John Wimber: False Teacher?

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-Branum.org and today I have my very special guest, Cynthia Artich. And Cynthia, I'm so excited to have you. We've been chatting before the podcast, we've been chatting on the phone via email and I have to say this is one of the most exciting podcasts that I will have been, I've ever kicked off because you and I are aligned on so many things and there's so many, I feel very critically

important topics that you and I have to discuss that are relevant to today's world, the NAR, even what I'm seeing in the comment feeds in my podcasts and there's just so much to talk about. So thank you for coming on here. Thank you, John.

It's a real pleasure to be here and thank you for the work that you do. I'm so excited. We were talking beforehand about John Wimber and that's you know I've got a thousand different podcasts that I want to do with you and just based off of the conversations but one of the most important ones that we have to do right now is of John Wimber. As you know we have been researching into the background of the International House of Prayer and my research started with Brannemism because I was in the Brannem cult and my research was kind of a

process of evolution. It started because I had just a few pieces to the puzzle and I actually started a blog years ago. I think it may even still be out there but what I said wasn't quite right but I had some of the pieces and I had a lot of the pieces that they had told me were factual and in fact were not factual. So as I learned new parts that you know researching history it evolved into what it is today with Brannemism. I'm doing the same thing now with IHOP and you know a critical milestone in the IHOP evolution was the connection to John

Wimber. So I started you know it's really just a work in progress of a page but I started a page I threw a video up there to get some interest but it is for me it's the beginning of something that will come later and this will evolve into something hopefully that people can use as a resource. The problem that I had is that I have some of the pieces of the puzzle.

And I understand it from my limited knowledge. I'm working with people from IHOP and people who came out of the, I call it the Wimber Cult of Personality, but that's probably that may be overemphasizing what it is.

But it's all skewed. My perspective is skewed towards branemism. They're highly in favor of Wimber to the extent that I called it a personality. I wanted to bring somebody on the show to balance the scales and low and behold, out of the blue, you contacted me and you had exactly what I needed.

Well, I know about that, but I started resonating. I saw some of the comments in your feed and I just had to contact you because I just wanted you to know. It's not like I wanted to be on the show or anything.

But I do see something so I was gonna say what I have to offer is kind of like what I've been taught and that is you talk about puzzle pieces. Well, you ever get one of those puzzles when you were a kid that had 500 pieces?

Well, in our family, sometimes for Christmas, you would get the puzzle pieces poured out into a baggy and you would just be given the puzzle pieces. You wouldn't be able to know what the box top look like, right?

So I think what we're looking at here, the better idea is to find out what is the box top picture look like. And then we can get some of those puzzle pieces and know where, no better places where they should go, right?

So I would say, you know, I knew John Wimber. I played in his bands. I attended the Anaheim Vineyard for years. I'd have to look at the calendar, but I think it was a good five, six years.

I was a musician back then and I didn't know back then what I know now. So it's interesting. I have a different viewpoint. But I do believe the teaching that Wimber experienced at Fuller Seminary, this all came out of church growth studies, okay?

And so my current pastor who just retired, who's trained me in apologetics for the last almost 30 years, was at Fuller Seminary at the same time and saw this. And so over time, when I wound up going, you know, stop going to the vineyard and got to a good church.

And I got discipled and properly, you know, taught by accurate theology and sound theology. We in Orange County, there was a lot of us in this class that were sort of refugees from all of this crazy teaching in this area, which included vineyard and Calvary Chapel and the Jesus movement and Lonnie Frisbee.

I knew Lonnie Frisbee played in his band. So I saw a lot back then. If you were a musician and you played for free, you really got to see everything, right? So I didn't know, I didn't know it at the time.

I'm in God protected me because boy I had some close calls back then, but some of my best friends who were musicians who played with me in those bands came to great ruin. Their faith came to great ruin and I'm still haunted by the loss of a dear friend.

She didn't die, but she just went crazy with the dominionist, heresy, just destructive. And she was in Y-Wam and she was doing Lonnie Frisbee. I'm not going to blame her, but she actually had a lot to do with me getting roped into the whole vineyard thing because as musicians, she would say to me, come on, let's go over here.

This is where the spirit is, all the energy and the excitement. And it was all this entertainment kind of fervor, okay. Now I can say that because I worked for Disney for years and I'm a commercial professional musician.

And I'm able to discern what's entertainment and what's therapy and what's religious music and all these musical genres, okay. But most itinerant musicians back then had no idea. They just went with the excitement.

So John Wimber was all about excitement. And I have to also say this, he was a very friendly, nice, sincere man. I found him very affable, very attractive as a friendly person. He was just comforting, really, you know, he had a very soft voice.

He was a great songwriter, so I respected him a lot. I thought, wow, this is good sounding music instead of some of the bad stuff we'd hear in Orange County. But I also know he was a professional musician in Hollywood.

And I believe he, I can't remember if he was with the righteous brothers or the Everly brothers, but he was trying to make it in the LA music scene. Like we all, I mean, real musicians were doing that, not Christian musicians.

I was a real musician trying to make a career doing music, right. And when I came to Christian music, first of all, I didn't like it because I thought it was crappy. I thought, wait a minute, three chords and you guys don't do any, you know, details in the music.

It's just this droning stuff that is monotonous and boring, but it makes the crowd sort of into an altered state of consciousness or feeling. The feelings, the kids would say today, the feels are so intense is all about the feels.

And I always didn't like that because I was more of a technical musician than a feeling musician. And like in church, I'd never raise my hands and do that whole thing that whimper. And his church services, it was all about singing and raising the hands and all of that.

And that was supposed to be the spirit. And I felt like a loser because I thought, well, the spirit must, I must not have the spirit if I'm not doing that. You know, so you and I are so much alike.

It's funny every time I talk to you, I learn something new that we're alike in and I, you know, I'm nowhere near the apologists you are, of course, and I don't even consider myself to be that or minister or anything like this.

But I did after I left the cult, one of the first things that hit me, one of the first realization was that if you're a Christian and you're not trying to save the lost, can you really say that you're doing what the Bible is telling you to do?

And then that hit led to the next question, well, why aren't, why isn't every minister an apologist? Why aren't they out seeking to help people? And I was just blown away by this question.

So I actually got involved into the apologetic scene. Back then it was forums, so I'd get into the forums and when I first started I knew nothing because I was, I was brand of my through and through, but as I'm learning and growing, if there was a question that I could answer and I could find a good source where they could, an online source that they could go to, I would give an online source and this is how I, this is how I learned and did it.

I did it for probably two years, you know, and it just, I love it, it was fun, but it wasn't really what I wanted to do. So I decided to let people who are better, like you, who are better at that than me to take over.

But, well, I just want, I just want, I'm sorry John, I wanted to, you know, put something in here. I just want your viewers to know.

My ability in apologetics is really different than what people think apologetics are. It comes from being discipled by some of the best ministers of the word in the reform tradition and the historical church tradition, which has nothing to do with trendy stuff.

