revivals of the late 1940s through the 1960s. James, I know this is the moment that you've been waiting for, we've finally made it to the topic of interest for you, and I'll say this for a lot of ex-message people because this is just one of those, I don't know, it's one of those means to control children for what is seemingly no apparent reason, but as we'll get into it today, there is a little

bit of the method to the madness behind it. But we're getting into a subject that I know I was in a group category of people who was in the message, who was actually able to do this, while I had many of my peers were not able to do this, and it was confusing for me, so years ago I dug into this a bit just to study and see, number one, why are they not allowed to do it?

Number two, why am I and certain people who are in the quote unquote, cult elite allowed to do it, and I'm excited to get into it, I don't know about you. Oh yeah, now this is, this is one of those things that any kid growing up in the message who went to the youth camps and things like that, and had, we're under some of the ministers who were more militant against these sorts of things, they'll be able to relate a lot with this episode, so yeah, I'm very interested to get it and take a look and see where

this takes us. Yeah, this one will be fun, so we're getting into video games, and like I said, I was able to play them, and I had a lot of peers that weren't, in many of the rural churches, especially where the minister was elderly, they were strongly forbidden in many of the, especially in the more fundamentalist flavors of the cult and its splinter groups, now when you got into it.

the bigger cities where a lot of parents would rather their kids stay inside in the safety of the home than to let them go out and play with the neighborhood kids and whatever trouble they might get into. Some of those churches actually did allow it, so it got a little bit weird. So at the top of the cult there was the Brannum family, at the top of the message cult, and the peers of the Brannum family were allowed to play video games. In fact, I won't give the names, but one person very, very, very close to them had one of the old cocktail mis-packman

game consoles. Not the kind that you stand up, but the kind like you would see in a bar or a pub where you sit down and both players face each other, and at seven years old I believe it was, he was able to roll the digits on that game. So that meant he, I think it's in the millions before it rolls, but he could take one pack man or mis-packman, I should say, and make it all the way up to the millions and roll it. And they had that, they had, I want to say it was Coleco vision,

one of the old ones, and you know, I didn't think anything of it because I was never told that this was not allowed. I was in the category of the cult elite, but then whenever I moved to some of the more rural areas in the country, I was a little surprised because those children looked at me like I had a demon for playing video games. And I got my first, I think it was an Nintendo Entertainment Center system, whenever I was, I want to say high school, the first video, second video game system I owned, and I was able to convert a few of them over

to the dark side, but my very first gaming console system that I ever owned, I want to say I was in 4th grade, 3rd or 4th grade, and a person who was even closer to the Brannum family gave me my first gaming system. And it was this, it was called Vectrax, but it was this gaming system that was all in one unit that you could play asteroids and, you know, a few different of the old school games. The controllers were built into the unit, so you pulled them out. And man, it was, it brings back memories. I want to go dig it out of my parents' attic if they still

have it. Probably be worth something too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess we should just start off here and start diving into some of these clips that we have to take a look at. But one of the things that you start to see patterns emerging, like you said, some of the generations don't, some of the ministers are elderly and they don't have an idea of really what video games are because they didn't grow up with them. It's just this foreign witchcraft of a thing that seems to be captivating to people's imaginations and minds.

But then you have some of the younger ministers too and sometimes you're kind of curious about how they're coming up with some of the things they are too. But yeah, so let's take a look at this one here where a minister appears to be talking about video games as though they're going to ruin your life somehow. But let's let's take a look and let's dive in further.

This really brings us in a humble condition here that at that time you were without Christ. Can you imagine where you'd be without Christ? You would have filthy minds, filthy lives, no holiness, no judgment, no I mean you just let anything come that comes instead of shutting the door to Satan you just let Satan in more and more. Where would you be? I told the church I probably be addicted to drugs. I'd be a thug with those sports jerseys on with my hat sideways. I live in still my mom's house playing video games, smoking and drinking and that's what I be. Can you imagine?

But look what Grace has done for me. Praise God. Look what Grace has done, amen. So James, I'm actually glad this guy's no longer living in his mother's basement. You know, this is a double edged sword because I get what this minister saying and to some extent it's actually a good thing. There anything that you overdue, anything that you overindulge can form maybe not an addiction, but you know people say you're addicted to video games.

