Converging Apostasy: Mysticism, Britton, Fife and the NAR

Hello and welcome to another episode. 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, author of The Converging Apostasy, and a quick outline of hands-on eschatology, a matter of timing and agency.

And together we're examining the themes of apostasy in the New Apostolic Reformation and its history. Steve, we've been diving so deeply into Jane Leed and merging that with Christian identity to lay the framework for where this podcast is heading with The Converging Apostasy and understanding that mysticism flowed all through it.

It was a little shocking to many of our listeners. I don't know if you got a chance to see the comments on the YouTube site, but there's so much mysticism that flowed through it, and key figures of the Laterane movement and Christian identity both were simultaneously influenced by what appears to be the works of Jane Leed in some branches and sects of white supremacy and Christian identity.

And definitely in the Laterane, we have clear evidence that Jane Leed was one of the primary influences through people like Charles Price, who had her writings. But today we're now bringing everything that we've talked about in the past.

What is it? Four episodes now. Bring it together and laying the framework of how this exploded into the Laterane movement and beyond. And hopefully the listeners can understand that we're showing the trails that lead directly to what today we call the NAR.

Absolutely, John. The NAR is sort of the target or the arrival point from which all the other streams have been flowing towards. And so two really key figures that have come to my mind as we've been doing this series of podcasts are Bill Britton and Sam Fife.

And I have mentioned Bill Britton before. I don't think Sam Fife is much. But just to start off, a little bit of background on Bill Britton was when I was helping to do exit counseling for people who had been in religious cult.

that were related to the latter reign or the manifest sons of God teachings, Bill Brittenstein came up repeatedly as sort of a founding father, a mover and a shaker, if you will, to those sorts of doctrines.

And actually his influence can be felt, even in some folks that are Christian identity, slash manifest sons of God, like say somebody like David Ebal. So yeah, it's a little background to Bill Britten.

He was a one time associate of Sam Fife and they became estranged to one another. And there was a breaking away. Bill Britten, for all the oddities he had in his teachings, was a little bit more feet on the ground's kind of guy.

He was, I would say, a little bit more socially minded than Sam Fife, Sam Fife, of course. Take his followers and forms, small communes and farms. And unfortunately, Fife was one of those ones who had many, I think pretty clear references and proof that he had physically and sexually abused people in his cult, including child abuse.

And that was primarily through his elders, but I think he was involved too. And his cult was known as the Body of Christ and the Move.

And so just like you're saying John, you know, of course, the followers of William Brand and the message, the move was this other trend that was happening. Another bizarre thing about Bill Britten was that he supposedly led the Guatemalan dictator, military dictator, Rios Mont to Christ.

He witnessed him and brought him to Christ. Unfortunately, Rios Mont shortly thereafter was accused of war crimes against humanity in his military endeavors in Guatemala and elsewhere. Another important fact about Britten was that he made the writings of George Warnock available, as I think I might have heard this from you before, John, is that John Robert Stevens of the walk, another manifest sons of God-oriented teacher was highly influenced by the Feast of Pat Mord ankles.

And so George Warnock was also present in North Battle for it when the laterally got started. Okay, so why is that important, is that the Feast of Pat Mord ankles was probably one of the first and most influential doctrinal presence.

of lettering, influence, manifest sons of God teaches. So what I think of as the big four are those who are very, very directly and clearly related to Jane Leeds influence. And they were all prophets in the lettering movement, but it's clear that not all prophets in the lettering movement, let's say prophets with quotation marks, not all of them talk the manifest sons of God teachings.

So just a quick review for your listeners, manifest sons of God, well it's clearly in a Bible in Romans 8. But the thing that makes it a problem is that the advocates of this sort of belief system that we're analyzing say that the sons of God will become manifest essentially divine with the ability to right, right justly judge those who they disagree with or lesser Christians and take the meaning of their faith.

They say all of this will occur prior to the repair of Jesus Christ. So you can see this is a little bit problematic. So the big four would include Bill Burton, George Houghton, Roll Cronquest, and J. Preston, EB.

Okay, how do I know this? Well, it's apparent in Bill Burton's writings, you know, anything about Jane Leeds teachings and what I go hands on, eschatology, it's fairly clearly outlined in Bill Burton's writings.

