Charismania: Contextual Issues With Scripture

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-Brandom.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Cynthia Artich. And together we're discussing Charismania, the history and the impact of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements on Christianity. Cynthia, it's good to be back. We had so many compliments off of the first one that we did together. I don't know if you got a chance to look through the comment feeds, but people were begging us for more and I'm glad we're connecting to do this and I have had my homework to dig

into Chuck Smith and lo and behold, he's tied into everything that I've been researching. Surprise, surprise, you mentioned that he was with the Angeles Temple, which I didn't know that, but I did not realize how deeply it ran into Laterane until I found a clip of Paul Cain talking about his days with Chuck Smith and he dated it back into the the days that Chuck Smith was at Huntington Beach and he even named the revival that Chuck Smith became his campaign manager for. So I was able to go back into the newspapers. I was able to dig that

up. You can go to my website, type in Chuck Smith and you can find this, but this was back in the fifties. So we have Chuck Smith as a Laterane guy as a he's from the Angeles Temple in the years in which they were Christian identity. So everything that I've been researching basically flows through Chuck Smith and from there, as you know, it goes from Chuck Smith to various other figures which will be examining in the future. Well, it's great to be here again, John and that's something I just learned from you. Now I have to say this. I grew up in

Huntington Beach and I was born in the mid fifties. So I was too young to know a lot of stuff. By the time I was a teenager though, I don't know if you know we're called Surf City. In all the nation, we're, you know, famous for that I guess. Well, back in those days, we're a bit rural and very, very hippie, surfer kind of town. I lived about a couple miles from the beach and I used to go fishing on the pier with my dad and we had a little fishing boat. So I missed those

times, but it does explain a lot because I wasn't converted or I didn't become a Christian at Chuck's tent. I actually, I think the Lord saved me earlier than that and I won't get into that story.

It was a very different kind of thing. But when I was in my early 20s, the musical group I was playing with, you know, I was a musician and we were all trying to make it in the music business, they all wanted to go to this place, Calvary Chapel.

The big news was Calvary Chapel and it was just out of the tent and into the building in Costa Mesa, which is pretty much up the street from Huntington Beach. And so I tagged along with my friends and was very open-minded.

I mean, I didn't have any goals of getting close to the spirit. I didn't even think I knew what that was. I was just reading my Bible and kind of feeling things out. But I do remember my early days at Calvary.

There was a class that Chuck Smith gave on teaching us the gift of tongues. It was a class. And I distinctly remember him being, he was a very friendly guy and he was dressed in gray sweats.

This is on a weekend. I felt like he was some sort of PE teacher. You know, Chuck had this history teacher, PE teacher vibe going on with his personality. It was very friendly and comfortable.

And in this class, I'll never forget this because I had been studying the scriptures on my own. And he got up in the class and he said, okay, we're going to learn about the gifts today.

And he talked a bit about them and he said, so we're going to teach you how to speak in tongues. And it was like a cooking class only. We're learning how to speak in tongues.

And I kind of got weird feelings from that in a casual way. I thought, well, wait a minute. If it's a gift, why is somebody teaching how we use tongues? I mean, was my take, you know, and I was a very new Christian.

So I didn't, I wasn't really perturbed, but I just remember distinctly him leading the class with the gibberish. I don't know how that sounds, but I felt really awkward with that because I, because that never entered into my head to talk like that.

You know, God, Gabby, Gabby, I forget what it was. It was some syllabolic pattern, right? As a musician, you know, we think of syllables like rhythmic patterns, right? And I remember sitting there thinking, how odd this is, if God is going to give us these gifts, wouldn't we just have them, wouldn't we just receive them?

And so that was kind of my first, oh, I don't know. Maybe a positive encounter with Pentecostalism, because it was so friendly and calm. It was not erratic. I have a couple funny stories about the speaking intungs. I have a lot of friends who believe that it is the next thing to God and whenever they enter into this thing like you, to me, it sounds like gibberish. Not going to lie. But we've been, Charles and I, as we've been examining the Brannum history, one of the churches that we examined, and I'm not going to mention the name, but in these churches that are very cultish and destructive, they

will often have, quote, unquote, messages from God that are intended to chastise people for questioning. And one time, the pastor had an entire sermon that was dedicated to the chastisement of an individual, while they're family, because they didn't adhere to the cult rules. And lo and behold, somebody who might have been the pastor's wife, somebody who was of rank in the church, quote, unquote, spoken tongues and prophesied. And the prophecy was this narcissistic God saying things that a God would never say against a person. I'll just say it like that. And you have to question it. But the funniest story, I had this guy

