Reformation to Reconstruction: Embracing Critical Thought - Detangling IHOPKC

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Bob Scott, former co-founder of Kansas City Fellowship, an author of some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer. Bob is good to be back. I always get a little bit of a chuckle when I read some said they blundered. It's just a funny wording for

that book. But I'm glad you're on today and the topic, I'm actually really excited to go through because I've wanted to talk about this with other people, and there is this, I don't know how you explain it, it's almost like this fear to even talk about critically thinking and what you're free to critically think about and what is blasphemy to critically think about. And you and I've had long discussions about this, and you share the ability like myself of just no fears. So I think I think we're a good fit for both of us to talk about this, but it's really, I was watching through

the comments on our last, as either the last video we did or the one before that, and I was looking at some of the way people were talking about some of the things that you casually mentioned. It's not like you even focused heavily on them, but you just casually mentioned them, and they have the sudden fear that that's blasphemy, and they start pouncing on it, and I get it too. You've probably seen it on the comment feeds for me, but I'm one of these people that I like to critically think. I feel like if God did not intend for us to critically think, He would not have given us a brain, and if you

actually read the Bible and read what it says and understand the context of it, the people in the Bible that we're reading about are critically thinking. But yet, this whole world has been turned upside down by the laterane movement and carismania and the authoritarian figures of those movements do not want, did not want the people to critically think about them because suddenly they would be exposed. Well, from a historical standpoint, if we think about it, this is actually not new.

And what I mean by that is that for A good 1,500 years, the Catholic Church controlled how people thought and people were not allowed to read their Bibles. They were only, you know, the Bible was in Latin, right, and so you had priests that were trained in Latin who basically told their parishioners, this is what it says, and this is how you should believe, right?

People thinking actually was what caused the Reformation, right? In other words, it sounds interesting because we're talking about this fear of challenging religious authority, but the truth of it is that's how the Reformation came to be, Martin Luther, right?

Probably like you and I went, hey, wait a minute. I'm actually reading this stuff and it's not exactly the way you're saying it, right? It's like, what's going on here? But what was also going on at the same time is Martin Luther.

You had all these other religious figures who in their search for trying to understand God ended up developing what we know today as science, right? You had Mendelssohn, right, doing his plants and all this, right?

And Galileo and Copernicus and, you know, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, like you had all these minds, right, that somehow or another had the courage to challenge this religious institutions default worldview, right? And they were actually the beginning of science, as we know it in the modern world, right?

So I think one of the things that people have to realize is that it's actually healthy. In other words, fear comes from the authoritarian figures that go, if you do that, bad things will happen to you.

If you challenge us, right, bad things are going to happen to you. When in fact, it's healthy, the challenge. Oh, yeah. One of my favorite shows is Cosmos. And I've mentioned it briefly a few times in the podcast, but anytime I mention it, I get this onslaught of hate mail saying Cosmos, that show that's the narrator is a atheist.

You can't listen to anything that's in the show. And all they're doing in the show, if I don't know if you've seen it or not, but it's simply presenting not only science, but the history of science, the things that as the ancient world was changing into the world today, it talks about the things that we learned that molded the way that we are today.

And what fascinates me when it gets into some of the, I don't know, mid 1400, 1300 histories, many of the things that men were burned at the stake for defying what the church believed. Many of them, most Christians today would believe, and they would object to the person being burned at the stake. However, back in its time, a vast majority of people would have agreed with the person being burned at the stake. Things like, I can't remember the guy's name, but there was an instance where some guy just had the thought, if I shot an arrow straight up in the air, and it wasn't able, if there wasn't anything forcibly bringing

it back down, it would just continue going. And this was defying the laws of not only science, but the way that they understood the Bible, because the Bible talks about the Firmament. And in the ancient world, the ancient peoples believed that there was this blanket of shiny things that was up above the sky. And in today's world, Christianity was, no, those are stars.

We have been to outside of the solar system with the rovers, what is it called, Voyager, et cetera. We know that these are stars, and each star is a sun for a galaxy of planets.

We know what it is, right? But back in the day, they did not. So they burned people at the stake for it. And I watch through the comment feeds, and if you make any sort of comment that defies what is tradition for whatever is the group you're talking about, they will verbally burn you at the stake. Yeah. Well, both Copernicus and Galileo got excommunicated.