It was also verified by the research of Dr. Bridget Jacobs, who's a scholar, she's ex-Narr, as we mentioned ours, a very important factor of all this stuff we're talking about. It was also verified through the research of Bill Mackinstead, who analyzed tons and tons of writings as you have, and I've both done.

But just to confirm things further, on August 9, 2020, I give a call to Bill Burton's daughter, her name is Becky Britton Hyphen Volts, and she said, sure enough, she looked in her computer, she said, yeah, it's right here.

So anyway, that ladder rain, excuse me, that Jane Leeds connection is very clear through Bill Burton. The ladder rain connection, which is taking us one step closer to the NARA, that can be shown in a couple of ways.

One is a writing of an associate that I have, her name is Georgie Kenyon-Cindray. She's written the emerging church, excuse me, the emerging world church with the help of Dr. Bob K. Wright. And of course, to what she has discovered. She says that Bill Britain became associated with the so-called spiritual outpouring of 1948. And as a lot of people were, due to the doctrines and practices, which were fairly extreme, he was excommunicated from the assemblies of God.

He is warned in his writings that any, he's not the only one who's made these outlandish warnings, but he said he warns that anybody who speaks against the latter reign will be judged by God. And if you look at his writings, judged by God is pretty, pretty heavy tall order there that can be pretty, pretty dangerous. So what about Bill Britain's connections to other prophets? There's a personal letter that I have found through an associate that says that Don Tobias, he was critiquing some of Bill Britain's writings and not in a very positive way, but trying to be fair-handed about it, looking at them from scriptural angles.

And Britain's response was that he was saved to Mr. Tobias that, well, I do all my ministry and my connection with other solid men of God. And I have fellowship with them. Well, who did he list?

He list Bob Wiener, who, depending on the way you looked at things, you might just say, well, it was a little bit extreme, but a lot of people identified him as another letter and inspired cult leader of a campus group called Maranatha Ministries.

Another thing that another couple of folks at Bill Britain said he was associated with solid men of God, Charles Smith and Larry Thompson. Those were two of the leaders of the cult-like separating discipleship movement, aka the Fort Lauderdale 5. And yes, there's been people who've literally been, if you want to call it, brainwashed, whatever, associated with those groups, very, very authoritarian, and sort of in your face and controlling whatever you do. Finally, one of the other significant people that Britain says he's associated with is John Jimenez.

Well, that becomes interesting, and it's sort of a side angle to all this stuff, taking into more of the esoteric world and the so-called New Age teachings. Why John Jimenez is significant with Britain, is that John Jimenez, Bill Britain and George Warnock, formerly mentioned, were all commended by Ernest Ramsey. Ernest Ramsey was an Alice Baby follower and Ramsey wrote, with the neopenocostals and their amazing new age teachings.

Their ramps is clearly connecting Britain and Werner to capitalistic writings and ways of finding secrets in the Old Testament. And the way Britain would say it is line upon line, precept upon precept, and that this is symbolic types and shadows to discover no-sister of secret knowledge from the Old Testament.

For listeners who recognize many of these names that Steve has mentioned, you will immediately make the connections into what later became the New Apostolic Reformation and you can see the direct levels of influence and where it came from.

To those who haven't, Charles and I addressed this somewhat in our historical revival history series in the podcast. And we created this road map basically of influence and you can find it on William-Brandom.org slash letter rain.

You can see the map and I'll try to throw it up here on the screen for the YouTube feed. But there is a clear level of influence heading both directions and what gets really interesting is that there's a point in time in which it is clearly a politicized movement.

And when you think about what the NAR is currently doing and all of the political implications of what they're doing, that gets really key to understand. You mentioned Guatemala, for instance, and it sounds like this wonderful side story.

But as we've explored on the William-Brandom research side, there were cult communes being set up in South America that were directly connected to the William-Brandom and the letter rain movement that were not good or revival places.

They were torturing prisoners, killing people, molesting children, producing weapons of mass destruction, arms deals the whole bit, and helping Nazis escape into South America. And there was a United States government connection to it.

So whenever you mention, you know, the leader of Guatemala being converted to the faith, well, the letter rain movement through the help of Nixon and some of that history were helping to install Penochet, which is Chili's, you know, the worst dictator they've ever had.

