Miracle Healings: When Faith Meets Deception - Escaping NAR

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Adam Short. And together we're examining the new Apostolic Reformation, its history, its many issues, and how to escape. Adam, good to start this. Today with you as the co-host, awesome, yes sir.

We've talked so many times over the phone, but I'm trying to piece together the chain of events that led to this, but I think it all started with me finding you in the newspapers talking about the Bethel healing rooms or maybe it was the other healing room ministry, but I realized that you had the information that everyone wants to hear. So I decided let's let's put this together and see what we can come up with. Absolutely. Yeah, it's always a pleasure, John, talking to you whether it's by phone, satellite, paper airplane, or Morse code. I don't think

we've tried Morse code yet, but we should try that. Yeah, but yeah, happy to be here and just continue to be a part of what you're doing and you know love what you're doing, love your work and your research. And so thanks for having me. Awesome. Well, we were talking, we had a lengthy discussion, talking about faith healing, and it's kind of a hot topic, believe it or not, because you've got all the people from the brand of movement who are watching and they're in a faith healing cult. So their salvation is wrapped around faith healing. And if you

leave it, their first question isn't, are you serving Jesus? It's always, well, can you get healed? Because they they combine the two, salvation, faith healing. Then on the NAR side, it's turned into the, I don't know what you call it, but it's like the deliverance healing ministries of the apostles, you have to go to the apostle for your source healing. There's varying levels of this. But all the way down to, and I got my handy book here of the Randy Clark, a little awakening deliverance training manual. And here you can learn, yeah, and here you can learn

how if you have cataracts, it's a specific demon and you have to cast the cataract demon out. And there's, there's all kinds of weirdness. But I thought would be good, because I read you in the newspaper, bragging about the healings that were happening in the healing rooms. And I'm bragging. Yeah, a little bit. You were bragging on the healing rooms. But For the specific purpose of this, there are many people, you've probably seen them in the comment rooms.

If I expose a fraud faith healer, I get all these people that pounce on me and say, you're against divine healing. Oh, no, man, I just exposed to fraud and he was clearly vaking it, right?

And I get these on the other side. Well, you have brought down our specific, you're making our specific cult of personality key figure, look as though he might have had nefarious purposes. And so therefore, you must be against signs and wonders.

And power is dangerous. So you get them from both sides. It's like, all sides. Everybody just comes at John and wants to throw bad comments and attacks and everything else. Yeah. So yeah, it's like, it's like both sides of the coin.

And you know, it's interesting. We're so prone, I think, in Western thought to say, is it either or? Is this bad or is it good? But one of the things I'm learning is I continue to peel back the layers, particularly of the history of my journey through various organizations like this, where you've got your own experience, right?

Where you've experienced God in a profound way at a personal level, whether it be an encounter or you hear his voice or you're just simply reading the Bible. And he speaks to you. You've got things like that.

Then you have also things that have happened to other people that you've witnessed. And then in a separate category, you have things that have been reported on by third parties, i.e. things that have happened potentially in church services that are then repeated back to you through a testimony of some sort, whether it's written or in a video or just live in like a church service.

So we have to think through, is it either or or is it both end? And I think a lot of times it's both end, but we're in the process of trying to peel back and discern what is real and what's not.

And I can point to things that I've seen with my own two eyes that were legitimately, I could say, legitimate manifestations of God's power and God's miraculous intervention, but I also have seen things that were unhealthy and potentially not even real.

So it's a big mix, I think. And I think to your point too, like when it comes to the man of God, the whole man of God construct, that right there can be very dangerous.

And I've seen the danger there where a person continually sets themselves up as the source. You know, come to the man of God for your healing. for your miracles, for your fill in the blank.

And the problem becomes lots of things. One of them being the man is your source and you all of a sudden if you have faith for a supernatural encounter or healing, you're coming to a person and I think it's hard to separate.

Well, if I'm coming to a person, am I not also coming to God, but I think they can shift that focus in a very unhealthy way and then all of a sudden you get to a point where you're like, depending on a person now for some type of experience with God and that obviously is very dangerous and unhealthy.

So add to that another category. Okay, the NAR has by and large claimed ownership of this thing called spiritual warfare and they date it back to some of the things that Peter Wagner said, but in all truthfulness, it even predates later reign.

The way these guys were talking about and wanna say these guys, I'm referring to the quote unquote, faith healers. The way that the faith healers were able to do what they did as con artists was that by taking it out of the, in the message called, we called it the spiritual realm and the natural realm and almost said that, but to speak plain English, if you take it out of the real world and put it into a fantasy world, people can't argue against the fantasy because there's no way that you can prove or disprove the fantasy world.

And that's a really good point. So what happened is these con artists, there were some really good people in it and there were some con artists. But the con artist turned it into a spiritual thing and then any single element that you had, whether it was a blood clot that wasn't clotting properly and your blood cell count was down to cancers, to who knows what else, if you broke your arm, it was a spiritual demon attacking you basically.

