Our Stories: An Interview With Nate Brooks

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Nate Brooks, a former member of Charismania and one step away from IHOP KC.

Nate, it's good to have you on and tell about all of your experiences. I've had a few different people now contact me who were involved in the charismatic movement and what they described. You know, I've heard the term Charismania for years now and I just kind of laughed at it and thought it was a non-factual insult, but the more that I hear people talk about it, it really is the only word that describes it.

And then to think that you were that close to IHOP, the whole thing just, it shocks me that this can even exist in today's world. Yeah, you know, yeah, that's a good point, exist in today's world.

There's a lot of crazy things that exist in today's world though. And so, yeah, I think Charismania kind of fits right into the milieu in some ways. There are a lot of crazy things I'll admit, but I will say that this is one of the more unusual.

Just because of the history that I grew up with, it's a little bit difficult for me to believe that number one, anybody bought into this thing that developed from Laterane, but number two, that it was allowed to continue.

I'm shocked that, you know, I'm certain that there were good Bible understanding Christian ministers who stood up against it, don't get me wrong, but how did they not stop this? I mean, it's nothing like Christianity, but anyway, all that aside, maybe if we start, just tell everybody a little bit about yourself and your connection to all of this.

Well, I grew up in a kind of a non-denominational charismatic church in Iowa. Actually, I would say a very good church. My memory of church growing up was in some ways very normal. There's the, you know, after church, potluck type stuff, you know, people would come over to our house and swim after church.

I remember my Sunday school teacher, who was also my karate instructor, who gave me a Bible I still have when I graduated from high school with my name on it. Yeah, I remember it. I don't really have any trauma or anything bad that happened from that period of my life Was not a perfect church. I mean, we had Problems just like anywhere else, but most families do But I remember the the adults who you know my parents especially, but other adults in our church Being almost like a I remember the safety of of feeling brought up by a group of people

I felt like being kind of protected by a canopy of trees around you And then there's it was also weird though like I didn't want to invite anybody from school To come to church with me because they might get hit in the head with a flag or you know when Braveheart came out Everyone brought their swords. That was a big era people Wow Around and that was you know, so I knew I had these kind of two worlds between church and my friends at school that I knew I did not want to to mix But you know good people and genuine

Honest authentic Christians Again, not without problems, but Yeah, I would say it was a good good way to grow up these are the I have a You know, I disagree with some of the theology now but it's hard for me to get away from the The fondness of feeling like hey these these people are who taught me the faith and I do take some of those themes with me

Yeah, and then our our pastor growing up was fairly well known in the charismatic environment in the like 80s 90s early 2000s and so he would um Travel a bit with Mike Bickle he wrote books and so we were we were pretty connected to iHop just relationally A lot of friends. I know I've gone there and become staff and so forth So I grew up being very aware of Mike Bickle and their whole crowd at the same time in high school I was kind of checked out just skating and Doing hockey and kind of my own thing

So I kind of reconnected with a bunch of the more charismatic stuff in college was when I really got into uh, you know a lot of charismatic culture before then I was just kind of You know along for the ride of the church I grew up at you know, it's odd because When you look at all of the many things that I have exposed on the website I really can say practically the same thing I grew up in a church world that It was very good to me the people were very good I strongly disagree now with all of the thing all of the theology but

You know back then when you're a kid you don't look at that stuff we We did have good morals we had good respectable people the people were really really good people And even though it is, you know, now it's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was connected to some very bad things, I can honestly say that the vast majority of the people that I knew had no idea that existed.

But it was the underlying premise for all of it that once I realized what it was, I realized that, you know, I've got to get my family out of this. But it was very much similar right down to the end I'm grabbing it, but right down to the sword, man, we didn't bring our swords to church, but we believe that William Brannum had a magical sword.

That was one of the theologies that I no longer agree with. I do not believe William Brannum had a magical sword. But whenever I talked about that on one of the podcasts, one of the former members sent me this play sword, and I keep it up here as a moment of the magic sword.

But I can say that though. You know what? There were good people. They believed some very bad things that, you know, some of it was good, but some of it was just really bad.

The premise behind it made it even more dangerous than we think. So I'm glad I'm out of it, and I'm certain that you're glad you're out of it as well. I would say we definitely had some laterane influence.

None of us, most of us, did not really know that. I'm still talking about the church I grew up at. So there was the assumption that we're in the end times, whatever that means.

I never really knew, no one ever really defined that for me. But there was the assumption that like Jesus is coming back real soon. And especially real soon if a Democrat is elected. You know, if a Republican is elected, we might have a little more time.