So there's this clear political influence. And where that gets really interesting is when you consider the framework that allowed all of that, all of the men that we're talking about were wholly invested in the manifested sons of God, doctrine.

And people who politicized it in the United States, such as Wesley Swift, Swift was the second in command of the California Ku Klux Klan, spreading white supremacy, Christian identity, and he was deeply connected to the early formations of the Christian nationalist movement.

So this was a very politicized movement, and all of these guys are deeply connected to Laterane. The Sam Fife and the Walk, for instance, even on the Wikipedia page, you can find some of that information, but he was fully invested in the manifested sons of God theology, because it was a framework that quite frankly was established to create a level of control that could enable a central figure.

And in doing so, these guys could create influence over the masses. And during, I can't remember what episode it is, but Charles and I went into some of that as it was related to politics, and Richard Nixon was actually working with the full gospel businessmen, and gave this speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, which is also tied to this thing, wherein he was instructing the evangelical world to use their political influence to imprint on the minds a very politicized charge against communism, whether you like communism or not, that's separate from this issue, but you can see this merging of religion

and politics, and many of these men took it to heart. Where it gets really interesting is whenever you look at Sam Fife and the move, in the fall of 1971, Sam Fife believed that the tribulation and second coming of Christ was near, and William Brannum in the Laterane movement was saying that in 1977, he could see nothing beyond that, and so the world would end before 1977, which obviously failed.

But Sam Fife, who was influenced in this doctrine, began moving people, people were leaving their homes, their jobs, their family, security, and moving to locations in Canada, Colombia, Alaska, basically out of the United States, because the end of day scenario painted by Laterane through William Brannum was that the United States was going to be the target of communism's wrath, and that charge came directly from Nixon's influence on Brannum to take this charge against communism in still such a fear in the people's minds.

So what that developed into is the fear itself becomes a mental prison for these people. They're trapped in these cults because of the fear, and that enabled Sam Fife to move and numerous other groups that we've explored.

Yeah, John, that's... fascinating and tells me I need to visit your website again because I know you're constantly adding things. I was not aware about the the Nixon connection somehow based on other things that happened through Nixon that doesn't sound entirely unusual but the part about the NARA you know we're always tying this back to where it's where it's come to today. I actually saw on I guess what you'd call just a secular news outlet. One of the reporters has fondly you know when I watch the news and they're talking about stuff that I say I say oh they're barely getting to

the tip of the iceberg related to the minion and so forth. Somebody recently I think it was the journalist Laura Cotes. Laura Cotes in her program was very specifically outline and critiquing the seven mountains of C. Peter Wagger. So you know finally it's coming around and to me I told my wife I said hey they should be interviewing me or John because we could add so much more than this particular Mrs. Cotes knew about it and I don't know who informed her but I was just glad to see that it was being talked about at least to a certain extent. But yeah John

the also the thing about Sam Fife just an interesting thing that came about for when I was talking to Bill Britton's daughter Becky I wanted to know how they broke away in other words how did Sam Fife and Bill Britton decide that they weren't going to be uh fellowshiping much more working together well Sam Fife and several of his writings mentions Bill Britton at conferences and it's always vague they don't know he doesn't say where the conference was who else spoke what year it was anything like that but the Bill Britton plug is there you also hear um certain certain doctoral uh things and

certain uh loaded piece loaded language that comes from Britton and it goes in the Sam Fife smell but I asked Becky uh I said well what wasn't the cause to your dad to not really fellowship with fighting and work together and I said specifically it's a doctrinal reason because they both you know have pretty outlandish ideas she said no it wasn't for doctrinal reasons she says it was pretty much what you were talking about John uh that Fife separated his his flock into small uh communal farms and spread them about and we're waiting to become manifest sons of God and waiting for the

kingdom to come um and the other reason that Becky said that her dad uh Bill uh this fellowship from Fife is the excuse me the it's stream amount of control that five head over his elders and the members of the flock.

So Britain was more like, he actually has a pamphlet, which very humbly describes himself as prophet on wheels. So he was more friendly in that sense of wanting to spread the garbage to other Christians and trouble about giving seminars and so on and making prophecies.