Right. And the point I'm driving at is this, we do every Friday I do these testimonies from people who have escaped a cult. And you'll notice also in the comment feeds that they attack anything to do with not just their healing but also their salvation by pouncing on anything that they can find negative about their testimony.

So if this is a person who's born again Christian saved by grace who has experienced a true walk with Christ but was in a cult and went through some really dark times and did some really bad things because humans are humans, humans have human problems.

What happens is after they leave and they start talking about how their life has changed or the better, you'll find all of these cult drones that just attack them and say, no, you did accept a demon during your dark time and you...

Salvation isn't real, and therefore, whatever suffer, you know, there are people that are still suffering with different ailments. They'll say, you're suffering from this ailment because that spirit got on you before your conversion, and so therefore your conversion is false, your healing is false, and you're doomed to be sick the rest of your life.

So you've got that mix, all of that mix in here too, and that's common both in AR, Laterane, and predating Laterane. Yeah, that's, man, I'm so glad you brought up the whole spirit realm versus natural realm because that thinking is very much baked into the circles that I was a part of.

You know, including Bethel, Iop KC, and Morningstar, but I'm thinking of Bethel right now, and it is, if you examine that a little bit more, I think you can probably speak to this better than I can.

But I think that some of that thinking has its roots in Gnosticism, where, you know, and Gnosticism has been around for thousands of years. It was around in Biblical times when the New Testament was written. In fact, we have warnings in the New Testament about Gnosticism, and I can't tell you the references right now, but I'm sure somebody can look that up.

But the premise is with Gnosticism, and we get to a point here, the Gnosticists claimed that the spiritual realm, the invisible realm, the things that we can't taste, touch, smell, feel, you know, physically here.

Those things are more holy. Those things are more spiritual. They're on an elevated plane, and anything that you can touch, taste, smell, feel, see, and hear, that is a debased level of reality. And so you had sort of like a bifurcation of the spirit realm versus the physical realm, and that's made its way out into these circles.

And unfortunately, it does end up harming people like you're talking about, because there are explanations given, they're sort of like blanket, stereotypical explanations to your point, where no matter what sickness you have, there's some type of spiritual calls to you.

And inevitably, the person that's sick is the one that's responsible, and it's their fault that they have diabetes. It's their fault. They have cancer. It's their fault. They have cardiovascular problems. But what's ironic is, even though it's their fault, it's oftentimes a scrip to a demon.

I will say Bethel was less prone to call things demons. They didn't really focus as much on demons. It was more about, let's focus on what God's doing, rather than what the devil's doing.

Well, I will credit them with that. I think that's probably a good thing, but there still is, I think, an undercurrent of the spirit of fill in the blank, you know, that's sort of the enemy here that we've got to, we've got to find out what the enemy is here and we've got to cast it out and get it out of here, get it out of the person.

And you know, incidentally, it's not always a demon and maybe it's not even occasionally a demon. I mean, matter of fact, if you have diabetes, you can improve your blood sugar by eating less carbohydrates as it turns out.

And so regardless of what's going on with the demon world, you know, whatever you believe about that, like, in fact, the matter is, if you decide to not eat carbohydrates for 24 hours and then you go get your A1C tested, it's probably going to be in the normal level.

You're probably going to be at below level five. That's, so that's like a practical example of, like the physical world, how it impacts the physical world.

So I don't know, I'm just, I think you make a good point like with the, the physical versus the spiritual realms. Yeah. Well, it's like this. There's not a single faith healer yet that can heal the common cold.

They can tell you, go home and in two weeks, you'll feel better, but it's always, you know, it has to run its course and they realize that, you know, there's a lot more going on than just a demon and the con artists like to use that because if they can put your mind in that fictional world, then they can't, they can't really critically think about you.

I have diabetes. I, during the course of doing the podcast that I did with Charles that really started all of this. I was on the, like you said, lower your carbohydrates, you can get your A1C down.

I had spent, I can't tell you how long, getting up to the level where I was eating almost no carbs. And I did the fasting, intermittent fasting for lost 45 pounds and 45 days.

Oh wow. And yeah, and my blood sugar tests were normal. So on the last podcast that I did, whenever we were driving around, you know, talking about the city, I said I had reversed it.

Well, according to my meter, I had reversed it. But I get to the doctor and there's more going on than just what I can see with the little meter. Apparently at night, my liver was excreting the, what is it, glycogen?

I guess it is. It causes your blood sugar to raise. So that didn't help. But the point I'm driving at with this is, there's another negative consequence with this type of religion that other people don't realize.

I fought so hard against getting on the little pill that just changes my life for the better. I take the, I can pretty much eat whatever I want. And I still try to diet and do what's right.

Yeah, of course. The thing of it is, whenever you're in that mindset, there were years I wouldn't take a Tylenol if I had a headache for years and years and years. And then after the headache run its course, I would say praise God, the demon that was causing the headache is gone.

Well, no, man, that's not how it works, you know? Yeah, that was so true to like to your point, man. That, it's not like that was even a blatant teaching in the circles. I don't remember it being taught, like don't take medicine, right?