Right? So let's bring this into the modern world, because I think there's a reality that I think all of us are aware of, and it's this. The experts say, the pundits say, right? So you and I are old enough now to have lived through in our lifetime a myriad of even quote, scientific statements that were fact, right? That now, as science has developed more, and we've got more ability to actually do better research, we're finding out that those facts weren't actually facts. They were assumptions, right? And I think we all have dozens of stories in our lives, right? About these things. You know, one minute eggs are

bad for you. Next minute eggs are good for you, right? You can think of all these things we've been through. You know, you and I grew up in the time in the 60s when they came out with the book about the population explosion. And we were, you know, I remember being and sitting in class paranoid that when I got to be this age, I was going to have one square yard of space to live on, right? Because that's what they all told us is kids.

Then we took a family vacation to California and we were driving from Wisconsin across the United States. And I kept seeing all this land nobody lived on. I was really confused. I was like, wait a minute, right? I got outside of my little classroom room bubble and saw the real world and I went, wow, something doesn't add up here. But I mean, so I think we've all been through this. So I think, you know, where it gets tricky is when you then cross into the religious realm, right? People just get scared.

Oh, yeah, they get really scared, right? Because again, they're all told, if you challenge us, bad things are going to happen to you. Or, you know, I've had, I mean, you've probably had this accusation, but you're deceived. Yes, right? It's like, it's a deceptive spirit leading you astray. Right. You don't mean? And so wait a minute here. So my challenging assumptions, because I really want to understand the truth is deception, right? Even though we know now, from history, that all the people that challenged all these things are the ones that moved the world forward. Right? So the fear of challenging, you know, because, I mean, I was like you. I

mean, I grew up labeled rebellious because I just had this nature about me even when I was a child. Why? Right? I think we were talking about this earlier. You know, people know a lot about what happened. They don't know why things happened. Right? And often they don't take the time to drill down to get to the answer the why question. Yeah. And more to the point, a lot of people don't really have a sound method for doing so. They'll tell you that they critically examined it, but let's face it, the vast majority of people who were influenced by these types of movements

have been distorted in their views of what is critical thinking. They're okay to critically think as long as they stay within this little box. And don't look outside of the box because that's sacrilegious, my brother. And one of the, so growing up in this flattering mess that I did, one of the things that was really frowned upon in the movement was science. You weren't allowed to, by any way, accept what was common science of the era. And I'm not going to go into details of those because I'll guarantee you we have listeners that they'll completely shut off the rest of the

podcast if I mention any of those things. So I'm not going to mention them. You can guess what they are. However, the scientific method isn't just, it's scientific theory. Somebody presents a theory and then what they do is they try to prove that theory. And according to the scientific process, it's not even that that's the final word, because Here's later, we understand that somebody else may disprove their findings, but they present the science and they present their theory as best they can with the information that they have at the time.

And that's the scientific theory. One of the methods for critically thinking is you take, so if I believe that my worldview or my religious view, anything that I believe is false, well, the way to critically examine this is, let's look at the other side.

What does the other side believe? Is it true? Is it false? What do they have right? What do they have wrong? And so you start going down that pathway, and you've probably seen it.

In my research, I will take the extreme opposite argument from things that I've been brought up with, and I'll try to prove it. Is it true? Is it false? I don't know. And what I'm finding is, many cases, when I take the opposite position that is fully again, in some cases, it's even the atheist position against what we believed.

I'll find that there are things that the atheist believe that are absolutely true. There are things that the latter rain people believe that are absolutely true. But they're in the mix. If you look at both sides, you get a bigger picture and you understand the whole picture.

And where it gets really interesting is, on the latter rain side, there are things that are beyond a shadow of a doubt, proven true, that you're not allowed to believe. And that just fascinates me.

Most of us are under the perception that we're critical thinkers. And we've arrived at our conclusions because of our own mental processes. Science, and the science I'm talking about, in particular, sociology, will show you that, actually, we are influenced into our worldview.

In other words, our family, our race, where we live, our friends, more than anything, actually determine how we see the world. In other words, it's actually, now, I'm not saying you don't do that in some cases.

But the vast majority of us have a worldview and a perception of things that's been handed to us. It's what we call our sub-culture, right? So churches are a sub-culture. Denominations are a sub-culture.

Cults are a sub-culture. There's a very defined worldview. There's a vocabulary, right? There's a value system that are very unique to that group of people. You do not challenge that. And the reason being is, is the minute you do, you get what?