But besides the personal interviews that I did, of people associated with five or Bill Britain, and besides the scholarly research that has addressed some of these, there really needs to be much more investigation that there is some out there.

What do I base my knowledge of Bill Britain's ideas on? Over the years, either through the old days when we had cassette tapes and then pamphlets and tracks, what not. I looked at 14 primary sources from Bill Britain and it's up for your listeners.

I just go ahead and mention them because if they have run into this stuff, then okay, this is one of the predecessors of the NAR and the NAR really doesn't teach much different from what Bill Britain does.

It's just worded slightly differently, but the basis and the bottom line is the same. Okay, so here's a list I have here. Hebrews, the book of better things. Now that's a side topic, John, but for all of the manifest sons of God, teachers that I've ever looked into, they really, really love the book of Hebrews because it talks about the great cloud of witnesses, which you'd have discussed before.

For them, this is essentially talking about you're not alone. There's this great cloud of witnesses and you can tap into some kind of communication with them and oddly enough, people like Roe Cronquist, who I think you might have mentioned before and I've mentioned, Roe Cronquist was one of those influenced by Jane Lee. He very, very clearly says that the cloud of witnesses will become incarnate in the body of Christ on earth, therefore making them essentially immortal, divine manifest sons of God. Okay, so the next book is a closer look at the rapture, all of the manifest, and

this is apart from any kind of disputes on whether there's, you know, how somebody stands on the rapture or not, but all of the manifest sons of God, teachers and all of the stuff you see from the narer, they want to get away from the rapture. Why? Because the rapture is like, hey, you're out of here, everything is okay. You don't have to worry.

about anything anymore. They do want to worry about stuff because they would prefer to quote, take the kingdom as elite believers. Another one is called Peter's Shadow and in that one Britain has some odd things to say about. Sounds very mystical. Reach for the stars, the beautiful veil, heaven on earth. That sounds like the kingdom of God. This next one has a funny title to me, John, because it reminds me of something Karl Marx wrote. Listen to the title, see what you think. Sons of God awake. Okay. Yeah. That might have been written in a very

famous Marxist book. The harness of the Lord treasures of the snow. When I first got that book on thing, oh, this is going to be about the beauty of God's creation. No, it actually has some real tricky footwork that Bill Britain did to get back to that idea carrying out the judgment day through the manifest sons of God. Ruth, the great harvest. What is it? That almost reminded me of skip a skip from Saturday Night Live. What's up with that? So he says, what is it? Yeah, I'm thinking, yeah, what is your teaching? Tell me more plainly. Then the one that really specifically talks about

Jane Leid and her 60 propositions is called a prophecy out of the past that was a track that written, circulated. And yeah, the thing of its source, how it got into the hands of the latering folks is accurate. Jesus, the patterns, one of its more famous works, because it very clearly outlines the idea, which you can get in Mormon teachings and elsewhere, that Jesus was just man with a lot of power. And following God so perfectly that he earned his sonship, so to speak, and I know Brandon talked about sonship also. So that's an important one. Here's one that if you

if you think it tastes like, smells like, and feels like, you're correct, Jesus was not a Jew. Hmm, is there something behind that teaching? Yeah, as a matter of fact, there is. We talked about that briefly a couple of sessions ago. Now, this next one really does raise eyebrows, and for good reasons, called Lucifer, the shining one. Without explaining everything in a little booklet, it's pretty much saying Satan, Lucifer, two separate beings, and one of the two is a tool in the hands of God to to perfect the saints. You mentioned getting away from the rapture. And people have

asked me that question, whenever you're in this cultist mindset, you have this very black or white view. And so when you see another group that has descended from your group, and they have some variation on what you believe.

think, well, they're not part of us. They just went astray, not recognizing that what happens is this theology evolves and changes over time, sometimes to the polar opposite of what it was before. So when you look at any of the grandchildren of Latter-Ein, for instance, they're not going to look even similar than their great grandchildren and so on and so forth.

And the notion of get away from the rapture, people have asked me, why did they change that? Because that's fundamental to Brandeum's teaching and it flowed through Latter-Ein. But I've come to the conclusion that William Brandeum's rapture theology was based off of so many extrabiblical facts that many of these men just cannot openly say.