Like, I mean, I know in some circles it's, it's very blatant and out front. And in your face, like, if you take medicine, it's a lack of faith. But I think that even still in my mind, like, maybe 5% of that's left.

I, you know, I take medication too for certain things and I actually have no qualms with it, other than what I'm thinking about is the side effects of the medication. Like, I'm thinking about, hey, I don't want to damage my body because X, Y and Z side effects, I'm no longer thinking along the lines of, gosh, I have a lack of faith because I'm taking medication.

So, but on the flip side, like I still believe in healing. So like, but I'm not gonna not take medication either, right? Because just because I'm like holding out, I mean, why does it have to be mutually exclusive?

Why can't it be both end? Why can't you go to the doctor, get a prescription and manage it through a number of different strategies? But then, by the way, while we're at it, we'll pray for healing, right?

Like, I think that we've gotten so binary and polarized. And that's probably one of the byproducts of these, cult and cultish, heretical teachings is like, you have to throw all of the other natural stuff out and it's back to the spiritual realm versus the physical.

Like, it's got to be either or, but in fact, the matter is it can be both end. I think that's just my opinion. I think so too. One of the things that I've, the conclusions that I've come to by examining all of these NAR groups is that, like you said, so Bethel, they don't focus on the angels and demons so much instead, they focus on what God is doing.

What I've learned is that all of these groups really took the model that was created, not even by William Brannum, but more so by John Alexander Dowey. The model that combined faith healing with salvation and the latter range just basically tried to recreate Doweyism.

Laterane was Doweyism 2.0. But then when the NAR evolved, they realized that, that method of selling religion, that method of selling religion no longer sells is good. Because by and- large, the group turned in such a negative, uh, I was around a friend who said that they have so much negative energy flowing around these people you're with, John, I can't even stand to be around them. And, uh, years later, I thought back to that conversation, and it's, it's kind of true. They were very focused on the bad, the negative, the aimed, the demons, more

than the angels, the, the negative spirit world. Well, then the NAR comes along and they flip it upside down, but they flipped it on the same exact foundation. So while we're the lateral rain and pre-lateral rain focused on the negative, well, now the NAR focus is on the positive that can only exist because of the negative. So both paths lead to the same conclusion. To have Bethel's form of positive religion or, you know, you can predate Bethel, you can go back to power evangelism, all of these other things that led to what we have now. Yes.

It's built on the same exact foundation, but it cannot exist without the negative that was preached in lateral rain. And that's why when I compare these guys, I'm comparing the foundation, what, what made them become what they are today. Oh my gosh. And that has been so eye opening for me, just watching your content there. Because we were placed, we just sort of were dropped off and here you are in the middle of a historical narrative that predates you long before you were even born. And to look at where this stuff came from is honestly staggering. Like, to look,

you know, you go back and you look at God's Generals, which I mean, that book was pretty close to the Bible at Bethel. And you didn't hear one Iota, you know, we, we learned all about John Alexander Dowey, John G. Lake, Smith Wigglesworth, Amy Simple McPherson, Jack Coe, William Brannum, we read the William Brannum books, the, the history books. And you got the story that was varnished and polished. You didn't get all the other stuff in there. And even like the stuff you're doing about John Wimber right now, and I'm not as knowledgeable about John Wimber. I mean,

I know he's, you know, he had overlap there with Mike Bickle and Iop K.C. And, you know, Kansas City vineyard, you know, was a part of the vineyard movement there for a while. But the undercurrents and the belief systems that gave birth and spun off these additional movements that we now have,

it's, you look at those threads and it is mind-blowing. Like, go back to the word of faith movement, you know, Kenneth Hagen, Kenneth Copeland. I mean, those guys are, are even more, I think, steeped in that kind of name it, claim it, even then the movements I've been able to...

Part of, but basically what they're teaching is you can have whatever you want, along with the fanciest jet known to man. And it's just, it's a name it claim it slot machine is what it is.

It comes down to a slot machine God, a lottery God. And frankly, if you just open up the Bible and read the New Testament, it is a vast contrast to what you're being taught in these movements.

It's just, it's like night and day. Yeah, I call it the rabbit's foot God. You rub the God a little bit and he's going to give you a healing or you rub it and he's going to give you an airplane or whatever, you know, whatever it has spun off to.

And really for me, that's the bottom line. They've preached a different God. And again, the NAR focuses on the positive, laterane, branimism focus on the negative. It came to the point where I realized there are numerous passages in the Bible that talk about the nature of God.

And one of the most common natures of God is a heavenly father who loves the children. And I'm a father, I think of my children when I'm reading those passages. Well, imagine this, I've got kids.

And you know, when they were younger, we lived quite a ways away from my grandparents and some of my wife's family. And if one were coming to visit, say my grandparents was coming to visit and they told us they were coming and we knew what day they were coming and my kids are there and they're saying, well, I don't know if he's coming.