who escaped, and he claimed to have had the gift of interpretation. And he said people would, in his church, people would start speaking in tongues. And suddenly the interpretation would fall upon him. And he would stand up. And he was the interpreter for the church, which, you know, I, I didn't question it. That's what he said. That's his story. I'm, and he's sticking to it. But he said, whenever he suddenly came in contact with all of the critical information of this, of these movements that I had been publishing, he was in the church thinking about something that the pastor had said that was just completely false. It did

not match the Bible, did not match Christianity. And his mind went there. And somebody started speaking in tongues while he's thinking critically. And he said, suddenly, he was thinking of that. And he wasn't listening to the speaking in tongues. And so after it finished, everybody's quiet. They're all looking at him because he's the interpreter. And he sat there forever, you know, because he didn't hear what the woman said, whenever she was speaking in tongues. And suddenly he had to stand up and say, I'm sorry, y'all. I know she said something that might have been important, but I just wasn't paying attention. Well, I'm sure out there, there have been a lot

of experiences like that because that's just real life, you know. But I do know when it comes to like Chuck, I really enjoyed him as a person. I thought he was a very friendly, just a likeable fellow. I mean, young people noticed that. That was a big deal because in Huntington Beach, we had all these, we had a lot of...

hippies, you know, back in the day, the, uh, well, you know, I don't know if people nowadays know what hippies are, but, uh, basically as a cultural description, they're these free thinking people who are really rebelling against the establishment in their own personal way. And, you know, we had the Vietnam War going on back in the day and there was a lot of, uh, scary stuff with that. I remember having some, uh, some friends, you know, some guys who I worked in the band with who were worried about getting drafted and, and I wasn't really paying attention to too much of the politics more than there was a lot of fear

in the young people, uh, community because of the guys, um, you know, some of them went to Canada to avoid the draft. And so, uh, there was a lot of, uh, up, upheaval culturally in Southern California and, and now with hindsight, some of my theology teachers, we look back on that and, uh, they think it was, um, the Southland was like the Burned Over District in New York. If you know what the Burned Over District is in church history, where you had all of these religious movements, um, uh, very, very emotional, claiming supernatural events. Um, and there was so much of this emotionalism that it just simply burned everybody

out, you know, it would de-church people. They didn't want to go to church. It was so extreme. We tend, I think I agree with the idea that Orange County, uh, mostly Orange County in this Southland area is a Burned Over District because we had the Calvary Chapel movement, we had the Vineyard Movement movement, we had a very, very large charismatic population with all the, like church of the Nazarene and other, uh, groups, um, definitely Jehovah Witnesses, definitely Mormons. You know, everything was going on here and, and Rick Warren, you know, rose to power here in Mission Viejo, uh, and now where are all these people? Well,

Schuller, I don't know if you remember Robert Schuller with his hour of power. And, and basically that word power is like what John Wimber used, you know, power religion, which was this indication when we have these extraordinary occurrences, these miracles, right? And I never saw a miracle.

I mean, I was here. Um, I saw a lot of strange stuff. Uh, now I would say it probably was Satanic activity. I mean, I saw a few things that were scary. Um, I also played in a, in a musical group that worked with Lonnie Frisbee, who at the time was Chuck Smith's house guest.

And I know now with Hines, Lonnie Frisbee was an occultist. He wasn't just a misguided Christian. He was doing a divination and all kinds of occultist pursuits at the same time with the Calvary thing.

And that's aside from smoking marijuana and whatever, you know, what the kids did back then. I'm not even counting that as a thing because there was so much of it. So what I mean, occultic practices, I mean calling upon spiritual entities and then claiming it's God.

And that was scary. You know, it's weird stuff going on there. So we now live in an area where

Robert Schouler's big church is now Roman Catholic. Calvary Chapel is fragmented when Chuck, in fact, today is the anniversary of Chuck Smith passing away. He died on October 3rd. I think it was 2011.

I'd have to look at, you know, the date. But his, Chuck Smith built a kingdom you might say to his name. His, what he thought, what he believed in, it was all about his domain.

And I said before, we used to joke seriously, not funny, but funny, calling him Pope Chuck because his Moses model of church governance made him the soul authority over what Calvary chapels would do.

And if you had a franchise at Calvary Chapel, like the other pastors, they are the soul authority. It's a business model. They own everything. They pay a licensing fee to the Calvary Chapel, dove and the trademark and the name and all that.

And when Chuck died, there's big fight over his multi-million dollar estate. You know, word for today, which began, I think it was the first small recording company that did sermons on tape back in the day when we had cassettes.

I'm really old. I don't remember cassettes. And it, well, it turned into a mega business. Like Greg Laurie has, I think Greg Laurie gets the prize for having the biggest business. Calvary Chapel sort of business that he calls harvest.

And he does these crusades. And it's all about building his brand. And he is the CEO of it. So he even sounds and looks like Chuck Smith. I have to say that. I don't know if he does that on purpose.