They now people understand the Bible and you have the new translations, the SV, that they're reading. So they recognize that the extrabiblical things that Brandeum and anti-biblical things that Brandeum said in Latter-Ein couldn't fly today.

But also Brandeum's rapture was supposed to happen before 1977. So if they continue that rapture framework that was laid out, well, they've got this clear problem because we're way past 1977. And yet they still use things like the great cloud of witnesses and spiritualism flows through it.

One of the things that they did in Latter-Ein is they would have these prophetic insights or visions where they say that they appeared on the other side and they spoke with the souls of the dead.

And it's a divine healing cult and not everybody gets healed. So they have to have an answer for this. And one of the answers is, well, and this came directly from William Brandeum. He said, well, I appeared to the other side and I spoke with this dead person and they're happier there now.

So it's okay if they died and my faith did not heal them or whatever was the gimmick. And it's spiritualism, it's a very anti-biblical notion but they want to communicate with the dead, which is in the Old Testament, they would stone you for communicating with the dead.

And they also want to tap into fortune telling like a Christian crystal ball and the way that this was enacted in the Latter-Ein movement is they would set up these private interviews and they could go to the whoever is the man who has the Christian crystal ball and they could come with some problem that's in the future and this man would go, oh, I see God is showing me through my crystal ball of my mind that if you do such and such you'll have the outcome that is best for you, that actually would not give

what would happen, they would say that if you choose this you'll choose the right path basically, which is very vague. And where that gets really interesting is that These types of interviews happened with members of the Jonestown cult when they were in Indianapolis.

And these are the people that went to Jonestown and drank the cyanide lay school aid. So all of this comes back together and the framework that was laid out with Laterane. Even though the theology has evolved over time and is in many cases not even similar and polar opposite, it is an evolving, ever-changing, ever-growing theology based off of this core.

Yeah, Jon, that's really significant stuff you're talking about there. And you're kind of leaning into the well with the crystal ball and making predictions and visiting the spirits, supposedly, to get higher knowledge. That leads very well into the next segment that I was going to throw out there.

And that is the question that happened after reading those 14 books and interviewing folks related to the governance ministry, comes to my mind where the bread didn't get all this stuff. Okay? Well, the idea of having influences they were heading a certain direction and as they progress and develop, as you say, where are they gonna get other information?

So many times it is not that they dreamed it up, thought, they weren't like theologians that thought in a systematic way what they did mostly was borrow steel, plagiarize. And that's where the extra biblical sources come from.

Well, where can we find a lot of extra biblical sources? How about the esoteric world, which will offer you all kinds of wonderful new ideas? Well, speaking of where they've written this stuff, I found out that a lot of his ideas come from Kabbalah, which is the, you should mention mysticism.

There you have Jewish mysticism, but then later in the Renaissance period, they actually have several important figures that taught what is known as Christian Kabbalah. And it just so happens that because Jane Leed was so influenced by so many of these esoteric

systems of doctrine, Kabbalah happened to be one of them. Okay, so did she pass that on to lettering prophets? The answer is yes. Here's an example. Having been influenced by Kabbalah, Jane Leed speaking of, Brett and his Jane Leed inspired fellow prophets, also had a certain teaching call.

And I've never heard this pronounced, maybe you have. John, but it's it's Jammatria or Jammatria. And this is who happened to teach this? Well, Bill Britain has it in some of his writings and he even mentions it, Royal Conquist mentions it, Franklin Hall, what an influential fellow he was on the lettering. He mentions it, and so does David Ebal. And David Ebal has that interesting connection between the lettering manifests sons of God teachings and Christian identity teachings. So what is Kabbalah, excuse me, what is Jammatria?

One, it's the quote, converting the names and words to their numerical value. And this is known as Jammatria. I'm quoting Bill Britain here, not an esotericist. Books have been written on the but is not my intention to go into great detail on it now. No kidding, Bill. This is not a Christian source of information. And essentially it's it's a biblical version of numerology. And you mentioned things that people got stoned from in the Old Testament. I believe numerology would fit into some of those some of those categories of teachings in the Old Testament. Here's another

one that comes from Kabbalah. There are seven realms in the spirit. Okay, David Ebal copied that from Britain also. This is like the Valentinus influenced, Kabbalistic ideas that the Satanist, Helena Blodzfika, excuse me, Lovatsky, and the Luciferian Alice Bailey referred to as the Seven Rays or angelic emanations of preristic deity. I say that slowly once I can pronounce those words too because it's a pretty big mouthful. But what it's telling you is that Britain and those around him in the lettering movement, they're into this kind of stuff from Jane Lee.

