Detangling IHOPKC: Prophets, Lies, and the Price of Faith

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Jed is good to be back. As I was mentioning to you earlier before we started this, I had almost the same conversation that I'm gonna have with you, slight variation. I had with Bob Scott earlier today. So they're both I can't remember which comes out first in the

order but they're both about similar topics. We're talking about the prophetic and we're talking about there's some special insight that you have that I have that Bob has where we saw the whole picture but the audience is seeing like this little tiny piece of the picture and you can really twist it to make it look much greater than it is and the weird part about this is as Bob and I talked about and I'm I'm assuming you and I are there are many things that we can fully explain. We saw the beginning we saw the end we saw

everything in between and no this isn't what they claimed but then there's this other weird case where you're like I don't know man that was really weird what just happened I can't explain what happened but I know that they lied about those other things so what do I do with this yeah yeah and it's interesting talking to Bob Scott because of course he has a much different perspective or point of view than I do I am someone who was born and raised in all of that and he was someone who was with we both both of our core memories of these

prophecies are probably in the same time frame of the 80s not well me it's not the 80s but the 90s and the early sort of pre-i-hop days so I'll have to listen to that episode to hopefully I'm not just repeating everything that Bob Scott said but well I can assure you to be different because even if we're repeating the same thing it's all about perspective so my perspective is not as close as you and Bob had because you were directly to the central figure I was connected to other people who tried to become central figure so I get to

witness how it worked and actually one of them I can clearly say is now a central figure, but won't get into that, but the perspective is all different. And if you have five different people witness the same event, you're gonna get five different views out of it, and you can only understand it through all five.

Yeah, totally. And you get the way that prophecy feels to different individuals to just shows how much power it has because you can have five different people all hear the same message. Two people be like, this doesn't resonate with whatsoever.

And then three people are forever changed by the prophecy for different reasons. So yeah, getting a plurality of experiences about, specifically about prophecy and prophetic history, I think is important. Yeah, it really is.

And one of the things that he and I got into is it's really from a psychological standpoint. It's really complex because you've got the human element, and the human element brings you in a ray of different perspectives that you really need to think through before you say, okay, this guy is the next closest thing to God.

Your average person isn't gonna do this, right? But then you also have the group problem because one person sees something, you know, in my example of five people, one person sees something and they have a perspective, and everybody has that initial perspective.

But because you are in these movements, you're looking for this spiritual thing that doesn't really exist. You're basically, you're living in a fantasy world, and you create your own fantasies. And what I mean by that is the one person that sees something, well, he connects it to some spiritual insight that he has, and he explains it to the other five.

Well, then the other one backs it up and says, yes, I too had this other spiritual insight, and it grows and grows, but it's growing as a cohesive unit. So what happens at the end, the story doesn't usually match what happens in the beginning.

Yes. People like you and I and Bob who are around, you know, we got to see things before they even would enter the five people. And so we know what we know what was going on beforehand in some cases, and you know, you just take a step back and you're like, no, man, you can't do this.

You can't turn this into something it wasn't. Yeah, and it happens several different ways, how that sort of comes about. Like you were the way that prophecy grows to be something different than what it was originally stated.

There's a lot of different ways that that can happen. I've been trying to more concretely analyze some of the ways that the prophets, not just Mike Bickle, but obviously my father and the prophets that I grew up with use It's different, for lack of a better word, tricks of the trade to build the grandiosity and the accuracy and make things that were basically

to make it more magic. There was different magic tricks that helped build the prophetic performance. And one of the things that I've been, I was just doing some writing on this and trying to hone in on this idea and the analogy that I came up with is this idea of a prophetic shadow.

And roughly, I think that what that idea is for me is that

if I am with you and say a few other individuals and we're in a closed store meeting of leaders and I say you and I are a part of some church.

And I give a lot of very clear and specific prophetic statements. I say in five years, this is going to happen that the world is going to end or that Russia is going to invade and blow up bombs and dallas and all these sort of things.

And I give like very specific prophecies, things that if they happen, they genuinely would be indication of some like divine knowledge or foresight. It's not just, hey, there's going to be tribulations in the future, there's going to be earthquakes in California, there's going to, you know, not these general statements that are, of course, true.

But these are very specific. So say I'm in this meeting with you and I give though that very specific word.

The idea of this prophetic shadow is that like when the prophecy is given, there's a shadow that's casted of it because there's several people who are there listening to the prophecy. And every time they think back on it, it can get a little bit broader, a little bit vaguer, a little bit bigger and more diffused.