There are some studies where the brain releases some endorphins as you're playing and it gets you into this weird video game high if you will, but it's not addictive like you can't leave it and come back, but some children overdue it, right? So if this guy truly was of the mentality that he was living in his mother's basement and might never escape unless he found whatever it was that he found, that's a good thing. I'll give him this. What's interesting about this particular clip is something that Charles and I have discussed offline. I don't think we've got into it much in

the podcast yet, but whenever a central figure of a cult rises into authoritative control and they begin to lose their mental faculties, which clearly happened with William Brannum, and in fact he admits it in like when it says 1963 or 64. He had a serious, serious mental health issue that he was told that he could not be cured of and if you actually study the transcripts, it progressively gets worse from 1963 to about 1965. We're going to be covering this in one of the upcoming podcasts, but as somebody loses their mental health and they're in a full authoritative control of whatever is the cult of personality that they have

manipulated to control, they turn into basically ranting and everything is condemned. And so you'll find these weird statements where the cult leader is going on and on about you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong, and they'll lump things in like and you women with washing machines. Basically everything is evil whenever you reach the point where you've lost full control of mental health. And I don't get the sense that this person who, you know, we won't mention his name, but this minister who says this, he doesn't come across to me as having the mental health issues like the man he's promoting, but I do sense that there's

a little bit of this ranting. He's included video games as though that's part of the evil. Now if he was truly addicted, I'll give him that, you know, maybe he's overdoing the video games, but that doesn't mean that everybody's sitting in his congregation are also going to end up living in their mother's basement forever. You know what I mean? Right, and that's one of the things you see as, especially you look in how video games have been treated in the realm of politics and religion in a wider realm. I mean, it's, it's just, there's a lot of similarities to how we talked

about earlier in other episodes about Harry Potter and how that was treated with the larger religious world and so you're like witchcraft. So it's like, we don't even look at the substance, we don't know what it is. We're just afraid of this thing, ban it completely. We don't even want to understand it. We just want to ban it and get rid of it because obviously it's of the devil. And then you look at how these things can be, how these things can go when they're done healthily.

So you have a healthy family who approaches these things from a healthy mindset. Parents, you have, you have parents who are getting older now who grew up with video games, who play video games with their kids in a healthy manner, you know, that's not like we're constantly playing video games, but it's like we do these things together, we share family time, it's a way of interacting. You know, and there's a, there's a real healthy environment around video games and you see healthy approaches to it. But when you get into some of these more fundamentalist movements,

then they just condemn it outright. Maybe you have an elderly preacher who doesn't understand the medium, doesn't understand what it is, has never played a video game. And then they just want to condemn it outright and say it's just, it's just taking over your mind and it's going to make you lazy, it's not going to make you, you know, you're not going to be able to hold down a job because all you do is focus on video games. And it's like, man, I really wish you'd actually play the video game and understand...

stand what this is before you're going out and trying to tell kids to not do this. It's very troubling sometimes when you see these things being treated that way. Yeah. It reminds me a lot.

I don't know if you watched it, but the Senate hearings on social media over, you know, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and the control of the minds, which, you know, is crazy fascinating because I did agree with them to some extent.

You had these really, really old senators and congressmen and politicians who were in on this hearing, and they would ask questions that clearly showed they had no clue how to even hold a cell phone, you know what I mean, right.

And again, I don't get the sense of that from this guy. I, you know, to some extent, I'm going to say this, I actually agree with this guy. I mean, truly, if he was going to end up living in his mother's basement and play video games until he died, then I'm glad he got out of that because that's a bad thing.

I have a, I have mixed emotions on this because during COVID, all of your children were almost locked up. I mean, they think of some of the younger kids. I think my child, I did the math and it was like 25% of his life was locked up.

You can't go anywhere. You can't do anything. All they had to communicate with the outside world was the video game environment where they're playing a game and they're communicating through the communication systems in the game.

I can guarantee you that a vast majority of the ministers in this cult have no idea that not only is it a video game. It's also a, like a cell phone, you can talk to each other.

It's also like a chat system where you can communicate with each other. It's like a forum, which they may not know what that is. I mean, it is this, it's this all-in-wonder tool. It's like, you know, your cell phone today compared to the old world.

It's like your telephone, your video camera, your microphone, your notepad, all of these things. Well, a video game system today, they even marketed as your all-in-one entertainment system. It's got your television, it's got everything.

If you buy an Xbox, it's literally a Swiss army knife of entertainment, which, you know, in the cult entertainment is taboo anyway. But all of that said, I get what he's saying in the fact that if this was going to consume his life, that's a bad thing.