And so I am an example of what Christian, all Christians should be if they're in church and being fed good food, spiritual food, because our teachers at the good church would always say to us, it's our job to equip you, the people, to go out into the world and do your life, you know.

And so over time, that's why we have the confessions, you know, the Belgian confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, all of these old documents that when I first came to the good church, I was freaked out.

I thought, oh, no, these guys are Roman Catholic and they weren't. And I realized church history mattered. I came to realize that, you know what, Jesus and his church has been around a heck of a lot longer than Chuck Smith or John Wimber.

Okay, and Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And he certainly has fulfilled that and will continue to fulfill it. So answer to your question, if I'm not...

outsaving the world, so to speak, evangelizing. What do Christians do? Well, we gather on the Lord's day, we hear the word properly preached, we partake of the two sacraments, the Lord instituted, the Lord's supper and baptism.

We raise our families, we love our neighbor, whatever that means, we live. We do what Jesus commanded by living his word, and we follow, and I love this, the apostles teaching, which has nothing to do with the silliness we see out in the field now, I'm an apostle, I'm an apostle.

Sadly, these people are so grossly ignorant of the Holy Scriptures and how they're read. So I would say any viewer looking at this wondering, get a good transcription of the Bible, like the ESV Study Bibles, really reliable, read big chunks of Scripture in context from beginning to end without stopping.

It's better to listen to it, spoken, because then you're not tempted to pull verses out, and the Scriptures will come alive and correct this mess that we're living in right now, which is really a bolus baguette, it's a lot of problems.

It is a big bolus baguette, which in fact, that's one of the points I wanted to bring up. So my method, which you and I've kind of discussed this offline a bit, my method is to, I look at the world like a balance scales, and in balance scales of truth, you have the good and the bad, and that's what writes history, the good and the bad write history.

If you take away the bad, you don't learn from the history and you're prone to make the same mistakes. So whenever I left the random cult, and I realized that not just the random cult, but many different groups that evolved because of Laterane in these movements were concealing their histories.

It became problematic for me, and so I started, you know, I built out the website, it's a technology, it's like a technology masterpiece in some ways, but I built out this technology where you can find links from one thing to another thing, simply by clicking on the, you know, the blue words on the website, and basically started building out this map of how things were evolving, but instead of publishing heavily the positive, I wanted to balance the scales that exist out in the world by publishing the critical, which has, it's its own kind of worms, right?

Because I have people who see me doing this and they think, well, every person that I publish on the website must be a bad guy, or I must think that they're a bad guy.

John Wimber, for example, I must not think that John Wimber had good intentions, which, You know, I don't know him, maybe he did or maybe he didn't, but I don't make the assumption. And instead, I get people like you to historically tell me your opinion of whether he was a good or bad person.

But it's just simply a way in which I can document links that intersect with other movements. And one of the points, which you and I talked about over the phone, I think a couple of weeks ago, and then you just recently mentioned as the feels.

I was in the random cult and we had the feels, but it was the feels of impending doom and gloom and hatred and violence. And I grew up in a world where we were still living in the red scare.

I mean, it was that kind of environment. And I realized after leaving and experiencing a real church, that they had weaponized that fear against our minds because the fear is powerful. They can keep you contained, they can control you, they can manipulate you.

And in the end, it's not the gospel, it's fear. And then when I began discovering the charismatic movement, suddenly, see, I'm hypersensitive to all of this. So I start seeing, well, they've got the same thing.

They're just not using fear, they're using happiness or were excitement or they're using... What are you used for too? It's, here's the thing. It's better to, or more useful to categorize feelings, okay? Because when you study the gospel, the word of Christ, not my testimony, no, the gospel, which is Jesus, okay?

His testimony. There is a good reason to be afraid. In the scripture, the Christians are called Godfears. And it's correct to be afraid of God because you know what? God can strike you dead.

The scripture says he is the owner of life and death. He is the judge. He is a consuming fire. This is why whenever I see the charismatic guys go, oh, fire, fire, and I go, oh, don't do that.

Because in the Bible, fire is a judgment motif. And whenever the Lord shows up with fire in the scriptures, it's not a good thing. It's not, okay? Right? It depends. The little flames over the head and the apostles, that's different.

But you don't want to go there. And this is why it is a hermeneutical problem. People reading the scripture just any way, okay? But the whole point is to understand, I mean, we're here today as believers of some sort for a reason.

The Lord owns the world and all the cosmos. He is not like he's presented in these charismatic groups. I had to laugh once when one of the charismatic guys over at Calvary Chapel of all places said, I have the word of knowledge.

God is telling me that Ralph is here and Ralph in the audience. in some wherever you are. The Lord wants you to know your love or whatever. And I thought to myself, wait a minute, who was the Holy Spirit if he needs help?

Isn't he God? Like the Holy Spirit is gonna tell this leader in this meeting, find Ralph, I can't find him. That's when I started noticing the plot holes back in the day. Now I wasn't strong enough or able enough to be an apologist back then, but I remember these moments, like with John Wimber, when he stood up in the congregation with the Bible in his hand.

And he was in one of his, what I call cute tirades. He was a very nice man. But he would do these long drawn out, emotionally driven speeches. They're not sermons. And he held up the Bible and said, this is not where the Spirit is.

Not in this book, the Spirit is here, you know, and his point was in the experience, right? Yeah, it's, you know, whenever I see what's happening in the charismatic movement, I see the fear too, but what I was trying to say is they are capitalizing on the same strategies that almost all cults use.

If you can get into the emotions and you can manipulate the emotions, you can manipulate the mind. And so I began to be concerned with this because, you know, that's common. If you get into even some of the five step help groups, they will try to use techniques to enter your mind and help you overcome whatever it is that they want.

But that's the agenda. They have an agenda of helping you in many ways that can be good. But then the church is when they do it, I have to question, well, what is the overall agenda?

Where is this headed? And so I'm often, as I'm publishing work on my website or in my videos, I'm often looking far beyond the point in which I'm publishing. I'm looking at where did it end up?

Because for me, when the Bible says it's by your fruit, you'll know them. The way that I map out my strategy of connecting all of these dots is I see what the fruits are and then trace backwards from that.

So for example, with John, back to John Wember, I see that the NAR exists and I can't say that Wember is the creator of this by no means. But I see that he's an intersection point and I want to know why?

What brings all this together? And I see things such as Wember did not create the kingdom now theology, obviously. But he's working with men who were developing the kingdom now theology. And this grew into the mess that dominionism and theocracy, all of the mess that exists today, there's an intersection point and I want to know why.

And one of the... Well, I can tell you why. Okay, from where we're sitting over here, it's not like... But I know everything. It just so happens. I was sitting, I was located in a certain area and saw certain things and we need to compare what's going on.

And in the universities, as far as I remember, because I have professor friends that were there. Okay. So you can verify this. When you're in a university and you have the opportunity to create a new curriculum, which was the church growth curriculum, right?