They're pretty much quoting things that come from Kabbalah, from Helena Blodzfika and Alice Bailey, definitely not Christian leaders. And it's the basis, this Kabbalah, this what did I say, the Jometria is actually the the basis of a lot of the teachings on the role of the great cloud of witnesses. Because in manifestants of God teachings quite a few of them, they say it will be through channels of access into the material world that these spirits of quote just men in heaven are to be made manifest on earth. So that's another kind of connection with Kabbalah.

with Britain. A third one is that previously mentioned writing of his called Lucifer the shiny one. In that writing, Britain sounds very much like the Kabbalistic teaching called Adam Kadman. This is God's one corporate man who is Christ. Okay, Kabbalah states it a little bit differently.

But in this writing, Britain says, after the shock value of this message wears off, well, maybe never, this very timely message will open up the book in a new way concerning in time's truths and the new creation man. It's so fascinating that these men took such extrabiblical sources and wowed the crowds with it. I did a deep study when I first came out of this thing because a lot of what you're describing was programmed in my head.

And when I began to read the Bible over and over for myself and tried to wash out all of the programming and indoctrination that they gave me, I began to realize that it was a very non-Christian religion I was in, but they called the God the name Jesus. And so when they would say the name Jesus, I thought it was the Christian God they were talking about, I came to realize over time that that's just a name that they gave whatever it is that they're worshiping. And it has no relevance to the Bible whatsoever. But they were taking these ideas from kabbalistic notions. And

you mentioned the numbers in the name, for example. That was a big thing when I was growing up. In fact, they, in the latter reign, it was dumbed down even further. Brannum would use words such as, he saw five angels and five spelled out the letters, G-R-A-C-E, for example.

And the five had a significant meaning. Or he would claim that his name had seven letters, William and Brannum both had seven letters. And he changed his middle name from the government record show, his name is Marvin, but he changed it to Marion and misspelled Marion with two R's so that it would also have seven. And then began, he was trying to denounce Billy Graham, and in the latter reign version of numerologies, the seven is spiritually significant, and the six is lesser important. So G-R-A-H-E-M had six. And so he set up the foundation for that.

Apparently back in the time in which that weird thing was introduced, people fell for it, because they weren't as biblically educated, I guess is the best way to say it. And so they could be duped easily by simple mathematics. And simple mathematics was used all throughout, man. But in today's day and age, that doesn't fly. You cannot dup people with simple in today's world. And so these men have made new variations on the same type of scam or con that they're creating, but they'll use such a complicated version of it that now the people who are biblically educated.

They're trying to wrap their heads around the new mathematics. And you end up with basically this religion of mathematics. It's still not Christianity. But I grew up with all of that program in my head. And I did this deep dive on church history whenever I left because I was just curious.

Where did this religion come from? And if this wasn't Christianity, what was it? And I went all the way back to Irenaeus, which is one of the first de-first Christian apologists. And it was a very hard read reading his against heresies because you can't just read the text and understand it. You have to read the text and then read the history about the subject matter.

They're talking about who are these people? What are they believing? What is the different gods and demigods of the ancient world? So that led me into studies of mythologies and still today I'm fascinated with all of that. But in the end, where I ended up is this.

The very first Christian apologist denounced this usage of this numerology. And he said that these men with evil notions and evil minds, and I'm paraphrasing, he said they're doing exactly what they're doing in the pagan religions.

And when you think about what we've described in the last few episodes of this, we're talking about the converging apostasy. We're talking about the same exact thing happening today that happened way back during Irenaeus' time and he's condemning it as heresy back then.

But that's where the Christianity of today has drawn the line. You do have people who are educated in the Bible and they have Bible studies, Bible classes. But you have very few people who are studied or learned on the Bible history and people like Irenaeus, what were they condemning?

Some of the churches now introduce this, but a vast majority don't. And I can assure you in the NAR, they're not going to talk about this guy from the ancient world condemned everything that I'm preaching today.

