Bethel Church - Spiritual Intelligence or Religious Exploitation

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend Adam Short and together we're talking about the NAR and all of the complex weirdness that is associated with it. Adam, I'm a little surprised we discussed just briefly before we started recording this. What our topic was today and it's just it sounds to me like whenever you get into the spiritual intelligence mumbo jumbo it sounds like a really bad B movie. I'm not I've watched detective shows with worse plots on on TV

my wife and I are addicted to the mystery shows and you know I come up with a better plot than this and one of the TV detective shows but it wreaks of cult and I'm gonna let you talk more about what it is so our listeners can understand but it's it's kind of crazy what we're about to talk about today. It is crazy and if I didn't know any better and I'm looking at their website on the screen down below here and I'm watching their presentation and it's like it actually does look like a movie trailer and to their credit it's you know

their presentation graphically speaking is pretty professional and it ought to be for what they're charging for what they call a prophetic report okay and I'll just kind of unpack what this is I kind of get some detail here and I came across this I guess it's probably a month ago maybe two months ago and I posted on Twitter about this and what it is is Bethel out in Reading Bethel Church which I was a part of years ago and left years ago they have a whole department which is basically their prophetic department they've had that for

years no crazy and that's no crazy surprise to anybody because it's a very prophetic culture but what I discovered is in recent years I think it was a couple years ago Chris Valaton who is sort of the prophetic figure at Bethel hired a lady named Lindsay Raymond as the prophetic director at Bethel and you can look her her page up and look at her profile on Bethel.com and anyway Her profile is in there, but not only is she the prophetic director of the Bethel Department of Prophecy, she is the founder of a company that she calls a spiritual intelligence company.

And the name of it is aqua regia. And I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but I believe that's from Latin. It's from the alchemy, the alchemists of like the Middle Ages. Yeah.

Does that ring a bell? I know back in the day, I think they believe they could take certain types of metal like mercury and other metals and they could sort of reduce it down.

The goal was to find a way to precipitate gold out of other metal. Well, anyway, that's the name of this company. And she calls it a company, not a nonprofit, not a ministry, but it's called a company called aqua regia.

And so I took the time to go down the rabbit hole a little bit and guess what? Not only are they claiming to be prophetic, but they have something called the prophetic labs, but they also offer a product called a spiritual intelligence report.

Or a prophetic report. And you can have it. It's all yours for the low price of $2,200. So, John, your question is, are you going to buy one? You know, Charles and I, we did a whole episode on deliverance.

And I made the comment, and I got a lot of feedback from it, and you know, I probably shouldn't have been making fun, but I'm going to make the same comment and make the same fun again.

It's like your adult and you're playing this Dungeons and Dragons game with religion. And when you showed me this, the first thought that come into my head was the, there's an anime cartoon. I don't know if you've seen it. It's called Full Metal Alchemist.

That's how my brain works. And then suddenly I leaped from there to, you know, if you're an adult and you want to entertain this kind of fantasy, just watch the anime. It's better than this thing that they charge your money for.

And it's free, right? Or you just buy it with your TV subscription. Hulu or whatever. I can't remember what it's on, but it's just so unbelievable that there are adults that play these games and they call it religion. And I, you know, I will say this about the random cults, at least the main sect. We never got into things that were this deep of fantasy.

But it's interesting to me that if you trace all the roots back, all of the roots go back to randomism. And then, so this alchemist thing that they're presenting, you can trace its roots all the way back into the nosticism. And, you know, Steve and I, been going through that on the converging apostasy. We trace some of the nonsense from the NAR all the way back and tell you where it comes from in in that series of converging apostasy.

And he's written a whole book that kind of outlines that, but it's really like I say, it's really hard to believe that there are adults that do this. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's so hard to believe. I honestly am still kind of shocked by all of it. Like, you know, having been at Bethel, it's one thing to come across this and you never went to this church or you you maybe never had any interaction with this church, but I was deep at Bethel. I was neck deep there. And so the prophetic thing is not really anything new to me, but what is new is charging money for it, right? And so

the monetization of not only prophecy, but pretty much every other output of a church, mainly Bethel's what I'm talking about. Like the only thing left that has not been monetized to my knowledge at Bethel is just going to church to a church service. As of now, to my knowledge, you do not have to purchase an admission ticket to go to church, but I would venture to say that in the not too distant future, once the new campus is open, the 100 million or 200 million dollar campus they're building, you're probably going to have to pay. And this is just this is my opinion. I have no idea

if this will or won't happen, but you may very well have to pay an admission ticket to get into church. So back to the spiritual intelligence, just to unpack that a little bit, I wanted to talk about what I found out because I did reach out to them. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. And so I reached out to them and asked some questions about what what their fee, what this 2200 is for. So I asked them specifically, well, you say on your website that you're not charging money for prophecy, but why are you charging money for prophecy? And if you're not charging