You know, man, get out of the house, don't stay in your basement and do this. But again, he is in a position where he is influencing people in a church. And there are children who are going, oh no, this guy is talking about, they're going to take my video games, if they're even allowed.

the church. You know what I mean? Right. And what's what's really interesting about this is whether this was a learned thing for him. I'm certain because being in the position he's in as a minister in either the main sector of the splinter group that he's in. Many of the older men like you said had no idea what is a video game. Because even though video games were invented, I think it's 1962 or so was they were the computer systems of the 50s and 60s were so expensive you couldn't have one in every common home. So they did exist, but they were more

prototype. And it wasn't until the 70s until these video games were starting to get somewhat mainstream. But what people what ministers in the fundamentalist religion compared them to because again, they had no idea what this was. Many of them know idea what technology is because it even technologies taboo. They compared them to the pinball machines. And pinball is crazy fascinating because it's a gaming system before there was a video game. And then later on whenever electronic became more widespread, the pinball machines got electro magnets and different electronic components that as the ball went up, it would hit a bumper and then the bumper would

shoot the ball. And the you know, this was something that they are familiar with because in fundamentalist religion in the I want to say 1940s pinball was just as taboo as many of the other topics that we've talked about like movies and it was actually pinball was there was this theme spreading through the United States that pinball was going to take the minds of the children and rob them and rob them of their hard earned nickels and dimes. That was an actual quote to the extent that in I can't remember what year it was, but New York mayor

LaGuardia actually banned pinball machines from all of New York. You could not play pinball in New York City because of this. Yeah, it's so crazy because I mean, I grew up playing pinball whenever I had the chance to do it because I loved pinball I didn't get a lot of opportunities to do it because most of the time it was at an arcade or someplace you had to go to so I didn't have ready access to it in my home. Though I do remember on a home computer having Windows XP in playing space cadet pinball on my Windows XP machine a lot. So that's that's

one way I had it at home, but it was in more in video game form. But yeah, you know, because one of the things that does go on when you're playing games and any sort of things like that is you talked about the endorphins get released and one of the things that is going on is you're getting dopamine hits and you know you talk about maybe some of the darker side and you see this going on in like people who are addicted to casinos you know why there's nothing wrong with going to a casino and dropping some play full money and long as it's controlled

and you know like you said you're not addicted but you know you see some people and even elderly people who are just you know you see pictures of this online you got an elderly person sitting in front of a machine pressing the button over and over and over again you know because they're getting a dopamine hit every time they hit the button and it's just it's it's something that it's it's moved into the realm of unhealthy where this is completely fine there's there's nothing wrong with this but for whatever reason this person is not interacting with this in a healthy way and some of some of the things in a casino are

designed to to gamify the dopamine release you know and one of the things that you see with newer games as this as as an as an industry as a whole it's become more of a it's it's larger than movies these days with the amount of money these things break in and some of these larger corporations want to pray upon that and so they've introduced concepts in some games where you don't release the game you don't pay 60 bucks for the game and just get the full game you get like part of the game and then you got like this loot box

system where you pay 20 bucks and you get a loot box which is a virtual box that you open the box virtually and you randomly get an item out of it and it may be the item you want maybe it's not but it's moving into the realm of sort of can't it you know gambling sort of like a situation there where if you know you took about a little kid five years old you got more of an adult they can interact with these things more healthy because they know what this is they know what's going on but you know talking about kid five and six years old maybe interacting

with this things and they're like ooh and it's it's it's triggering something that they're not um they're not ready and they don't have the tools yet to understand what's going on in their brain to know when okay this is maybe getting a little healthy for me maybe I should pause and so that's one of the things where it's like yeah there there can be an unhealthy relationship that can develop with some of these things but if you have a healthy home environment where the parents are involved and um and helping the child to understand what's going on in this moment and maybe

saying like okay maybe some of these games that have the loot box stuff in it maybe you're a little too young maybe that's a little too addictive for you to handle right now um you know and then sometimes it just comes down to managing time but there are ways if you have a healthy environment and and and the healthy life to to interact and interface with these things that doesn't have to go into these dark places all the time you you these things can have as much control over your life as you give them, you know, but ministers like to say it's a demon or this or that

just like our previous episode where we talked about the demonology and it's like no it's a demon that's just raging control your money and you don't have any control over it's like no you have more control than some of these ministers would like for you to think. Yeah I mean we've talked about it before but it's honestly like the gun control a vast majority of the churches in this religious system that we're talking about are pro gun control and you'll see them argue it's not the gun that kills people it's the people that kill people and though they'll gladly do it for their weapons