He's not here yet. He was supposed to be here an hour ago. Are you sure he's coming, Dad? And there's never a case where I would have told my son, well, you're doubting, I no longer love you.

But when you're in these religions, if you don't believe the healing, if you don't believe, you know, if you have any doubt, if you have any question, you, your God suddenly cut you off.

It's a narcissistic God. Narcissistic God. Yeah, you took the words right out of my mouth. You're absolutely right. I'm a dad too. And like, of course you wouldn't say that to your kids. Like, that's so cruel.

And, but we, yeah, we've, I think that these, I don't even want to say we because we've been indoctrinated by a lot of these teachings and they, I will say they, these faith healing, you know, super power, men of God, and some women of God too, there are a few of those in there.

But mainly men have created a God in their image. That is actually what's happening. And so the projection of God that you hear from them, I think it's just a grandiose version of themselves.

Like, and, and incidentally, it's not just rub the rabbit foot, by the way, it's pull out your checkbook. and write me a five-figure check. Even if, oh, by the way, if you don't have any money in your bank account, go into debt, sew a seed into my ministry because it's gonna return to you a hundredfold, or a thousandfold, or whatever it is.

And unfortunately, these elderly people who have no money as it is, they're living on a fixed income, social security, and maybe they've got a little bit of investment income. They're going into debt to donate to these guys, and it's so, so evil, it's so wrong.

Kenneth Copeland has a net worth of $700 million. Like, that's insane. He's a preacher, $700 million. Like, in what universe is that okay? And he's the guy that's saying, write me the checks. You know, I saw a clip of him recently, where he's going on and on about his $10,000 watches, and they're probably more than $10,000 now.

I think this was many years ago. But like, in what world does that make any sense? If you compare that to Jesus, Jesus is hanging out with poor people. He's hanging out with destitute.

You know, he's calling the religious leaders of the day, breads of vipers, and by the way, if you look at what that actually means in today's language, I'm not gonna repeat what it means.

It's pretty bad. Jesus actually cussed, by the way. Yeah. So these are the phrases, brewed of vipers, that's another one. That's the one that comes in mind. There are a few others in there.

But if you look that up, it's actually their expletives. So, you know, Jesus, we're told Jesus is meek and mild, but I got news for you, man. He cussed people, I helped. I study everything, and I'm a little embarrassed to say this, but one of the pathways that I took after leaving the cult, see, we weren't allowed to even think a cuss word or spiritual warfare, the demons in you, the demon get in your head, and then you can't get healed off of stuff, right?

Well, I got to thinking about, because in the IT world, you can be in a business meeting, and the CEO will come down, and he'll motivate you by using a cuss word. And it's not like he's cussing at you or offending you, but he uses the word, and come on, let's buckle the H up and let's go, right?

You know, but we were taught that it was so evil, and so I did it just to study on cuss words, and you go back and you look at Martin Luther when he started the Protestant Reformation.

It wasn't back then, it wasn't really so taboo. It wasn't until it came into American Christianity that it was, and so then I went a step further, and I started studying, like you said, the phraseology in the Bible, and suddenly I stumbled across Ezekiel 23-20, where God is scolding Jerusalem and says that you lusted after your lover.

who were hung like horses and sprayed like dockies or something to that effect. And man, that was, that was cuss word in its essence. That was, but motivating them to change their ways, basically.

Interesting. I had not heard that or I didn't know that about Ezekiel, but that makes sense. Like, you bunch of, you load a donkey, donkey colony, like modern language.

I mean, like, well, translate it in English and well, it sounds so pious and spiritual, like you brood of vipers, you know, and the Morgan Freeman voice. You know, if you had a Bible in the voice of Morgan Freeman, who if we all listen to Morgan Freeman, like, oh my gosh, that's what God sounds like.

And I mean, I think he has probably the best God voice I've ever heard, but like you brood of vipers, you know, and, but no, like 500 years from now, somebody's gonna look at modern American English and they're gonna look at our expletive and say, oh, look, look at what a nice phrase they called people back then.

And by then, they're probably calling people like, scaly alligators or something, which means absolutely nothing to us. So it's just an example of how language evolves, but I'm not even sure how we got on this point, but it related back to, I think, the difference between like the God and the Bible and the version of God that were told exists from these faith healers.

Yeah. Well, the funny part for me is it was full circle. So when I went down the tangent of studying language and how it changed over time and how it differs from the ancient world, et cetera, even it, you know, 300 years ago Christianity was different.

Well, it got me to thinking again about the foundation that was laid, which was entirely false. You, it was asceticism. You don't cuss, because if you do, you're going to hell. And you mentioned Nostics earlier.

Well, there are Nostic groups that they believe that they could save themselves by being ascetic, by denying themselves certain things. And one group went to the extreme that they said anybody who has sex, they're committing the, the ultimate sin of the world and will never make the rapture, will never have a rapturing faith as long as you guys are having sex.