money for prophecy, what is the money going to? And their response, they were kind enough to respond, which I appreciate. They did right back. They gave a personal message back. And they said, none of the money is going to the people that are actually, I don't even know what to call this, receiving the prophetic words or creating the prophetic words in the report. Those people are not being paid. This is what they said. The money is going towards all of the production cost, the editorial cost, the binding of the book, the printing. And I'm thinking and they actually

have on the website a, they show a picture of what the report looks like. And by the way, for $200 or $2,200, not only do you get a hard copy, you get a PDF, they're kind enough to include a PDF in there, gone. So you get the PDF.

But you also get a hard copy, but they said that none of the money is going to the people that are giving the prophetic words. So I asked them further questions. I said, well, where is the money going then if you're not paying the people that are giving the prophetic words?

Are you literally paying that much to bind a book together or to have people edit this? I mean, that is ridiculous. Like, I don't believe it. How can you charge $2,200 for a book that you could probably put together for $25 or $50 at FedEx Office?

And you know, $25, $50, what you're left with is $2,100 bucks, it's going into somebody's pocket. Yeah. So figure that out. Somebody figure that out, please. Well, these days, you know, these days, there are services, Amazon's one of the services you can take a word document, give it to Amazon and it costs you $0 to produce it.

You just type it in and then you're wrapped up and they all know this. One of the common things about the cults is that they use the cult members as labor. And so I can assure you that they are being honest.

They're probably not paying the people doing the work. We're not paying them. That's how it is. But the elite up in the, you know, up in the upper tiers, they're the ones that make all the money.

And they're, you know, I'm not going to accuse them outright of, of mist handling the finances, but I'll just say it reeks of mist handling the finances. Well, at least, at least they don't claim to be a nonprofit organization.

I will give them that, you know, on the profile, it says they're a company. So, you know, most companies exist to make a profit and have no reason to believe that they're not out to make a profit, right?

If you're a company, you need to make a profit. So, hey, at least they're, at least they're, they're being a company and they're making a profit on the product. I mean, call it what it is.

They're selling a product, okay? I pay money and I have considered doing this actually. I, you know, just for the heck of it, I thought, hmm, maybe I should just be, you know, a test to, you know, test this out, right, and, and call it up to 2,200.

Maybe we could do a crowdsourced spiritual intelligence report. If y'all want to, well, maybe I should even solicit that, but John, now I'm making a nervous, sorry. Yeah, you're killing me, man. You know what's funny is, I'm also, you know this, we've talked enough to know, but I'm also a big gamer.

I love video games and when you look at their website and you understand the depth of what this actually is, I mean, this is what's, what, what they've done is they've literally gamified spiritual warfare, but they've gamified it not to the people that like the games, but to the organizations, the churches, the ministers, they've gamified it.

And if you look at it, and if you look, and if you look at it, and if you look at it, If you look like their home page has got profile reports and it's talking about Think of this profile report as a spiritual treasure map meets the president's daily brief I remember clearly playing video games back in the day You may remember this or not But a lot of the games were text-based before they came out with the shooters, you know And so you would yeah, you'd have games where they give you these kind of presidents briefs and it it had this mission

Impossible feel to it you Here's the briefing here's the president's document and then it's going to self-destruct in 30 seconds So get away from it that kind of thing. Well, that's what they're doing here. I wonder if I wonder if they present these books I wonder if the book self-destruct when they give them away. Yeah, maybe the PDF says your PDF is gonna expire in 30 days and better look at it before 30 days is up who knows but yeah, I mean There's so much I could say about this especially and there's more out there in the public domain if you want if you care to

Look at this like there's a whole YouTube interview between Chris Valentin and Lindsey Raymond And this is probably a couple years ago that this was recorded But I went actually took the time to watch it and I just wanted to try to get my head around what is The rationale here and What I came away with is This is the part that and I'm just I'll just be a little vulnerable here um Having worked under Chris at Bethel when I was at BSSM like I met with Chris and You know, he probably doesn't remember me now, but anyway

Having worked under him it worked with him. I respected him very much and Watching the interview with Lindsey and Chris There's a part of it where Lindsey goes into um kind of a story of an encounter she said she had the Lord and I remember I watched this interview John and I'm listening to her describe what she's calling an encounter with the Lord And I listened to it and it sounds it sounds real it sounds like a legitimate encounter with God And I actually pray during while I was watching the interview and like Lord did you it's this real like?