Yeah John, one of my real heroes of the faith, you mentioned Irenaeus, Irenaeus. He, another thing about him that I found besides being a hero of the faith, dealing with stuff that you and I are dealing with, he specifically wrote tons and tons of critiques of Valentinus' writings.

So, as I've mentioned in previous podcasts with you, Valentinus is... not the only Gnostic, but the esoteric world of today, and if you go back to the 1800s with Levotsky and then on to Alice Bailey, he's the most influential.

And those folks cherry picked from him and come down to a few essential doctrines and that you can also find in Kabbalah. And so the thing about Valentinus and the fact that Aaron S. has happened to deal with him is that Valentinus got a lot of his stuff from Plato.

Plato is the pre-Christian philosopher from Greece. And the esoteric world really loves him. He's a hero of the faith, their faith. And you probably know this already, but Plato is a big hero for Wesley Swift.

And so without going into a deep dive in the Plato right now, the idea of perfectability and communication with angels, things that were picked up through Valentinus later, they also have showed up in George Houghton's writings because George Houghton not only liked Jane Leade, he liked her predecessor, who was Hakob Boying or Burn, can't ever pronounce that properly.

So anyway, back to Plato, Jane Leade does show the influence of Plato, mostly through Neo-Platonism. And the Jane Leade inspired Britain mentions the Plato like false doctrine about pre-existence, conscious pre-existence of the sons of God in the angelic realm.

Well, you can kind of think, well, so Hought, that's pretty weird stuff, but the esoteric world and the lettering folks that were influenced by the esoteric world take pre-existence as the idea that they were once divine essentially angels, they became incarnate on the earth and they're working their way back to the garden as New Age folks might say, or as hippies might have said, working their way back to the garden.

And that is that they will become deified metaphase sons of God again. And so, but later Britain says in the same writing where he's talking about this as a false doctrine, sounds like he wants to have his cake and eat it too, because he says only that which was eternally pre-existent in God, such as the sons of God, can return back to God as glorified sons of God.

So yeah, he's like talking out of one side of his mouth, backtracking and saying, yeah, yeah, wink, wink, nod, nod, we really do believe that stuff. Okay, and now here's one that's really, really significant Centaire world. Even if somebody says they'd never heard of Valentinus, never heard of Blavatsky, you'll have people that do say they've heard of this one. This is a plate to inspired action that says, as above, so also below. That one is like, it's all over the place and esoteric teachings. Well, Bill Britten said, and listen to this carefully, he says, as in the natural, so also in the spiritual, sounds like he's paraphrasing this other,

clearly plate to inspired idea. And this is based on the occultic idea of sympathetic magic. Well, that's a lot of focus, but anybody who believes, like some of the extreme manifests sons of God and some of the other folks that are more comfortable in the esoteric world, it's sympathetic magic has two, two, three components to it. One, get attempts to magically manipulate the material world through the so-called law of correspondence of internet connectivity.

Okay, well, who teaches, who teaches or even believes that kind of stuff? One is Wicca, two is Voodoo, yeah. So the idea of influencing the spiritual realm through some kind of correspondence in the natural realm comes down to the really goofy idea of poking a little doll with a needle to hurt somebody else or kill them, you know, burning the doll. And there's some kind of connection with the thing that you wanted to to manipulate in the natural world. Okay, so that's a big one. What else is sympathetic magic? Well, sympathetic magic is one thing. As above,

so also below, it is also a foundational teaching for Alice Bayley's ideas about the spiritual hierarchy, i.e., the great chain of being i.e., the great cloud of witnesses. They are above and they supposedly guide humanity below on their way back to divine status. You know, whenever I began mentioning that the religion we came from was very similar to witchcraft. I get so much outcry, especially from the people in it, you know, they don't want to be here compared to witches for whatever reason.

And yet it's ironic because they're actually doing many of the same things, many of the same practices. And where, you know, I left that and I went to a Christian church and we began learning core Christian values. You love the center. You want the center to be saved. You don't despise the center. And you don't despise those who, despitefully use you, etc. Well, in these movements, it's not that way. You are...

It's welcome open arms whenever they want you to come into the fold, but if you ever try to leave or if you ever try to question, that's whenever you see the wrath of the witch or whatever is the demon that they're serving and giving it the name Jesus.