but then when it comes to something for the children that can be healthy video games actually we'll get into it but it can be healthy because they don't understand if they just outlawed in general and right they're robbing the children of you know the entertainment which is very very common there there are medical professions especially if you're a surgeon that it is recommended to play video games because it improves your hand eye coordination your dexterity and it makes you there are surgeons who the better surgeons actually play Xbox or PlayStation because their hands are so coordinated with their mind and they can quickly you know perform the surgery get in

get out to the job right but these authoritative cults they're they're basically three categories of reasons why that video games are outlawed the first one is you know like we mentioned with this example kids can overdo it and that is I will agree with a minister if that's if that's the way it's presented it's kind of in the gray area whether or not this guy presented it that way in a normal Christian church the minister would say now video games can be habit forming not addictive but habit forming and your children might overdo it and in doing so they'll miss a vast

majority of their life and they're getting more influence from the video game than they are from you the parents so it might be good if you keep an eye on it and make sure they're not overdoing it that's a normal church in a cult church in category number one they would say they're gonna overdo it they're going to become vegetables and they'll live in their mother's basement forever you can get them out of there yeah then you've got the historical category of person the people who are the ministers who are familiar with the progression of the gaming systems until they reached

the electronic gaming systems and I'm taught you mentioned the casinos well the early pinball machines didn't have all of these holes and it's it wasn't they weren't designed in the same way they did not even have of the spring, I can't remember what you call that thing, but the thing you pull back and shoot the ball.

Yeah. What they did have was they had, you could hit these pins and knock the pins over. It was much like bowling, and they ended up putting them in casinos, and they would have like a free game jackpot.

If you got the ball in the hole, you got a free game. Well, then they gambled on, could you get the free game? And then that turned into, okay, let's turn this into actual gambling.

And then that progressed into the electronic gambling machines. And I may or may not know, Colt Elite, who frequent casinos. Oh, that's taboo. But these men who go into the casinos, and they see all these electronic games, and may or may not spend their money in them.

They see this, and then they go back to their churches, and they say these electronic games, they're off the devil, because I just played one. Yeah.

Yeah, and it's crazy, because like I said, just about any of this stuff, you can have a healthy relationship with it. If it's not something that has to be the end of the world, but when you're in a controlled environment, where it's all about the control of what you watch, which you, how you spend your time, who you interact with, these things are presented as though they're demonic, and just playing the thing takes away all your control, all of your agency, and that's just not the way things are.

That's just not the way things are in real life. And so it is sad to see that so many kids, I mean, I remember going to youth camps, and the ministers would harp on video games, and all kinds of entertainment, music, and all kinds of stuff that was not in normal circles, this stuff was not viewed as demonic and evil, and going to control your soul or your mind, but these ministers would start pressuring the kids to do things with the entertainment that their parents had purchased for them.

And I guess we'll let this next minister say for themselves, how they think the kids should handle these video games. Oh, Mom, we can't get over these video games, man. Kill him.

You dad got a hammer? How about a crowbar? Yeah? Okay, clear them on a table, and take that crowbar. They're not my games, yeah, you're games. What?

Kill him, man, kill him dead, you know? So this guy is clearly in category two, the category where there is some history behind it, he may not understand the video games. but I mentioned in the 40s New York City banned the pinball machines.

Well, the way that they enacted this, the mayor participated with the police and they actually took sledgehammers and they just smashed the heck out of these things and dumped them. What was left of the remains, they dumped it into the rivers in the city and polluted the rivers.

And, you know, so that's in the early days you can kind of understand why New York City did this. You had these kids who were very poor, who were working in factories, who, you know, they're spending their money and the family needs the money.

So I kind of get it, but then what happened gets kind of funny.

Pinball machines got banned from New York all the way to Los Angeles. Los Angeles in 1939 banned the video game, banned the pinball machines and what happened is, you got this wide swath of the United States that you cannot play pinball because it started out because the kids might waste their money but it turned into this thing where we don't know why we banned it.

We just, that's the way it is. We've always banned it. It wasn't until the Supreme Court of California overturned this in 1974. That's, that's pretty late, right? And even worse, even funnier, there are cities in different rural areas in the United States that continue to ban these pinball machines and they didn't know why.

They're like, you know, we've always done it. So let's just keep doing it. Kokomo, Indiana, it wasn't until December of 2016. Kokomo unbanned them. We're talking, I mean, this day and age, most people don't even want to play pinball, right?