And so what was once very specific, detailed the edges were very like cut and dry, it then becomes diffused. And all of that sort of detail is lost, but it still weighs as heavily as when it was first stated.

It felt like if I come in and I say all of these very specific things, it feels like I'm giving a genuine, real end of the world apocalyptic sort of,

like, I don't know if you've watched the movie Doon, but that sort of... of level of that type of prophecy that's like that earth shattering type prophecy and everybody who's in there is kind of like oh my goodness this is real this is genuine stuff but as it's then told to the congregation maybe when I retell the prophecy to the congregation it I start that sort of diffusion process it becomes less specific I don't say that Russia is going to blow up a bomb in Dallas I say that there are going to be armies that are going to be marching against the United

States or something like that and it gets a little bit grayer right and more general and then what happens is then people who hear that as it gets wider people who are not in that initial group start attaching their own interpretations to it they start filling in their own details and as things happen they fill in their details so they said oh Jedediah prophesied this back in 2005 and now I'm seeing this and this is clearly a fulfillment of the prophecy that Jedediah gave in 2005 and if you then go back and re-listen to the recording or to specific details of the prophecy

and it's like no those have nothing to do with one another but somehow because of this sort of shadow that was casted it all kind of fits and you can kind of redraw it and honestly no individual is more guilty of doing this process than Mike Bickle that I've seen in my life like Mike Bickle does this this is just the entire iHop prophetic history is

painted through this process there's other tricks of the trick that they're using too but it's all of this give a specific prophecy in behind closed doors with people you know are not going to sell you out right if you get it wrong they're not going to be the ones who hold you accountable because the inner group it's the people you know Mike Bickle isn't going to tell anyone that Bob Jones got a prophecy wrong Bob Jones isn't going to tell anybody that Mike Bickle got a prophecy wrong Bob Hartley is not going to tell these individuals and you know Bob Scott wasn't supposed to

and Jedediah Hartley wasn't supposed to either because but we you know some of us now are telling hey no this is not how it was this is not the specifics of it so you give this sort of Mike Bickle would give these like specific words or actually really he would take Bob Jones words that were very specific he would then apply it to the future of forerunner Christian fellowship or then later iHop KC and this was the way to make it seem like there was grand prophetic and fulfillment that was happening every single year when in reality what was being fulfilled

like the shadow prophecies were being fulfilled because they're so vague in general it's really not that difficult for them to be fulfilled but the specific prophecies were either forgotten or just manipulated so many times. What you're describing is an atomic bomb of air and shock waves of nonsense but so in my research and what you're describing was happening in Latter-Rain I can clearly see that happening with branamism but if you take a step outside of that circle and you just look at the whole history of all of it not just I hop not just Latter-Rain but all of it

you've got some weird cases and you can't really put everything in the same box but in some cases there were people who had clear mental issues and these people really believed that they had a prophecy and they really were specific and sometimes like you said maybe it was to a small group of people because they also realized they had a mental issue sometimes in front of a small group of church people etc. And then what happens is as the prophecy is close to failure that's whenever it starts to shift just a little bit because they start to see okay wait a minute this isn't

this isn't quite right but if you look at what I said as originally as a prophecy you'll remember this one little detail that still fits so let's take it move it forward cast everything else that didn't fit backwards and then they build upon that and it's like this never ending game of morphing it into something new the thing at the end doesn't match the thing in the beginning so you've got the guys that are doing that but then you've also got the weird thing and this I can identify places where Paul Kane did this one there were cases where they

the initial prophecy was random nonsense that wasn't specific and yeah in fact the funny part as I'm studying this and starting to piece together what happened none of this would have came about if not for Paul Kane out on the west coast I think it I think it was in Los Angeles or one of the nearby cities he's in there saying he flies in and he says and God has told me an earthquake is going to hit yeah have you looked at how many earthquakes hit in that area man it's like right you can't miss you can no matter how many dartboards you're throwing at you're going to hit everyone it's

just like nonsense to say it right but the people actually believed he was a prophet because of course there was an earthquake that just happened afterwards and if you again if you throw enough darts something's going to something's going to stick and Are there, I do think that there are times where I look back and I can't explain everything

from honestly, from my dad more than Mike Bickle. With Mike Bickle, it's easier, because it's kind of the same prophecy every single time, just recycled. And also with Mike Bickle, he didn't really say a whole lot.