Could be. But yeah. And so it's sad in a way, I think Chuck meant well. I don't know about the ladder rain portion, but it explains a lot because his productions at the tent and then at the building were very well planned, very well orchestrated.

And, um, slick, you know, in their own way. Yeah. I've had to, in my roles with my IT business, I've had to play many different roles, but one of the roles that I play is architect, because it, number one, I have to, but number two, it fascinates me to understand how things work.

I was one of these kids that whenever I would get a radio for Christmas, first thing I did was get a screwdriver and take it apart and see what's in it, so I can understand what it was.

But I want to know what makes things tick. And that's part of what drives me to look into all of this, because once you understand the architecture of Latter-Rain, I call it the framework, and that word probably falls on deaf ears, but in the religious circles.

But if you understand the architecture of it, Latter-Rain had this focus on exactly what you're calling power, power evangelism, power signs and wonders, miracles, all of this stuff. But it also had a heavy focus on the demonic, and when I say that, I mean not just from the deliverance side of things where they're claiming they can cast out evil spirits, etc.

But they did demonic things. There was speaking to the dead, and openly they were praising God for speaking communication with the dead, which is highly abomination. They're doing many, many occultist things that if you go study Satanism, which I have, just understand what it was, many of the practices that you find in Satanic worship, they were doing in Latter-Rain.

And Branum spearheading it was teaching by example, and he would say things like, I don't know the book real well, but I know the author. But here, let me teach you the book. So he would bring his own flavor of teaching into it.

And that flavor included things like communicating with the dead and reaching out to the souls on the other side, many, many different things that you would find if you go to a say on.

I mean, it's really that weird. But more than that, the Latter-Rain focused heavily on the fear. It did have the excitement, like you're talking about in our last episode, the excitement with the power of angelism.

It had that, but it capitalized on the fear because that's what contained the people of that era. They were afraid of the next coming World War, they were afraid of the Cold War, etc.

So they capitalized on that fear. After all, that fear subsided, and especially during the hippie movements, it was love, peace, happiness, excitement, power, this kind of thing. And if you understand the architecture of what was built with Latter-Rain, you begin to understand that you cannot have this excitement without the other side of it.

So the power of angelism exists because of the powers and the signs, wonders, miracles that Latter-Rain advertised, which... The way in which they represented it was that it was this demonic thing that they were overcomers of.

The same thing Laterane did, but they created this fictional world far above and beyond with the Bible teaches of angels and demons so that they entered the casual average person into a daily battle with demons, but focused on the excitement of it.

It's exciting to fight these demons, etc. So I understand how the architecture works and that's really what drives me. What Chuck Smith brought into this movement and he was learning from people like Paul Cain who was Branham's protégé.

Chuck Smith, according to Cain, Chuck Smith was his campaign manager in the fifties. So he's learning how to build this architecture, but instead of focusing on the fear, he focused on the summer of love, the hippie movement, get everybody rebrand this thing into a new marketing strategy for this new rising group of people.

And to be fair, speaking of the occult in Calvary and touching on Lonnie Frisbee just a little bit, one thing that Chuck really was at the beginning, he really was a compassionate person, just a very compassionate.

And when he invited Lonnie Frisbee and his wife into his home, into Chuck and Cain's own home, Lonnie Frisbee was like a street person, he was dirty. Literally, he walked barefoot, he was kind of an unkempt, hippie kind of person, right?

And some of Chuck's church employees or leaders didn't like the fact that these people were coming to Calvary Chapel's building. And because they didn't want to get the carpeting dirty on the ground. And I love this story because it's true.

Chuck said, no, we're going to let anyone come in the door. And it didn't matter how clean they were, it could be a homeless person, it could be somebody on the street, whatever. And so he had a very big heart and he let Lonnie Frisbee into his life personal, living in his home.

Now what I think is interesting very quickly, it was in a few years because he gave Lonnie things to do with the church, Chuck backtracked. And I guess it was Lonnie's lifestyle, you know, I didn't know back then, but now I know.

And so the occult practices that creep in always, you know, we're warned in scripture. I mean, I was tell people, look, I don't know why anybody is wondering about the validity of these signs and wonders groups were warned, you know, Jesus said, an evil generation seeks for a sign, right?

So there's a lot of very good clear directions in the New Testament. One thing that Chuck did that I... today that I think is a problem is he did a good thing. He thought by teaching the word of God verse by verse and he would simply go through the Bible. I think it took two years to go from Genesis to Revelation and then he would start over again and that was the big sell back in the day.