And so what happened was you've got these ministers who remember smashing these things and they told their kids and their kids became preachers and then their kids, so there's this long history of let's smash the games because the games are fun.

And it ended up, well, we don't know why we're smashing them, but let's do it because that's what we've always done.

Yeah. And one of the things that, you know, this brings up, like I was said in the introductory to this clip, this brings up a lot of memories from me of youth camps and stuff like that.

And if there's any, if there's anyone watching the show right now that went to us any of these youth camps, they know what I'm talking about. And you'd have a lot of ministers who would encourage you to burn your CDs, burn your games, get rid of your movies, You know, destroy the TV in your home, you know, get rid of all that, you know, because that's all demonic and it's all taking control of your mind and, you know, you need to be in this word and you need to be getting closer to this word and it's going to keep you

from catching a rapture if you play these video games or listen to this music. And one of the things that growing up and getting older back then, I didn't really see this, but as I get older and I actually have a job and I pay for my own stuff, I think about how my parents would have felt if I to came home and just set fire to all my video games that they had purchased for me because they had taken their hard earned money and they had decided it's okay for me to have this video game and they purchased it for me, but

I'm in the backyard setting it all on fire and I say, my minister told me that this is what I should do to get into heaven. I see a lot of problems there and I imagine my parents would have had a lot of problems with that as well.

Yeah, I can't even imagine. I mean, well, first off, you know, the parents in a normal non-cult, non-authoritative frame of mind, a normal Christian church is going to teach a person the skills that they need to continue through life as they enter into adulthood and get children of their own.

And so you don't lead by forcing, you lead by explaining why we do what we do and leading someone to accept the belief as though it's something that is good and helpful to them.

Not just, you can't do that and I'm going to go destroy everything that you have. You know, whenever you do this to a kid, you know as well as I do James, if the kid doesn't understand why you're doing it and you're doing it in a way that hurts them like this.

You know, if you destroy the video games, they're not going to enter into adulthood and even accept what you've done to them. They just see you as this person who took their fun away.

That's all they see. It is so sad because you know, I've examining some of these things and going into some of these topics. We could go on for hours just using clips of the minister saying all sorts of crazy things.

So we have to, we have to trim it down. We have to find only a few. But you know, I mean, I've even seen ministers, you know, just go off on all unhinged rants on video games and you know, it is, it's sad because we've examined all sorts of entertainment in the show so far and just, when you put it all together, when you put all the various, you know, thoughts of all the different kinds of entertainment that kids are able to interface with in the message, which is very few and all about none depending

on which church you go to. You know, it, yeah, it's so sad because you see kids being robbed of innocent fun, you know, and it's like, you know, you could think of, you know, that you could think of so many examples of like movies or different things like that.

maybe it shouldn't be for kids, but there's so many things out there that kids shouldn't have any problem, you know, interfacing with. And, you know, one of the things that I was, I was completely shocked to see was a minister, um, ranting on Minecraft. And I was like, okay, well, I got to see this. I got to see what's going on here because this just doesn't, this just doesn't seem seem logical here. But, uh, let's let the minister speak for himself and, uh, take a look. As believers, I don't believe we should let our children be playing all of these games that are on these devices because I don't

think you're going to find any born again, Christians doing, you know, uh, Minecraft or a war of the worlds or whatever those things are. In fact, I did some research on that and find out that one of the most popular, uh, writers of those games is, is a drug addict who constantly would just get himself as high as he could get and still function and then stay up for 36 hours straight under an anointing and write those games. And so, James, I'm going to be really honest with you here. I have children and their boys, they

love Legos and the number one weapon that you can take down a parent with is a little tiny Lego on the floor. And Minecraft for me is basically playing Legos on a screen and I don't have to step on the dang thing. So I, I fully disagree with this minister.

Minecraft is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to America. But this brings us into category three, which in my opinion is the worst of all the categories. And if you put it on a scale, on a balance scale from the guy who has a tendency to want to live in his mother's basement to this guy who's ranting on Minecraft, who probably doesn't even understand what it is. This is the category that is the worst because it is basically rules for the sake of rules. There's no other reason for it. It is a rule so that I can create

a rule. And that's what happens when you're in a cult of authoritarian control. We've got on our website, you can type in the search, go to Williamdashbrandom.org and type in cult rules. And you'll see some of the rules that we grew up with. And I've had people contact me over this. They're just completely shocked. Like, why did you have this rule?