And that entire cult died out because you don't have any, there's no reproduction about the sex. So it took me down those paths, but I came full circle back because the way in which they presented the God was so powerless that if you were to cuss back to the child example, if my son were to say, Dad, I hate you.

Well, what teenager hasn't said that to their dad, man? They come home from school. You hear it all the time, even watching the television programs, you see kids do that. And then they make up, they reconcile, they get back with God or get back with the father.

Well, a father is not going to stop loving the child because the child says something out of anger out of emotion but we did and the the cussing tied to the salvation the salvation tied to the healing and It just came back full circle until I realized this entire foundation that all of this stuff is built on is completely false Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter reign Charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website

William-Brannum.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 Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. It's just the

the practice of healing I think It can become this notch on the belt and It it becomes I feel like a Bethel like we got so deep into it and I saw a lot of healings happen, but it became a thing where the focus was taken off of God and the goodness of God was so preached and Which is there's nothing wrong with that, but like when the focus becomes the person praying for healing right like One more testimony in the bag, so to speak like that's not even the point. That's not the point and

at the end of the day the gospel is here to to save people and In the process. Oh, yeah, by the way, you might get healed too like the central focus isn't healing I think that healing has taken the forefront in a lot of these movements Kind of like prayer took the forefront in eye up KC It's just it's just one of the fixtures of the movement the main fixture, I guess and so But one of the things that occurred to me You know post-Bethel was How many times in the Bible specifically the New Testament and the Gospels did you see

The people that prayed for healing like the disciples when they went to go pray for healing or do miracles Did you hear them going around telling the story or was it the person that got healed that told the story?

So that kind of was a light bulb for me because it's like That was so preached at Bethel that when you have a testimony to share, we're going to get up on the stage, we're going to share the testimony, and I did that myself.

I was in the newspaper talking about it, but I think the biblical model is the person that got healed, the person that experienced this is the one that should tell the story. I mean, not to say that you can't share with somebody if you prayed for somebody and they got healed.

I think what I'm trying to say is the focus, it's just the focus has really been put on the person doing the healing, which is really a fruit and byproduct of, I think some of these faith healers you've pointed out.

It's like the man of God model, right, or even the power evangelist model where it's all about you. You've got the good. You've got the power. You've got the supernatural to bring to a person.

I'm glad you brought that up because that I've been trying to find a good way in a podcast to illustrate exactly what you're saying because like you mentioned earlier, John Wember, he's turned into this hot topic through the comment threads, everybody, you know, seeing that I dislike some of the framework.

It's not that I dislike the man, he was probably a good guy for all I know, but power evangelism, a lot of people don't realize that is nothing new with John Wember. Again, the NAR took the positive, but to have the positive, you must have the negative and laterane had the negative, it'll come out soon, probably before this heirs, but I'm doing a deep dive in Chuck Smith.

When you see the laterane connections to Smith and Wember and all of these guys in that Jesus movement, it's kind of eye-opening, but the power evangelism framework itself, I have a huge problem with and I'm going to try to articulate my thoughts as best possible.

Yeah, I'm dying to hear this, this is going to be good, I already know. Yeah, where I don't offend people because there's a lot of people that they have been sold this bill of goods and hookline and sinker, they believe it.

And if you question the framework, suddenly it's an us versus them in the same way that any destructive cult will fight back, it's us versus them. It's not that I don't believe in the concept of power evangelism.

If you have an evangelist who is truly working for God and God does heal people, according to the Bible, when there's a healing, that, in my opinion, that is power evangelism. It's somebody who puts the focus on God, has an individual who's seeking God and the evangelist is simply making the connection between the person and the God.

There's no triangle. What these power evangelists model is, they like the triangle. They like God and me, the power evangelist and you, the individual. So there's this triad. Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

The real problem is that because this model was created in this way, the people begin to look at the religion exactly like they did in Brannemism, Latter-Rain, where their spiritual personality and to some extent the salvation is wrapped up in that same model.

So there's that same triad, that's why people, I think, defend Wembers so heavily. You have to have the evangelist to have the power of angelism. That's what connects you to God. And here's the people seeing the signs and wonders.

But in that model, you're defying several passages of the Bible that warn you like an evil and adulterous sign, evil and adulterous people seek after a sign. That's a Bible verse. If you take power of angelism only then you're denying that verse because you get people who are associating their salvation with the signs and wonders miracle.

Exactly what was happening in Latter-Rain. But what about the person who comes to these things could really care less about the person on the platform? Realizes that the person on the platform is full of this hype, but they're a true Christian and they realize that other Christians are in the building and they come because we're two or three are gathered in my name, there will I be.

And they come in that aspect of the Christian faith instead of the power evangelist who is connecting you to God. I actually see more of a Christian in that person than I do the people who are looking for the signs and wonders and miracles because of one single thing that is overlooked in these power evangelist models.

If you actually read the Bible, which I have several times, many Christians unfortunately have never read it. If you read it, you're going to find example after example after example of people who didn't get healed and were they not Christian, were they not following God?

