Converging Apostasy: From Gnosticism to the NAR

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 Steve Montgomery, researcher and author of the converging apostasy, a collection of thematic critiques. Steve, I've wanted to do this with you for a very long time, and we actually tried it last week, and things just didn't work out, but as you know, I have put all things Brannum research on hold for a few months, and as of, I guess it was

week before last, I'm starting to get back into this, and to the audience who have our unaware Steve is one of the people who has worked with me. Gosh, I can't even remember how many years Steve, but you were helping me connect what is William Brannum's manifested sons of God to the new apostolic reformation, to the latter reign, and there were so many pieces of the puzzle that you had, and I had all of these scattered pieces that I really didn't know what were, and you helped me put it all together. So I've been wanting to have you on the show, and I've been wanting to

help advertise your book, the converging apostasy, a collection of thematic critiques, which you can get on Amazon, and with that, I'll let you introduce yourself to the audience. Thank you very much John, it's been a pleasure to talk to you over the years, and to have this opportunity. Well, a little bit about my background is in the early 80s, I began to attend a charismatic church that was highly influenced by the word of faith folks, so that was Kenneth Hagen, Kenneth Copeland, et cetera, a little bit of Hobart Freeman thrown in there for good measure,

and so after a couple of years of that, through the help of some friends, I was sort of like, you'd say, counseled out of that group, and after that, I began to help people get out of, what a lot of people would call religious cults, or cult of like groups, so the group I worked with helped people get out of same fights, the body of Christ, also known as the move.

We also helped people get out of the children of God, and they have several different aliases. one of which was the love family, the family of love. And also we'd get people out of the way international.

And so I did that for maybe two or three years and then I began to really, really get into the idea of was there a common thread, was there something that these folks hadn't had in their backgrounds and in their influences that led them to come to similar belief systems.

And Lombie Hold that led to the later reading movement, which didn't answer all of my questions, but it did make me become aware of, as you mentioned, the manifest sons of God doctrines. And through talking to numerous people that were either pro or con on some of those beliefs, I came to realize that there was actually a prophetess, a 17th century prophetess in England, whose name was James Leed, and she actually, some of her works were inter prophecies, were directly used, plagiarized, borrowed from, by several of the main prophets of the latering movement, not all, but several of the movers and shakers,

if you put it that way. It's just so interesting when you think of all of the different connections to all of, all of what you've been researching and all of what we've been researching.

And this will probably come as a surprise to you. I don't think you and I have spoken since we uncovered this, but David Berg was a splinter group of William Brannum's message called. He was in pseudo-laterane movement.

You know, his mother was a big time evangelist, but David Berg was, as you know, got into some sexual trouble in the church he was in and he got ousted and William Brannum, prophesied over him, gave his blessing to him.

Basically helped David Berg get back on his feet after having the sex scandal and started his children ministry, which, as you know, turned into a big, big mess after that. But one of the other names you've mentioned, and I'm just gonna throw this out there for the audience to help me put the pieces together, Hobart Freeman.

I have researched him up and down and left and right because I'm looking for one key thing that I have not yet found. William Brannum had significant mental health issues from start to finish of his ministry.

And after the latter-laterane movement exploded and he was not able to handle the stress of it all. quite early on. I want to say it was 1947, maybe 49. Well, a man named William Freeman, who is this no-name evangelist, if you can look him up, you'll find absolutely nothing on this guy. William Freeman was William Brannum's replacement in the voice of healing. Brannum was the champion of the voice of healing movement, which merged eventually with Laterane. When Brannum dropped off the scene, William Freeman became their champion. Until Brannum came back, obviously, and things changed again. I have been trying to connect, is Hobart Freeman related to William Freeman,

in any way, and who is this William Freeman, where did he come from? Yeah, John, that's fascinating. That is usual. If anybody's new to your podcast, your research is very thorough, and if there's a link to be found, I'm sure you'll find it. Yeah, the Hobart Freeman thing, as I was mentioning to you earlier, at the church, I was attending called the Lord's Gathering in the Boston area.

Occasionally, we'd have folks come out and visit, and our impression at that time, of course, we were all thoroughly indoctrinated in the place we were at, but our impression was that these people were so holy, so set apart, so anointed, and so we have bi-tapes, you know, booklets that came from Hobart Freeman's ministry there in Indiana. Claypole, I believe it was, but

when I really got going with my research into the Laterane movement, which led to many, many other things, as I mentioned, Jane Leed, just kind of working backwards, but it eventually, long behold, led to someone who's extremely influential in what scholars call Western Esotericism, and that is the second century Nostec Valentines.

There were numerous other Nostics, but I'll get to the reason why I focused on him. So, Valentines has had an amazingly pronounced influence over, as I said, Esotericism. Some people like to avoid the word occult or new age because they think, oh boy, this is going to be another conspiracy theory, and they discount the actual content of what you're saying. But let me put it this way. Valentines, according to scholars, was highly influenced by Plato, by the mystery religions, and by several key scriptures from the Apostle Paul, which he spiritualized and made into things that they weren't intended to

mean. And if we move on from there, from Valentines in the second century. You get movements like, you know, playtism, you get Kabbalah, you get, I'm not sure if I pronounce this right, I've never heard anybody say it, Jekkoim of Fiori.