We all love that. I mean I remember being excited going to a church where I would get taught the whole Bible in a couple of years, right? But now we know that's a very unreliable way to study the Bible because the Bible is a it's not a verse by verse book. In the original writing of the Bible we don't have verse divisions or chapter divisions. None of that. It's basically written like a novel and so one of the Bibles I have doesn't have chapter in verse divisions. It forces me to read, read it like a regular book and even with all the cultural differences that I may not know about

if I'm reading in context it forces me to put a pin in it and find out later what is that reference to you know propitiation. What is that? It was that word mean and how is it being used in the context of the whole chapter and Jesus using it and and that's why I think today we have a really risky system in churches because everyone I've met you know Bragg's about reading the scriptures verse by verse and I would say don't do that you want to read large chunks from beginning to end without stopping whole whole books whole letters you know do that that's better because you get a

totally different take a spin on what the scripture is saying and to really understand what the scriptures mean you have to understand what they're saying and how they're saying it and that's how I believe now that's actually the reformed a reformed approach and all that means is getting back to the original intention of the writers that's what I mean by reformed I'm not talking about any group I'm talking about understanding the scriptures for what they say absolutely I knew what you meant and last time we last time we spoke I did notice people were pointing that out in the comment feeds but you and I had had so many conversations before I

couldn't remember what we talked about before the podcast or during the podcast but I knew what you meant by the by the phrase reform what's funny for me is like I said I study the architecture I want to know how it works what makes it tick and I began to understand exactly what you're saying the original scrolls had no had no numbers some guy sat down and he wrote a scroll and then the scroll were rolled up and they would carry the scroll with them, the scribes would carry them. So the prophets would prophesy, the scribes

would write it down and then they would have it in a scroll with no chapters or anything. And it... Well, and I have to say this, let me add this. The Hebrew are the Arabic scrolls you read from right to left, not left to right. Isn't that amazing? You know, it's like that's really different. Yep, yeah. But there were so many things that I came to understand was taught upside down, or like you said, left to right. But it matches the architecture.

So what Chuck Smith was doing, he was actually teaching what latarine had taught him to do. William Brannum would come out and Brannum was the leader of the latarine revivals. So everybody was trying to mimic what he was doing. He was mentored by FF Bosworth, who was in Dauy's cult, John Alexander Dauy's cult. And they all did this kind of thing and they cross pollinated in doing it. But Brannum would get out in front of an audience and he would say, okay, let me read this verse as my context, which actually meant he was building a context out of context if you understand what he just said when he said it.

And I began to understand this when I first saw a photograph of what a scroll would have looked like. And I suddenly realized, wait a minute, this can't be in the latarine movement. And this came from Christian identity, this predated Brannum, but Christian identity taught Pentecostalism that the last chapter of Malachi was to be applied to the British Isles and the United States and Canada under the British Israel framework. And so when you read Malachi four, behold, I was in your light of the prophet. This was supposed to be coming to the United States and Great Britain, according to that theology. And I began

to realize, well, wait a minute, chapter three and chapter four, there were no chapters. This is a scroll. The very title line of that scroll of Malachi says written to Israel, written to the Gentiles. Yeah. And I took it a step further, like exactly like you just said, the like your your Bible, I really liked this idea. I started reading it when I would sit to read a book in the Bible, I read a book in the Bible. I didn't even think about the numbers that are associated with it. And I started picking up on things that the movement had taught

incorrectly. Another thing that was taught is that God only since one prophet per age, one major prophet per age, that was something that taught was taught in Latin. Well, as I'm reading it as a book instead of a verse, I'm starting to notice this prophet's talking about King Darius. And this other one's talking about King Darius and this third's talking about and you start to get a picture of the cultures. So rounding all of the books and the prophets. And you start to understand that the whole framework that was established by Laterane cannot exist. But the critical flaw that I see in all of this

Charismania, when Chuck Smith started doing this, all of the errors that were in Laterane can now come forward into the Charismatic Movement because of out of context reading of the Bible. Now, given me you're taking me down memory lane, and I remember distinctly one of the most beautiful things at Calvary Chapel, the building in Costa Mesa back in the day, was the bookstore, was the Calvary Chapel bookstore. And I remember, you know, because a lot of young people started reading the Bible. And if anything Chuck did that was good, he really got people to think

about reading the Bible themselves. Like many young people, I got a King James Bible for my 16th birthday that I never read. You know, it was one of those gift Bibles with the pretty cover, beautiful artwork. And I started reading, you know, I opened it and read a bit of it and I thought, oh my gosh, I can't understand this, you know, the language, and it was, you know, King Arthur, I couldn't get there. So, but what I think is so wonderful is Chuck brought, you might say, a public square kind of store, there was no Christian bookstores back in those days. Okay, Calvary

might have been the first one, I don't know, but it was a giant place and it had everything from trinkets, to jewelry, to books. And I don't remember any theology books, but what I have here, and this is what I learned later, this is a wonderful book on how to read the Bible,

because as I agonized over me reading the Bible myself, I think what I brought to the table was just a basic concept, because I'm a musician, a reading musician, and I thought, you know, you read the Bible like you read music, right? You start at the beginning and you don't stop until the end. And I think that was my individual gift. That saved me from a lot of heartache, where my friends, a lot of them did the taking the verses out of, you know, cherry picking the verses, right? And I always had an aversion to that, because I thought, well, yeah, as an improvising

musician, I can pick out those riffs, but you're not going to get the whole understanding with a piece of music, unless you go from the beginning to the middle to the end, right? And you play it through. And that's hard work, but hey, I was a symphony musician back then, and you just turn pages.