This is so silly. And some of them, they, they were part of the rants that I've talked to about. They, you know, I don't really believe that many people followed these rules. But as the minister is ranting about this, that, or the other, and he throws in all of these evils of the world he'll throw in.

things in like, and you people playing Bunko, I guarantee you that a vast majority, probably 90% of our listeners or more, maybe 95 or more, have never even heard of Bunko, don't even know what it is.

I haven't. So it was, it was a social gathering where people could go and they play this game and, you know, it's, I don't know the rules of it, I've not actually played it, but as these men are ranting, we've got this list and you can look through it on the website, but no stitch and sew parties, you know, in other words, we don't want you to get together and have fun, basically, don't play Bunko.

One of the most interesting as it relates to the authoritarian control is no dice. And we all know what that comes from, it's the gambling, the people who may or may not be going to the casinos and playing a little fun game, come back and they tell their congregations you can't have dice.

What's really interesting is, I don't know if this happened in your sect, but in the main sect of the message, one of the prophet's sons apparently spread this doctrine that if you played monopoly or any of the board games and you took, you used the dice that came with the game, the devil was in those dice and it would come out and get you and it would convert you into a gambler and you'd lose everything that you have.

I can't remember how the full doctrine worked, but instead what he and others did. I mean, this was widespread in Jeffersonville. I'd go to a house, you say I grew up in, you know, everywhere from coast to coast, basically, and when I moved back here, I'd go into these houses and I'd see this little box.

I was like, what in the world is that? And they say, oh, we're going to play a game. And so they get out monopoly or whatever and I'm looking for, where's the dice, man?

And they'd hand me this little box and you push a button on it and it was a random generator of numbers in the same way that a dice is a random generator of numbers.

And even more specifically, it was an electronic generator of numbers, which in fact means it was a video game. Yeah, it's crazy because the no dice thing, that's foreign to me and my group.

But you know, I mean, because board games was one of the things that we could do that seemed to be immune from this sort of thing in my group for whatever reason. I mean, you go into other groups and it's like, that's not the case.

Board games are just as evil as everything else. So yeah, I guess my group kind of lucked out a little bit when it came to board games. We didn't get much else but we got board games.

But you know, this also, you know, talking about dice and things like that, one of the things that is kind of related to video games because it sort of spawned, you know, a lot of the modern sort of role-playing games and like it was sort of the spark of the imagination for it was Dungeons and Dragons and back in like the the 70s there was you know the Satanic Panic over over Dungeons and Dragons because there was so there was this widespread fear that started being propagated by few people in media that it was these people were doing occult rituals while they're

playing this game and it's just if anyone's ever played Dungeons and Dragons or knows anything about it really it is so silly to think that's what's going on any I'm sure people have taken monopoly and made it into some weird thing just because they made these weird house rules and I'm sure somebody out there maybe at one time maybe play the game of Dungeons and Dragons and maybe decided to make it an occult thing but that's one person isolated because they decided to do something weird with it that doesn't mean that the actual property itself or the game itself is harmless I mean one of the things

that Dungeons and Dragons at its core it's a game of imagination like everybody comes to it they decide what kind of character they want to play whether they're playing in a fantasy realm or a sci-fi realm they come up with a backstory for their character and you've got the Dungeon Master who takes them through the series of adventures and it's like okay you encounter a goblin and you know what do you do do you barter with the goblin do you fight the goblin do you do because you got to go save somebody or you got to go do this or do that

and it's a way of simulating when you compare it to video games the Dungeon Master is simulating the computer on the other side the AI the thing that's that's running the game for the player and in this case multiple players and it's just one of those things that is harmless harmless fun and you know it you know the satanic panic in the 70s really did a lot of damage to that brand because so many even like me I grew up without that and I always thought of it as something that was demonic I'd hear about it you know and then one of the things that brought it back into

popularity again was the show stranger things because in the very first season the very first episode it opens up with the kids playing Dungeons and Dragons and so many people were like wait a minute that's Dungeons and Dragons I thought it was something completely different I thought it was something else and then it captivated so many people and and they were like okay well I want to figure out what's more about this and you have this wide swath of adults who are picking it up for the first time because they grew up being told that it was this demonic thing and they were gonna

go on killing speeds or rampage because the demons were gonna infest them in their mind and take control over them and it's just it's the nonsense and this is something outside of the message but message people would have happily adopted it because it's saying that you know this sorts of entertainment or demonic and that seems to be a very easy thing to ingest into the message but yeah it's it's sad to see especially when you look at adults who wide swath of their childhood where they could have interfaced with innocent things and had fun with their friends they