And then all of those currents, and there's numerous doctrinal commonalities that those groups have, even though they're very diverse, and spread out through history. But all of those things from Valentinus on through the people I just mentioned, sort of arrived at, and this is, most people say, Jacob Bowieim, okay, that's the Texas way of pronouncing it.

But no, it's German, so I think it's Hakuob, Boeing, something like that, something close of that. And what happened, he was what most people would say, the spiritual mentor of Jane Leade, who led the Philadelphia society in England, okay, the big question might be, so what?

Well, the so what is, as the latter-ranked movement began in 1948, as you know, John up in Canada, not everybody with head over heels for the manifest sons of God doctrines, matter of fact, they had to kind of develop, as the movement went on.

But I can list these guys they call the big four, because they're so influential, and so, so highly influenced by Jane Leade. This would be George Hodden, who you know, his significance in the latter-rank, also Bill Britton, I think in some ways the most influential, then there was role-conquist, who was John Robert Stevens, right hand man, considered a prophet and a apostle of the latter-rank, who kind of went off to his own, his own ends and formed his cult called the living, excuse me, the the walk, Church of the Living Word.

And then the final one out of the big four is Jay Preston Eby, excuse me. So those four folks either directly mentioned Jane Leade in their writings and their taped messages, or it can be discerned very easily.

For example, I talked to Bill Britton's daughter about this, and she says, oh yeah, he has a little track here that he produced, and it's called a prophecy out of the past, and it's directly from Jane Leade.

So having said that, we get to another, so what, that was in 1948, here's so what. Hopefully it's like, links of a chain. Right. One person has some kind of bad theology, but realizes that, hey, there's a lot of money or coinage back then in doing this thing that I'm doing.

And then somebody else takes it and they run with it. Mix in with this mental health issues, like you said, noctisism, which really funny is I came to researching Jane, Jane lead about the same time I had came in contact with you.

But I came from the opposite angle. I was at the time researching Christian identity. And at that time, I had not yet realized that Christian identity developed because of British Israelism, which is the tie to the UK, obviously.

But I was starting with Irenaeus because Irenaeus condemned the whole foundation of Christian identity doctrine, the two-seed bloodlines mating with the serpent, all of this was condemned by the very first Christian opologist, Irenaeus.

And that led me into a deep study of noctisism. And from noctisism, I landed in Alexandria, which, as you know, Valentinus was in Alexandria, but I got sidetracked because I discovered this character named Heron, they call him Heral of Alexandria.

And you don't know this about me, but I am in deep into scientific things. I like to experiment and build things. When I was a kid, when my parents would give me a radio, I would take it apart to see what made it tick and auto mechanics, I've done all kinds of things.

But I discovered Heral of Alexandria. And this was a guy that he was nothing more than a chemist, a, it was a scientist of sorts, but he was well ahead of his time. He knew pneumatics, hydraulics, and they would pay him to go into the pagan temples and bring the deities of gold or stone to life.

And one of the most fascinating inventions that he made was the priest would go under the temple and they would light this fire under this big vat of wine. And the fire would heat the wine, causing it to expand. And then he had these tubes that went up to the eyes of the deity in the temple.

So they go light the fire, they'd be preaching and say, here's our deity. And then, you know, halfway through the sermon, the deity starts crying, what looks like blood, but it's actually wine. It's just hydro, it's just pneumatics, right? He's just, you know, you, it's crazy fascinating. But anyway, long story short, all of that trail led me from the opposite side to Jane lead.

So you've got this trail directly from Nosticism, to Jane Leade. And then I discovered that Charles Price, who was, he's a figure that's not well known. William Brannum mentioned him. Brannum was connected to Price and some of Price's following.

But Price was also deeply connected to Amy Simple McPherson. And I don't know that you and I've had this conversation either since my research, but McPherson was, I found one newspaper article where it declared that the four square church was actually funding the operation at Sharon Orphanage, which is a direct title at Arrayne.

You've got Gordon Lindsay, who was working with Amy Simple McPherson. You've also got, oh, it's his name, Wesley Swift. He is the key figure in Christian identity. He was trained in Amy Simple McPherson's Bible School, among other schools, obviously.

And Gordon Lindsay was speaking in British Israel conferences in both Canada and in, what is it? Washington State, I think, different places. So they're all connected, right? And when you follow that trail, those links of people all the way back, like you said, it goes directly back to Jane Leade, but then as I found, and as you found, it goes all the way back to just pure narcissism.