He stood to make a lot of money off of that. Now I'm not saying he thought one day, I'm going to make money and I'm going to do X. But any academic knows, if you want to rise above your pay grade and your power position, you create a new curriculum.

It's the same thing in my business. You know, I teach harp. I'm one of the top pedagogy harpists in the world, okay? In my category. So I do know, yeah, I can make a lot of money if I can duplicate my curriculums and pass it on to learners.

You know, my students, my protegees, and they become, they now become, you know, salesmen so to speak. You know, they're spreading that curriculum, right? So we see this with the saddleback and the purpose-driven stuff.

I know for a fact that Rick Warren sold franchises, well, still does, to churches to learn this curriculum. You get a package of data, you know, information and you start teaching their curriculum in your church and there are thousands of purpose churches like Calvary Chapel.

Calvary Chapel is a franchise. Every person who wants to make a vineyard or a Calvary, they have to sign a license for copyright, you know, the Dove logo or the name, whatever, and go along and agree to the curriculum for that franchise.

I don't care if it's a tasty freeze or a Calvary Chapel. I mean, it's funny, but not funny, but it's true. Years ago when I was going to Calvary and left and I went to another Calvary and there was another problem I saw apologetically that the pastor was doing, I called the main office Calvary, which is in Costa Mesa, thinking, oh, they're the leaders and they should know about this grievance or this question that I have.

And the person in the office told me, we don't have anything to do with that other church over by you, the other Calvary. You need to talk to them because each minister owns their own Calvary.

It's a business. They own it. So Greg Laurie, he is the CEO of his corporation, just like Chuck Smith. He is the CEO. That's why there was a big fight over Chuck Smith's multi-million dollar estate when he passed away.

Okay. Same thing with vineyard. Now, when you get a different person, like John, I knew Chuck Smith also. Okay. And John and Chuck, you know, different. Okay. But I also know that John Wimber was a human being and a sinner, just like the rest of us. And I would say his sins that affected others was the sin of presumption. And that's what, if people want to talk about sin and wrongdoing, let's get real here. The sin of presumption, let me see if I can read my little description here because I want people to understand. The sin of presumption

is basically what all the, what any charismatic stuff does. He says, here's a John Wimber statement. He says the kingdom is about doing just as much as teaching. Period. If you aren't doing the works of the kingdom, the message isn't complete, period. I pray the vineyard never stops taking the risks of the kingdom. Okay. John Wimber, right? Well, just on its face, you know, I respect the context, but just on its face, that's piotism, the works of the kingdom. Now, I want to simplify for everyone here. On this earth, there are only two religions, two, just two. Okay. Let me explain. There's either what God does or

what man does. That's it. Those are the categories. Now, what John Wimber just said is piotism. It's what man does. Now, I was there when he was all about urging us to do this stuff. And like you, John, I sat there feeling so bad for myself. I thought, man, I don't have the spirit. I don't feel the stuff, whatever. I even got goaded into doing tongues. And it was so fake. You know, I, because I knew, right? And like I said, I never raised my hands and did all the stuff, you know, had the emotional expression, except I was gobsmacked when he said, don't trust the

book, right? You see what I mean? This emotionalism leads humans into thinking what people do, what men do, men and women do. That's where God is. And that's not true. I mean, anybody can go on a hike in Yosemite or some amazing natural place and know or a natural disaster, by the way. And know the Lord who is the governor of everything. That's where he is. This world belongs to him, right? So John Wimber claiming that the Holy Spirit is only here in this warehouse building on on a certain street in Anaheim was nonsense. It was his opinion. And that's the sin of presumption,

because he led all of us to... think that was real. And he did it with his affable, friendly. A lot of people say he was so humble. Well, let me tell you what false humility is. Okay. When you violate God's word, for whatever reason, I mean, I don't know his motivation. I just know I can see and I know because I test the scriptures, he was violating God's word and then explaining it away. Okay. And at one time, when I went to the vineyard leadership years later, I was really troubled. I thought, maybe I could make sense of it. It was more of a cathartic

thing for me. I said, are we ever going to study theology or apologetics? And they said, no, we're just going to follow the spirit. Well, that's narcissism. Yeah. You know, it's now we are in dangerous land because who can say whatever can say anything?

We talked earlier about the converging apostasy, the podcast series that I'm doing with Steve, and you were talking about how, well, this has always existed. This has been apostasy for ages. Once I started into the apologetics scene and I was learning what is narcissism.

I didn't even know until I left the brand I'm called. I began to see traces of it and threads throughout the religion itself. And one of the things that really hit me like a brick wall was the indoctrination because we were indoctrinated with loaded language and different themes that kind of sound biblical. But and you can find little passages of verses that if you really stretch them, you can make them kind of fit the agenda. And then I would find many of them are rooted in narcissism. And this was very problematic to me. And one of the things

that I came to understand is people who are indoctrinated like this, whenever you give them the actual, the actual true biblical meaning of whatever is the concept that they're trying to understand, they don't hear it because they're hearing the loaded language when you talk. And they don't see the difference because they think their loaded language is the Bible. And I recently, I had a conversation with somebody recently about John Webber in the Kingdom theology and I faced this exact problem. Jesus says, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you. And you know, if you read just simply basic Christian principles,

that means an entirely different thing than what Webber taught and what Brandham taught, to reign all of these guys. And especially the Kingdom now nonsense. But the problem is because people who are indoctrinated with each one of those various individuals of cults of personality, their perspective is based off of the cult of personality rather than focusing on just the Bible, just what the Bible says. So I had this trouble.

trying to explain this. What I'm seeing, and I'm going to let you explain it far better than I ever could, what I'm seeing is that it is the variance within what they're teaching and what is actually in the Bible. People are building upon that variance and turning it into far more destructive themes. And so one of the sections of the page, the John Wembre page that I have, it's talking about the kingdom now theology and how he was working with others to develop this.

And it grew into the kingdom now theology. What I was trying to say there probably should expand a little bit further my thought, but my understanding of what has happened is Wembre did not teach kingdom now, but the variance between what he taught and what is actually in the Bible, it could be used by others for destructive purposes and they did. So maybe you could speak a little bit about this. Right. Okay. And well, there's a couple things you mentioned that I think we need to look at. First of all, the teaching of the kingdom is in Scripture. Okay. And better

theologians and historical theologians for thousands of years going back to Augustine further than that. Old Testament. I mean, after remind myself, it began in the garden. Okay. That is the temple of God in the garden. But we see this theme throughout Scripture. And it's what we would call, you know, those of us who study this, the biblical historical model, which we call it the two kingdom model. It means we have the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. And Christians have dual citizenship. You know, we live in this real world on earth. Okay. And we have citizenship where

we live, real lives that have agency. Okay. And so there's that category. And then the category that we are also citizens simultaneously of the kingdom of heaven, you know, of God. Right. And in my notes here, I always have to remind myself, the kingdom of God is both present and future, both and.