Label does rebellious, and you get rejected. Absolutely. This is one of the... where a lot of this actually started was people were trying to figure out post-World War II, how a whole nation of people in Germany got caught up in a worldview that ended up resulting in the slaughtering of 11 million people. These are people that are living right next to these.

Camps, right? And it's like, how do you not see this? So, sociologists began to look into this more and more and going, wait a minute. Where's the disconnect here? And that's when we began to realize how powerful sub-culture influence is and how we think. I tell people this all the time, when you're in a discussion with someone and you challenge their thinking or their perception and they get angry at you, they're not getting angry at your argument. They're getting fearful about if you're right what the implications are. It means I'm going to get rejected by my family.

I'm going to get rejected by my friends, right? And so people just instinctively get defensive because fear takes over at what they're going to lose, right? And so that's where you see arguments end up digressing from facts to emotions, right? And then they go at Hananem, right? They start attacking your character, your whatever, right? The facts are no longer the issue.

Yeah, right? It's a good point. You know, one of the exercises that I did when I left the call, there came a point in time in which I realized that the God that they presented to us in this movement, there's no possible way that it could have been the God of the Bible.

If you follow all of the attributes of what God is and should be and even logically speaking, a God who is powerless to save the lost and none of it made any sense to me. So I've threw this false God out. And then the thought suddenly struck me. What if I was born in a remote island somewhere and had never ever heard the name Jesus Christ? And suddenly I picked up a Bible, would I believe it? And I think when people leave these kind of movements, they're a little bit afraid to go through the normal exercises that a normal human would do. For me, I, you know,

it took me a long time before I got comfortable with doing that. But I completely wiped my slate clean of what it was that I believed and started from literally from ground zero. Pretend I believe nothing, which you know, it's not like I lost my faith entirely, but pretend I believe nothing. What is it? I believe and let's stack up the things that I believe. And why do I believe them? And we...

We went to multiple churches after leaving the cult. I remember very vividly sitting down with people and asking them just basic questions. Like the Christian tradition, as we see it today, just the principles of it.

Why do you believe that? And they were so uncomfortable, man. It's like you could see this white wash, almost like a used car salesman look on their face. And we believe this because that's what we're supposed to believe my brother.

Can't you read it here in this book? And I'm like, well, pretend it's not in the book. Why do you believe? Why do you believe what's in that book? And when you do this, if you have, if you have never heard of Christianity and they see you, they suddenly feel like you're going to be a victory, a notch in their belt.

And they will, they'll be very excited to bring you in and show you these things. However, if you were in a community that used the label Christian, and I'm quoting that, and in the Brandon Movement, if you had experienced the name Jesus Christ in any way, shape, or form, and you asked these questions, they suddenly see you as this blasphemer.

And literally, I was just trying to stack back up, what are the truths that I believe and why do I believe them? I don't want to believe them just because my parents did. And I started from ground zero.

Why do we live in this world and who created it? And I think a lot of people are afraid to go to that level because like you said, it's the fear. What if I'm wrong?

What if I end up after going through all of this work and all of this study? What if I find out that the things that I believed most were completely false? And they won't take that next step.

But for myself, I just came to the point where I suddenly realized that if I can't do that, if I'm afraid of that, then I truly don't believe what it is that I say that I believe.

And I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna be too faced about it. I want to know. So I began studying and researching. And it's a journey, it's very difficult. But after you get to the other side, then when your faith is challenged, you're not afraid of it.

And you've probably seen on this podcast, I've had people who were atheist come on and talk to me. I've had people, I had one gentleman who was, he had struggled with homosexuality in the past.

And I got blasted from, there was a big name podcast. I'm not going to mention the name, but they had been asking me what I come talk about, brandemism with them on their show.

The moment they saw that I had a person who had been homosexual in the past, they sent me hate mail. And I think he even called me and said, we're not having you on the show, because you didn't denounce him to his face.

What did you just tell me? I don't want to be on your show, my friend, because they're, There's that fear and they, I truly think that they have that fear because they can't address their own questions about what is real, what is not.

So you know what the bridge across fear is? Disillusionment. So I'll give you an example of this because what you're describing right now is what I talk about in the book. Is in when I'm writing I'm talking about the fact that disillusionment is actually an incredibly healthy process.

People don't think that way but it's the same concept of a forest fire that burns down a forest right of old, you know, old timber. Only to watch it then over the next decade come back even more healthy and alive and vital than before.

People are afraid of tearing anything down right. What's happened at IHOP since my book came out I have had dozens and I mean dozens of conversations with people who are all disillusioned. And the second D word that goes along with disillusionment is deconstruction.