That's kind of a halfway joking, but it did kind of feel that way. And then the assumption there's going to be an end time revival, just kind of perpetually around, right around the corner.

That was, it wasn't like a hugely main theme, but it was just so in the water that you almost didn't need to talk about it. If that makes sense, I don't remember any sermons on it, but I do remember just the constant assumption.

Those things, we didn't really talk about apostles and prophets very much. We believed in our pastor, again, who was a very good man. His focus was prayer and spiritual warfare. And if you read most of his stuff, most of it is about becoming Christ-like or the, you know, taking on the nature of Christ.

But there, again, there are just some things around the fringes that I would not really, I'll put it this way, I wouldn't want my kids to be really focused on. So, yeah, I wouldn't say any of it was super damaging to me.

in me, but learning, especially from your podcast, learning the, some of the background of laterane influence groups has been extremely eye-opening for me. And in some ways, I don't want to go down a rabbit trail here or off to the side, but in some ways, I imagine it'd be a little bit like you grow up in just some random Southern Baptist church in Missouri.

And to you, it's normal Bible church, whatever. And then you grow up and you realize, like, OK, there's some history here with slavery. And like, maybe this denomination doesn't even exist without, you know, without people trying to protect slavery.

And then, you know, all this stuff reap more recently with them kind of covering up a lot of sexual abuse things. And you're just like, wait, how do I put this together with, how do I put together the macro picture with, you know, the micro pictures of just, like, I'm looking at the face of my Sunday school teacher.

I'm looking at the face of my parents' friends. And I know their lives. I know how they've done life, and I respect them. I'm looking at, you know, the pastor I grew up at with, and he's a good man.

You know, so it's those kind of things that make you, I don't know, it just makes you have to negotiate a line there where, you know, I'm not saying it's all good or bad, but you, you know, life is kind of that way.

It's not all good or bad, and you have to find your way through it. I'm with you there. I'm still trying to piece all of it together for myself because my family was involved in this.

And how do you reconcile that, you know, my grandfather believed that William Brannum was God in the flesh. How do you reconcile that? Did he serve a different God? It's hard to say no because he believed that this man was God in the flesh.

But I'm fascinated with psychology, and I study psychology to know in, trying to understand just how the mind works, and how they can manipulate the heads like they do. And one of the concepts is that there is no really bad person.

There are good people who do bad things. And that's really what I'm trying to frame this as, because the situational, the environment that people are in, the situations that they're in, their life experiences, that molds them into what they are, and had they not had those experiences, they might have been, you know, something entirely different.

So it's hard to say what happened and why. I just look at it, and I'm a little sad that so many people that I grew up with and respected should not have the level of respect that they had.

And I think that's certainly true when you zoom out to kind of larger charismatic culture. So much of which is just frankly like a cartoon. You know, you started out saying it's a miracle, anybody.

You know, maybe the big miracle of charismatic... culture is that they talk to anybody into it.

You know, that's not that's not half bad. I don't think there's a lot of weirdness and a lot that's just kind of cowboys and Indians. But you know, again, going back to like your podcast, it's helped me see some of the theological substructures are like where the ideas that formed me, especially in college came from.

So yeah, maybe we can talk a little bit that direction because yeah, I remember in college being I went out to college at Biola University in California, which is the Bible Institute of Los Angeles.

So it was a very just kind of evangelical institutional college and then simultaneously went to the Anaheim Vineyard. And for me, that was a pretty good balance of of, you know, just getting a lot of Bible and then a church that was again, down to earth, into the things of the spirit.

And I've, again, I would say the same things about that church that I said about the church I grew up in. Most of what I take from there, I learned in someone's living room, not at some conference, but we did, you know, because we're in Los Angeles, we did

go up to Che on's church. I don't, do you know that name? I do. Yeah. So we went up to Che on's church quite a bit because they would have conferences at Harvest Rock.

And so the whole everybody would come there. And that, that was quite an experience. That was kind of, kind of my introduction to, you know, as you say, Cures Mania.

And yeah, that, that I have very mixed feelings about. And then, of course, like the whole time, I was also listening to stuff by Mike Bickle and, and I was listening to John Piper too, you know, as, it was listening to Chan too.

So it's, it was kind of a both-hand situation. I was never totally sucked in in an exclusive way. But yeah, I was, I definitely had a heavy dose of Mike Bickle in there too.