That's what this movement was built upon. Yeah, again, John, that's a, that's super job of connecting some of the dots there. And what that led me to is, if I, if I stopped with the, the profits of the ladder rain in that chain and mentioning the four, what I call the big four, then those folks became a big influence on,

what, what some called the, the Kingdom message of the 1980s, primarily, that would have been Earl Paulk, Bob Reiner, John and Ann Himines or Jimenez. And from them, they influenced the NAR, but especially if you go to Bill Hammond, Bill Hammond's really key in the NAR, because C. Peter Wagner, would refer to him as, it's sort of the doctrinal fount of all infamy, no, he didn't say that, but, but of a lot of the, the doctrinal foundations for the NAR.

So, what I did in my research was I took it upon myself and it's pretty much the mid, early to mid 80s. I did, approximately 20 phone calls and I had a little, this is back in the morning.

the day of the old-fashioned telephone like so, and I put a little suction cup on the receiver to record what I was saying and what their responses were. And I wanted to find out the doctrinal issues they set up on primarily eschatology, so in the end of all things.

So here's what happened. I can wiggle this down to maybe the short easy version of it. Out of the 20 calls that I made, the eschatology of all of those 20 who had links to latering, but especially manifest sons of God doctrines.

They all, except for two, answered my question in the affirmative. Here's my question. Is it true that the perfected church, the manifest sons of God, the new man, all of these different terms that they have are essentially the same thing?

Is it true that they or we will be the means through which a perfected church and someone heads on that and says, oh no, it's just becoming complete. Well, essentially if you look at what they're talking about, it's like perfection, glorification, et cetera.

Is it true that that segment of the elite followers of Christ will politically take dominion, as I say, see Peter Wagner changed that up a little bit, but essentially it means the same thing.

Take dominion politically and then quote, Rill and Rain with Christ or for Christ and then carry out what I refer to as a sacred purge. Okay, what's a sacred purge? It's executing the literal written judgments of God.

So does that mean that the elite will point fingers and say, ooh, you're so bad, you're not following God? No, it doesn't mean that. What I found in my 20 interviews was at 18 out of 20 said literally that the wicked, meaning most people that they define as being wicked and those in the church who do not kind of get with the end time move of God, they will literally be removed by us.

And here's what several people called a kingdom principle. Kingdom principle went like this. Anything and everything that will happen from now to the end of eternity will be accomplished in through and with the corporate body of Christ.

So I pressed these folks in the interviews and I said, well, that really means removing people physically. Are you killing them?

They would say yes and give various scriptures they felt to back up and support this concept. So who did I hear that from? I heard that directly from a Bill Burton's ministry, directly from San Fife's ministry.

Now, San Fife was already deceased at the time I called. So I was right here in men, buddy Cobb answered a couple of folks from Bill Burton's ministry. I talked to associate pastors at Earl Paul's church also at John and Jimenez's church and then a host of other folks.

So I talked to George Hawden, numerous times by phone and then he would write out long letters in the old days before we had, when everything was still snail mail, he would write those things up.

Okay. And so coming to that conclusion that these things were actually not some sort of idea that Jesus, angels, God would exercise the judgment day, which is pretty much what Orthodox Christians would believe.

What we say is respecting the providence of God that he's the one that handles those things. Having come to this conclusion, I would talk to various people if I thought it would be just way interested in learning this and doing something about it.

Maybe people that had a little bit more clout than I did. I was just Joe Blow researcher. So I called spiritual counterfeits, I called the Christian Research Institute kind of no go with any of those folks and said, oh yeah, we know about the medicine of God.

Yeah, they sort of believed that, but no, you're probably misunderstanding. And I was already completely aware that I was not misunderstanding. I found a met a couple of folks who said, yeah, yes, Steve, that's exactly what they say.

It's in that terrible. Okay. So that led me to even some other things which I can go into shortly. So here's where I get really excited. You continue to go forward with your research and making all of these connections.

And I keep going backwards. I keep starting at laterane and then going backwards. And what's interesting is we're both converging again. And that's honestly, that's why I'm excited to have you on the podcast today.

We've been deeply diving into not just Christian identity, because that was the structure of what we believed, but the reason for the manifested sons of God, we've been trying to understand, because all along I have said, this is a political cult, this is not a religious cult. It is simply a political cult disguised in religion. And it wasn't until Charles and I and our historical podcasts, we started piecing all of this together. And we finally stumbled on, wait a minute, I know what this is. And it all ties back to the British Israelism I mentioned earlier. There was this theme that was created, it was created in the 1800s

in England. But it came into the United States. It was this theme that the people with white skin of the British Isles were the direct descendants of King David. And that they were the true Jews.

And all of these people who say they're Jews and all of these other races, they're not the Jews. We're the children of Israel. And then later it developed into this notion that the British Isles were of one tribe of the children of Israel and the United States and Canada were the other.

And then that came into the United States through a drawn a blank on the guy's name, Hein, I think it was. But there's a lot of money to be made with this, right? So he comes in the United States with speaking engagements and book sales, whatnot. Well, he influenced this guy named C.A.L. Totten. And Totten was a military guy. And now you've got the children of Israel combined with the interdaced theology, combined with militarization of the United States. Well, our armies, it's a bad mix. Our armies are now the armies of the children of God.