So I hear all these IHOPpers are saying, well I'm deconstructing everything. Like I'm actually going back to the very beginning and deconstructing how I even arrived at this worldview because it's all crashing down.

Now the extreme ones are actually on the verge of losing their faith and that's the ones that I sort of have to pull back in and just wait a minute. Don't indict God here God didn't do this right.

In other words this this was a combination of two things right it was you know narcissistic men right needing to be the center of attention and lead this movement right. And you accepting it blindly because you were so desperate to be long to this movement.

So there's you know there's not don't be pointing the fingers you're you know this you made choices here. But thank God you've gone through this right now you're young right. You're disillusioned so take a step back try to control your motions I know your hurt I know disillusioned in this painful this is not a fun exercise.

Neither is getting burned to the ground yeah right. Your life is getting burned to the ground right now. But I'm telling you there's there is life going to come back and that life is what remains of God in this journey right.

It's the new life that emerges that's God and you know what you're going to own it. You're not going to be a parrot you're not going to be an echo you're not going to say like 99% of everybody that I talk to.

Well my pastor said Mike Beckle said. McCain said, Bob Jones, William Brannum, right? We're all echoes of what they said, having not actually critically analyzed any of it. Yeah, and now here you are, and you're getting that opportunity to re-evaluate all this.

That's a good thing, that's healthy. It is healthy. I think one of the problems, I've mentioned this a few times in the podcast, but they indoctrinate you with this really, really unhealthy sense of urgency.

These are doomsday cults, right? They're teaching that the end of the world is here, there's a doom, and when people leave, they will throw away all kinds of things, but they never throw away that urgency.

So whenever they say, I want to critically examine what it was that I was in, well, they think they're going to immediately do it in the process of, I don't know, one week, one month, whatever it is, you can't re-evaluate, for me it was what was a 37 years of my life.

There's no way I can re-evaluate 37 years of training in a week's time, it may take me the rest of my life to do so, right? But you start with the basics, and you find the things that, like I said, who created this world that we live in?

Do you think it really just magically appeared or did some higher power create it? Start with questions like that, and then hold on to it once you make a decision, and then move forward beyond that, but don't be in a hurry about it, because what I've seen exactly like you're saying, people will get in a hurry, and they'll be at a place where they're critically thinking, which is good, but they hit this brick wall, they can't find the answers that they're looking for, and then they suddenly stop, and at the point in which they stop,

they may have been leaning towards just not believing anything, but they weren't taking the time to go forward with critically examining the information that is available, it's very difficult to find, and it's time consuming.

I'm in no hurry, it may take me the rest of my life to, and I did use the word deconstruction whenever I was going through it, but for me to reconstruct, I'm in no hurry, it may take me the rest of my life to reconstruct.

Well, and just so people don't feel like they're all alone on this, I can think of two biblical figures who went through this. One was Elijah while he's sitting in his cave running for his life, I didn't sign up for this, but the one that's my favorite is Jeremiah, right?

Jeremiah is this young guy, like an eye hopper who's being told that he's got this calling on his life that's gonna be for the rise and fall of nations, right? And he's like, pump, dot, man, I'm the man, right?

I mean, I got this really cool thing, then you just keep reading and reading and reading, and you get to this point where it goes, God, you deceived me. Like everybody hates me. I mean, and he's like going, this didn't turn out the way that I expected, so it's not like disillusionment is being hidden in the Bible.

It's right there with many, you know, the biblical characters went through these very same stories, you know? It's like, wait a minute, this didn't turn out the way that I sort of anticipated. It's mostly Joseph, I mean, I wrote a whole book about him and I've got this chapter in there called Walking Backwards Up the Stairs because everything in his life looks like it's failing.

Yeah. Right? He's disillusioned over and over and over again, going, wait a minute, this isn't not what you promised me. I'm really glad that you brought up that exact example that you gave. I was actually, I was sitting here thinking, what example can I use for this?

One of the things that they have done in these movements, because of the authoritarian structure, they want to present themselves as though they are the gods before you. They meaning the apostles, the prophets, in many cases, the pastors, they are your God, right?

Yeah. And so what they want to do is project the idea that their narcissistic control matches the personality of God. And so what the end result of all of this is the people that they're indoctrinating get this view of God as though he's a narcissist person that you just really would not want to be around.