keep reading. So I did notice some differences, especially the end times scare things. I mean, I don't know if you remember, Chuck Smith wrote a book about the end of the world. I think it was the day of the Lord was going to be sometimes in 1988 or something. It came and went and we were all really scared about it because with dispensational, he had a dispensational view. So you had to be ready. There was this, you had to be ready because if you weren't ready, you were going to get left behind. And so that was the new fear. I remember having

some mild concern, but I had some friends who had gone to, you know, summer camp, Christian summer camp where they showed the scary movie left behind. And I laugh about it now, but back in those days, if you talked to any of those guys, they would say, we were terrified. We were terrified about that being left behind as Christians. And I, because I kept reading the scripture, I thought, well, wait a minute, I don't read that we get left behind. I believe in Maranatha, you know, the tagline of Calvary Chapel was Maranatha. And I was all Maranatha. Come Lord, let's

do it. I never thought about being good enough to be ready, you know. So it just shows you how you can have in one church a group that misreads the scriptures. Based on the leader, I can't remember what Chuck did after the date came, the date came and went.

I think he wrote another book and I wondered about that. I thought, how can you do that?

And even that matches the architecture in later reign. We have not published it yet, but Charles is going through and Charles has compiled a list of all of the hundreds, not tens, but hundreds of times that these guys said, in the next five years, we're going to see the end, folks. It's going to be the end next five years. And sometimes it would be this year, say, into this year marks the whatever is the sign that they had picked from some little verse that was out of context. And that's really the problem that the other problem I see, which you beat me to it. But whenever you have

a church of people and you have a minister who is preaching a single verse and that is his context, ripped out of context, it becomes like a magic potion. The Bible itself turns into an idol when you do this because now that verse has power. And because it's ripped out of context and has no context, this person over here is going to hear one thing and they're going to apply it to whatever is their current problem of the time. The other person is going to apply it a different way and they both hear the two different things. And so they both think that this book says two different things.

I remember that hit me like a brick wall. I was sitting there and I was trying to figure out whenever I began reading in context, the very first chapter that I had read when I left the, the brand of movement, the day that I read it in context, it said something entirely different than the day before. And my mind was blown. I was like, this just can't be. I've read this book in the Bible probably a hundred times. So I went back and I probably read it ten more times, just that one particular book, so that I could wash all of this nonsense out.

And then I did the same thing with the whole Bible. I read it cover to cover. I did not read specific verses. And I lost count, but I think it was between ten and fifteen times.

I did that right after leaving the call. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned 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 Montgomery, 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 so good that you came to that place. One thing I was really grateful to discover and it was much later when I started studying church history and all of that theology is what is a profit in the Bible? Who are these individuals called profits? What does that mean? Right? And in 20th century America and 21st century America, especially now with the NAR silliness, we have the total wrong idea of what the biblical prophets are.

In the Bible, in the scripture, God's profit is a prosecuting attorney, is basically that's who that individual is. God sends his profit to indict Israel when they're breaking the law. And God's judgment is going to come, and that's why the prophets weren't popular because they were the only ones telling the truth to national Israel, your idolaters, you're whoring around with other religions. All of that was not good news, right? And that's what a profit is. A profit is not a fortune to...

Teller, who tells the future, yes, some of these things happen in the future, but that's not what they are. You know, they're office and that's why a proper reading of the scripture, the whole scripture from Revelation, from Genesis Revelation, Jesus is art.

He has the trifold office of prophet priest and king out of all the prophets that came before, he is the final prophet, period, okay? Out of all the priests that came before in the Old Testament, Jesus is the final priest under the Old Testament system, okay?

And then Jesus is the king of the kingdom. So he's everything, that's why, you know, he's everything, right? And recognizing those three, that threefold office is so important to Christian maturity. But I love the fact that, you know, when I learned prophets were like prosecuting attorneys, it gave me a renewed interest in reading all the places where the prophets were delivering their messages to rebellious Israel.

And it's always the same situation, you know, Israel has, you know, I love Israel's kind of funny. They get the Ten Commandments and the first thing the people say is we will do everything, the Lord says, yeah, how long did that last, right?