There's not a whole lot of, that it's interesting if you listen to, especially the contemporary prophets, they don't actually say things that much. They're, there's, at least publicly, and when being recorded. Because, well, there's a variety of reasons why they might not, but you hear, you listen to them and it's gonna be 95%.

Retroactive prophetic testimonies. So looking back and being like 95% of testimonies of prophetic fulfillment, that's what you're gonna see from the prophets, is they're gonna basically look back and be like, here's all of the things that I got right, here's all of the things that Bob Jones got right or whoever Paul came, here's what they got right, but there's not gonna be a whole lot of like actual prophetic statements made.

And when they are, usually when it's public, super general, not very detailed stuff. Right now, extremely political, it's obviously gonna have everything to do with, the election in the United States and all of that.

That's kind of the method. So with my big goal, I don't ever remember being like, huh, that one's hard to explain. With my father, there's dozens of times where I was like, I legitimately have no idea how he figured that out.

But, and that's what you will see, so many people will come to me. And the most common question that I get asked by individuals who believed the prophetic declaration

so my father, and they're trying to sort of struggle with the things that I'm saying now about some of his fraudulent behaviors and some of his more predatory behaviors. There's this question of like, well, was it all fake?

Was it not, there's some things that I can't explain. Can you explain all of it? And that's been a hard question for me to even grapple with. But I'm trying to decide whether or not I wanna tell the story.

Well. It's bad, it's bad form of me to tease the story and then not tell it. So,

I have a story for you, John, and this is a, this is a, this is a doozy of one. But growing up, I saw my father do all of these different prophetic miracles of not just like this general sort of soft reading. We've talked about this in the past, but just this, there are those, those prophecies that are miracle prophecies where it just, it isn't about same vague things and letting see what sticks against the wall. It's genuinely like, I know your phone number, I know your address, there's no way that I could have gotten this unless

it was divine or insidious. Like, it's one of those two. Either I found this through natural means and then now pretending like it was from God and this is just flat out fraud. It's not sort of in that gray area of could be vaguely inspired by God. It's like, it's either fraud or it's divine.

So, I saw my dad do those all the time throughout my life. Only once did he ever do it to me. Now, he spoke over my life all the time and he would do general, I mean, my name Jedadaya is from a prophetic dream that he had before I was born. So, my dad prophesied over me all the time.

But there was only one instance where it was really like, he has specific information about me that he was then using to tell me something or try to honestly try to manipulate me. And basically what the story was is I was in my mid to late 20s.

My father and my mother had recently separated and my father was in a very tumultuous time with his own career, his ministry and of course with me and the rest of my family, it was very strained.

So, he calls me up and he says that he wants to meet and get coffee. I am at the time living in Kansas City going to the University of Missouri, Kansas City. I'm studying philosophy there.

I say, okay, I'm going to meet with him for coffee. I go to meet him. He's there and as soon as we kind of meet, there's not pleasantries, it just sort of goes straight into he has a prophetic message for me, which at that time I had already kind of,

I kind of had one foot in, one foot out of the Christian world in general. And was very skeptical at that point. I knew that my dad was doing a whole lot of prophetic manipulation.

I didn't have the highest view of him because during the separation, you know, I was forced to sort of reckon with a lot of the negative behaviors of my father and some of the more abusive traits that he had had growing up and everything like that.

So, you know, I was kind of fully disillusioned towards this grand image of my father. But I still, he still was my dad and I wanted to maintain a relationship with him. So I show up and he goes in straight into this prophetic statement.

And he said, I had dreams about you and you were asking questions. And he said, you were asking questions with a professor so well. And he spelled out the name of one of my professors at UMKC.

And then he went on to talk very detailed, give very detailed information about some of the content that I had written for that class that I was in. Which was a philosophy of religion class or something like that.

And in that paper, I had talked basically about Christianity and about miracles and about faith and just very questioning. It was about Kierkegaard and, you know, the leap of faith and what that all takes and everything.

And it was frankly very critical of the Christianity that I was raised in. And so he gives me this sort of the saith Lord prophecy that I need to repent and turn from my ways to not accuse God and I need to return back to him.

And as a signal to show me that it was from God, he gives me all of the specific details that was, I mean, there was no way he could have known that information. So I'm there and I remember having a sense of panic rise in me during that conversation with my father because one, it just felt like a violation.

It felt like I've seen you do your tricks of the trade using them on me is like, it felt like there was an unspoken rule that we just wouldn't do that. There would be this level of mutual respect.