But if you actually read the Bible, there are people who get upset with God. And I look back at the, I can even vividly remember sermons where preachers are talking about this. One called pastor said, sometimes God gets angry and just likes a good killing.

And it's like, no, man, that's not how the Bible works. You can't do this to people. But they want you to think that if you question God, if you get, if you have a human emotion about God, if you get angry with God, God will smite you dead because that's, that's what they would do as the cult leader, right?

But if you read the Bible, there are people who have human emotions, they get upset. 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.

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If we think about church history for 2,000 years, for the first 1,500, there was sort of a single entity, and they had priests, and it was taught to people that these priests are the mediators between you and God. In other words, they're the ones that will forgive you of your sins, they're the ones that will be siege God on your behalf, whatever, right?

And I grew up in that world. And then, as an 18-year-old, I crossed over into the protest inside of the equation. And for a while there, in the beginning, because I was an evangelical, the focus was on the Word of God, right? But then, as I got more and more introduced to the Pentecostal Charismatic world, it's like, wait a minute, I feel like I'm full circle back again, because now we have a man of God in the middle again, right? It's like, this is kind of wild, do you know what I mean? It was like, it's different theology, but it's the same concept. There's

this elite person who's got these unique spiritual gifts, and they're telling you what God's talking telling you, right? They're suddenly now, they're telling you, they're speaking for God, you know? And it's like, huh, wait a minute, I already had that when I was a kid, right? Now, I'm doing it again, right? Where the disillusionment comes in is when you begin to realize, here's later that these guys have the same agenda, the other guys, which is, everything that they're telling you God wants actually has some sort of manipulative agenda behind it that benefits them. Absolutely. Right? And that's where it really starts to hit home, and it's really

painful, because it's all presented to you like, oh, I'm this really good guy, and I'm blessing you, and you know, I'm going to do all these things for you, and then you find out actually it was really all about them. Yeah. Right? And the way you know that is the minute that you ceased to be of benefit, you're gone. I saw this the other day, this is, this is sad, this is very sad, because remember Mike pickle, I love my pickle. I mean, this is my, you know, my buddy, you know,

and I've known him, well, now 47 years, nearly 50 actually, and I can't think of a single long-term ministry relationship that still exists. In fact, they all hate him, or they are disgusted by him, or they're whatever, like I, I can't find anybody. I mean, and going back to the 70s, who worked on staff with us or whatever, who is in disillusioned.

It's really, you know what I mean? And so that to me is the fruit, like if you want to judge something by the fruit, right? How is it that after 40 years you have no ministry relationships that have stood the test of time?

Yeah. That's painful. It's really hard for people like you and I. It's really hard because we know the people that after these people, after people leave this kind of thing, there's this hatred of the person, the human, and the human made many mistakes.

I'm not going to dismiss what happened, but in the situations like this, there are also human beings. They have family, they have friends. I'm friends with people who have destroyed the lives of other people.

In fact, I have family who I, I can call on the names of people who have written into me just really blasting me, why, why do I pull up my grandfather like I do?

Why am I that respectful? And they give me stories that I don't blame them. I would be just as upset as they are, but he's my grandfather. What do I do? I'm in this weird place.

I think people are afraid to just see the humanity of all of it. And when I say that, I'm not talking about just the cult, take it all the way back to the Bible.

People are afraid not just to see the humanity, but they're also afraid of being wrong. And I see that in the comments that whenever, you and I have had conversations and I've seen in the comments where there are cases, even in the Bible, when the person who is deception, in today's world, we would see it entirely differently than the person who is writing the text in the Bible.

And what they have written to them, it's not wrong. That's just what they saw. That's what, that was their worldview. That's what they believed. But in today's world, we would say, if we knew exactly the environment, the conditions, everything that was happening, we would say that what he wrote was wrong.

That's incorrect. However, in this weird religious world that we live in, they have taken it to such extremes that in my opinion, they have actually turned the Bible itself into an idol. I find that most adults still have their Sunday school worldview of the Bible.

Oh yeah. What I mean by that is that if you actually read what's there, the Bible is an R-rated movie. Yes. Right? It's vivid. It's graphic. It is this display of human brokenness, people killing each other.

keeping each other, lying, stealing, cheating, right? There's all this stuff going on. And then on Sunday morning, because we want to have a G-rated church, the narrative gets scrubbed, right? And even at the adult service, we still get the child, Sunday school, noise, arc, and the cute little, right?