Well, he influenced one Frank Sanford who I'm certain you know the name, but for our audience, Sanford was the leader of a very destructive cult in Maine that was one of two cult compounds that Charles Fox Parham, the founder of Pentecostalism, visited to model his own following after he visited Parham, who Parham actually taught C.A.L. Totten's theology in his school and his compound. Parham also went to John Alexander Dowey, who was also a British's relight.

Dowey had the notion that he was going to just go outright by Jerusalem for the kingdom of God. And they were going to reestablish the throne there. But this developed into this weird thing when you get in towards a later reign in the manifested sons of God. Because Totten influenced Parham, Parham was teaching in Amy Simple McPherson's church and schools and people like Wesley Swift, who I mentioned, these were direct influences of parham for the British Israel doctrine.

Gordon Lindsay, William Brandham's campaign manager, was a speaker at the Anglo-Saxon Federation conferences of British Israelism. Here's where it gets interesting. Gordon Lindsay joined into this thing at the moment in which British Israel doctrine started twisting to become racial doctrine. As you remember in the 20s, the Ku Klux Klan was growing, so now you've got this notion that we, with the white skin, are the children of God.

One, in the United States, at the time the clan is widely popular. Well, suddenly those people with black skin, those must be the evil race. Those must be the demons that are coming to take over and overthrow the United States government, is what it actually ended up to be.

So you've got Totten's militaristic, very, very political version of the British Israel doctrine, combining with the white supremacy, and when this merged together, there was a notion that we need to reestablish the kingdom of God on the throne in the White House, and we are going to start a religious revolution, basically. And the reason I'm, the point I'm building up to this, a lot of people don't realize this, but C. Peter Wagner, who, you know, you've mentioned him, and we've got some research published on him, he published a book called Our Kind of People, the most racist book in the history of all of this. He is talking about how the civil rights

movement just destroyed the culture of the black people, and in his own words, the civil rights movement caused a distinct change in the attitude of American blacks towards their own cultural values in general, and toward their churches in particular, what happened to black churches during the 60s was not unlike the process of indigination that occurred in scores of cultures around the world where Christianity has been introduced. He was all forced segregating the people, and George Houghton, who is one of the other figures you mentioned, one of the big four, he had a very, very, very racist Christian identity view, and he got called out for it in his

publication entitled The Living Creature, the Origin of the Negro, and it's a horrific book, but what they're teaching, this is manifested sons of God, but more to the point, this is the racist form of British Israelism, which was developing into Christian identity, which spawned the neo-Nazis That's the, I could go on for hours talking about what that created.

But from a religious standpoint, this was the merging of militarized political weaponization of religion through Totten with the Laterane movement. When that came together, it created the NAR. That's, that's again, fastening John, I really appreciate all the good work you're doing.

All the things you mentioned that I want to take up on, if I can, that is you mentioned the, the very clear, the very clear jumps, moves, influences into anti-Semitism and, and just, you know, pure racism and hate.

It's what I didn't mention earlier, but it's part of, part of the book, I wrote a part of the research, is that, obviously, there's many, many different themes through which you can trace, basically, what the teachings of false prophets are.

But, but having looked at the earlier folks, as you mentioned, moving backwards towards Valentines, looking at some of his ideas and then those that, that progressed from him from his influence, and that eventually leads to the, the big two, which is Helena Blatziger, excuse me, Blavansky, and also Alice Bady.

And then even folks like Alistair Crowley, those, those folks exhibit some similar themes. And so this is why I mentioned, well as part of my book, is the, the convergence, the converging apostasy, so thematically, I see, I identified ten essential things that are present from everyone, from Valentines on, through all of the, the Western air, Esotericism, all of those themes, there's ten that I found are principal themes, and they're paralleled in what began, or was, I really think of Jean-Lied as a, a conduit as a focal point, those same, same ten themes show up again and they're passed on through those, whom she influenced.

Okay, so, I mean, I go into all of the ten themes, but the principal ones, and John, you'll see why, why these are very valid. Let's, let's start with Jean-Lied and maybe I'll go backwards to Valentines and those whom he influenced more directly.

So if you, if you, if you start with Jean-Lied... lead, then the idea, here's one of my central themes, recurring, it's like a recurring nightmare essentially, is ongoing revelation. Okay, so, yeah, sure, we believe in the Bible and oh, yeah, it's the final word of God. Well, no, not really, because we have prophets who are getting new revelations and who are opening up the word of God in these end times. So I know you've heard that kind of stuff add infinitum. So that would have been one of my themes.