Golden calf moment, two minutes later, right? So they, so it's funny, not funny. They keep failing and they keep apostasizing again and again and again. And the prophets keep coming until I love the Ezekiel prophecy where, you know, it says that the Lord is going to raise up not only the dead bones in the valley, but they are scattered, they're dry and scattered, right?

And Ezekiel sees this vision and he has the correct response. He goes, how are you going to do that, Lord? You know, it's not like there's a dead body laying there. It's the bones are dry and scattered.

And he had a very practical question, how, how is this going to work, right? And by the preaching of God's Word, of God's Holy Gospel, the Word of Christ, the bones will come together, which is spiritual for the Lord, the spirit of the Lord living in the hearts of His people.

And so the kingdom is with us. The king lives in our hearts as Christians. It's not, you know, the only other kingdom that's sort of out there is the age to come and the Lord consummates all of His work through the second advent.

And then thank you, it's done, you know. But it's so sad that everyone's chasing these false prophets. But if you read the scripture, we have warnings about that, I just think people don't want to know. They don't want to hear God's word.

And... You're beating me to all of my main points. One of the other big things that hit me like a brick wall is... So in the latirane movements and not just latirane, but everything that predated it, that created latirane and everything that post-dated it, that emerged from latirane, they taught a very different model of what a prophet meant.

And it took me a while to grasp that thought because we were taught, exactly like you said, we were taught that a prophet is a fortune teller. They actually, in the latirane movement, they had these sessions where after the revival, you could go meet with the prophet and go into a little room and you could ask him...

Basically, you're asking what is your fortune, but you'd come with whatever is your heart's desire to learn about in your future, what choice should you make left or right, you'd ask the prophet and he would give you his secret words of knowledge, which is fortune telling.

It is the absolute definition of fortune telling. And John, just a minute, the proper word is seer. Yes. That's an occultic, that's occultic. Exactly, exactly. That is demonic. Yeah. And they even called themselves, I was talking with another gentleman who knew Paulcane and Paulcane and the others, they even called themselves that word.

They would say, we're seers. You guys call this a prophet, but we call ourselves seers. Well, when you read it in context, when you read the Bible in context, you get exactly what you said.

Here's the law. I can't remember the numbers, like 300 blessings if you obey the law, like 300 curses if you fail it. Well, what happened is exactly what you said. You read the book of kings, they rise up into power, then fall into sin, and then here come the prophets.

But even deeper than that, to get the full context, you have to understand the culture. So I began studying the ancient world, the ancient cultures. In today's world, we have a separation of church and state.

And so it's very much different than in the ancient world, your culture, your state, your religion, it was all one and the same. They were all bound together. So hold on a second, I want to catch something.

So it's even more organized than that. And here's the thing to catch. Okay, in the Old Testament from Genesis on, you see a pattern. God's presence with his people is covenantal, even with Adam and Eve.

Covenant is, and this is something that blew me away. The covenant is not a contract, like the baseball contract, where two mutual sides are going, well I'll do this if you do that. No, you have the great creator king, the Susa ring, in ancient Near Eastern.

language. The Susa ring was the most powerful king that could kill you. He had the biggest army, right? So when he conquered you, he would say to the tribe or the village, I'm the big great king and I can wipe you out. I have all the power. So here's what I'm going to do for you if you want to survive. I will provide protection and my greatness will watch over you and all of that. So the village or the smaller people group that got conquered by the king, they had no power. They were told what the covenant treaty was, okay? And

we have archaeological evidence of these ancient treaties, right? So the entire Old Testament is basically the same design as an ancient near Eastern treaty. So the children of Israel who were called out from paganism by Yahweh, right? And the Ten Commandments is part of the covenant. And it's a very clear relationship where the great creator king who has the power of life and death says, if you obey me and keep my decrees, I will bless you. If you don't, if you break the covenant, there are sanctions. And that is today, that's same to the today

because the Old Testament is a covenant. The New Testament is the New Covenant. So the Old Testament covenant is not gone. It just has been fulfilled by the New. And so they are connected, but the New Covenant that Christ, Christ's blood on the cross and the Lord's supper and the day of Pentecost, inaugurated the New Covenant. And that's why Jesus is the final prophet and a story. And you know, I get a little animated because I just, I see these people and it's scary because I think you know, have you ever read the curses in the Holy Scripture where if

somebody speaks for God when he has not spoken, have you ever read the consequences? Wow. Yeah. It's scary. Yeah. It's like you and I, we didn't compare notes before this, but you're like heading everywhere. My, my head was heading. So one of the verses that hit me really hard after leaving this mess that I was in was Luke 16, 16, the law on the prophets are until John since then the good news of the kingdom, which means the gospel since then the gospel is preached. We're in a new covenant. And like I was heading towards, I studied the ancient cultures and in the