It's not either or. Now throughout church history, we see these two categories being fought over. Okay. All the time. In fact, I have to remember the funny thing is that it's actually humorous. Jesus is teaching his disciples in Matthew 24. And he's telling them those scary things. Remember where he says, you know, not a generation will pass. And this temple will be, you know, leveled. Right. Now, now imagine you're a Jewish man. You have to think of it like this.

That's all they, their whole world is the temple is Israel, you know, the people of the land. And here is Jesus, this rabbi saying, okay, guys, in a generation, none of this is going to be here, and you're going to have to run for your lives. That was radical to them. And the disciples right there, you had to wonder what they looked like, like, uh-oh, what do we do? And then they say to him, oh, you know, basically, what, oh, what do we do? Right? And Jesus tells them, basically, don't worry about that. I'm telling you these practical things. Okay.

Now here we are 2,000 some odd years later. And we try to make sense of all those historical things that have happened between Jesus and us. And we can benefit from those studies because what we see again and again and again is enthusiastic Christians, those, those would be the charismatic kind of Christians that for whatever reason don't have self control. They don't read the word of God. They, if they do, they don't care about it. If they do care about it, they twist it to their own devices. The Bible talks about all of this. This is nothing new. Okay. But we Christians

are warned in the New Testament. Over two thirds of the New Testament is warnings about these false teachers. And I love second Peter. If you just go through any book, go through second Peter, the whole book, read the whole thing beginning to end. And you're good to go. I mean, if you are, if you have a fairly rational mind and a third grade education, and you just read, you're going to understand a lot there. And so we're not left without any instruction. And that's why I can point to teachers like John Wimber and say, for whatever reason, you know, nothing personal.

Okay. This man is culpable. By God's word, he is culpable for misleading all these people. Innocent people, experimenting, whatever you want to call it. I remember John improvising like a musician with his spiritual stuff. Well, I don't know if it's this, maybe this, I'm thinking, wait a minute. Do you know, I'm reading the Bible for myself at the time. And I realized pastors and overseers in the Bible have a incredibly burdensome responsibility.

God is going to hold them accountable. It's not a little thing. It's a big deal. And for somebody like John Wimber to get up there and make it casual, like we're all at some sort of potluck in Kumbaya and we're all just trying to know the Christian faith is tied to a book. The Christian church is supposed to be the place of the truth, not the dialogue. And that's what Wimber and church growth were part of. It's this dialectic nonsense that is very dangerous. Peter Drucker, thank you very much. Former Nazi came over and started teaching this business model. Okay. And the person who really latched onto it was

Warren. And of course, when Rick Warren came out with his stuff, and by the way, I played over at his church enough to know how his curriculum worked, okay? Rick Warren, I don't know if they still have it, but they have Roman Catholic Theologians teaching their theology classes at Saddleback, okay? So it's all tied together, and it all goes like this. We men, whoever we are, it could be Paul Cain, it could be John Wimber, it could be Chuck Smith.

I don't care, name it. You know, and sadly, I think Johnny Macchism hints there too. Anytime you get John MacArthur, anytime you get a rock star Christian leader, there's great danger because now we are all tied into their kingdom building, whatever it is, whatever they think it is, okay? And Jesus' church is not that. If it's big and exciting and all and new, that is not the church of Christ. It isn't. And Jesus said it best. When Pilate asked him, are you a king? Jesus says yes. Well, my kingdom is not of this world as Jesus answered to a Roman governor for crying out loud. And it's like, I want to say

to Christians, what part of what Jesus said don't you understand? Jesus was clear. He is not vague about that. And these kingdom builders, these entrepreneurs, that's the right word, okay? They are fleecing the flocks, like the scripture says, and leading them into a ditch and ruining their faith, you know, ship wrecking their faith, I think the scripture puts it. And it is such an egregious crime in the face of a holy God. And one day he is going to deal with that, which is if if I were back then, I didn't have the, you know,

the ability to do it, but nowadays I do it whenever I run into a church leader innovator because I play the harp, okay, for a profession. And I play everywhere. I'm a commercial musician.

So I play for the Mormons. I play for the Jehovah witnesses. I play for hospice. You know, the harp is the powerful instrument as a solo instrument, right? And I've had quite a few adventures. And I had a Lutheran chaplain at a hospice, say to me once he came over to the harp and he says, oh, you must be an angel. And I said, you need to talk to my husband about that one. I'm not an angel. I said, this is my instrument, you know, and it's great. I love it. Well, he starts telling me about God and I asked him, oh,

you're the chaplain here, you're ministering to people who are dying. And I said to him, what do you tell someone? I'm very curious, sir. What do you tell someone who's dying? What kind of hope can you give them? And I'm not kidding, John. He said, I tell them that Jesus loves them and has a wonderful plan for their life.

On the deathbed, and I said, well, sir, what about the gospel of our gracious Lord dying on a Roman cross, shedding his blood for all of our sins before a holy God that we might be saved from God's wrath and join him forever in paradise.

And the Lord paid it all, what about the gospel of Jesus Christ? And he looked at me kind of startled, and he says, well, we don't take the Bible seriously do we? And I found out later, because that shocked me, I thought Lutherans were biblical, you know, I was learning too, and I hadn't learned enough yet, and I went back and checked his name tag, or, you know, he had a department there in the hospice, he was one of the liberal Lutherans, right?

And so I began to learn that this apostasy is everywhere throughout the entire church. There is no respecter of, I mean, it's everywhere, it's everywhere, and it's all about abandoning and fighting against the truth of Christ.

Now, the moral things, I will say this, everybody likes to get distracted about all these moral infractions that these false teachers do. And that's why I think they defend whimber, okay? As far as I can tell, whimber was a good man.

I don't know of any, you know, conspiracy, I don't know of any scandalous things that he did. He wasn't, he didn't look greedy, you know, I don't think he looked greedy at all, he didn't act like that.

He had a wonderful family, you know, he wasn't doing anything morally wrong that I could tell. I have no beef with him on that. But I would tell anybody who is searching here, I would say, wait a minute, Christians are told to judge mostly the church, by the way, we judge the church, the leaders in the church, not the world, okay?

And we're supposed to judge their theology, their teaching. And that's hard to do. I know when you're a new Christian, you've got a study and that's a pain in the head, you know, it's a pain in the head, a headache, literally, okay?

And then you may not have resources, you may not enjoy reliable discipleship at your own church, you know, there's a lot of fragmentation, right? But that's the template that the scriptures give us. And yes, out of that bad theology flows all of this, you know, moral sin.

And oh my gosh, we would be cataloging these moral sins to the Lord comes back. Is there any end to it? There's no end to it, is there? Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the ladder?

Reign, Charismatic, and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation. You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, 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 Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

Immediately people are going to accuse me of connecting to you because of the music, and I'm going to clear the air right now. Of course I did. Absolutely. We're musicians. We're musicians. That's what musicians do, right?

Right. But yeah, there's so much to unpack there. Like I said before, I'm not, it's not that I'm for or against any person. I'm just simply documenting what everybody else refuses to document. So this history is preserved for the future.