So, A, just the fact that he was trying to pull that, I was just so off guard. And then B, I was like, wait, how did he get this information? And I didn't give him much. I was like, okay, I hear what you're saying.

And I didn't respond to anything. He was like, does that make sense to you? And I basically just didn't respond. It's like. You know, I haven't even got my coffee yet. Let me go get my coffee, you know?

And then I basically got my coffee and was like, I need it, I need to go. And so I left. And I didn't talk to him for a couple weeks after that because it just rattled me so much.

And I genuinely was extremely rattled in that moment because I was like, I cannot figure out how he knows this. And I panicked, I called one of my little sisters and I was like telling them the story.

And she was like, I have no idea. And I was like, do you think that my, do you think that dad would have higher private investigators? And she was like, I wouldn't put it past them to find that information out if he's desperate enough.

And then I was like, okay, you know, I thought about Kansas City is like a city, but it's kind of a small city and so far as you go to Kansas City, you're gonna find someone who's loosely connected with I have all around.

And I was like, is there somebody in my class who like heard me talk about these things, knew my name and somehow it was getting back through the grapevine. I was like, did it, did my paper be, was it online somewhere?

I'm Googling my name. I'm like, is there anything that's popping up? And all of this is just, no, I have no idea. I talk with my professor himself. I'm like, hey, did you ever put this online like a turn it in sort of thing and he was like, no, he was super weirded out by the whole thing.

Like that conversation was just a bizarre conversation to have. And so for like two weeks, I couldn't figure it out. I tore apart my entire apartment, trying to find the physical copy of the paper because I had written it offline and had printed it out and handed it in.

So it was like, it's not even online anywhere that I was aware of. And so I was like, did I leave it somewhere that he got and I finally found it? And anyway, it was just, I was going kind of insane for a little while.

And I remember calling my mother and talking with her about it. And she said something that forever changed my perspective on this entire prophetic world. She was like, because I was like, how did he, I have to figure out how he got this information.

I have to figure out, am I being followed is there private investigators? My dad has a lot of money. Like, could he have bought this information somehow? And she was like, maybe it was.

And she kind of like trailed off, but she didn't say God, but she was just like, maybe it was supernatural. And I remember being so shook because she had just separated from my father and part of the reason that they separated.

I don't want to tell much of her story. That's her story to tell. But part of the reason was because of my dad's prophetic manipulation, like that among many other reasons. So my mom was fully disillusioned just as I was towards this sort of prophetic ability of my father, but yet here she was being like, maybe he does get it supernatural.

And I remember that because she said after that, she was like, what does that change? And I was like, it doesn't change anything. All of it, like my dad still has been abusive. He has still been highly manipulative.

He's still lied about all of these things. This supernatural capacity, whether he has it or not, doesn't mean that he's not doing all of these other horrible things. Doesn't mean that I should even listen to him.

Like, there's a lot of, you know, the Bible even talks about that. There's plenty of people who do supernatural things in Jesus' name, and then Jesus will say, term for me, I never knew you, you know, that's a passage I think in Matthew.

And then furthermore, also for the first time, I was like, what if it's not from God? What if there's some demons that work here or whatever? And that was the first time where it really started becoming haunting to me, not like it wasn't fun anymore, not that it was ever really that fun, but it just got so eerie because I was like, man, what, if this is supernatural, what is the fruit of this and where is this coming from?

Anyway, I kind of settled in my soul, so to speak, for a while being like, I don't know, I may never know, but that isn't going to change what I think about my father, isn't going to mean that I suddenly drop out of college and go into the missions field because God has now spoke to me. And I eventually was able to return and actually spend time with my father, and I went to his house. And I was helping him, you know, and I kind of, for like a month, we kind of just played it off like it was normal. Neither of us talked about it again.

I just kind of went on my way and he went on his way, we talked about football, we talked about whatever, we just kind of kept going. And then I went to his house and I was helping him and, you know, get organized and stuff like that. And so I was helping him clean and I was there, and I was working for like a couple hours. And then I saw an opportunity to basically sneak into his office while I was there at his house. And I went into his office.

And I went to his computer, turned on his computer, and I mean, just the first thing, desktop pops up, and there is records of my bank account. There is my paper that I had written.

There is emails that I had written. There was text messages that I had sent to my fiancee at the time, like the whole text message to the Reds, and just all of my information was on there.

What had happened is that I had worked for him in the past during high school, and I had worked on a computer in his office, and I had signed in to the Google Chrome, because it was my computer in that office, I was the only one who used it, I just kept my Google Chrome.