No, that's not the case, but they did not get healed. And so if you're in that model and you're thinking it's always good all the time and there's doing the stuff is going to affect your life, well, what if it doesn't?

What if it doesn't? That is the existential question and it dovetails with this, the inability to face reality, the inability to face grief, the inability to face loss. And so what happens when your spouse dies of cancer?

And it was an absolute shock to the Bethel ecosystem. When Benny passed away, Bill's wife, it was, she was a huge figure at Bethel, an amazing person. And the fact is, she did not get healed.

And that... That is horrible. Like, it's horrible. It's a huge loss, you know? And there has to be a human grieving process. Like, everybody doesn't get healed. And the Bethel answer to that is, it's because the fullness of the kingdom has not yet been released in the earth.

And it needs to be. And that's our job to bring kingdom now. And I know you're diving into that with the whimper stuff. But the fact of the matter is, let's play out that conclusion.

Let's say, just for sake of argument, let's say that we could get everybody healed. We could write every wrong. We could prevent hurricanes from flooding thousands of people like we're looking at right now, just in our backyard.

Well, okay. Well, what about all of the book of Revelation, which predicts absolute catastrophe and just unbelievable judgment? And, I mean, what do you do? I mean, it says that there's gonna be a new heaven and a new earth.

And that the current earth will pass away. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will never pass away. So if everybody gets raised from the dead, I mean, just thinking about that for seconds, kind of freaky.

Like, if everybody gets raised from the dead right now, what are you gonna do about the resurrection from the dead that is prophesied in the Bible? I mean, there's just gaps in how that stuff would play out in reality.

And meanwhile, the people that experience the loss are left for dead and they don't know to do with their grief. And that is probably one of the biggest weaknesses of Bethel is you're focusing on what God's doing all the time, but the people that actually lost stuff where things did not go as planned and whether it's sickness or some other tragedy, those people are, it's like there's not a spot for that to happen.

There's not a spot for that to be processed. And unfortunately, that is what is causing a lot of the harm in people that have left these movements. And unfortunately, it rewrites huge portions of Bible text, which, again, there are many Christians who've never read the Bible.

And so when these quote unquote power evangelists are doing this kind of thing, they don't recognize it because they've not actually read the book that is being referenced. But one of the things that these guys go to and this was also common in the Brannum movements, but they would refer to the book of Job and focus in heavily over emphasizing the restoration of everything that Job had lost.

Okay, which, if you... Yeah, Bethel did that too. Yeah, so if you emphasize that one little part of that entire book, you have totally missed the point of the... book of Job, where a man is being so faithful to God, even though he's going through all kinds of trials, more than any human should, the entire subject matter of that book is that you can have a connection to God while you're suffering.

But because one little passage at the end has the restoration, they say, and see you too, if you go through trials, you're going to be restored. What about the times when you're not? I've seen this first hand.

I had a family member just pass who they are suffering their entire life. And they were wrapped up in this thing that they believed that they had done something wrong and they don't know what because they have an illness that just continued the rest of their life.

They were as dehabilitating. But they were wrapped up in that model where they thought that they could be cured and it was an incurable issue. And so the problem is it gave them false hope that never came.

So their life gets worse and worse and worse up until the point of death. Then every family member, they're suddenly experiencing, wait a minute, there's something wrong here because she was, this person was never, never got any better.

I've seen it multiple times with multiple people and the problem is that it makes the people who do have a certain condition feel inferior. And I don't believe that God would want a Christian to feel inferior because they're going through some sort of a trial.

Yeah. Well, there's even an example of that in Jesus's, you know, in the Gospels, right, where somebody asked, well, who was it that sin? Was it this man who sinned or his parents or, you know, you know, I'm talking about in the Bible there.

And Jesus's answer and I'm paraphrasing all this and probably botching it up in the process. But he's basically like, it was neither their sin nor his sin. But so that the glory of God would be revealed.

And I mean, that person did get healed, Jesus did heal that person. But the point being like, it wasn't their fault. Like, they didn't, they weren't sick because of their sin. And that's been ultra pushed like for years that your sin is your reason for your sickness.

And yeah, people end up in this so sad like with your family member, you end up, you know, they ended up, it sounds like to the end of their life believing that it was their fault.

And that is just, oh, gosh, that's just so painful, so hard. It is. And that's, you know, one of the reasons why I'm so hard against the framework that has created all of this is because I've seen the suffering.

And as humans, we go through things. There are things that happen in our lives that can cause us grief and suffering and sorrow. But the problem is whenever the framework of what they're calling Christianity, when that framework itself also causes suffering on top of the suffering.

Now you've got this layer of burden on your shoulders that you didn't even have to have in the first place. So you go through life with this extra burden, and I don't care how you spin it, you know.

In the NAR, you can take away all of the negative and focus on the positive. You still got the same framework, so you still are left with people who they're suffering and they don't need to.

Yeah, well, there's a term for this, and it's called toxic positivity, and it actually is a thing in the mental health space. You can ask therapists, and it'll tell you that toxic positivity is actually a, and I don't know what category this fits in, but it's a reality that people wrestle with when they're in these kinds of movements, cultish movements, and it's like this, you know, no matter what, I've got to have this positive, it's thought stopping, right?