Did you really encounter her like this? I'm actually asking God this question and I don't know what I didn't hear any him say anything back to me So I don't know but like I don't know how to explain this but She's explained she's basically describing an encounter she had right that gave birth to this company She started that now charges money for a spiritual intelligence report Again, it gets back to the mixture stuff we've talked about in previous episodes Is the encounter real maybe it very well could be But just because the encounter is real does not mean it legitimizes or validates the fact that she's created a company to charge

money for prophecy. And so that's the point I want to make. Like it's not binary, it's not just good or bad. Like you have potentially a real encounter here. Okay. Or not. I have no idea. I'm just postulating. And but but the point being like just because one is real or isn't, doesn't mean the other is or isn't. And so I think this where the critical thing that comes in and you have to really look at this and and use your mind, use your brain and use your discernment. And anyway, I don't know. That's that's a big ramble that I just went through there, but hopefully it made

sense to somebody. You know, when we were in the Brannum cults, one of the things that was used as a manipulation tool by Brannum and then all of the splinter groups that came from it, they Brannum would take verses from the Bible and he would twist their meanings to be the exact opposite of what the verse said in ways in which it empowered him and made you inferior as a human.

One of the examples is Hebrews, the first chapter of Hebrews in the Bible in the in modern English, it says long ago in many times in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he's spoken to us by his sons. Well, Brannum used the King James version.

And whenever you when you hear the King James version, you mind kind of shuts off because it's not in today's language. And so what he what he twisted that verse to say is that he emphasized the word prophets and says it's only it only can be understood, but through a prophet. So that entire passage is literally saying we used to have prophets no more God has spoken to us and now we have the gospels and now we move on, right? Okay, I'm reading through there on this Acrogea, how we pronounce this thing right on their homepage. It says, and this is an exact quote,

spiritual intelligence changes lives, brings solutions and brings people to their creator, aqua regia, or however you say that, is uniquely positioned to get spiritual intelligence into the hands of those who, and this is the part I want to stress, otherwise have limited or no access to the voice of God. So this is exactly what they were doing in laterane. You do not have access to the voice of God unless you come to us, come to us and play this gamified thing that we're doing called spiritual intelligence. That is, I mean, that is literally brandemism 101. You have to have

a prophet, you have to have this organization. That's, I mean, think of it, the brandem headquarters is called voice of God recordings for that very purpose. You go there to get the voice of God instead of instead of Hebrews one. And when people leave the brandem cult or any of these cults, one of the exercises that I give them if they want to remain Christian, just go read the first chapter of Hebrews, and it'll excite you enough to read the rest of the book, because it will fully describe why this religion is fully anti-biblical. Oh my gosh, there's so much in what you just said.

Going back to the Hebrews, okay, and I was not in the Brandham cult, so I'm not as familiar with these things you're talking about here, what they did. But basically, if I understand correctly, you're saying they supplanted William Brandham in place of Jesus, right? Where?

Absolutely. Hebrews is actually talking about the Son of God, and then the Brandham organization supplanted Brandham into the place of where Jesus was meant to be, and really hijacked that scripture, really, is what that is. And if people claim that William Brandham did not believe that he was the Son of God, all you have to do is look at that sort of practice, and that will disprove that belief, right? Like, I mean, that is deity claimed right there. And it's no surprise that it created a deity cult. Deity cult, yes. And a lot of people don't really recognize the power of

that because it has been lost to history. But when William Brandham died, William Brandham was deeply embedded into the full gospel businessmen's international fellowship. And that was, if you really study the history of what that was, that's what birthed the major charismatic movement.

If you were charismatic, you were connected into this thing. When Brandham died in 1965, they, he died in, I think it was in Texas, but they held his body from the grave until Easter of that year. And there's a whole weird story about that. We talked about it in our podcast with Charles. After he died, I think it was, I want to say it was mid-January.

They held a service for him in a full gospel businessmen's convention, wherein TL Osborne, and if you, if you understand who that is, that's deeply connected to word of faith, charismatic movement, the prosperity gospel movement. He's one of the guys who was supplying the shepherding movement with their organization's information to start the shepherding movement.

This guy was deeply connected in the speech that he prepared for William Brandham. He said that William Brandham was God come down in the flesh. And when he saw this, it started, it sparked a already growing and developing deity cult, but he was literally announcing that he was part of that deity cult. So you think his connections to Kenneth Hagen and all of these people, you can go I mean, you can go find transcripts of this online.

What you can't find is any one of the men in the Charismatics, the Prosperity Gospel, were the faith movement. You can't find any single person denouncing what he said, which leads you to believe and conclude that was a commonly accepted doctrine among the Charismatics at that point in time.

Now they later ditched it, but this was all part of a deed he called. And think of the, I mean, just think of the, like Kenneth Hagen, the Rema, the word of faith, just think of the phrase word of faith.