ancient cultures, it wasn't just Israel that had prophets because it was church and state was all one and the same like the prophets of Delphi. You had these, these other prophets. the prophets of Bale are mentioned everywhere in the Old Testament. But that was the Old Testament structure where it was all one entity with the civilization, the culture. Well, when the new covenant came, and Jesus said, or the Bible says, the law on the prophets were proclaimed until John, well, that model where the Old Covenant prophets would rise up and say, no, you broke this, now you

get these curses, that model no longer applied. And so we get into a new model where everything that they tried to bring back by taking specific verses, especially from the Old Testament, and trying to point that to today's world, it doesn't even match the Bible. I mean, it doesn't not match the Bible, but also does not match just the structure and architecture of what was a prophet of the Old Testament. Yeah, it's, um, we are now seeing what theologians are calling, um, let me see if I can say this simply, uh, chrysendum, that word chrysendum actually is different than chrysendum.

chrysendum is man's expression of chrysendum. So we have American evangelicalism or stuff like that, which is different than scriptural Christianity. We are now seeing the abolishment of chrysendum, which we saw in the 60s where we had the sexual revolution and we had all of the fundamentalist blue laws, what we call blue laws, uh, all chrysendums have the 10 commandments, we don't have 11, right? We don't have 11 commandments where my skirt length has to be so many inches from my knee, or I'm in trouble with the church, or if I cuss, or if I drink whiskey or an adult beverage,

you know, um, during the prohibition, there was these, um, moralistic movements that were hyper focused on piotism, which is you can't smoke, you can't drink, you know, um, and so all of that's been obliterated right now in the culture we're in right now, okay? And in the ancient world, as you noticed, there was no separation of religion and government. In fact, the government was religious, right? Yes. Yeah, I mean, look at Daniel. Daniel and, you know, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo under Nebuchadnezzar. And I just love that story because, you know, you see the virtue of Daniel and his friends. But then you see Nebuchadnezzar,

larger than life, very good example of your typical suzerain, you know, earthly suzerain, right? And Nebuchadnezzar comes into personal contact with the suzerain above all other suzerains, the true and living God, Yahweh, right? So, um, it's interesting the time we're living in now, which kind of, I guess we're all ringing our hands over.

folks that think it's a good thing to be a Christian and run the government, run the American government. I always like to say, no, no, I'm an American. I'm an American. I believe in the equal opportunity of all people, even if I disagree with them.

Because I know the end game here. It never turns out well when you mix government and a relationship. And I want the freedom to worship the true and living God in my country. I do not want to do a nebuchadnezzar moment.

I mean, whatever that's going to turn into. And so we're living in interesting times now. Yeah, you know, it scares the heck out of me because a lot of people, and you can read this in the comment feeds, they're like, well, why would you not want the new apostolic reformations form of religion in the government?

Why would you not want this? Because they're pushing good things. But the problem is they are trying to reestablish the model that was in the old covenant because according to Christian identity, they're picking and choosing verses to try to reapply that to the nations of the British Isles and the United States and Canada.

And they're trying to reestablish this model that was for a different covenant, which means that if those quote unquote Christians get in power like they're trying to do, it means the form of Christianity that they're pushing now becomes law, which means me, who is not that type of Christian, now I have to conform to this false version of Christianity.

Right, right. So here's the scariest thought I would like your viewers to think about, because this is a real situation.

Every, all of the Christian folks that are thinking it's a good thing to have a Christian government with a Christian leader, you know, a dictator, one individual. Here's what they're missing, okay? The reliability, the moral reliability of that individual because everyone says, oh, this is all gonna be good.

Excuse me? Here's what they don't know and anyone can learn this if they want to study it. You got to study church history because in church history we see again and again and again, the failure of the so-called good leader.

I mean, look at Cromwell. I mean, the European wars in England, the civil wars, we have typical scenarios that are very much biblical, we have the failure of these leaders for various reasons. And we see it today.

I mean, what scares the heck out of me is seeing some of this, getting to know some of these individuals that are running our country right now. And they're, we're starting to learn because because of the internet, thank goodness, we can learn a lot about their personal lives and their thought patterns.

And it's very terrifying because they are hypocrites. They are not righteous. None of us are righteous. We're all sinners. But Jesus's church is designed to protect the church from our own sinfulness from within and the darkness of the world from without.

So we get into trouble when we get away from the biblical model. And that's what's sad today, the ironically, they're saying, oh, this is the biblical model and it's not, you know, just open the Bible and study.

But the moral failing of one individual that has all that power,

that's not gonna work out the way they think. And yikes. Absolutely not. And it really takes a way, if you really think about what they're trying to say, we want to rule, we want to force other people to conform to our belief set, whether they're Christian or not.