So yeah, I don't know where we want to go with that, but I could tell, tell quite a few stories from that, that era. I've been working on my manuscript for the next book, which, I think the book might actually come out before this podcast comes out.

We're in the editing process now, but I have a chapter at the end that is dedicated to explaining some of the Cheon weirdness. It's, it's also politicized today and that, that's very surprising to me because they have, you know, not to get into politics, but they've wrapped so much up into the politics that it's very difficult for them to separate the religion from the politics.

So I kind of go through, walk through that history. Why is that? And how did that develop?

At the end of the book, it lands, it might, because that really was the epicenter for all of the political weirdness once you bring Joel's army into the mix. But I can say that without a doubt, these men had more than just religion on their agenda.

And whether it's Cheon or whether it's Mike Bickle, all of these guys, they had an agenda. And once you understand what that agenda was and realize how much different that is from Christianity, you have to ask yourself the question, is this even Christianity?

What was this and why did it exist? Is your perspective, because I think a lot of us kind of woke up to that in 2016, we were watching kind of what happened there and how our churches just jumped on board.

And for a lot of us who grew up in this environment, we was kind of like, what just happened? Again, the people who taught me in the faith, they've always been a little crazy, but they're going like full on crazy now.

So is your perspective that that has been in the water, in the same to the same degree this whole time or has it gotten worse? It's history repeating itself. We, in fact, I think it did already release before we're recording this today, but in the weaponized religion podcast, John McKinnon and I go through the,

what I would call the epicenter of the first round of this history. Actually, it hasn't come out yet. It will come out before this podcast, but we talk about the events that happened in 1944.

When you had all of the crazy, it wasn't Charismania back then. It was fundamentalism, but the crazy nut jobs were rising up against the Democrats. And it was really the point in time in which those same religious nuts flipped from the Democrat party to the Republican because they all rose up in opposition to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

They believed he was part of the Jewish conspiracy and you had religious leaders like Charles Fuller, head of the Fuller of Theological Seminary. He was in bed with these guys that were preaching Christian identity.

And Gordon Lindsay, who's William Brannum's campaign manager who was largely responsible for the latter reign. He was speaking at Christian identity conferences at the point in time in which those Christian identity movements had turned racist.

So you've got racism, Christian identity. They're all rising up against FDR. Well, there was a buildup until about the 60s and in the 60s it got very violent. Once the fed started investigating, all of it just kind of went underground.

And I walked through this in the books. I won't tell the full story here. You can get the book in. and get the history, but it kind of re-emerged right about the, at the point of the shepherding movement, he had Christian identity coming in again through Eldon Purvis, and it tried to surface and didn't.

It went back underground, and what's interesting, which is part of the climax of the book, the feds started noticing Christian identity re-emerging at the same exact time that Paul Cain, Bob Jones, Mike Bickle, they're bringing all of this Joel's army stuff, and you can go look at the, what's it called, the Johnson Amendment. They actually had to change the Johnson Amendment because these guys were getting ready to do again what they did in the 40s.

Yeah, Joel's army. So first time I remember hearing that phrase was Todd Bentley. So 2005, 2006, somewhere around there. I remember Todd Bentley talking about it,

and I'd listen to some of his stuff. This is before the Lakeland revival, so he was going around talking to that, and then it was also part of IHOP's prophetic history. So Paul Cain had an experience allegedly where he first time he went to IHOP, he sees the sign Joel's army and training over the IHOP building. That's a good thing to bring up because they've always done a decent marketing or PR job around what that means. Kind of talking you out of the actual army that's in Joel too, and saying, oh no, this is actually just an army of people praying, or excuse me,

and it's a good army. It's God's kind of end time army. Even the military language, though, is like that it's a big part of this movement, especially the like prayer, spiritual warfare, prophetic part of the movement. A lot of the general charismatic movement has kind of dropped a lot of military language because I think it's trying to appeal to a larger audience, but from the beginning, the kind of prophetic stream has always kind of viewed itself as an army and spoken in those terms. I did not pick up any political, you know, you grow up in that and you don't really

cognate everything. I always thought of it as just a kind of a spiritual, you know, militancy type of thing, but it has for sure taken a political turn, partly because of how I think the the word and the theology of the kingdom of God is viewed in this movement. There's a, I don't know if you want to go down that road at all, but there's a kind of an, it's a overr- Realized eschatology, meaning there's more of an expectation of God's kingdom on earth now than maybe is is a biblically you know yet biblical warrant for and that includes