If some of this is thought stopping, and Stephen Hassan talks about this as one of the characteristics of a cult is thought stopping practices, and so I can't have one possible negative thought in my head.

And you know what actually that is, it's denial, it is 100% denial. You can actually be honest with yourself about the circumstance that you're going in and or that you're going through and simultaneously have faith.

But see, those two things have been made to be mutually exclusive, and it's highly damaging, it's highly damaging, it causes incredible damage to a person's mental health. And then, to your point, like they end up living in a situation where not only is it the initial sickness or hard thing that they're going through, but it's also the burden of trying to maintain that toxic positivity.

And frankly, a lot of people burn out from that, and they end up, they actually end up having more health problems as a result because their actual nervous systems are related. And that has actually, that's been researched and documented by the mental health and the psychologists, and the people that study the nervous system, that kind of stuff has been documented.

Yeah, I'm no psychologist, I'm fascinated by it, but for me, it appears, for me, and I hope to have one on soon, hopefully. But for me, it borders on disassociation, and because if you really think about it, when you're in that state of denial, and you're in that state of toxic, positive lifestyle, what it is, you are completely ignoring the negative that exists, like you said, you're in denial.

But more to the point, you're trying to pretend that the negative isn't a reality for you when it is. And so it's creating an ultimate... and that reality in your head. And the real problem with this kind of thing is people who suffer with this, I can say this from experience, even though I'm not a psychologist.

Many people who leave these groups and they tell me what is going on with them, when they leave that toxic positive effect, suddenly they go through battles where they feel all of the effects of disassociative disorder such as they're in this fog, this mental fog, it doesn't, life doesn't seem real, it feels like they're watching a movie of themselves, they're like outside of the body looking in, because they've disassociated, they're not connected with reality.

And again, you go back to that framework, the framework of religion that created the power of angelism, that created laterane, enabled Dowie to make millions of dollars, that framework creates this toxic level, this toxic level of environment, where you are hurting yourself needlessly to claim a false religion.

Yeah, you're gaslighting yourself. Like if you're standing in the prayer line, the main of God's praying for you, or even if it's just the prayer, just the prayer team, you know, and this is the part that I'm still trying to work out, right?

Where, biblically, there is precedent for incremental healing. You saw that with a man who was blind. Jesus, well, Jesus was healing him. And initially, he said, well, I can see, it's like trees walking, I think, or it's like he could see shadows, or his vision wasn't completely healed yet.

That's my point. So there's incremental healing. So that is a thing in the Bible. However, I think that where it's been hijacked is you're standing in the prayer line, and you're the person coming up here getting healed, or wanting to get healed.

The person praying for you is asking for feedback. And you've talked about where this practice came from. They're asking for feedback, okay? Level one to 10, what's your pain now? You know, we started at eight, now you're at a six, okay?

These are the kinds of things that we would do on the prayer line, okay? Test out your elbow. Could you do that before? No, I couldn't. Okay, great. I mean, measures of healing. Is some of that legitimate, I think so, but then I think also it's exploited in hijack too, particularly from like a psychosomatic standpoint, where you actually can, you can sort of be talked into it sometimes, right?

Where even physical pain can lessen, I mean, that's just the power of the brain. You know, what we think about can radiate out to through our nervous system and stuff. So anyway, I make the point that the incremental healing is a thing in the Bible, but I think also there's a mixture in there where some of it is sort of exploited and sort of...

hard left turn hijacked, if you will. And like everything we've talked about, it's more complex than even just those two sides. You've got people who are entering the prayer line and their heart rate gets up because there's this fear of approaching the healer, right?

Or anxiety, I guess anxiety is probably a better term. So you get your heart rate up and then your mind is you're in an altered mental state because your mind is focused on the healer as though the healer has connected you to God.

And so when he does the thing with moving your arm, the pain that you might have recognized before will your mind has disassociated from your internal feelings because you're in this altered mental state.

So even that can be somewhat explained by the psych, you know, the psych, the psychiatry of it. But that's not to say that God isn't doing the healing. I'm not saying that at all.

It's just that in many cases, there are also other explanations as to what's going on. I think another example of that is, if you think about the adrenaline, the function of the adrenal glands in the body, right?

So for example, let's say immediately we, you know, in my office here in your office there, you had a herd of bears come through your back door. You know, all of a sudden I'm seeing bears come through your door back there and you're like, oh my gosh, bears are coming in.

I mean, regardless of what state of mind you're in at that point, whether you've got pain in your body or whether you've got headache or, you know, your nose is running or, you know what I mean?

Like you're gonna go full on like fight or flight mode, right? And so you're gonna do whatever it takes, you know, turn yourself around and wrestle those bears with the ground and get them out of there.

Or whatever you do to fight bears off. But and then in the meantime, all of your symptoms that you've had are probably gonna go to the back burner for a minute, right? Because you're, that's just how the body's created a work.