Because they will just pounce on you with the wrath of vengeance and they want to place curses on your head and they will use biblical phrases to place those curses, which again tells you it's not the Christian God that they're serving.

Yes, on that judgmental aspect, certainly, certainly there. One of the folks that we talked about earlier that just throws a name out there again, Bill Hammond, very much like Jay Preston, E.B. and others, like Kelly Varner, said that for you to be in this judgment ministry, you have to come to perfect love first and just say, oh my goodness, how hypocritical, how bizarre is that.

So just to wrap up for what I've been bringing today, comes back to that idea of ongoing revelations because Brandon and all the other ones can come at this. So three people, Jane Leade, Bill Britton, and actually the esotericist and Luciferian, and I can tell you why I say that, it's not idle talk, I'll explain it, they'll have something to say about ongoing revelation.

So here's Jane Leade, she says that new and fresh revelations, new springs of revelation will be given to the elite. Britton says, God has always been faithful to provide us with new and exciting revelations.

I didn't know that's true. Leade says it is not revelation, it's not to be rested upon as if there's nothing more to be revealed. You can say that the elect will be introduced to deeper truth since the Holy Spirit has not stopped opening up the scriptures.

Then you will hear stuff like that, and I'm not even going to list the guys, but there's a lot of that kind of talk. So Alice Bailey said, new truths will come through the doctrine of the continuity of revelation.

So who's who? Sounds like they're all in the same camp, they're all in the same seeking boat together. So I wanted to follow up on this kind of stuff with, again, Becky Britton's daughter.

So in August 22, 2020, I made a call, and she kind of forwarded it on this time to one of Bill Britton's associates, Lynn Hiles. He told me this, which I found I was about to laugh at the moment.

I tried to suppress the laugh, but he said that Bill Britton worked at such a high spiritual level that sometimes Britton didn't even understand his own teachings. It's okay. Well, a lot of us would prefer to have good teachings.

Don't understand his teachings, so I guess we're in agreement. You know, it's also funny because I'm working with many different groups of people now, not just the former members of the message cult following a William Brannum, but when I began to understand that the term, the message, was this broad, encompassing statement that included many different cults and sects and subsects.

I began to realize that it's all the same framework, even though the theology has, as we mentioned, shifted over time, and they have new core values that they consider to be the required for your faith and everybody who doesn't believe these core values is apostate.

It's still the same framework, right? And where it got really funny is examining just that term that you mentioned, and revelation, because group A, whoever their prophet, leader, apostle, whatever it is that they call their central figure, when he utters his quote-unquote revelation, they're so duped by that spell that it's really hard for them to recognize that in many cases it's just the guy who's putting it on.

You know, you can clearly tell if you were never under that control, you can clearly tell that this guy is using fakery. But yet, people in other groups, those same people will watch the other group central figure, and they'll say, well, that's all show.

It can't you tell this guy's fake, he looks fake, he sounds fake, but they can't, while they're under the same control, they can't see it. And that's where, for me, it's fascinating because I'm fascinated by psychology anyway, and it is a psychological control that they have over the people.

And until they begin to break free, they can't see it. And then when they do the wake-up, they're like, what on earth was I in? How were they able to do this to my head?

And it's just so fascinating. And we're only skimming the surface. I know we're drawing near an hour, so we'll probably wrap this up here, Steve, and then continue on with this discussion on the next podcast episode.

But I just want to say this topic, I could talk on it for hours and hours and hours, because it's so fascinating to me to watch how the anti-biblical themes were branded as Christianity in these movements, and these men could do that and convince people that it was Christianity while those same people are holding Bibles in their hand.

How is that possible, man? It's just unbelievable. But anyway, we'll pick up next week, and if you've enjoyed our show, and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org.

For more information about the dark side of Latter-Rain, read Weaponized Religion from Latter-Rain to Colonial Dignidad, available on Amazon. Kindle and Audible. And for more information about the converging apostasy, you can read the book, the converging apostasy. You can also read the book, a quick outline of hands-on eschatology, a matter of timing and agency, also available on Amazon.

You can also read the book, a quick outline of hands-on eschatology, a matter of timing and agency. You can also read the book, a matter of timing and agency, a matter of timing and agency.