So kind of a partner in crime with that theme is extra biblical revelations. So all of these guys and girls do that. And again, it's after a while it's like, oh, yeah, no surprise, where do they find those extra revelations? It's not really through a hotline to God. It's more through exposure to sometimes in a secondary kind of fashion exposure to some of those same old doctrines that have been around since since Valentines and all the people after him. Okay, so these are two startup doctrines that are really, really a problem, problematic. Okay, just that

lead us to that leads us actually to the Garden of Eden because pretty much the third and I would say the driving theme of what I call the converging apostasy. The third one is what I call defecation based on the original big lie. Okay, we can kind of figure what that is if we look at our Bibles, you will be as gods. Okay, so numerous takes on exactly what that means, but all of these folks have some sort of angle on that. That leads to a couple of things that I mentioned earlier. If in any way, shape or fashion, you think that the corporate body of Christ or the

individual followers of the numerous esoteric groups, if you believe that you're going to be deified, then it naturally follows that you would be like the, what do I play to call it, the king prophets, you know, you'll be able to be in charge of the other folks who aren't quite as spiritually advanced as you are. Okay, so it's that rulership idea, dominion and politically speaking, the word the, the, theocracy is thrown about quite a bit, the new order, the theocracy, et cetera, the new age, you see that with numerous prophets of the, the manifest sons of gods, doctrines and

ministries. And then the third, even goes back to Valentinus is this great purge where The ones that don't quite make it spiritually, they're done away with. Okay, so at first, I found that Valentina is not always talking about, you know, kind of like universal salvation, which you're probably wearing gene lead, pass out on to numerous folks.

And of course, the new age groups and all of the esoteric groups that we talked about, also talk about universal salvation, but it comes with a caveat. And here's how it goes. Yes, everybody's going to be perfected, but some people won't quite make it in the first round.

Now, they get taken out of the way, and either they're going to be reincarnated, there's one way that some people approach this, or, and you hear this, this is directly mentioned by royal cronquest and Wesley Swift, they will be saved, but as by fire, which is an illusion to a biblical scripture, you know, turning over to Satan so that the destruction of the flesh will preserve the soul.

And so they kind of like had their cake and eat it too. Oh, yeah, you know, God's kind of like save everybody, but we're kind of kind of being in control of how that happens.

Okay, obviously a big issue. So going through those things, it actually led to another couple of things, they're like I said, I won't go deep into them, but let's see here, how, you know, this has always been a big issue with manifest sons of God, teachers, how are we going to become perfected?

Is it through praying real hard a lot? Is it through separating ourselves from those other kind of lowly Christians? How does this really occur? Well, this is another issue that people kind of raise our brains and say, are you kidding me?

No, I'm not kidding you. If you go back to Valentinus perfection and sinlessness comes to bodily receiving your personal angel. He had different words for this. He would say angel, he would say the bridegroom, but he was, he was not talking about Jesus Christ.

Specifically, he's saying each person has their own bridegroom up in what he'd called the pluroma, which is similar to what some people call the the great cloud of witnesses, similar to what people in a new age, we have been following, Alice Bady, that tradition, they would call it the individual members of the spiritual hierarchy.

And again, that's got a long, long history throughout the esoteric world. Okay. How does perfection come? It comes to union with those folks. Now, I saw that very, very directly through role-cronquist. I saw that implied very subtly through Bill Britton.

And I talked to his daughter about this. He refers to this as God's two armies. And he totally stole this from Jane Leed. OK, God's two armies. You've got one in the heavily, so OK, those are the angels or else they're the very cloud of witnesses, whatever you want to say.

And then we've got the perfected or will be a perfected body of Christ on earth. And then what happens is in the great consummation of all things in the end times, these two armies will meet.

Well, is that specific? Is that general? Oh, they'll meet. And they'll do judgment day. No. What a lot of these folks literally say is that they will come into union. And again, in the esoteric world, this is spelled out pretty clearly.

You got all the way from the spiritual hierarchy ideas, the Ascited Masters ideas. And you also have all the new age folks talking about channeling this with that entity. But then you get more, the big picture, which is, well, how would we?

This is what I was getting at. How would we become perfected through the numerous, numerous different ways of saying exalted beings from angels to spirits in the hierarchy union with them and through them working through.

And this is what I call this a symbiotic relationship because they gain, and you might have recalled seeing this in Wesley Swiss writings and others, and probably Jim Jones and Brannum also, they gain perfection by having our bodies, and other sons bizarre, to become incarnate.

And the body of Christ on earth, the individual members of the body of Christ would gain their perfection through, obviously, higher beings than themselves than their mortal bodies. So this became one of the issues that began to circulate in the granted, in the very, very deep end of the pool.

If you want to put it that way, of the manifest sons of God, teachers. Right. And that was, for me, that's where things just went a very unusual direction. I'm a science fiction fan.

If you can't tell it, right behind me in every one of my podcasts, I have the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. I'm a big science fiction fan. And people who are in this cult, and it's blancher groups, they often ridicule me for my science fiction background, but they don't realize just how close this comes to science fiction.

And you mentioned Jim Jones, you mentioned Wesley Swift. Well, out of British's realism, and more towards the Christian identity side, they developed pure themes of nosticism where there was a being that was out there in the universe, that you were supposed to be living on this earth to channel and become the fulfillment of.

And what happened was, and the timing is just really interesting, at the moment in which the laterane movement was birthed. That is the same exact time in which the flying saucer craze began to spread throughout the United States.