Like your adrenal glands are taking charge. You're like, you're there to protect yourself. And so, but incidentally, when the, once the bears leave, your pain might come back. And even more, you're reminding me of the race, Stephen's song, drawn a blank on the name of it.

But he says, somebody shouts out that room, don't have a door in it. And he says, it will have in a minute. That's how I'd be with the, with the bears coming in. But yeah, I think the bottom line for me, if I were to try to sum this episode up is that just because I disagree with the framework and all of the critical example that I've put out with all of the different people who are definitely con artists, many of them are.

I've also tied it to people who I don't, like, Wimba, I don't see him as a con artist. He's not from anything that I can tell. It just seems like a good guy who got mixed in with the wrong crowd.

Those, those people can get steered in directions that they wouldn't have otherwise went. And I see the framework as the cause of that too. Like I see his connection to Paul Cain and all these guys.

If you look at what happened, there's a reason why all that happened. And it ties into that model. Had he not been introduced to this very, very bad thing that was called Christianity, the framework that enabled all of this, I think it would have been entirely something different.

And so I, you know, I've never really been against healing by, per se, by God. I even had my own father went to these healing lines with William Brannum and he had rheumatic fever.

He, I can't remember how long that he had. They said he would live, but it wasn't long. And he went through the healing lines. He was prayed for. And then according to my grandfather, he won the physical fitness award in his high school the next year.

So his body was near death and then, you know, recovered. Now, are there other explanations for that, maybe? But I can only go on my grandfather's word. I wasn't there. But I have no reason not to believe it is what I'm saying.

But I also strongly feel that the man on the platform had 0% to do with that. Well, yeah, and that's the critical point. I think we're making is it's like you combine thought. Like mind control, you combine money.

You put money in the mix and money just makes things all the more heightened. And, you know, people that might start out well, you know, they get, they start making a lot of money doing this.

Like, oh, this ain't so bad, you know, like I can go hold these meetings with all these tent revivals and this, that and the other and make bank in the process. So unfortunately, you know, and this is probably a little bit of Bethel speaking through me.

They started well, but ended bad. But I know what you have revealed is that they actually started bad. Like some of these guys, a lot of these guys, they, they came in the door and they already had the grief going from day one.

And that's the, that's the part of the story that frankly needs to get out there. People need to know the full truth. They need to know what actually happened that John G. Lake, you know, there's documented evidence.

I think of the, he was involved in a criminal. There's some type of criminal activity there. Right, am I getting that right? There's a, he was involved with multiple things, but the most, the most covered up for me has been the Paramite murders.

He was a leader in the Paramite sect and Dauy's religion. And he was in Dauy's compound of Zion. Charles Fox Param comes there and they started spiritual warfare. They started exercising people, exorcisms with people.

And to the extent they were killing multiple people with their exorcisms. And Lake was involved with that before all of the fraud scams. And I think it was called blue sky fraud that he had committed where he swindled to his own church.

Yes, security is fraud. These were not good people. And for me, the reason why I published the negative, and I get asked this all the time, why didn't you tell the good part of this person? Well, it's a balance scale, man. If you are, I can't remember the phrase that you use, the toxic positive, toxic positivity. Yeah. So if you're focused on that with any of these gods' generals, you're so positive that you ignore all of the critical. What happens if the negative of these guys so far outweighs the positive that they're clearly con artists, and that's what I'm finding with a lot of them. Yeah. And like at the end of

the day, you have to evaluate this stuff through the Bible, right? So you will know a tree by its fruit. And if this is the kind of stuff, I mean, everybody makes mistakes. None of us are perfect. But if you are doing stuff like what you talked about, John G. Lake, covering up murders and whatnot, like that's frickin' that's bad. That's real. That's not just bad. That's horrific. And so how can you possibly just say, well, you know, I think the good outweighs the bad. It's like, no, I think we probably have to go ahead and throw

all of that out because like, Jesus actually asked the question, does bad fruit come from a good tree? Something to that effect. I'm probably getting it wrong, but it's in the Bible. And so you have to evaluate these people. I think that's the point you're making. And it turns out that a lot of these guys were evil. Yeah. A lot of these guys were evil.

And some of them, you know, no matter if they've made it to my website or not, I'm putting them there so that I can map all of this out. So some of these guys were good people.

They really were, but they were mixed in with some bad things. And I think for me, understanding that nothing is really black or white. Back to the example of the people who are giving testimonies on the website, you can't deny that they had a salvation experience just because you disagree with what they believe currently on faith healing or whether they believe in the central figure of your group or not. You can't, you didn't walk in their shoes, you know, you don't know what what they went through. And for me, if you have to fight to that level to try to uphold it, then there's probably something wrong and probably need

to get out of that. Yes. Yes. But anyway, this was great fun. Thanks for doing it with me. And I look forward to the next one. Absolutely. John, thank you. Great to be here. Appreciate it. Awesome. 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-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Ottawa.

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