Now, eight years had passed since I had last used that computer, I changed my password, but when you put your, you know, login to Google Chrome, it like updates and does the keychain update, and I had never logged out on all devices or whatever.

So I had no idea, basically what was happening is he had not just my password to my Google account, he had my password to everything, all my Google passwords, just everything. And he had been logging into my bank account, he had been logging into just all of these different things, and downloading and just popping it on the desktop to look through all of this stuff.

And honestly, had he not overplayed his hand, I maybe would have never known this. And so I confronted him about that, well, I formatted the entire computer, I just like did a factory reset, deleted all of the information that was on the computer, I'm sure I deleted a lot of his information that was important too, I knew I wasn't going to get in trouble for it, because, you know, and then changed all my passwords, did all of these different things, I confronted him about it, he was like, oh, you know, I'm not good with computers

and all that sort of stuff, which of course was sorry for my language, but absolute bullshit because he clearly knew enough to do all of this stuff. And then later, about three years later, he apologized for that very vaguely, but anyway, I know that it was super long-winded and I told that huge story, but whenever anyone says this, well, was it, was any of it real?

I always think back to that moment where, A, I don't think people realize the lengths that these profits will go to to fabricate. offices. I genuinely don't think that anybody has really come to terms with just how much these men have sold their soul for their prophetic identity.

And two, even if it is true, we have all of the other fruit of their life, right? If Mike Bickel was not abusing women as well, wasn't grooming young teenagers, then this analysis of his prophetic manipulation would probably be less intense. But we see the fruit of all of these men's behaviors, Bob Jones. If he hadn't also abused individuals, if he hadn't abused his own wife, maybe we could see these people in a different light.

But the fact of matter is that the fruit that has come from these prophetic ministers is just rotten. It's just so rotten. And the more that they delve into these prophetic worlds, the more they sell their soul to becoming these grand prophets and ushering in the end times of the world, the more and more you see this bitter fruit rising from them. And so I'm getting heated because this is 100% just like, this is my dad. I saw this happen with my father. I saw it happen with my family and the ways that these not only did he like

sell his own soul for his prophetic anointing, he sold some of my family to it. He would do it to his own son. He would come to his own son. He rattled like if I was in just a slightly weaker place at that time, I'd probably be in the missions field right now based off of prophecy. I'd be on a different podcast talking about there was this time my dad knew something and there was no other way than divine. You know, if I had been, if I had believed the best in him, if I had given him just a little bit more grace, it would have

fundamentally altered the entire way that I live my life to this day. 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 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.

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On behalf of William Brannum Historical. or research, we want to thank you for your support. You know, one of the things that I had to come to terms with, there are a lot of things that I could not explain and we'll never explain them.

But there are a lot of things that I can. And whenever you're talking about IHOP KC, Paul Caine, for example, I've got multiple people who tell me Paul Caine used to bring stacks, like large stacks of phone books and was reading through the phone books to get names and addresses.

Yeah, yeah. Which suggests that he probably had a photographic memory. And I have evidence that suggests random to you had something similar. Whenever you have people that are scoundrels and will use it, use their abilities and information against people, they will.

But I also had to take it a step further than that because there are also things that cannot be explained and not just in the Christian religion, in all religions, it can't be explained.

Profit is not unique to Christianity. A lot of people don't realize it. I understand. But it's not. And it's like my glass of tea. So this glass of tea is a cup and there's water and there's a tea bag in it.

And that's what makes the tea, but there's separate things. And I had to start viewing profits in that way. We were taught that a profit was literally God manifested on the earth to us.

And it's one cohesive thing. It's either all good, all bad. It's either of the God or of the demon, right? But it's not like that. Humans are complex. And there are people who like it or not, there are things that cannot be explained with certain people.

Now the phone books, you can explain the phone books, the letter or the paper, you can explain the paper. But I wanted to examine all of it. And I finally came to realize that it was false to try to bundle it all as one cohesive unit.

Like the cup of tea, you take the tea bag out and all you've got is a cup of water, right? These people, if they had a gift, there would be no need for the deception.

So pure plain and simple, if you can do a thing, if I could make tea without a tea bag, I'd be making it without a tea bag, right? But if you have to have the deception, now you've got a different drink or in that analogy, you've got something else.

It's not a profit of God by no means. Usually it's a scoundrel, if you have to, if you have to fake things. But say that it's not. Say that you didn't find the paper.