They're trying to say that you, there are people on earth who have this deification, and we have it because William Brannum was the primary target for God's deification on earth, and he gave us this little impartation of this through these mantles that we're receiving.

That's why you get these people who come to Jeffersonville. They want William Brannum's mantle because they want the quote unquote voice of God or the spoken word. Yes, okay, there's so much in here.

T.L. Osborne, yes. He is so influential, the pastor I worked with and under in Africa when I was a missionary there years ago was basically mentored by T.L. Osborne. So I have a direct personal experience not with T.L. Osborne, but somebody who was formed and mentored by him.

So I'm aware of the way that man thinks because of working with somebody who sort of indoctrinated him. But back to the deity piece, I was just in the middle of a deep conversation about this over the weekend.

And we were talking about Kenneth Hagen, Kenneth Copeland, the word of faith or oral Roberts. And I was trying to explain to him everything that you've researched, like the threads of connecting, not just the word of faith movement, but also our current charismatic movement, all the way back to Latter-Rain, William Brannum and then pulling that thread back, right?

I was trying to botch my way through trying to explain that. And the subject of deity came up. And this is exactly what we were talking about, John. Exactly what you just said about the whole teaching of what you say with your mouth.

Basically, the teaching, it started in the Bible from the verse that says life and death is in the power of the tongue, but what they did is they went way further. They went way further and then they mixed in this belief that because you say it with your mouth that you can create, that you as a person can create.

And the person I was talking to said, they had like a light bulb moment and said, oh, like God does. And I said exactly. Paul's exactly. God is the one that spoke and the world was created. And the fact that we think as people that we've been indoctrinated to believe that we are deity, that we can do the same thing, that is the biggest load of baloney. And it has totally wrecked so many people's lives because now, and it makes it way out in the financial world too, because at Bethel, like I've said before, every church service, you were doing the offering declaration and we're declaring with our mouth,

financial blessing, raises and bonuses as states and the heritances, rebates and returns, gifts and surprises, bonuses, and forgot the other one. And you know, debts paid off, blessings and increase. We're saying this stuff with our mouth to manifest it in the world, right? Like in the real world. And anyway, it's all back to that deity. Like if you trace that back, it's built upon this sort of hidden belief, even though they won't say it overtly, below all that is a belief that you can be, it's like you can be like God, you can actually be God.

And there are preachers now who are actually saying that. They're actually coming out and saying, and I'm not going to name the one I'm thinking of right now. But there's a preacher, a very well-known, famous mega church preacher who recently said this in a sermon that you're basically little God walking around. And I got news for you. If you think that's the gospel, you've been totally duped. That is everything but the gospel. It's deity cold, like you said.

You know, the funny part about the word of faith movement, I get in these battles. I don't know if you've seen it in the comment feeds, but there's there's a few people in particular that they will defend the word of faith movement to no end. And no matter how many connections that are exposed between latarine and word of faith, they all want to say that Kenneth Hagen is the one who came up with this brilliant idea. And there are numerous scholars. You can you can just type up.

I think even the Wikipedia page talks about it. What Kenneth Hagen was teaching was not new to him. It's you can trace it all the way back to Nosticism. But what is missing from the Wikipedia pages is actually even funnier. And Charles and I have mentioned this, but I don't think it's really stuck in the minds of people just yet. It will, but it hasn't yet. So Kenneth Hagen was deeply embedded into the full gospel business man. He was a part of this thing as it was birthing what became the charismatic movement. William Brannum was their poster child. And there was a point in time in which

Brannum, Gordon Lindsey, who started Christ for the nations, but he also edited the voice of healing publication, et cetera. They were working on classes to teach deliverance and spiritual warfare. A lot of people don't realize that, but they held classes until Brannum died.

And so that was growing. And one of the things that Brannum spread throughout all of this, throughout the CFNI, what became CFNI, the Pentecostals, the Charismatics, the, you know, Full Gospel businessmen, etc., he claimed that God, through, because he was this voice to the last age, which they all just kind of accepted for some weird reason, he said that God had given him the power, which would be given to the people, that he could speak things into existence, long before Kenneth Hagen ever claimed to have this Rema, Rema word of faith, however you say it.

Brannum claimed that he was out on a hunting trip, and he was having apparently a bad hunting day. He liked to hunt the little squirrels, and apparently was having a bad day, and he said that he spoke a squirrel into existence.

He said, there was no squirrel. He said, I spoke, because I wanted to kill a squirrel. And so I spoke and said, make a squirrel right there, and he said, poof, the squirrel just appeared, and I blew his head off.