And you mentioned so many things that I'm actually going to have to go back and listen to this after we record it because I want to build out some of those pages on my website.

But you mentioned the Nazi guy, for example. And believe it or not, that's connected directly to everything that we're talking about. I just published my book, Weaponized Religion, Christian Identity to the NAR. And there was a, there was a American Nazi guy who got his commission apparently allegedly from directly from Germany.

And he started working with Amy Simple McPherson. He started working with Charles Fuller. The Fuller University exists because largely because of this guy. And people have to understand it's not that I say Charles Fuller is a Nazi.

But he's working with the most notorious Nazi figure in the United States. Were they aligned? I don't know. I can't say, but I can tell you where they were speaking at conventions together. And then I see John Wimber out of the, you know, out of this university.

He's working with Fuller institution, I should say. He's working with C. Peter Wagner. They were networking. Does that mean Wagner influence them? I don't know. But I can say they're working together. It's an intersection point of history.

And where it ends up is exactly what you said. These people are building institutions. And we talked, right before this podcast, we talked about how America is basically recreating the Corinthian problem that existed back in politics.

So they're doing the same thing. And when I see somebody who is so respected that a group of people will try to conceal his history. For me, I want to know why, why are they doing it?

Why do they want to conceal it? And I use the phrase cult of personality because in many ways they try to emulate what Wimber created. That phrase itself isn't that bad. You've got the just and beaver cult of personality, right?

It doesn't mean it's destructive, but my fear is if you take all of the historical examples of people who build a framework around a human being as a cult of personality, I have seen very few that did not end up into a destructive nature.

They always do. So let me, you said something there, John, I want to pick up on this word cult. Let's talk about this word cult. This is going to be a little risky, but I'm going to go for it.

Okay. Just studying apologetics, I just, you know, we have some great teachers, you know, Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, I mean, these are people you can look up. And they're the textbook writers, okay? And so there's this word cultus, which is where we get our word culture from.

So I want to just let everybody know that word cult is not a bad word. Now we think it's bad today because we've had these horrible experiences like Jim Jones and we now have this phrase, you know, drinking the Kool-Aid.

And I studied the Jim Jones cult and stuff with Dr. Martin. But the word cult is not a bad word. It identifies the created world that the Lord created, the culture. So men create culture, societies, you know, humanity as history progresses creates culture.

And in the Old Testament, we see that in the very beginning where you have Adam and Eve they leave the garden, you know, they, they commit sin, they commit treason to the creator God and they get kicked out of the garden.

They're in exile, okay? They're in the land of nod. And that's, um, the land of nod is not Eden, okay? And then we see life continue for these people. They grow their families. And then we see a fork in the road where we see the children of Seth, which is the child of Adam and Eve.

And, and I think it's Lamek, okay? He's another tribal leader. So the people of Lamek, they build a city. And then it says in the scripture that, um, the family of Seth, they trust the Lord.

So we see this category distinction in the Old Testament as history continues. And so the city dwellers, I mean, nothing against cities, but I think what it's pointing to is the, what happens to humanity when they build cities, they build things like the Tower of Babel.

What's the Tower of Babel about? It's mankind saying, Hey, we don't need God. We need to, you know, touch God. We're going to be our own gods. I mean, we go off the rails.

We always do, right? And then there's a small remnant of people who fear God. God and respect God like Job and say to the Lord, though you slay me yet will I trust you.

So there's a very, very important plot line in the Old Testament that brings us to the New Testament, which if you crash through the New Testament and keep going in human history, it brings us to today.

But one thing that the charismatic folks miss is the warnings in Scripture that say that the canon is closed like in Revelation. I was marvel that they just skip over that. It's a really bad thing for anyone to add anything or take anything away from God's book.

Why don't we look at that verse? They don't want to look at that verse, but they're going to yank all these other verses out of context. And it's like we have a book for a reason because it's the record of God's own self-revelation.

The Bible is not about us. It's not about me. It's not about you, John. And thank goodness it's not about John Wimber. It's not about Charismatics. It is about how the Lord saves the people for himself through his own son, the son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, who was born of a virgin in a Jewish village as a poor person and lives a human life perfect, which you had to wonder what that looked like when he was a kid.

Perfect in order to become the prophet, priest, and king of all the prophecies in the Old Testament. The road to Emmaus tells us that that the entire Old Testament is about Jesus. It is not about the stupid, dominionism, whatever.

It's not about any of that. It's about Jesus. Full stop. He says it's all about him. So every page of the book is about Jesus Christ. Every single page, right? So when anybody walks in the door, and it's always going to be somebody, you know, I don't care who it is.

Now, you know, all the new false teachers that are copying the old false teachers, you know who I mean? Ton Cani, they have like a pre-can curriculum. All they got to do is rebrand it, right?

Yeah. And it's a money machine. It's just a money machine because human nature is so vulnerable. We are fallen creatures. Advertising companies know this. And also in my work, I work for advertisers. And they pay me a very good wage to come into a studio and play music for an advertisement that's going to sell a zillion products.

And advertising is lying. It's telling little fibs to get people to buy things they don't need. OK? And it's all about emotional manipulation. So this thing that we're looking at with, like John Wimber and the NAR, now the NAR is interesting to me because I am astonished that we have the technology that we do.

to verify these claims, you know, like everyone has a cell phone, right. And they say, okay, we're raising the dead. Hey, show me a video. Yeah. I mean, it really, if I can, yeah.

So we don't see that. And then we see really, I think such ridiculous things like glitter being sprinkled out of the upper, you know, my husband is a stage craft designer. He's a tech guy.

We work for Disney. We know all about these little glitter canons. You can put up in the ceiling or a fog machine or any special effects device that you can use to create some sort of experience, right. And people are so gullible. I mean, that's what actually makes me afraid.

It's the gullibility of the populace because I think, uh-oh, we're not, we're not doing well. Absolutely. We're not doing very well. And I think of circling the wagons and what does that mean? I can't go to the grocery store because people are just, I don't know what's going to happen.

If I leave the house, right? Yeah. But, um, the religious, uh, hucksters. I mean, these people are religious hucksters. I think John Wimber meant well. And I think he sadly was one of many. He's not the only one. But he was very successful at his, um, his own research and his own, uh, building of a business. And it is a business. I mean, his estate is making money off of all these movies now.