the political dimension where we're essentially they won't say we're here to take over but that's kind of the feeling and you know even if i i'm not against a a christian influence in every part of our country not that i want christianity running things i'm not a christian nationalist by any means but we do have a you know somewhat of a christian heritage culturally speaking in our country and i think that's a good thing um that's different than what these these guys want control of basically the the commanding heights of the the the culture and the the political sphere

and which in my in my mind if any of those guys got any measure of control i think our country would be done in about six months you know they like they can't even manage their own churches let alone you know let them manage the the country um so you know i don't know again a lot of this just feels like a cartoon though you don't know how much of it to even take seriously or think like is are they is this really what they're trying to do here um or whether it's just sort of

you know little guys when you don't have lots of influence you can talk real big um if that makes any sense and i i'm trying to get a feel for like how much influence does this movement actually have because if it's inconsequential and it's talking big it's kind of like okay whatever you know sit down if it's actually dangerous then we we need to do some thinking about it and and talk about it it's a real complex issue i get you've probably seen in the comment threads i get a lot of heat because anytime i mention trump or the trump administration or the any artist connection

to trump everybody says i'm a democrat which which i'm not i've actually i'm a registered republican so i'll get this is the first time i've ever ever said that out on the air but i'll say that now i actually am a republican but as a person who studies history there are things that really scare me and you can't look at it in a black or white way it's very very complex and if you know the history it would scare you too the fact that i'm mentioning this in relation to what's going on today with trump it's not that i'm against trump it's that i see the dangers and what

is happening in the political religious world i too think that you know christianity has some good morals and like you say the whole reason why this country exists is because of Christianity. The people came from England, they wanted to get away from the monarchy and they wanted the freedom to worship in the way that they wanted to worship Jesus without the church of England or whatever. So I see all of that as good.

There's some dangers though that really bothered me. I am the opposite of a public speaker. I actually struggle a lot with doing this if you can't tell. Speech in college, speech was the one class that I think I did pass, but I barely by the skin of my teeth passed it because I'm not a speaker.

But after you've done it for a while, you start to pick up on things that you say that either excite and encourage or motivate people to go do something. And you can sometimes say the wrong thing and they'll do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing. I can make a comment and I can watch the comment feeds and I get the feedback and you learn this not by going to school just by saying things. So here we have ministers who are saying things. They're saying some awfully politically charged some very dangerous things. Well, as public speakers, they have to recognize the consequences of the

words they say. I'm certain that they do. The problem comes in that whenever you say something that is militarized, it is for the sole purpose of activating people to do something. So you can use that and it's very, very powerful towards taking people to whatever is your agenda and making them act out, you know, try to do it. But there are consequences that come with doing that because you have some people who are mentally unstable who may go act out in different ways than you intended. So when I see the things that are being said about the presidency, about the candidate

who's trying to, you know, trying to get the NAR agenda into the White House, all of this stuff. And then I watch the NAR speakers what they're saying. The scary part for me is I can identify almost every agenda in say, for example, Wesley Swift, who is one of the most notorious Christian identity leaders of the 60s. He too, like all of the NAR guys, was a preacher and he was preaching.

He didn't say, go take your weapons and go shoot people with black skin. But he used the same phrases knowing that as he spoke them, there would be people who would go act out and they would act out in ways that he didn't tell them to do. But he was using that language. So whenever I see them using weaponized language in a sermon, knowing that yes, they're weaponizing it for the sake of getting Christianity into politics, it has a semi-good quote-unquote good agenda, but that same language can be used to create extremists and those extremists can bring

bad things into the country Yeah, and I have no doubt that you know because we know they're like pictures of You know caresmatic leaders praying over Trump and think we know they've had Access and we know they've had access to other, you know, it's not I don't even think it's super sinister or anything that they would have access to political leaders May, you know, of course, they're going to court

You know influence I have no doubt that their meetings and such where they they talk about like okay Here's how we can get behind you and have our people get behind you too Kind of like treating us as a voting block and that's kind of again. I think a lot of people Maybe some people don't care about that, but a lot of people at least my age and and younger Are not that's like one of the main things that's making us disconnect Not not just from charismatic church but from church from just the whole kind of conservative evangelical swirl as we've realized how

Politically captured it is and how you know not that that Yeah, not that there's any Perfect political movement, but when you're when you're politically captured Again, you just sit there and you go wait a minute. I'm not I'm not I'm not dumb, you know, you're not just gonna kind of string me along to you know Tell them basically conflate a political movement with what God's will and expect me not to think about that You know expect me just to kind of go along with that There is a lot of charged language spiritually charged language where about what will happen to the country?