It must have been a flying squirrel dropped right out of the tree above them. He was a tree redneck. Well, the funny thing is, this friend of mine, we're talking, he said, you know, it wouldn't be so bad, many of the things that these guys claim, if they were to start out with me and the boys were drinking a few beers one night, and then you tell a story like this, it works, right?

But he said this, and then he started repeating it throughout all of his revivals. His minister started picking it up, and believing that he actually did it. That spread throughout all of this mass that created the charismatic movement.

And Kenneth Hagen, there is no way possible that he did not come in contact with this. The people he was associating with, he came in contact. Brandham died, Hagen took it, and ran with it, and claimed it.

That's the reason. Yeah, he actually, so Kenneth Hagen actually stole Brandham's idea and made all kinds of money off of it. They know how to sell the snake oil, or in this case, the flying squirrel.

I'm a self-proclaimed country boy, I guess if you want to call it. And I mean, you hear about William Brandham, as I understand, I mean, I didn't know him, obviously, but I mean, he sounds like a country boy, like he's out there hunting, and he just comes up with this hunt story, just like people do with their fishing stories.

And every time he tells a story, the fish gets bigger. But all I can think about now, John, is a flying squirrel dropping out of the tree. I'm thanking Rocky. Bullwinkle right? Well the funny part of it is, so I am, I try to hide it and I've hopefully hit it pretty well but I'm very much a redneck country boy myself and I grew up in the south where I can actually claim it. I'd spend a lot of time in the south but whenever you're around people and you're in around us, a southern country environment. You know things and you understand

things, you're kind of in tune with the land and the world around you, right? Yeah. So when William Brown was in these, in these revivals and he's talking to all these guys who, they're all city boy, city slickers, they're trying to make money off of religion and they're listening and they're eating it up and he's telling them about his country life experience. But what's funny is the things that he says aren't true. He claimed, well an example of this and this is a funny story, it has nothing to do with his podcast but I'm gonna tell it anyway. He claimed that if you shoot a deer,

you have to shoot it through the heart because if you don't, if you injure it, no matter, no matter where you shoot it, no matter how badly you've injured it, if it can just make it to water and its head will fall in the water, it will drink the water and survive and run away and you lose your deer. And the reason that's funny, I've heard a version of that a little bit different here in the Carolinas but a similar sort of belief. Yeah. Maybe it all originated with him. Who knows but if you have ever haunted a deer, you know how ridiculous this is. So there were

in the movement there are a lot of people who want to pretend to be big hunters because you have to be like the central figure. So there's this hunting trip. I'm not gonna name names or anything like that but these guys were hunting and they shot and they just missed the heart by a little bit in the deer ran and fell over dead. I mean like literally dead but its head fell into a stream when it died. One of them jumped and just started stabbing with his knife the heart. Just pounding on the other guy said, what are you doing man? It's head fell on the water. It's going to come back

to life. And so I'm sitting and I don't know, a zombie deer is going to come get us. Oh my gosh. That's how wrapped up people are in this. It's like superstition almost. Yeah. It's like super stupid. Well it kind of reminds me, you know, and I grew up in the country and you can tell I'm Southern. I listen to them how I talk but you know, it's like fishing stories. You have to go over here. The certain spot of the lake and then the moon has to be three quarters of the way full and

it has to be after 11 o'clock at night. If you drop your line right there you're going to catch the biggest catfish you ever saw. But like taking that stuff, it's almost like folklore and then he analyzed on the folklore and spiritualized it, almost, it sounds like, and people believed it, and you know, they put their faith in it.

They actually had faith that that was going to happen, so that's interesting. 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 Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top, and as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. To reel it back in, because I took it away from this podcast, what you're saying is actually very similar to what I see happening with this ridiculous website and this spiritual intelligence reporting, because what Brandham did was significant to the face and landscape of Christianity in America and abroad, but what he did was he took folklore and mythology that was invented newly by him, and he merged it into Christianity, and so the folklore became part of the religion, that's the weird part of all of this, whenever you, if you were to have sat down with T.L. Osborne

and asked him, why do you think William-Brandham is God? He would have told you stories about the folklore that William-Brandham invented for his stage persona. He would tell stories like the squirrel thing, and these people, what happens is they get so involved in the folklore that they totally miss the difference between the folklore and Christianity, and sadly, the folklore starts to rise above even the Bible in importance. The Bible takes a second place to this, right?

And what the folklore described was a world of angels and demons and country boy. It was a weird mixture of those three things, and so the people, because they were so distracted and had forgotten that, wait a minute, Christianity should be centered around the Bible, they're instead centered around the voice of God, the God who, God in flesh, I can't remember how Osborne called Brandham, but they're so focused on the human that's not a God, thinking he is a God.

They totally forget about the Bible. And what happened was the result of all of this, they, if you look at the roots of this quote unquote spiritual warfare that the NAR pushes, you can find every single aspect of it in the latter reign movement.