And these guys began claiming that there were these celestial beings, you can look up the transcripts of Jim Jones, you can hear him saying this almost verbatim. There were these celestial beings, and I am a manifestation of that being.

And the higher I become in my spiritual plane, the greater my manifestation of that being becomes. That was a core doctrine in the Brannum movement, everything that splintered from the Brannum movement developed this.

But what shocked me was to learn that this, although for me it originated with Brannum, for the world it did not. These were central themes in Christian identity as the height of racism was being burst in the United States.

They were claiming the same thing. You can go to Wesley Swift's archives, and you can look at his UFO flying saucer theology because what they were trying to say is, we are so much higher than the people with black skin that we're not even of this world.

Exactly. Yeah, John, that is exactly true. And you saw my reaction is like, you've seen this thing. Yeah, so the how-to, the nitty gritty, the practical way of how do we become perfect. What sets us apart essentially is, you know, we're from another world.

Well, that is so clearly expressing the esoteric world. But yes, it did find its way into the esoterically infused Christian world if you want to put it that way. And there's more, okay, if you go, if you go to Bill Hammond, what a fascinating fellow.

Bill Hammond, when I was doing my interviews, he was by far the most willing to totally spill the beans. He would tell, oh yeah, that means this, that means this. And he went on and on and on.

And he talked, he talked about the three central themes I'm talking about. Yeah, obviously. at the ongoing revelations, he's a prophet. And, but the one about a real array with Christ, he was quoting all the same manifests, sons of God, angles on scripture.

And then taking dominion, yes, he's full of that, and then the literal purge. And so what Bill Hammond told me, when I asked these questions about it, is that really what our roles, Christians, in the end times will be, he goes without missing a bead, he says, well, well, yeah, what's it in the Old Testament where they wouldn't top off the heads, I don't know if we got what scripture's referring to, but one of the ones that had to do a judgment of the ungodly, and he says, and then he's kind of parroting his critics,

he says, well, you might say, I don't know if you've heard that so many times, he says, well, some will say that that's in the Old Testament. Well, what I say is, what about when Peter spoke the word of judgment, and they felt dead at his feet, and then he says, whether you cut their heads off or whether you speak the word of judgment, death is death, any way you look at it, and then he gave a really sinister laugh.

And so, yeah, okay, I get it, I see where you're coming from. And so, for his big, big influence in the NAR, you know, you can track it with others, I call them self-annoying conferences of infamy or what are, there's a million ways to look at it so dynamically, but you're all those conferences and relationships with other prophets and apostles of the NAR, he has kind of subtly spread some of that stuff, and nowadays, what I hear more often,

some of the, like the leftover odor of that stuff is you can still breathe it, but it comes out, it's like, better watch out, there might be a civil war where Christians rise up and support Trump, excuse me, I said that word, didn't I?

That's literally what they're talking about, son, and, you know, it's all,

you continually hear that sort of thing from like his underlings, which would be like Cindy Jacobs, another prominent prophet in the NAR, and Bechel, Mike Bechel, and who's the other one, Rick Joyner. They're all into that kind of slightly modified and slightly euphemistically turned judgments, literal judgments that will be carried out through the sons of God, they just, they realize that those are kind of controversial things to say, so they kind of have to him and hall and represent it, baptize it, if you will, so that it will, you know, the deep, and actually I was told that by, by,

Hey man in his own words The these are deep things of God and you know, he says get well. Here's paraphrase what he said He says yeah, you know, it's so it's so revolutionary that some people just can't accept it Meaning don't think you're a hair take perhaps or a lunatic perhaps Yeah, right I I left whenever you mentioned the political name that shall not be named but When you look at the themes of what's going on in the United States now Not just in the political world but also in the religious world You can take just like we've done with all of this research of all of these

Building blocks of bad theology You can trace all of these things all the way back to the trails that we're mentioning To the extent one of the key figures We're about to introduce into our podcast the historical podcast Is a guy named Gerald LK Smith who had the america first party Which launched about the same time as either that or the christian nationalism party he had he had both of those parties But at the same time the latter rain was being birthed he was launching basically the This christian nationalist movement is what it developed into and

You look at that and you think well that's off to the side. He's a political guy Even though he is a minister He has nothing to do with the Laterane because he's a disciples of christ minister But remember these were political cults disguised as religious cults and the british israel framework Advertised itself as inter-denominational We don't care who you are as long as you're part of our white supremacy body. We don't care who you are and The connections to smith Are unbelievable Smith Smith launched his claim to fame in shri port lewiziana right where william brannum's headquarters was

I don't want to give away too many of the secrets because we're about to explore it in our podcast, but Let's just say the trails to white supremacy are unbelievable and as you mentioned without the manifested sons of god theology Which was birthed from the same thing None of this that we're talking about today would even exist Yeah, well, it's always what you say leads to like numerous ways who that brings up this and this and this but let me say this is You mentioned the year 1948 You may be aware actually have a segment and I'm in my book which

Kind of in the vernacular. I said because I don't pretend to be a scholar Although I use scholarly information and text I said so what's up with 1948 and so you get to as you mentioned you get the ufology kind of stuff happening obviously the lettering. Swift brings us up. He says, do the Nostite Gospels, which were recently uncovered?