If so and so gets in or it doesn't get in or what you know and And that I remember waking up to that in about 2016 I've always felt permission to have my own my own opinion But it was around 2016 when I realized like this whole thing is is pretty captured and that's that's not a good feeling Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism Transition through the latter rain Charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website

William dashbrannum.org On the book's page of the website you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven McGummery, John McKinnon and others With links to the paper audio and digital versions of each book You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements If you want to contribute to the cause you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannem Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

I have some good examples in the book, but I think people would be surprised at just the level of connections between people who you might think have a good agenda, but they're connecting with, for example, one of the Trump rallies had, I can't remember the lady's name, you'd have to get it in the book, but they are holding a rally with the son of Moon, who is the founder of the Moonies. This is the guy that has the AK-47s and is weaponizing his church. Well, when you bring NAR groups together with those types of extremists and they're holding hands and presenting a unified front, well,

what are you unifying with? That's the real problem here. And then take it a step further, once you connect it to organizations like the Fellowship International, the family, where you've got, now you've got big business that's getting in bed with religion. The big business has the funding to fund the religion. And now you've got this interface where religion, politics, and money all create this cohesive unit. Well, if the NAR people back off, well, they might lose that funding. So now they're being controlled and manipulated, which is ironic, right? Because you've got the manipulators that are also being manipulated.

So it's not a black or white issue. This is just so complex that it's hard to explain, but like I said earlier, I just see the dangers of it. And the fact that there are good, really good people who genuinely want to worship God, who are in these churches like this, Charismania, NAR, all of these churches, and they have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, they're like, you, they see the politics and they're like, why are we doing this? Why are we not talking about the Bible? And they don't understand that there's a whole agenda behind it

that is causing it. That has a huge history to it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

And just to go back to that, that idea of kingdom for a sec, because that phrase gets, that phrase has been politicized quite a bit. And just to, you know, you mentioned Charles Fuller,

was that his first name, Charles? Yes. So Fuller Theological Seminary, there was a Theologian there named George Ladd in the 70s. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he put a view forward of the kingdom that the vineyard adopted, that for my money is gets, I think, pretty close to a good.

idea of what the kingdom of God is in this age. And he talked about, he wasn't the first one to talk about it, but he talked about an already and not yet reality to the kingdom where there's a certain part of the kingdom that's available now.

Jesus came and he announced the kingdom of God as a hand. There's some present reality. He looked at, while he was doing exorcism, he looked at someone and said, if I've cast out demons by the spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

There's a great hope of the restoration of Israel could be summed up in the idea of the kingdom. And Jesus came announcing that it's here. Then he dies, goes, as resurrected and ascends, and he pours his spirit out on his church.

And his church, one of the main metaphors for the church is Christ's body. So there is some, in my mind, there is some present day ministry of Jesus that happens through the church. You could call the church the present day ministry of Jesus.

That's what we're supposed to be up to. And it should look quite a bit like what he did back then. I think that's what people get sucked into charismatic churches for, is to have their light, to be a part of something that looks like Jesus.

That's not what we get usually when we sign up. But that's kind of what the hunger is. When you're 18, 19, 20, and you want to follow God, there's a legitimate hunger there to live in step with the Savior, not just believing in Him, but doing what He did, ministering like He ministered.

It's not all about power. One of the keystone passages of His ministry was Luke 418, which in IHOP, I know that was a big kind of a promise that has a history or whatever, but it doesn't need to be a promise.

He inaugurated it. He was doing it. He's poured his spirit out on his church. He never stopped doing these things.

And so we don't need to wait for it like some big promise, but the spirit of the Lord is upon me because He's anointed me to bring good news to the who, to the poor, to bind up the broken hearted, to set the captives free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

That's kind of a DNA message of Jesus' ministry and what His kingdom, His kingdom message is about now. There's a part of it that's here now in terms of power in the sense that sometimes we pray for people and they're healed.

Sometimes we pray for people and they're not though. And we're not ever going to see a full consummation for the kingdom until Christ returns. And so we do the ministry of Jesus now in little ways.