For me, it would not have changed a thing because once you separate all of them out, you have a human who might be deceptive. You have possibly a gift, but you also have the separation of the three.

doesn't mean that it's God. And, you know, if you look at the history of the world, you've got prophets in every single civilization. It used to be, in the ancient world, there was no separation of church and state.

You had the monarch or the king, and you had his array of prophets that were telling him, yes, go to war, no, don't go to war, yes, make this deal, no, don't make this deal.

That was how they made their decisions. And the ones who made bad decision, bad prophecies got executed. So you don't hear much about them. So there was, you know, it's a completely different world.

But in today's world, now in the Christian religion, we have, we've packed it all together, and there is no execution of the guy who's faking it. Instead, you've got people who are trying to fake it because they have to keep themselves in this authoritarian control over the people and manipulate them.

And I could give examples in my family and people, I know as well, they have means to know things about people. And I had to stop and laugh once I was able to critically think about it.

The name's address this thing. It's like a bar trick, man. What God is going to need a prophet to tell me what my address is. It doesn't make any sense. It's a bar trick.

And once, I don't know if you may know some, but once you learn how a few bar tricks work, you're like, man, these guys are playing with the people. It's not right what they're doing.

Yeah, and it's not even, like you go to a magic show, I live in Los Angeles here, and there's some really good magic events and shows, like there is in Vegas and stuff like that.

And I've gone to a few of them. And you try to figure out what they're doing. And sometimes when you figure it out, or it is explained to you, you're like, oh, that's still pretty clever.

Like, oh, because it's an art form, you know, you have the pen and teller, and sometimes it's just this fun, where, you know, because you go to the show and you know, you're the, everyone's, everyone's there understanding and on the same page.

It's just like, we know that this is a trick, but we want to be tricked, and we want to try to figure out how we were tricked, and that's the game.

And again, sometimes you will figure out the trick or hear of the trick, and you'll be like, oh, my goodness, that took incredible sleight of hand. That was so clever how they did this, how they coordinated.

You know, if you went to a magic show and everybody in the show was plants, and you just figured out they were all plants, like, you know, is this your card? And they're like, oh, yeah.

It's like, that's not that clever. That's not creative. It's like, you just paid four people to lie in the audience, and like, that doesn't, that'd be a little bit disappointing. You know, there's no sleight of hand, there's no actual like trick.

It's just sort of. straightforward, and I think that that's what's crazy about This prophetic world too is that as soon as you're critical of it as soon as you're like He could have just gotten it from that individual It becomes way less like you do it basically a lot of these prophesies prophecies rely on a whole community and culture Refusing to ask any questions about the prophecy and Panalyzing and punishing the people who do they're the cynics. They're the scoffers. They're the the the Pharisees Right the ones who were like you could have just gotten this information from there and

It's just that's that was the trick is people trusted my father that was the trick now He also was when when When I'm like, okay, what was my dad good at he had a really good memory And just like like he he can remember that's why phone numbers and addresses were good for him because he could Remember long strings of numbers and he wouldn't have to he would have his notebooks too, so it wasn't Wasn't all that impressive because he could just like look down in his notebook and pull it out but Also, he would walk away from it and he would sort stand there and then he would think and it was

He's trying to remember the prophetic the the number in his head But it feels like he's getting some divine information He would say the string someone would be like oh my goodness That's my phone number and then he would take that number and relate it to a Bible verse and then give very a very generic prophecy and

It just isn't the 90% of that It's just relying on people who are already kind of if not a hundred percent bought in their 90% Bought in and everyone around them is a hundred percent bought in that's just that's it and it's it's really heartbreaking because It takes advantage of people who I don't know if it's just naive It's just people who trust it takes it takes advantage of those who are the most trusting within the community and the most desperate You know if you really need to hear that God has you covered right you're having a hard time in your life

Someone just passed away or something like that and you really are asking the question is God good and then someone says From the pulpit your name From God and knows your address, you know in a place of desperation even if in the back of your head you're like That could have been done Artificially People are just not going to think that way because they need to know that God cares about them.

And yeah, it's heartbreaking. It's genuinely heartbreaking. And it prays upon the people who are weak. And I don't mean that in a negative way. There are people who are just desperate for something. So whether it's, you know, in the laterane movements, it was healing.

These were the worst cases of people who were, some of them were going to die. So they came here as a last resort to these meetings. And if you study everything about the meeting and you understand it and can apply, critically, critically think about what's happening, it actually disgusts you.