I know that it has roots far beyond, you know, back in time, all the way back to Nosticism, but the latter reign popularized the Nostics, the Nostic view of the angels and demons. And created what it did essentially was it took Christianity and it turned it into a more of a, I don't know how you call it, yin and yang type religion.

You've got the forces of evil, which are just as powerful as the forces of good. And there's that balance and you, the Christian, are walking in between this balance. And be careful because you might accidentally get one of these demons and we need to have a deliverance minister to come get you because they've empowered the demons in this mythology they created.

And what's difficult is deliverance actually happened in the Bible, but in the end, but in it, there are angels and demons in the Bible that actually exist. There is a world of angels and demons, but to your point, what they've done is they've amplified that.

They have, they have heightened the focus to actually to a fault where people are consciously always thinking about there's a demon behind every bush, even though maybe they don't say it like that, like, you know, you get into like physical healing and like we talked about before, there's inevitably there's a spiritual problem that I have that's led to my disease and this, that and the other.

And so this heightened sort of hyper vigilance of the spiritual world that we're constantly, like you're saying, we're in a battle. And yeah, I mean, those themes are in the Bible, but they just, they took it and they, they just 10 X did or 100 X did or whatever it is.

But then like the folklore, and it's exciting, I think back to your point about, you know, this prophetic stuff takes a level of precedence higher than the Bible. It reminds me of the prophetic history of I hopped where that's pretty much what happened there.

The prophetic history became even more important, I think, practically than the Bible itself. And then these spiritual intelligence reports, I mean, people are taking these reports and I as understand it, there are people that are high profile, like government leaders and, you know, high level business leaders that are buying these reports and they're using their reports to make very critical decisions in their business and organization.

And so this company that's selling prophecy is exerting its influence through sort of this folklore, prophetic bent. And it's in, and that's how that stuff is sort of making its way into society. through people of influence. And honestly, a lot of that is due to the Seven Mountains mandate that other people have talked about too, whereas the belief says that Christians are meant to take over every, as they call, mountain of society. We're going to literally dominate and have dominion over every mountain, and we're literally going to rule the world, like that's the end goal,

even though it's not pitched that way. So anyway, this is just another tool to get to world domination and the scary part is it actually could be used for that, but not in the ways in which people are thinking. And I'm going to try, I'm going to try very hard not to do this in a way that sounds like conspiracy theory, because what I'm talking about is reality, not conspiracy theory. But what you just said, these reports are given out to government officials and not just united states government officials. This is a, this is a worldwide thing. These reports might go to another

government entirely. Keep in mind that Chris Valleton, Chris Valleton, he, there's, there's segments you can go find on the internet where he's talking about working with a fellowship international, which is the family, right? If you want to learn more about that, you can go on my website and I've got a great deal of information about that. But one of the problems that existed in the family is that they, the religious elite were lining and dining politicians in such a way that they could influence government policy outside of the public vote. It's a big deal and it's,

it's a problem. They have shut down a lot of a lot of the possibilities of that. However, they're still connected to these people and they still have, they still hold influence, which technically isn't illegal. You know, if you're best friend, if you're next door neighbors and your best friends with the governor and you invite them over for dinner or whatever, you can have conversations and that's not illegal. But now you've got one of the problems that existed with the family was espionage. What if in that same scenario, your other neighbor next door says, Hey, can I come to and he comes over and he's a spy for Russia and you don't know it.

The governor doesn't know it. Well, now you've got to spy in your midst, right? Well, these documents are being passed to government officials in not just the United States, but in other countries and back and forth because to build an intelligence report, you have to have data coming in, data going out. Well, now you've got this level of information going to people that is outside of the control of the United States government and it's connected to the family because through Bethel, they're connected to the fellowship international, the family organization. There is no governing process that is monitoring and

keeping everything safe among all of the people that's involved with this because this sits outside of the government. That's where it turns into a real problem because say one of the people who, I mean anybody can pass to a church in this religion, say some foreign entity sets up a church, gets an actual preacher who's actually preaching, but he's working for a foreign intelligence agency and they're working through these reports. Well, they're also not screening the information that's coming into these reports and out of these reports.

What if the reports themselves are a way to pass documents? And I'm, again, I'm not going into conspiracy theory. What I'm describing is that is literally how espionage works. It's not that it's not that I have a theory that they're doing this, but it is a platform that can be used for this. And there are many, many such platforms. It's not like this is the only one, but this is one that is claiming to be Christian and has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity whatsoever. Maybe they do claim to be Christians, but I have no idea, right? And just because the founder of the company is a director at Bethel doesn't

really tell me whether or not the company's Christian or claims to be Christian, but I think what you're saying is a lot of serious consideration in there, like the intelligence stuff. I didn't even thought about that actually, like the intelligence. Where, you know, it raises a lot of questions.