And if you zoom out, the church ought to look, the church has a... whole ought to look like Jesus walking around on the earth. None of us individually have the full ministry of Jesus, but as a whole, we ought to look like that. But again, we're not going to be resurrected now, we're not going to have any kind of, I don't think we should expect any kind of control or political victory now, not that we shouldn't be involved, but when you're overrealizing what you mean by kingdom. I think where you get in trouble, where you're going

into these political movements, you're looking for political power, you're looking for position, looking for basically trying to enact God's kingdom with your own heart and mind out of step with what Jesus is actually doing today. And that's another big thing that people are reacting to, where it's like, how come these movements, you know, you have these scandals happen, and how come like all the way back in circle, we start, we start just, you know, hiring lawyers, protecting ourselves. And, you know, all of a sudden, we're looking nothing like Jesus, and how he treats victims, how he treats the poor, the sick, the downtron, and how come, you know,

that it's the height of irony that a so-called spirit-filled movement would be behaving in a way that's the antithesis of what Jesus said he was about. So I'm not trying to like pre-turn anything, but that's, I think a lot is wrapped up in that word kingdom, that if we need to tease out and go back and kind of dust off, what does that actually mean? You know, Jesus said the whole testament, the law and the prophets are summed up and love God, love your neighbor as yourself.

But what these ministers have done most of the time whenever they get involved in their agendas, they like to use the example of Jesus overturning the money changers, money tables. But the way they present it is as if that is Jesus' ministry turning over the money tables.

That's only one example out of hundreds that we have, right? So they're not getting the full and complete Jesus, you have the angry Jesus, and it's not the Jesus of the Bible if you portray him that way. So I have a problem with that. The, and again, historically, I go back, the kingdom theology. We've examined the supreme kingdom which came out of the out of the clan. You're probably familiar with that. But the fact that, yeah, it's crazy history, man. The fact that the NAR-7 mountain mandate isn't new. They just gave it a name, but you go back

in history and you can see they're doing the same exact thing. They're saying the same exact thing over and over. But it's a politicized movement that's doing it. And you know, I have no problem with trying to...

vote for the right thing, vote for the right person who's doing the right thing. I have no problem with this at all, but the moment in which you take your religion and try to mold it around to Jesus that is the angry Jesus and not the entire picture, there's a problem there.

It's a false religion when it gets to that point. So I just had to back up. I can't be a part of that. That's not me. I can't be the angry Jesus. I'll make kind of a side point to what you're saying as I totally agree with you.

At the same time, though, when we're talking about, I think it's good to know that God gets angry at certain things. Because that's, again, another, I think, misstep of some of the charismatic movement where there's a phrase that went around for a long time, God's always in a good mood.

Or there was a kind of God's goodness, and his goodness not meaning his just he and himself was good, but his goodness in the sense of he's good to me was one of the top teachings that was going around for a while.

And that's good as far as it goes, especially if you grow up in a heavily judgmental environment. It's good to get that other side of it through your head a bit. When you start talking about some of the stuff Mike Bickle did, though, and some of this, like what's his name down in Texas that just had that thing happen where the, you know, I forget his name, but Robert Morris,

I think God gets angry at that kind of stuff. And I think he's angry at the, I mean, obviously, he gets angry at that kind of stuff. I think he's angry at the commercialization.

Aside from the politicized stuff, we've also turned this whole thing into a business. It's heavily commercialized in that. I think a really good picture is Jesus's going through the temple, throwing the money tables around.

Like how I do think there's a part of the Lord that's looking at the charismatic movement and more than the charismatic movement and saying, why have you turned my father's house into a marketplace?

Because it is, man, we have done that. We've totally done that. And I think we have a moment here that it may, because of all the scandals, I think we have a moment that may last a year or two, where we could reform some stuff.

I'm not confident it'll happen. But I'm starting to think about what a post-charismatic not movement, I hate the word movement now, but just where do the exiles go? How do you decommertialize this thing?

How do you delatirate the thing? How do we get to a place where those of us who want to be part of churches that emphasize the power and presence of God? But see that the whole thing has become a grift.

Where do we go? You beat me to my climax, man. I was, no, it's okay. I was heading for context because one of the things that British Israelism and Christian identity did to Christian religion in America is that it ripped out context.

You don't have to have context of scripture to preach a sermon about a passage of scripture in these movements. And when you think about the money changers, the money tables, the whole irony that I was building up to is the fact that they're doing exactly the context of that scripture.

So you beat me to it, but it's the same bridge. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's so wrong. The fact that they don't care to twist scripture in that way that they'll take it out of context and make, they're literally reversing the role of the Bible.

They make the Bible match their sermons instead of their sermons match the Bible. And how do you, the question is that you ask, how do you de-laterrain this? Decares, mania, in my opinion, simple.