I mean, he's a copyrighted author. He makes royalties off of all these praise songs. And by the way, the, the theology in these praise songs is all gnostic. It's not good stuff. I mean, it's very romantic and, and it's not biblical. That's the problem. And, and so, um, and by the way, if you ever study the scriptures in the scriptures, we, we are told how the church is to worship. And we do not see such a person as a worship leader being a musician. We don't see a category for worship leaders. We see the minister of the word, the overseers, the elders, you know,

that, um, the teachers that are under heavy accountability with the Lord, okay? And, uh, we don't see all of these adjunct, you know, this, um, what does it call it? My husband does all these installations for churches. That's the other thing. My experience is in my household, my technical husband, who is a sound engineer, lighting designer, his business for the last 20 years has installed systems for all these mega churches. And believe me, we have stories to tell because when you're in there, hanging lights or speakers from the ceiling and the pastor walks through the, the, the building, leading, um, a group of investors, talking freely about the money

he's making, you know, that's why I can say if, if I want to, I don't want to go after these guys, but I know it's a business model, okay? And, um, and some people who were attending this, thinking, oh, God's there, it's, Like, no, one of the churches I left years ago was a Calvary Chapel, and my best friend stayed, and she was shocked when I said, Donna, I'm leaving the church.

This church, the Holy Spirit is not here, and she gasped, and I said, look, that guy is up there on the stage scaring everyone. It was during Y2K, probably before you were born, John.

And he was well-known today. I won't name him, but the man is still fear-mongering and making money off of it. And he's in the political scene now, and I don't know why his non-profit isn't yanked, because he's using his many thousand visitor members to make money off of all this.

And it's appalling, but we're gonna see more of it. I'm afraid. It's terrible. One of the best things that ever happened to me happened by chance, and it seems to happen often in my life.

People just kind of fall into my lap when I need the most. And I was on a business trip, and I was flying back home, and the guy sitting next to me just happened to be a, I think he was pretty well respected in the psychology community.

I can't remember his name, but he, you know, through the course of our conversation, he learned that I was in a cult, and he learned what I was doing, trying to help people who were in cults, and he recommended that I read two books.

And to this day, a lot of what I do, I can trace back to some of the themes that I got from this guy, and his explanation of them, he had me read propaganda, which if you're a psychologist, great book.

If you want to learn how the church is manipulating your head, these mega churches, read propaganda, because I read it, and it was like, oh my gosh, they did this to me for 37 years, and I had no idea that they could do this.

But it talks about how you can, for good or bad, you know, it's not always necessarily bad to manipulate people if you have the right agenda that kind of came out wrong, but the book explains how you can use different techniques to make people come to your, to come to the decision that you want them to, I think is how the author puts it, which is it's good to learn, but then you can also see how that can be abused.

And then the next one, he made me read, which you may laugh at me for this, but I still, I go back to it. He had me read hero with a thousand faces. And the book, it has a lot of things that, you know, you're not gonna agree with everything that you read in the book, but what it gave me was so critically important.

It showed how not just the ancient religions, but even some of the modern ones, they use the same themes and build upon them in different ways and how the techniques that are used build those religions are even used in movies, like Star Wars, I think is one of the ones it mentioned.

Love Star Wars. Yeah. I do. In fact, every episode's got the Millennium Falcon right here, so we, we, anyway, we talked about about exactly this and he started explaining the hero of the thousand faces and I'm like, no, no, the, the cult I escape wasn't like that.

Well, then he described the structure and oh my gosh, it is exactly recreating the structure that is not a Christian structure, right? So I began to develop that and into the research that I do, I started looking at the people that I'm examining and trying to figure out the variance is what I'm interested.

What is core Christianity and what is the variance? What do they teach that is just slightly extrabiblical, but pretty close to the mark and what direction is it headed? And if you can find that difference, wait, you can always, you can, I have to interrupt you.

You can always find it because remember the categories I gave earlier. There are only two religions on this planet. One of the best teachers I ever had said that to us one night when we were looking at the list, the endless list in apologetics, you have evidential apologetics, which is the Josh McDowell stuff, which is very interesting, you know, all these evidences and all that.

That will, that is not helpful because you get this list that never, never ends. And it just never ends. And now, now the good news for me, kind of good news, bad news, I live in Southern California.

And here we are the epicenter of religious weirdness. Everything happens here. We have the Jesus movement, we have, you name it, we have it here. And one of our teachers said once in apologetics class, he said, you know, you got a blender, right?

And you put all these different religions in there and these different ideas and they push the button. That's Southern California. And so pulling that, you know, separating that is impossible, okay? And he said, never forget this.

We have two religions on this planet, two only two, the religion of God and the religion of man. That's it. No matter what new name you want to give it, Hinduism, pantheism, this is called worldview study, you may know, there's only six worldviews, I think it's six, Ronald Nash, great teacher, get the book on worldview.

There's only six categories of thinking healthy humans can do and they think in categories unless they're mentally ill and that's why people are mentally ill because for whatever reason their brain is not functioning correctly, you know, it's not ordered, right?

It's disordered. So humans have an a religious creatures. That's who we are. We cannot escape being religious. We venerate something. And in the Bible, that's idolatry. Okay, that's the category, idolatry. So I would say cold personality, that's idolatry, you know, one of many. So in the scriptures, in the Ten Commandments, we're told to have no other gods before us. Well, when we value some person and we start treating that person like they are the be-all-end-all, the voice of God other than Jesus. You know, look at him. The two categories, he went back to the two categories. They're better expressed in the Roman

church because today our teacher said never underestimate the power of Rome because their message Jesus plus whatever you got works. Okay, Jesus is not enough. What he did is not enough. We need more.

And they want to rule the world so they're behind, you know, their agenda, the Jesuits and all of that is a fascinating study because they're still here. You know, and that's why I think I ran into, you know, Roman Catholic theologians over at the Saddleback Church. And the nice theologian that I met because he liked the harp and I, I saw his little name tag. It says, father, son, so theologian for whatever. And I thought, oh, that's so interesting. He goes, yes, I teach church history. And oh, that's interesting. Why are you at Rick Warren's church? Oh, I have

to teach them because I was marvel and I was thinking, I was just so, you know, surprised by that. And he said, well, I'm here to teach everyone church history. Well, okay, fair enough. But how much you want to bet he was teaching with an edge, you know, favorite Rome, you know, I get it. Now, I'm a Protestant. That's why we're, you know, we protest against Rome. That's why we're Protestants.

We say Rome is wrong. Okay. And that Jesus is enough and that he paid for everything. And it is Christ alone that saves sinners, not the stuff that we have to do. And that's why getting back, you know, circling back to the comment of Wember here. He says, if you aren't doing the works of the kingdom, and I'm thinking, uh, the Bible doesn't teach that. No. And and he doesn't say it outright in that statement there. He doesn't say I'm going to hell if I'm not doing it. But I'm sorry, we lived like, uh, whenever I say, um, the vineyard or the Pentecostal groups,

they teach a bifurcated Christianity. They, they, I don't know if they know they're doing it, but that's what it is. That means there are the haves and the have-nots in Christians. Me, I'm a poor loser Christian. I can't speak in tongues. You know, I have less than the whole spirit than my friend who goes bubble a shamba, you know, and it's like, no, we have wheat Christians, true Christians have been given everything in Christ, everything, everything. And that right there gives us a lens to look at all the extra stuff that these people are imposing

on us. And that's why I left at Calvary Church because the ministry was saying, well, you have to do this to get that. And you have to, and I thought, wait a minute, I'm reading the Bible. And it's not even matching what he's saying. And not only that, he's kind of mean about it, you know, he's really angry and yelling, I was wondered, why do they have to yell when they're up there? You know, like, what is that?