Do they verify Christian identity? Looks like he thinks so. Or Validating said, and another thing, if you're going to that other spiritual cousins in the esoteric world, one of the really central books that Alice Bady wrote, and I mean, if your listeners don't know this, she specifically says that she's working on trying to introduce concepts to the to the esoteric world that will prepare for the reappearance of the Christ in which she calls the externalization of the spiritual hierarchy. Well, as I looked at this and I began to think, I said, huh, they're already, and this would take too long to explain, there's already bridges between

the esoteric world and the manifest sons of God teachers, some through their ongoing revelations where they kind of arrive at same conclusions. Other spiritual actual, literal connections where somebody says, hey, manifest sons of God, they're sort of like us new ages. Let's support them, get into what they're doing, and vice versa, some manifest sons of God saying, well, they kind of believed like what we do, but oh, yeah, but we like the Bible. And so they sort of have a difference. Anyway, 1948 also Israel becomes a state, also Alice Bady writes, the reappearance of the Christ, and she also writes the externalization of the hierarchy. If you look at externalization

of the hierarchy and what that term is talking about, it comes out to sound very much like what people in the sonship move, or present truth move, call the manifestation of the sons of God.

So in other words, you have these higher entities beings, or perfected versions of us, loyal immortals, and the esoteric world and the so-called Christian world is infused with this kind of stuff, come to the same conclusion. Okay, back to Valentinus, if I may for a very quick moment here. Valentinus, actually, according to the esoteric world, and this comes from Alastair Crowley, very notorious, as we know, people looked at him. Alastair Crowley calls Valentinus a saint. He also calls Jane Leeds, a spiritual mentor, Jacob Boen. He's a saint, interesting. And if you look at Helena Blavatsky, she says that Valentinus was the greatest of

on Aztecs. Okay, that's interesting also. Well, what do we learn from Valentines? From my idea of having 10 thematic themes, well, that's redundant, isn't it? 10 different themes to the which to analyze all these apostate versions of whatever the thinkings of truth.

You can get all 10 of them to Valentines without listing all of them secret noses. Okay, well, that's where you're getting these extra biblical ideas, et cetera, from on high, the revelations you're getting. But a couple of things that I know would be very high interest to you, John.

If you don't know, I haven't heard this already, Valentines introduced what he thought were two new sacraments. So he actually held to at least a form of other sacraments that, you know, Orthodox Christians would agree with, but he added two more sacraments, one, which he called the sacrament of redemption. Huh, sounds like Christianity being redeemed, et cetera.

No, Irenaeus who mentioned actually analyzed what Valentines was talking about. And it's actually the sacrament of renunciation. He's renouncing the hold that the Jewish God Jehovah has on you so that you may progress spiritually and become divine to union with your bridegroom and slash like slash personal angel. Okay, so there you have that perfectionist idea, which the esoteric world really loves. They call it the great work. You know, that concept has been around forever. And you also have his other sacrament called the bridal chamber.

So anybody who's read about esoteric stuff, this is a fairly common idea. Essentially, it's like this. They hate, they take the idea, which was a part of the, you know, the ancient world where, where literal sexual union between a priestess and a, a stand-in for one of the gods would be performed. And they thought that this would honor the gods, bring blessings, your crops would grow and so on and so on. And so Valentines based his ideas, some word on that. But what he said was the bridal chamber is for perfection, because it's all about union, get it? Yes. The esoteric world, Kabbalah.

And the gnostic ideas from Valentinus highly sexualized, that's just the way they roll. And so anyway, what else did it do? The bridal chamber led to any of those extreme ideas, which I'll just recall, you know, there's picked up about what they frankly call sex magic, and they misspell that for you.

Okay, so you've got that in, how did the racism thing have a precedent set by Valentinus? Well, here's what he did. With that thing about the redemption, he also, he said that, you know, it's a renunciation of God, at least Jehovah, that version of God, but it also set the precedent for racist ideas about who's in and who's not in.

And you can actually look at comments from Blavatsky and others. That could be another whole podcast as you know, John, looking at the ideas that were prevalent in pre-Nazi Germany, some of the societies of many that had influences from Blavatsky, which very clearly states things that, I mean, it sounds like Christian identity.

Right. And, you know, Christian identity, racism, the way it's developed in the United States, none of it can exist without that basis in narcissism. It is literally taking the gospel of Jesus Christ, where whosoever will can be saved, because Jesus died for you.

The gospel in its simplicity, well, they've turned it into there were two bloodlines that entered the earth, one of them good, one of them bad. And if you're of that good bloodline, where you're saved.

And if you're not, well, there's not much chance for you. How does that fit within the gospel? And the problem, you know, for me, as I'm unraveling all of this that was programmed in my head, I kept coming back to this one single question.