Didn't do it because they were afraid of the ramifications for their soul Yeah, it's again. It's basically it's rules for the sake of rule So there's there's no logical reason and it's like anything else It's what you put on the gaming machine if you're playing minecraft, which is one of the most healthiest tamest Whole some games for a child to play. I wouldn't have trouble with even a two-year-old playing minecraft man It's it's building right. I mean they're gonna sit on the floor with their building blocks or they can sit in front of the television with their building blocks

This man has no clue what minecraft is or he wouldn't be saying this But like you said with the dungeons and dragons, which I was gonna mention that too, but you beat me to it Yes, this whole this whole swath of fear in this religion It's fear of the unknown and Many of these people preaching it they have no clue what it is they're preaching about They they preach for the sake of preaching and they like to hear what their own mouth says and they get excited about it And it a lot of you'll hear them say it

I'm preaching to you and I didn't even know what I was gonna say this revelation come out of my mouth And then it's some revelation like minecraft is of the devil man Yeah, well, they just they have you know the listeners have itching ears Well, I think they have an itching mouth. It's it's so freaky weird But one of the earliest games that you know and to prove the point that these guys have no clue what they're talking about Video games has this wide variety of what is a video game?

You know, I mentioned the dice thing that's an electronic game, which is essentially a video game all the way to you know whenever I was in What age was that is probably seventh grade they had all over the news because the The fundamentalist religious leaders had risen up against mortal combat Because two men were fighting on the screen and you could control them in fighting and there was one particular move that you could do on one Character you could rip his spine out and you'd hold his spine up and yes, I won I held the spine up

everybody went into This weird religious frenzy and all of these boycotts on not just the game itself, but any gaming system That had the game those were also outlawed you can't play the whole gaming system and all of its thousand games because this one single game and Even as a kid I'm like Really man? It's what you put in it like if I'm gonna put in Minecraft into this gaming system and I'm gonna play that Why ban it because it has a game that you could put in it that I don't have you know But one of the

earlier games. So they're also these text-based games. And I had no idea how widely popular this was until recently I had a client who wanted me to develop some text-based games. But my earliest experience was the Oregon Trail, which you've probably heard and played. But it's like reading a book, but it's a choose your own adventure. It presents you with where the wagons are going over the hills. And you have the choice of going into the path towards the water or the path towards the plains, which one do you want to choose? And you choose it. And then suddenly your

wife has dysentery. That's how this game worked, right? Well, my first experience with this game, I was in a school in, I think it was also, it was seventh or sixth or seventh grade. But the school had this technology center that was one of the most advanced in the nation in this little podunk town that we lived in. And on any given day, you would see people from Japan or China or India touring to see what they'd set up. You could build, and I did many of these things, you could build a V8 engine. You could build a bridge and see how much weight it would take. So you were

doing architecture, auto mechanics, computers, audio design, music. I mean, everything, everything technology. And I was in the technology side. In my opinion, it wasn't as advanced as it should have been, because you set down, you played Oregon Trail. And that was your experience with technology, right? I was bored out of my mind, like this game, I was used to miss backman. This game's no good.

And so I taught myself in that class, how to hack. It was my first experience hacking. I hacked into the game. And I got to where I taught myself to read the code, looking through it. And first I had to figure out how the hacking even worked, like I had no clue. But I started toying around with it. And I found a way to inject myself at the very, very end of the game.

Because I want to see how this thing ends. Where's this headed? Why am I playing this? And I made it to the very, very final scene before you won the game. And then all of us, I can't remember how it displayed, but it displayed these winning banners and things. Just as these guys from Japan were walking by and they looked over in the instructor who's given the tour of the facility. He looked over, nobody has ever beat that game before. There's this big celebration. And I wasn't about to say, well, I kind of hacked into it. Yeah, it is crazy. You look at stuff like that and how we're

How we're told from the minister we're not allowed to interface with these things and then we you know, we still do Because like you said, we don't understand why this is why this is wrong because it's just nothing logically seems to tell us that there's anything wrong with this Especially something like Minecraft But then you have situations where some of the kids Experience whiplash as they go through their life because just like with so many things the parents decide okay This is okay. This is fine. We'll let this in the household. We'll let the kids play some games