If I were to hear a motivational speaker and they started yelling, I mean, I'd get up and walk out, but we do it in the churches. Why do we do it? Right. It's like, what is that about? You know, but now I know. So it's interesting, though, that, you know, the two categories, the religion of men is always about them. It's always has sex in it somewhere.

Okay. And it's always about fame or some sort of elevation of that person, you know, that's where we get the cult of personality. But it doesn't have to look like that. I've been a lot of Christian praise groups that had that going on. And you know this, John, if you've been in a band, a band is like a miniature government, you know, there's always got to be a leader and other people in there. And it's either democratic or autocratic, right?

So, you know, I don't put up with the autocratic stuff. And unless I'm in a symphony, you know, I've played in the symphony. And I got to say the conductor is the head cheese there.

We got 150 people here that need to play music together. So we need that. But I find it very interesting that all these other problems like NAR, okay, we're going to continue to see that.

And we need Christians to be cataclyzed. That's not a Roman word. That is a Protestant word. And it means we need to learn the curriculum of the scriptures and each individual family member of that church needs to be equipped. That's why we see this destruction. It's so heartbreaking to see the devastation left behind from Wembur in this case. And all we have right now, and I think it's because of the marketing of the new films, you know, the Hullani Frisbee thing. When I saw that marketing, I just shook my head and thought, man, you know, I'm pretty sure that it looks like

Greg Laurie's behind it. He's very much an opportunist. It's all about money to him and everything. I'm pretty sure these guys justify their business decisions using God. You know, God brought this about. And I should do this. I heard that a lot in the Calvaries. So the Calvaries are connected to the vineyard things because they have a similar 10 in that the business model or the, I'm sorry, the leadership model. If you don't know this, have you heard of the Moses model? I don't know what it is exactly, but I have heard it.

Well, here's what it is. It's autocracy. So here's how it goes. In the New Testament, we see a Presbyterian model of governance in the church. It's got to press Buddha us, you know, the original language. It's got the elders are overseeing the minister of the word, and the minister of the word is the preacher, okay, on the Lord's day. Now, it's, it's funny, but not funny, but if the preacher, for whatever reason, starts off-roading when he's talking, it is the responsibility of the elders to remove him or, you know, to intervene, right? So there's accountability. But in the Old Testament, in the Moses model, you see Moses, the leader,

the great leader that led the children of Israel out of Egypt, right? And he was the authority under God. And then he gets into trouble because he has human limitations. He's going, Lord, your people are driving me nuts, you know, and the Lord says, get some, you know, get some help.

And so he picked 70 helpers to help him. But notice the power, the organization chart, you know, who's at the top? God. And then it's Moses. And then it's his people. Well, that's what Chuck Smith adopted. And Chuck Smith came from four square Pentecostalism. Okay, that's his background. He's from four square, Amy's simple nefarza and all that. Okay. Now, whether he did it in a fair, I don't think he was nefarious. I think he did what he knew, you know, oh, yeah. And so, and so that's his model. And we used to call Chuck later, Pope Chuck, because he was the one, I mean, think about it.

He was the evangelical version of the Pope, right? And now, now I haven't kept up on this, but I'm guessing it's Greg Laurie now, because when Pope died, or Pope, when Chuck died, there was this fight, there was this fight over this power struggle over who was going to be the new Pope, right? And that I guess it's Greg Laurie. I don't know. I couldn't keep up. It was so much drama. It was like my gosh, you know, it like you said, they were just devouring themselves, right? Yeah. So, but look at that model, that is not in the new testament under the new covenant. We're still under the new

covenant, which is not like one of those baseball contracts. God's holy covenant is a big deal. And and that's why a true church has that template in place because that's Jesus's church. He did he organized that in instituted. That's the word the institute today.

So whenever we get any person saying, oh God, I love God, I love Jesus and he told me I should start this church and then they start doing things to they take out a license for a non-profit, anybody can start a religion, anybody can't and say anything in this country and that's I think that's the problem.

It's a good thing. The good thing and a bad thing, you know, and I don't know if we're ever going to fix it. It's I love having the freedom in this country for false religions. If they're safe, you know, that's my requirement. If they don't harm anybody, I will, you know, support the freedom of religion because I want the freedom to worship God in the way I believe.

And now we see that threatened and I'm going, oh, this is in church history every time that happened when you mingle government with religion, it doesn't go well ever never never. I just go, you guys, even it's like, yeah, and so and that's why Jesus, I mean, we have to add Jesus in here because Jesus is response to all the diversity. I mean, he is the Lord of all the cosmos and his mission here when he was here.

On earth was to fulfill the covenant because his church are the people of the covenant, the new covenant, which is the same covenant. I don't know if anybody knows how covenants work, but they're similar to living trusts, you know, legal documents where the old covenant, you don't wipe that out. It's not gone. It's still there, but the new covenant overlays it and fulfills it.

It's like an addendum. Right. Right. And it's what it's the authority that we operate on, but there still is a relationship because Moses was saved the same way we're saved today. He looked forward to Jesus and trusted in him. It's not that he did, I mean, my goodness.

It's not a list of to do's that we have to to do because Jesus taught that's why he taught all of the parables and his disciples basically said, who can even do that list? Nobody were lost. We can't do it.

And Jesus's point was now you're getting it. What you say is so eloquent and perfect. I wish you had a written that page that I have on John Wembre and not me. But it well, we're all learning here and you're and you know, when I read, I think I saw the video and I also read your work and I understood by comparing it, I thought, Oh, you're out there and bless your heart. You're just studying and learning, you know, you're learning facts. You're doing research. Right.

So somebody like you, you have no input from a personal experience, right, which is correct. Good research is always done with reliable, verifiable sources. Right.

claims here, you know, anybody can look, John Wimber is now dead. He now knows whatever, you know, and I don't know his heart. I want to believe that with all the mistakes he made, I know the Lord redeems his people.

I don't know John's situ. It's not for me to know what his heart is. And so I don't know his final destination. I do know what he said was damnable. Yeah, was was really, really, you know, big ticket item.

Not little things, big things, okay? Same thing with Chuck Smith, by the way, Chuck Smith was on record, denying the physical resurrection. And that's a big deal. And so when we see these leaders age and get older and then somebody in my group said, you know, when they get that old and they start, start talking heresy, they need to just be put out to pasture.

Go golfing, get off of the state, stop teaching, right? But I think the Lord's instructions in the word are enough. They're sufficient. Everything I've learned is from the scripture. I am not, even though I'm under the authority of leaders of the church, you know, men, real elders, real pastors, I really am.

And it's properly instituted. So I'm not just winging it here. Everything I say has to be accountable. And God helped me that I've delivered the information I know to be true. As far as I know it, okay?