How can they take a Bible verse and twist it so badly out of context that it means absolutely nothing like what the chapter said, right? Well, when you factor in British Israelism and what developed in the Christian identity based on this theme, you start to realize that the Bible itself doesn't really matter to them because what they believe is that this is the new Israel.

This is where in the new Bible days, where in the manifested sons of God days, and they take that one single verse where it talks about these were a shadow of the thing. to come. They have twisted that so far out of context of what they believe actually is that when you read a passage from the Old Testament, it was a shadow for what we are now. And so let's invent this new thing and let's call it the Bible. And so you ended up in the manifested sons of God days with spoken word revelations. And they, in fact,

they use that as a phrase. And in some of their business entities, they called it that, you know, the the brand of organization is called the voice of God recordings. And its publications, its blocks is the spoken word. Jim Jones used the spoken word. And they've all got this, you know, Kenneth Hagen, the, the reema. It's, they've all got this phrase that means we can create this new thing. It's new and exciting. And signs wonders. And I kept coming back to that one single verse that said an evil and adulterous sign, evil and adulterous generation seeks after a

sign. They did not care. They did not care. They wanted to make the signs wonders. Wow. Will amaze you. Step right up. Step right up. Folks, they even had William Brandham traveling with the levitating boy, David Walker. They don't care, right? So I, you know, like I said, I'm, I'm so glad we got together and started putting all this, this research together because you have helped me tremendously in helping to understand what this was that was programmed into my head and where it came from. Likewise, John. I really appreciate all your help. I mean, specifically, I, if you're,

if you're listening, don't know this, I would, I would text John and expect, oh, well, maybe in a week or so, he'll get back. And I would have a very specific question. Did Brandham ever say this? And he would give me chapter in verse, like probably on the same day or the next day, just has real extensive memory. I would know knowledge, but you must have a very good memory, John.

And I have to say, you probably feel this every time you do a podcast, I'm going, wow, we didn't say this yet. We didn't say this yet. And there's so much more that would hopefully make your listeners, Christian and non-Christian, because I think if somebody was not a Christian and heard some of this, hopefully it would say, well, that's not what Christian and it is. And they would see the opposite. You know, I can't remember where I heard this, but there's theology. Some of the early church fathers would implement, which is sort of showing the negative in order to prove

what the positive is. I don't know if that's the perfect way of exegesis, but in other words, this is not where God is like. This is not Christ. This is not salvation. However, by looking at that, you can see, perhaps, an inroads to what is a legitimate, saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

Absolutely, and my mind just thinks like this. I have the mind of an architect. So whenever I'm trying to prove a point, I prove what the point is not. And I don't always, I don't always get it right.

You know, sometimes I will go down a path and I'll say, whatever is the theory, I was trained to believe Acts. Well, I want to go back and examine, well, what about why? What is the polar opposite of this?

You know, that's just how my mind thinks. And by doing so, you can rule out the, what is false by trying to prove the false. If it can't be proven and it is truly false, well, what else is associated to the false?

And that's why my mind just goes that direction. So, well, this, this has been great fun. And I'm going to talk to you after this. And hopefully you'll do some more episodes like this, because I'm certain this is going to fascinate our listeners.

But before we end it, I want to ask you to tell our listeners again about your book where you can find it, where they can get it, and make sure that they're aware that your book exists.

Yes, thank you very much, John. How you'd find that book is, it's on Amazon Books. It's called The Convergent Apostasy, Colon, a collection of thematic critiques by Stephen, that's Stephen with the pH, the biblical spelling, Stephen Montgomery.

I have a little thing to throw in there is that not being a whiz at computer stuff like John is, I uploaded the versions and said, yes, ready to go. And I got the sample copy of it and said, ooh, the formatting is not so wonderful.

There's a gap like so, and it should be like so. I did find a couple of misspelling issues and slight grammar issues. Maybe John has the same issue is that having a fair amount of knowledge in a certain area, you have to really watch out for run on sentences, or else not run on sentences, but highly complex sentences that could be maybe divided up in two or three portions.

So what I'm actually working on right now, just about done with, is a second edition. So if you don't mind as a little tiny issues, I think the content would be very informative, very eye-opening, and would lead you to ask further questions, but the second edition will be much more manageable.

This book is 468 pages approximately. It's got at least five or six pages worth of the work cited. over the place and what I'm actually going to do after I finish this second edition is produce a much, much shorter version of these ideas, which essentially is going to focus on perfectionism, demeaningism, and eliminationism through all of these folks that I've said to the esoteric world and to the so-called Christian world. In that, I'm estimating would be like 40 or 50 pages long and I could probably produce that through Amazon on paperback.

So I'll end that, yeah John, I would love to come back and discuss whatever you want to talk about. Excellent. So if you are a researcher and you want to have the information quickly, you can grab the book right now, the converging apostasy, a collection of thematic critiques on Amazon. And if you're a casual reader and you want to wait for the polished version, it will be coming out soon. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For an overview

of the historical research of William Branum and the healing revivals, you can read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Auroble.