Where are they getting the information? Is it that their volunteers are, quote, unquote, receiving prophetic words? Or do they have a data set somewhere? You know, are they pulling from, because they claim they're doing a double blind methodology where they don't even know, like the people don't even know your name. You just have a number. And so they don't, supposedly I don't have a way of pulling you up anywhere, but like it does beg the question, like where are they getting the information? Is this just up to just cooking up in their head?

Is there a database somewhere, you know, or is it a combination of the two's or something else? I mean, you know, to mean like who's feeding them that information and who are they feeding that information to as well, even though they say it's going to be confidential. I just, I have so many questions and doubts. Well, it's, the funny part is, so as a businessman, I can look at this and I can tell you, this is nothing more than a consulting company, but it's a consulting company, a fantasy. And I just, I just looked up on their website. They do have a statement of faith. It says

we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, okay. Well, that's encouraging. It does have a statement of faith, but what I can tell you is this. I was a consultant for, gosh, 30 years, 20 years, a long time. I was a consultant. And I know how it works. I have had to produce reports in the IT world similar to what they're calling with the spiritual warfare thing. And I can't, I can't name a single business that would ask me for a report.

with no input because it would then be of no value. So if they're doing these kind of reports as a consulting company, they're going in and they're gathering information, there would be meetings the people in the organizations that they're targeting would have to give them information for the report.

And then the funny part is, I did it in the technology world. So I could go into my databases and resources, Google, et cetera. I could pull in other databases. I could tell you more about that company than they knew about themselves because I was a consultant.

I know how it works. Yeah. If this is a quote unquote spiritual consulting firm, they have access to the same tools I do. So they go in, they have these meetings, the people give them the information, all they need are the keywords to search, then they can go get the quote unquote prophetic data.

Give it back to them. In their assin, the funny part is, they're doing essentially the same exact thing I was. But I'm looking at this and hearing the numbers from you and I'm thinking dang, I would have made more money doing this than I would have in my consultant business.

Well, it's never too late, John. You can always switch to your John 2.0 spiritual intelligence consulting, unbelievable. Yeah. But hey, at least they do have a statement of faith. I see that too.

But, you know, I mean, if they have a statement of faith, they should also have a statement about how, you know, the gospel is not meant to be monetized, you know what I mean?

Like, that's the part, honestly, that's the part that ticks me off the most is like, you're selling, this is a gift, there's supposedly a gift of prophecy that God gives people and you're selling it.

And then if you're pulling it from a data set, like you're saying, like Google or whoever, you know, Dunes and Brad Street or Bloomberg or whoever it is, you're pulling from all these data sources.

I don't know if they are or aren't, but if they are, they're basically just charging people a subscription to information that they subscribe to themselves. And then they're gonna add like maybe some proprietary flavor to it or something, I don't know.

Well, the weird part is their statement of faith on, well, I can't remember what page I found that on the FAQ, I think. The statement of faith in the FAQ is a complete rejection of the first page where it says, you who have limited or no access to God.

Tell me where in the Bible Jesus came and died for the entire world, but doesn't give you access. I mean, it's like, yeah, they have a statement of faith, but they've never read the book of the faith.

I mean, they don't understand what it is. Yeah, and then there's also a fine print. I think it was on the sample mini report where they say, we don't seek to replace your relationship with God, but it's like, Well, don't you?

Because if you didn't, why in the actual world, are you charging people money to give people what you think God's thoughts are for them? Like, it's like you said, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

You say you believe this, but you're doing that. So it's like, do as I say, not as I do. Or was it, how does that go? Do as I do, not as I say, I can't remember how that you sound like George Bush, man, or don't do as I do and do as I don't do whatever it is.

You know, the funny part, I've mentioned this name many times in our podcast, but the funny thing about all of this, this company reminds me of a documentary that I saw early in my escape. So I grew up in a world of angels and demons.

That's how Lateran taught it. It was the Yin and Yang. We were so scared of catching a demon. And what happened was the Lateran basically trained people to deny common sense. And then that same denial of common sense made its way into the charismatic movement.

And I have a feeling it'll, it may be this one light and you may be not because one of the comments you made. So after being, after being able to understand and critically think about the Bible, you actually learn anything that you learn, you learn by critically thinking.

But this movement trained you to believe that if you critically thought about the Bible, you were Satan had influenced you basically, but that's not how it works. You critically think because that's how you think, right?

In today's world, there are people who have bipolar disorders in an example where people have chronic depression. And this is a chemical imbalance. And I, I'm a full believer that medical science is a miracle.