But the proper compassion on false teachers. I mean, there is a point for compassion. Right now we see great risk and danger in our nation with all this political stuff going on. Oh, absolutely.

The proper attitude is the adults in the room, so to speak, we're not going to advocate for violence. We're not going to advocate for vengeance. You know, vengeance is mine says the Lord. The Lord says he is going to sort out the wheat from the tears.

That's his business, his job. And and this is this whole thing, this whole confusion with the NAR. This is an eschatology problem. And I want everyone to know here because it's true. Eschatology is not a little added category we desire to study or not.

Every Christian is driven or led by their eschatology. So my view of eschatology is my view of scripture. It's cohesive coherent. It's not, it's not about the Lord coming back. You know, I'm what they call an, I can't even say this, an omelennialist.

I agree with the scriptural description of what like Paul's view of the end days. Jesus' view of the end days. And it's not for me to say when that is and I'm so okay with that.

We have a lot to do. It's like, look, that's what he does. He knows what he's doing our job. is to live at peace as far as it is in our power, is to deliver the message of the Holy Gospel to sinners, which is the mercy of God to save sinners is sacrificing his only son on a Roman cross who rose from the dead on the third day.

And by that message, he regenerates the souls of dead people. You know, we're dead and sin. That's the miracle. That's what's so ironic about NAR. They're running around looking for these signs that are fake.

And yet the greatest miracle on this planet at this moment is when the heart and soul of a dead person is brought to life by the Holy Spirit by trusting alone in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's the miracle. And you can't see it, can you? It's not usually, it's not wild and crazy like Paul. He gets knocked off his horse, blinded by a lightning bolt, whatever that had to look like, that had to be dramatic, you know.

But today, it's not the way we think. It's not walking an aisle and praying a prayer.

I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful it wasn't the beach conversions we had. at Calvary Chapel did these baptisms at one of the famous beaches down by Laguna Beach here on the west coast. And, you know, the Jesus people would go out there and get baptized and all of that.

And I now I wonder how many people really were saved. The Lord will use man's efforts, which is a miracle. He does that. But that's up to him. That I don't see how anyone can walk around and pronounce.

You know, Roman Catholics, there are true believers in the aberrant church of Rome. And they're everywhere. But we're not told to go around and check everybody's, you know, spirituality. We just don't do that.

We have enough to do. And so, Wimper's curriculum was all about motivating people to get out and do stuff. And so it's pietism, which is anti-Christian. You know, it's all about man doing, doing whatever.

And I'm really sad because I know time went by and some of the friends that I had there that I thought were believers. They're atheists now. You know, we now know that these kinds of religions alienate people and they become sort of inoculated to the gospel where they want nothing to do with it.

And it's so heartbreaking. I wish I could meet them and say,

the Lord has not changed. Humans always do bad things and people that's... speak for Christ to do criminal things. But that is not who the Lord is. We need to get to know who Jesus is and we always know Him through His Word.

And I think that's, well, I know, that's why John lifted the Bible up and no, it's not this, it's this other stuff. And that's when I knew I'm at the wrong address, I need to not be here.

Yeah, for me, like I said, I take the fruits because Jesus said by the fruits, you'll know them. I take the fruits of whatever was created and then I trace it backwards and I see all of these milestones and people like Wemper, for me, I don't know if he was a good man or a bad man.

I didn't know the man. And for me, that's totally irrelevant. I look at it more like for a period of time he had a steering wheel and he turned it slightly. Now, whether he intended to go the wrong direction or not, I don't know, but he turned it slightly and then other people carried it forward and then they turned it even further.

In the end, you've got, like you said, the mixture of politics and religion, which is the most dangerous thing in the history of the world that we have in the sea today. So I see this as the fruit.

Can I say that Wemper created this not directly, but he turned the wheel and he's one of the men who turned the wheel and why did he do it? So from here where I go and I did the same thing with the Brannum research, every figure that I introduce into the website, I take the assumption that if they're in this cult of personality that is trying to conceal information, I want to know why and I don't really trust the facts that have been written by the historians that are in favor.

So I start a page and it's nowhere near complete. In fact, you'll probably, I think people have actually found a few either grammatical errors or I think one place I chose the wrong footnote, but from there the page gets developed.

And if there's anything that's just blatantly false, I usually issue an apology and say, I'm mischaracterized so and so here. I haven't really seen anything like that. It's mostly there's differences in opinion of what he intended, which that's irrelevant to history.

But I build out the history and as people contact me with information like you're doing and I've actually have some other people who were in the Wemper groups that are sending me things that I can use, I build out the information and that leads to another figure and another and another.

And pretty soon you have this roadmap of how all of this turned into the NAR, which is what I'm building out. So I'm excited to, this is the early stages of that journey and I'm excited that you're joining in with me to do this.

Well, it's surprising. I didn't think my experiences, I mean, it's not that I ever thought it would contribute to anything, I'm very happy to help. I'm just glad in a way, if just some of the people that I saw ruined ship.

wrecked back in the day might be restored. It would do my heart good to know that might be possible. Yeah. It's to live, as you know, being in a cult, the wreckage that had to have been, that that is in all cults, the wreckage, you know, the emotional feelings of people, the relationships, you know, families, you know, I'm just, I'm just so grateful I was not hurt worse, you know, I was involved, but I saw family groups, you know, my former, I've been married twice, my former husband was in the vineyard, a leader in the vineyard, and of course that went south because of it.

So the Bible is true when it says that these false teachers shipwreck the faiths of those who are vulnerable, you know, who don't know how to discern. So being a Berean is a big deal, and I'm glad you're doing this work, John, I really wish you well in it. It's important, and I don't know, I don't think the, I don't know how someone who is enamored of a person, like in this case, John Wimber or Chuck Smith, whatever, you know, these people, especially attractive people, you know, John Wimber was attractive in the sense that he was, he had a kindness about him,

a friendliness, you know, and being a good musician, you know, all of that. So I would have connected with him, just because of the musician. Oh, you know, I knew him, and I know you now, and I think we would have jammed together.

Really? Absolutely. And I just think he, his experience, and I don't know why he went to Fuller, but I think that's where he got tainted with that stuff, because the whole kingdom of Heresy is actually a twisting of the kingdom teaching in the scripture. So there is a proper way to understand the kingdom, and there's an improper way. And like I said, the two categories, you know, the man, religion, they're always want to, they're going to exploit Christianity for their own gain.

That's the end game there, you know, their own gain. And, um, yeah. And as sad as it is, and I've experienced this even working with the Wimber people, whenever people are doing this for their own gain, and they've manipulated a group of people, it's very difficult for them to see that it was for their own gain. And they always look, especially the charismatic personalities, they really want to see them as a good person.

I'm the same way. I want to, I look for the good and all people. So it's very hard for me to see somebody had taken advantage of me. But anyway, this is the beginning of a journey. I welcome you on board, and this is, uh, this is going to be exciting. We're going to get into some good things. So If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the NAR, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Audible.