Just go back to the Bible. The Bible says exactly what it needs to say. And if you read it in the context in which it's written, you have a pretty good sermon. But I grew up with sermons where the ministers would say, now for the sermon I'm giving you today, I'm gonna give you a little context of scripture.

And I'll just read one little verse and they built their whole sermon off of the one verse, but their sermon didn't match the passage that they read it from. In fact, sometimes I caught it being polar opposite.

So, you know, go back, just go back to the Bible and let the Bible be your guide. And forget about all of this nonsense. Absolutely. I remember actually going to, when I first showed up at Bible College in California, I remember the realization, you know, holding my Bible.

I remember thinking like, oh my gosh, this thing actually says something. This isn't just, because honestly, I thought, I thought until then that it was like a string of fortune cookie type sayings that you use to match the potion.

Yeah, it's kind of a springboard off of to say whatever you wanted to say. A good bit of that, again, like our church growing up had good teaching, it just wasn't expository. It wasn't the kind of place where you'd go through, like we're going through Romans.

So that's, and half of me wasn't even paying attention even if they were doing that. But yeah, I remember waking up to the fact that like, oh my gosh, this thing's talking to me.

It actually has something to say on its own. And you know, your point about reading the Bible,

that could be, you know, it's, it's sometimes it's the simplest things that make the most difference. And that could be one of the most potent things to kind of detoxify your mind from it.

some of this. Because so much of the authority of the Bible isn't just the authority of having like the right answer about this or that. The authority of the Bible is that it's a meta-narrative. It's a story that sits over our lives and directs our lives in the same way that great stories do. That's why a good bit of the authority of the Bible is vested in the way that it's written. Most of it's a story. It tells us who the people of God have been, where we're going, where we're going to end up, what our role is here. It doesn't give

you every answer to every question. It's not going to tell you how to interact with your iPhone. But it tells you deeper, substructure type things that you get through story. I think the big part of that is letting the biblical narrative be the main narrative in your mind, as opposed to competing narratives like the prophetic history. The prophetic history, Mike Bickel's prophetic history, competes for the same space in the mind that the biblical narrative does.

There are secular narratives out there that are essentially trying to attain utopia now on this side of things that compete for the same space in the mind that the biblical narrative does. And so letting your mind soak in the Bible in a very broad way, not just cherry-picking versus, I think, is huge. I think that's a big, when we talk about the authority of the Bible, again, I think that's a big part of what we mean, not just that the Bible gets to answer specific questions on specific topics that we're wondering about.

I agree. There's a big, de-churchification movement that's happening. I use the word movement, again. But people who have been abused by this type of religion, whenever they get into another church that wasn't part of this religion, they can sense when ministers are doing the same thing.

And then it turns their stomach. They become hypersensitive to it. And I grew up, like I said, I grew up in the, you know, in the Brandham cults, but there were variations of the Brandham cult.

And sometimes you would go into the more heavily influenced churches that were heavily influenced by Pentecostalism. And they had this weird structure in the sermons. They would rattle off a verse because they've got them all memorized. They'd rattle off a verse from one book and then a verse from the next book. And you might have 20 minutes of, here's this verse, and here's this other verse, and here's this. And they're adding them together to make a story that wasn't in the Bible. It's just the story when you can catenate all of those verses. And context is critical. Like you said,

the Bible is a book of stories, or some of those stories weren't of good things. there were stories of bad things that happened and here were the consequences for the bad thing that happened. And while you're talking, it reminded me of this. I saw this funny meme, but you know, there's little calendars that's got the daily motivational passage from the Bible. Apparently, somebody wrote a software that does this and pulls verses from the Bible of random. And the verse for July 3rd was, if thou wilt therefore worship me, all shall be thine. Which that sounds like a

great Bible verse. But if you know the context of where that came from, that is Satan talking to Jesus, telling, asking Jesus to bow down and worship him. Well, in the Pentecostal style churches, what if you rattled off that scripture? You could use it in your context, and that's the way that they've done this. But the problem where I'm headed with all of this rambling is the problem is because that structure existed and then Charismania built on top of it. And now the NAR is building on top of Charismania. There are root elements of the structural design of a sermon

that they're using to weaponize against politics and some of the things that they're using to weaponize that some of the scriptures they're using aren't really fitting their agenda. It's fitting the agenda of Satan. So now you have the question, well, what if these are ministers of Satan? And I'm not going to make that leap. That's not a not for me to answer. But that's a problem when you have ministers that are weaponizing the Bible for an agenda and they're not even paying attention to to what their sermons are saying. Yeah. And one of the, you know, to ministers of Satan, the

at the very least, I think there ought to be some sort of ordination process. And there there isn't there isn't. It's just you can go hang a shingle and become a apostle so and so.