Because picture of the lady who's coming in who has a month or two to live, she's got her whole family just desperately seeking healing. Well, they come in and are completely blinded because they're giving, they're taking a leap of faith that this faith healer is going to heal them.

And they tell their story, sobbing to the usher, and the usher recognizes that this lady in this purple shirt wearing a yellow scarf is suffering from cancer and she's going to die. And she goes and takes her seat.

And in the brand of meetings, they actually took a number and they would tear it off and you'd have, they called it a prayer card. So they had them all in order, right? And then, brand of them would do the trick where he'd say, who has prayer cards such and such and he would tell their name and address.

Well, then he would go off, quote unquote, off script and say, you with the purple shirt and the yellow scarf, you're suffering from cancer. Well, there's a series of events that can lead a person to have this information.

It's not rocket science how it works. But to the person who's suffering, they're like, oh my gosh, how did he know? God has with him. Now I'm healed. And then the sad part is we've seen, we've got evidence on the website of people who bought it hookline and sinker and went home and died.

And totally, I cannot imagine the anger that would be caused, you know, the people who are going through this I'll bet some of them de-converted from Christianity altogether. If this is the God, I don't want it.

I don't want this God. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that too, because especially in the

1910s, 20s, 30s, like in the 1900s, just in general, the trick was when they don't get healed, you blame the person for not having enough faith. And so it's compounding. Not only are you raising their hopes that they might be healed, but and convincing them that they genuinely are going to be healed.

But then when they are not healed, you are blaming it on them for their lack of healing. And that's where when I know that a lot of people have criticized me specifically for throwing the baby out with the bath water, that this like...

There's these people who are doing good healings, they're doing good prophecies. And that's the same thing that I was kind of talking about earlier of like, what was it all fake? Is that sort of like some of it's good, some of it's bad and you can't just throw it all out.

Frankly, I'm throwing everything out from any individual who looks at a weakened person and does this sort of manipulative tactic to have use non-divine information to talk about there, whether it's just prophecy or whether it's healing too, I mean, especially healing.

If you say that someone's gonna be healed, they aren't healed and then you blame them for the lack of faith, there's no redeeming that. And that is crossed over a line that is so unethical, immoral and there's like, what's the baby?

That's what I always tell people, like I'm like, throw the baby out with the baby with this sort of stuff. All of the things that are good, like, oh, okay, well this prophecy led me to really feel like God was there for me.

And so that can happen regardless of this prophecy, right? You can still have encouragement. So many times, my dad go into places where a pastor would tell my father what was going on in the lives of the church members and then my dad would then tailor a very general message with some specific details about those individuals to tell them, to reassure them that God loves them and cares for them.

Generally, my father was doing a lot of positive prophecy. He wasn't doing a whole lot of repent and turn from the Lord except when he did it to me. But usually it was just these words of edification.

Well, the pastors could have just given those words of edification non-divinely to their members, right? You could have just been, you know, gone up to your friend and said, John, like God loves you and cares and sees what's going on and you're gonna be okay.

You know, just give that sort of word of encouragement and I'm proud of you for this. And even if it is, like, I was praying for you and I really thought that God was highlighting this passage.

That's totally, that's not under the auspice of some grand miracle. It's just very human. It's very connected. And then if later you find out like, oh, maybe that wasn't from God, then it's on the prophet.

It's not on the individual who heard it, right? And yeah, there's just non-toxic ways to give these words of encouragement. But anytime you're trying to employ these magic tricks,

the whole ministry is just corrupt. There's no way that I can see that entire ministry not just being entirely corrupt. I could go off on a rant and I'm going to try to avoid it, but anytime somebody comes at me and attacks me, I'm going to use that word when they attack me with the don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

Yeah, it is an insult. I have yet to sing out of the, it may be in the thousands now, thousands of people I've helped escape cults. Out of the thousands, I have yet to see one single person who fell to their knees and surrendered their soul to God because somebody said, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

That's not how this works, man. And it shows that the person who is saying it, number one, they're not sympathetic. They've not yet taken time to learn that the bath water was fake, the baby was fake, and there likely wasn't even a bathtub.

Right, right. But more than that, I usually engage them in conversation because I answer every email. I can't tell you how many emails that I've got with that phrase. And whenever I see it, I put it into this other category because usually it is a person who has been affected by either a cult or a derivative of the same cult.

And what they're trying to say is, we still cling to many of the things that you have proven false. Don't talk about those things, please, John. That's usually what it comes down to. A hundred percent.