It's no different than what the Catholics did, you know, years ago, whenever they were conquering different nations and trying to enforce this, what they ended up with. I went down to Mexico and like I said, I've fascinated with everything, history, archeology.

I went on a tour where the tour guide was also deeply knowledgeable about the religious history. And he was explaining that during the Spanish Inquisition, the local cultures were into shamanism in the area that I was in.

And what happened was, instead of conforming to Christianity, they had this new thing, which was shamanism and Christianity. And he was taking me to some of the shaman temples and it was the weirdest thing, man.

They were selling little trinkets that would have, like the shaman gods and Jesus together in the same statue. And weird things like this, right? And so what they're saying that they can do, even logically, it just doesn't make sense, it would never work.

Well, and the Roman church is still powerful today. And we see it here in America, Romanism is underneath all of the American evangelical ism stuff. If you trace the theology of whatever group, you know, like the syncretism that you saw at the Spanish Inquisition, Rome is very good at gaining power

over the world. In fact, there's a painting in the Vatican where it shows the Pope with the globe in one hand and the scepter of Christ and the other, what they call the scepter of Christ.

And that's their agenda, you know, to take over the world, which is against what the scripture says. Now, we're seeing it, ironically, we're seeing the same... concept being adopted by Christian nationalists, will we want to take over the USA by force?

And what cracks me up, I mean, it's funny, not funny, it's like you guys, you're not even reading the Bible. I mean, what part of Jesus' conversation with Pilate don't you understand? Or I just appreciate, if you're going to reject that, just say so.

You know, come out, come out with it because you're rejecting that. We don't see Paul going to Ephesus and saying, okay, you guys, you're worshiping a bunch of these goddesses and gods, and I'm protesting over that.

You know, you don't see Paul doing that, you know, what I think is gutsier is he walks into the intelligentsia there, right? And he says, hey, you guys are really religious. I just looked at all your idols and your temples and you got this one temple that says to the unknown god, I'm here to talk to you about that.

Exactly. You know, I thought, man, that is so gutsy, wow. And the way he argues, I mean, that is our mission. That's the Christian mission today. And yeah, so I don't know, we're kind of on this rollercoaster together.

We're going to be, this is an e-ticket. Now I think biblical Christians like us, we're not going to do well because I think we're in the minority. I don't know. I think so. Yeah, I agree.

We are in the minority and there's a lot of people who have, they think they're Christian because they're involved with these movements that has taught them something that uses the name Christianity as what it is.

But like you said, whenever you take a verse out of context, you are inventing the context. And I listened to sermon after sermon, both in the cult and unfortunately, after I left the cult and started entering some of the mainstream churches, I heard it in mainstream churches where they would take a little section of the chapter and then they would try to bastardize that section to make it fit whatever was the agenda of their sermon.

And many times I knew the book that they're taking it from, I knew the chapter that they're taking it from. And I knew that it was actually saying the opposite of what that sermon said.

And there were a couple times I actually got up and just walked out because I can't listen to this man. Once you read the book and understand what it says, you cannot listen to a man who's telling you the opposite of what it says.

You know, those experiences I think should be talked about because I got to believe other people are having moments like that, you know. If you can't tell it about me already, I'm a bit of a troublemaker, not by a desire.

It's just one of the churches we tried after leaving the cult. when the Bible study group, because this fascinated me. I'm studying and they're studying too. I want to learn more, right? And this guy gets up and he was a rank in the church and he was talking about how if you get angry, you are violating the Lord's command and you're falling into sin.

And I'm like, no, man, you cannot manipulate a person's emotions or you're no better than the cult we just escaped. And I stood up and said, but Paul said, and your anger do not sin.

There you go. And he was angry. Yeah, he was angry at that moment. Yeah, the guy read the part in Galatians where he got angry at the Judaizers where they're doing circumcision again. And he says, go the whole way and cut it off if you're gonna do that.

Yeah. And when I read that, that was like, oh, is he really saying that? Yes, the Apostle Paul is pissed. This has been great fun. I think we've gone over an hour at this point, but I look so forward to the next one.

Thank you so much for doing this. Oh, John, thank you for asking. And I wish you well. And I just look at your schedule every time I check in and I think you're doing, my gosh, are you doing this every day, every other day?

Your schedule is just formidable. It's insane. It's insane. And I have a day job, like this isn't my job. I laugh when I see the comments people say, they're doing this for money. Look, this is a day job.

There's actually not a lot of money in doing this, friends. There's not a lot of money in discernment work. Uh-uh. No. There this isn't. And yeah, I'll bless your heart, John. Anyway, thank you for doing this.

Thank you so much. And I'm glad to be here today with you. Awesome. Well, if you 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 Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Audible.