If you're, you know, charismatic enough, you know, people will follow you. So yeah, it's a mess. And especially now politically, commercially, the whole thing at a high level. Again, I would not want my kids to become part of that. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned deconstruction or de-churching.

And I have a, I have a pretty soft spot in my heart for people who are going through that.

When I was growing up, the people who left church were like the kids who wanted to party and do, do stuff. And now it feels like we're losing the good kids. We're losing the people with a strong sensitivity to moral injustice. And that, because of the kind of things we're talking about.

And that ought not be. I, you know, I'm a little it tuned into some of the social media stuff on people talking about these scandals on Twitter. And I find myself agreeing almost the most with a lot of the people who have de-churched.

You know, I have the most Jesus-like things to say who don't even know where they're at with their faith and, or if they believe in anything anymore. And I have a lot of friends that have gone down that road.

And I just, I almost did myself, actually, in 2018, I had about 18 months where I call it, I don't know if you ever listened to or watched or read Chronicles of Narnia. But there's a scene where, in the silver chair, we're puddle-glammed and Jill and I've used this, I think, are all down underground with the witch.

And she's convincing them like they're talking to her about what it's like up top in Narnia. And she's the witch is convincing them that they're basically, this is the only world there is. And she's saying, oh, the sun isn't that a nice idea.

You know, oh, tell me about the sky. What a fanciful thing to talk about the sky. And puddle-glam, eventually, you know, kind of says like, look, I can't, you're doing a good job of convincing me, none of this is real, but even if it's not, I'd rather live like it is.

And I think I spent about 18 months in that place where it just, none of it felt real. And part of it was deconstructing from some of this kind of church stuff. Some of it was, honestly, intellectual problems I've had with the Bible.

You know, but for about 18 months, it was like the light just turned off. And I didn't even feel like God was real. And all I had to go off of really was the memory of kind of times I've experienced God before.

And knowing that like my parents are the real deal, knowing that you get down to some very basic things. So I guess all I'm saying is that I have a lot of understanding for people who are going through either a really dark time or who have totally deconstructed.

And I think we need more room for that in our churches. The charismatic movement is overly victorious. Again, going back to some of this kingdom now stuff, it's overly victorious. And there's, I think it's merged with some of the social media influencer culture where everyone's just winning all the time.

And that's kind of the feeling you get out of charismatic churches is if you can't make this work for you all, like God turns into a gumball machine, where you're getting something out of it.

And if you don't know how to work the system, you're doing something wrong. And so that overly victorious thing, I think the Bible itself has more room for the breadth of human emotions. and experience that our churches do.

And so again, and what I like thinking about and maybe a post charismatic type of environment would be that we have room for, so those people can have serious doubts about faith for years, or not even really believe and still feel comfortable in our churches.

Because there's too many bodies behind the bus, so to speak, to just ignore. There is something not working on a pre-systemic level. Yeah, I would agree with that. I actually don't use the term D-Churched whenever I consider the people, I look at it like Christian agnostics.

Because if you think about the people, the believers in Berea who sought out the scriptures and found Jesus to be true, they were agnostic to the idea. They weren't hard set against it. They weren't hard set for it.

They just, you know, show me the proof. Show me what's actually real. And I think that's what these people are doing because they were sold a false bill of goods. They realized that it's this false Christianity.

The problem is they left many of them and they go into another church and they have similar experiences. Because the influence of this is widespread. They may not even be in a charismatic or NAR church.

I've attended just regular small non-denominational churches here that I can see the same influence and the people, some of what they said was nonsense. I'm just going to say it plain and simple. And so I was turned off by that.

I don't like nonsense anymore. I'm hypersensitive to it. So some of these people had bad experiences after leaving and then they consider themselves D-Churched. But if you think about the meaning of that word, it means that they're really not giving up on the idea of it.

But they don't like the church. They don't like the organization in the structure and that's the real problem. And I think, like you said, if ministers were just get rid of this, go back to the Bible, quit all of the nonsense.

People who are hypersensitive against the nonsense might start attending church. And then there will be this new movement called the re-churchified movement. So thank you so much for doing this with us today. I'm certain that a lot of people are going to be encouraged by what you had to say.

I appreciate your time, John. Thanks for having me. Well, 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-Branham.org.

For an overview of the dark side of the NAR, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon Audible.