And just recently, this last week, I had this again with my father, or not with him specifically, but with someone in regards to my father. And I was told, don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

And my best answer now is that I actually am not, but it's not about the ministry. The whole ministry is just rotten. Like, it's like looking at a tree and being like, don't throw out the tree that is dead and rotten.

And it's like, that's what you do with rotten trees. Like, there's no good fruit that's coming from a rotten tree. Like, it just isn't producing good fruit. I will say the one thing that I have thought about and I've tried to communicate with people is that my entire, the only reason that I'm on this podcast with you, whole reason that I have been doing a lot of, a lot of the conversation that I have been doing that has geared more to either people who are still in the charismatic world or one foot in, one foot out, or ex-cares,

like, but in this sort of Christian sphere is because the baby in this instance is the people who were, part of these communities, not the leaders, but the people who believed all of it. I think if I was to throw the baby out with the bath water in a way that is actually reasonable, if I went and just threw out, if I just blamed all of Christians, everyone who is deceived as naive, as people who are apart, complicit in the system, who are perpetuating these different things, that all of the sins of my fathers are then cascading through these

entire communities and the person who believes it is wrong, the person who spreads it is wrong. I think that that would be unfair, because I think that there's a lot of genuine people who are getting wrapped up into it. Some of it is reflective of character flaws, of desperation and needing to accept things even though it's just not true. But I think a lot of it is also just reflective of honesty and believing the best of the community that you're in. I want to have compassion for the people, even the people who are still at

it's harder for IHOP because IHOP has just been so explicit now. It's harder for the people who are still defending IHOP, but for just this world in general, for the people who still believe in prophecy to a large extent and are trying to find the good, I feel for them. I feel for them. I don't want to just go and start preaching to a secular liberal community and be like, you won't believe how crazy the right-wing world I grew up in was. I could do that and I could gain a following doing that. That 100% could

be the thing because some of that's true. Some of it is. There's a lot of crazy right-wing people who are a part of this world and it's scary, but I feel so much for the people who are still in it and that people who are like me, the young individuals who grew up into it or got sucked into it at a young age. That's the baby. That's the group of people that I'm trying to salvage and not trying to villainize. To do that, we got to throw out the bathwater and the bathwater is all of the ministry and frankly, all of the leadership.

This is going to be way more critical than some of the other people that you've probably talked to. I do not think that there is a single leader in the non-denominational, charismatic world on a mega-church level that does not have been explicitly aware of the option and fraud within the the community and abuse and sexual abuse and has just decided that those things don't matter to him because it's always a him, you know, that I so the whole I'm throwing out all of those leaders until they repent and say, you know, sack cloth and ashes and be like, okay, wait, what we were doing is wrong. I'm not touching any

of them with a 10 foot pole as far as their ministry goes. They might be fine people outside of it. I doubt it, but again, that's me speaking from my place. I am angry. So that's where I want to be like, okay, all right, I don't want to burn too hot there, but I am very upset at all of these leaders. Set cloth and ashes and remember, they rent their clothes, but in today's world, the equivalent would be they took a bulldozer and they smashed into their Lincoln or their Cadillac man. Right. Exactly. You know, for me, the bottom line is this.

And not to continue my rant that I promised that I wouldn't, but to continue it, you know, if you if you're dealing with a woman who has went through 20 years of spousal physical abuse and you find this person and you say, here, I'd like to help you try this other man, try here, try another man, try how are they going to react? They're going to be like, get away from me. I do not want your help. And what I'm watching from the people who are trying to communicate with people in our support groups, even you can see it sometimes in the comment

feed. It's this baby in a bathwater thing. They're what they're trying to do is they're trying to proselyseize. And they're not really understanding that the person has just been abused. In my case, it was 37 years. Some of the people I'm working with, one guy told me he was in it for gosh, I think he said 60 years. And he had escaped. These people have been abused, man. And when you talk about baby in the bathwater, we're not talking about the same baby here. If you've watched them, we'll be the the omen. That's the child we're talking about, man. It is not the same child.

So anyway, I'll in the rant there. And I'll just say this, it's not the same religion. We were in a different religion. And if you are one of these people who are really truly wanting to help and not insult the people who are escaping, this is not how you do it. You instead, you show them love, kindness, and all of the attributes of the spirit that you can read clearly in the Bible. And then whenever they're ready, like the woman who's been abused, when she's ready to open up, that's when you take the step forward. So anyway, this has been crazy fun. Thank you for doing this.

Yeah, for sure. I think that that's an excellent analogy to my man. You nailed it. So 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-Branham.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.