It used to be in the 60s and 70s. People were committed and could not be around their family. And they were not normal when they had this, you know, long time ago, now you just take a little pill and little pill fixes it. And as long as you keep taking the pill, you are, you're an actual, it's a miracle.

You are a normal human being and you can function, right? It is a miracle. To me, that's a miracle. And that's a miracle. God has given the science of today's world the ability to do in the Bible.

People who had those conditions, they called it a demon because in their worldview, people who had any mental health disability in the Bible, they had no worldview that understood it. So the author who's writing the books, they don't understand that, no, this is a chemical imbalance in the head to them when a person got healed.

of that. There are examples of people who got healed of mental health issues. It was a miracle in the same way that today is a miracle. And the way the miracle happened may not be the same. You know, I wasn't there. I don't know. But what they describe as a demon today, I would not describe that in the same way, right? Yeah. I mean, you could literally say that maybe the demon caused the chemical imbalance. How do you think about it? But for me, it's different because I have critically thought about it. I critically have thought

and I know that you can take a pill for this. So back in the ancient world, people were living in this world of angels and demons that got fully erased whenever science started to teach people how to understand the world that we live in in the modern world. We understand the world a lot more than they did back then. Well, there was a man named hero of Alexander and it was one of the most fascinating documentaries I've ever watched. But he was an inventor and he was a brilliant inventor. He knew pneumatics, magnetism, hydraulics and his job because

he was so good at what he did. He was hired by all the ancient temples to go in and make their demons, their gods, seem more alive. And he had the series? Yes. And in fact, we know this because they have found his diaries and they have found the architectural drawings of how he did it. The most fascinating of which one of them, I can't remember what temple, but he installed these big vats of wine and put, I think there were brass tubes that went all the way up to up in the worship chamber. They had the demons, you know, in the pantheon

or whatever. Well, the tubes of brass went up to the eyes and the priests before they would start service, they would light a fire under these vats. The fire would cause the wine to expand. The wine would expand and go up the tubes and it would make it look like the demons were crying blood. Oh my gosh. Unbelievably cool stuff, right? That's fascinating stuff. So whenever you read about in the Bible, it talks about the demons and the temples and all of this, right? Well, there are also passages that say these are just idols made

of stone. It's like these aren't real is what what some of the prophets were saying. Well, the the latter reign wanted to teach you that these demons were real and you had to spiritually fight them. And you had people like hero of it, Alexander, who's going and making them animated, right? That's crazy. I see this company as exactly what this guy is doing. They're going around to the temples of Bale of the NAR and they're saying, we're going to teach you how to animate your spiritual.

warfare and make it seem real dude and what was his name he wrote of Alexander nick name hero of Alexander I think it's he-ron actually okay I gotta I gotta look into that that's interesting I said it incorrectly it's Alexandria but Alexandria Egypt maybe yes yes you learned me something I had not heard that I'm full I'm full of little knowledge that most people will never need in their life and I probably don't need but I also am to a limited extent I'm an inventor so when I saw this I was just I fascinated man it's one of the coolest documentaries I've watched that's

really cool but yeah it's like even way back then however long ago that was probably thousands of years ago this this same grift was being pulled you know except to their benefit or to their credit that they were at least you know non-Christian you know false religions as we call them now but they were pulling the same grift that quote-unquote Christians are doing now so good figure yeah nothing do under the sun right well well he died in AD 70 so we're we're talking the grip that they're doing in the NAR today you can date it all the way back to the days of Jesus they were doing

the same grift and and it wasn't the Christian churches that we're doing it it wasn't the Christian churches and it's probably going to keep going long after we're going to absolutely they're going to be doing all this stuff yeah so the least we can hope for is to open a few people's eyes and help people extricate from high control toxic you know groups like this yeah well this has been fun man when we started talking about this episode I was thinking well this is so silly I don't know if there's even enough to talk about but the more you think about it the worse it gets it's

one of those out of no if you've seen this toys that you pull the string out and the more you pull the bigger the mess gets that's that's kind of what this is the more you untangle this it turns in this big mess of nonsense none of which matches the Bible and the fact that they're doing this out of Bethel Church of all places it's just it's a little unbelievable it is I'm still a little kind of shell shocked by it if you will but hey maybe this will open up some eyes I hope that

they write me back again because I asked several questions they didn't answer like the accounting of their expenses I would like to see an accounting report so because I'm going to count it so we'll see if I get that I probably won't but I guarantee you will not bet who knows I'll see well hopefully it's open to somebody's eyes and this has been great fun 100% man thanks a lot enjoyed it awesome well if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web you can find us at william-branam.org for more about the dark side of the new apostolic

reformation you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon Kindle and Soon, Horrible.