We'll let the kids watch the movies whatever Then some time goes by and something happens where the minister says something like oh well the video games or demonic and you know And the parents come on from churches like okay no more video games are out the door no more movies the video games are out the door We're getting rid of them all and you have some some kids growing up in these in these movements who have have this whiplash where Sometimes it's okay. Sometimes it's not and sometimes it's okay to have fun and then sometimes you're just like well

I'm back to playing with sticks, I guess because that's all that's how I got in my life You know, and it's it's so sad like you said the the the rules that have no Reason no sound reason to be there but the parents are just as caught up in this and and they want what's best for their kids They don't want their kids interfacing with demonic things and and and ruin in their lives They're trying to create they want what's best for their kids And so they hear these things come across the pulpit and they're like no

It's not because I'm trying to take away your fun I want what's best for you and I've been convinced by this minister that this is this is what you need to have ripped out of your life for your own good and It's it's sets up this vicious cycle between parents and kids that that is so unhealthy because like you know the kids They know that this is this is Poloni and a lot of times and and and then they are like Sets up this animosity with their parents and it's it's so sad But these top-down control mechanisms just work

Rick havoc and people's lives and and in some of these ways and it's so sad to see Yeah, it is sad. I mean You know my advice is this James if you're in the category of the first guy that we listen to and you are a Late teenager or however old you are and you're stuck in your mother's basement and all you want to do is play video games I'm gonna give this minister that get out of the basement man Go experience life. Don't have fun. I mean there's now that COVID has lifted There's all kinds of fun things that you can do and enjoy life

I again, I'm gonna give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully that's what he meant I don't think it came across that way and if he ever listens to this Maybe he can take some feedback and adjust to like the other normal Christian ministers would do Where it's an advice, you know, if you're gonna live in your mother's basement get out of the basement but for the people who are controlling their kids to the extent that they're actually listening to the guy over the platform when he says Minecraft is evil. Number one, this guy has no clue what he's talking about. Number two, you as

a parent, it's your job to raise your children and it's your job to make sure there aren't people who are predators who are impacting your children. And that's what this guy is. This guy is, he's creating rules for the sake of rules for authoritarian control. And if you're a parent and you're listening to this kind of thing, and you've not even stopped to think, well, is this guy does even make sense? Does he, does even know what Minecraft is? If you've not asked that question to yourself, then you're probably under his authoritarian control. And you might want to get out of there. You know what I mean? Right, you

know, because that's the thing, you know, we said it before earlier in the show, these, there are tons of games and things for all ages. Just like we talked about in the comic books episode where there are things that are designed for kids and there are some things that are designed for adults, you know, four-year-old kid probably shouldn't be playing GTA 5. I'm just gonna say they probably, that's probably a little too mature, a little too old for them, but you know, whatever it is what it is. But you know, when you look at things like

Minecraft, you've got, you've got calm music playing around this little eight-bit music that that is so serene, and then you're taking blocks, the entire world isn't made of a blocks, different kinds of blocks, and you can take the block, the grass block, and place it over here. You can build structures with it. It's virtual Legos, you know, and they introduced these little obstacles by having, you know, these little cartoonish little things come out at night to add a little bit of difficulty to it. If you choose to play in that mode, you can actually play in completely serene and build mode and not even turn that on,

but it's, but there's nothing about it. There's no adult themes in it. There's no blood and gore. There's no, like you can think of all these extreme things that the minister could be going after, and it's like, and but see, that's where you where it's where you get to when you're in the top-down authoritarian cult, is things stopped making sense when you enter the door, and when you get past that, all bets are off, and it's soon, and you get further in, and soon Minecraft's going to be demonic, and it's just like, that's just the way it goes.

Yeah, I mean Minecraft is, again, it's one of the most healthy games that you can give to your kids, and it's educational. I mean, you're learning to build, it's no different than, you know, I had these erector sets, and I had these, I can't even remember what they're called, but these little blocks that you could build castles and whatnot, they had these little pins sticking out.

Even as a little tiny child, you have these things, and in today's world, it's the equivalent of that without the mess, so... Yes, for a parent, it's the perfect thing. So, you know, my advice, again, if you're a parent and you have a man who is making rules for the sake of rules, you're probably in a bad situation, you might want to think about it.

If you're a kid and you're listening to the show, my advice is, do what your parents say. And make sure your parents are thinking, you know, bring it up to them, say, Dad, do you know, minecraft is just building blocks?

So, if you have weird doctrines that you'd like for us to discuss on the show, you can contact us on the web. You can find us at William-Branham.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Branham and the Healing Revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branham and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.