Everything's cute, right? Here's a reality that is inconvenient. Peter and Paul did not even agree what the church was supposed to look like. Right. Peter, who stood up after panic cost and preached and thousands of people got saved, still was a racist.

Yeah. And people go, oh, you can't say that. I'm going, yeah, he did not like Gentiles. Yeah. Right? He had a really hard time grasping the fact. Now, is it understandable? Absolutely. The Gentiles were the oppressors of his people.

He sat and watched his people being crucified. Not only Jesus, but thousands, tens of thousands of other Jews, right? The Gentiles were, you know, were the not, I mean, the Gentiles were the Romans, who were the Nazis of that period of time.

He could not even after filled with the Holy Spirit, get his head around the fact that Gentiles could be a part of this, right? Again, he was filled with the Holy Spirit, right? Tons of fire, all this stuff happened.

Thousands get saved. He's, you know, he's in Jerusalem. And then of all things, Jerusalem gets destroyed like the epicenter, right? Of Christianity. Yeah. Right? The very people he hates comes in there and 70 AD and then annihilates the place, right?

And guess what happens? Christianity spreads to the Gentile world and eventually ends up moving from Jerusalem to Rome. One of the problems that I have seen, and this is, it's interesting to me because this is not just limited to the message called or the IHOP or even laterane in general, I've seen this in mainstream churches where they will take stories, events in the Bible, and they will read that particular event or story through the eyes of multiple books to come to a conclusion that doesn't match any of the books.

In other words, they're reading through different witnesses of what happened and each witness may have a varying view of what happened. And what you end up with is you have a different religion because many of the stories that are told in the Bible are about humans.

And sadly, most of the people listening have never read it and have literally never studied it. So when a minister does this, they fully believe that what they just... heard was biblical. And instead the reading passage here, passing here, let's, do you remember those commercials?

What was it, blood wiser? The guy says, I like dancing. And the other guy says, I like football. Let's do both. And they have these ballet dancers. And it's kind of like that because they're creating a different book. I had, I had one of a person who contacted me who was upset because I use some words like heck or something like this on the podcast. I can't remember what it was. And I said, do you realize that the whole notion of just even the Pentecostal position against cussing, all of that's a modern nonsense that's not biblical.

And I went back to Ezekiel 2320, which I may pause, because I don't want YouTube to censor me, how are rated the statement she lusted after her lovers whose male parts, I'll say it like that, like those dockies and a mission, you can read into that what you will, with had the emission of horses. Now, if I were to say that, if I were to say in today's language, what that is, YouTube would actually censor this video. But the problem is this is God speaking through Ezekiel, who in today's world, we would say God is cussing at Jerusalem because they're

acting up. But it's not, they've taken so many things out of context to try to make the people of the Bible and the people of today into a mythology that doesn't really exist. Humans are humans, and they lived out here very human lives. And if you miss that, you totally miss the picture of what it would be for a God to control all of this mess that is humanity. And what's interesting is in doing so, you actually create a God that is just so weak and imperfect versus a God who can control all of these humans who have varying beliefs, limited knowledge, and

watch them progress through time into what we have today. It's fascinating to me what actually happened, but it matches nothing like the sermons that I heard of what was happening. Well, I think, and again, this is a weakness, I think, and I understand why it happens because we're all not scholars. But one of the things that is missing significantly, even with guys that are preaching is the word you were just said context, right?

And where does context come from? Well, these stories fit into a time period, right? These aren't isolated stories. These are happening in a bigger world, in a time period, in a, in a culture, right? So one of the things I find interesting is when you're having discussions with people, they don't know history. They don't actually understand culture, right? They don't understand anthropology, right? And so what happens is you get this very, this historical book, right, that is telling these stories, right? In the context of the time, but people don't actually know what that is. So they interpret it through a modern lens, right? So to your

point, right? You know, you're talking about something that's really graphic that most of us that go to these big churches are all urbanites. But if you talk to somebody that lives in rural USA, right? Who breeds cows and horses and is out there every day butchering things, right? They're reading this guy. Yeah, well, of course. Yeah. So one of the things I see in our modern world is this, there's a, there's a huge separation between urban and rural, right? Yeah. Right? In terms of how people see things, because almost everybody in the city shows up at a grocery store and buys something that's already been processed,

yeah, where there's a whole side of our country that lives in this raw world of actually, you know, shooting animals and gutting animals, right? And living in this, right? And so when they go back and read the Bible, what they're seeing in there is something that's very understandable to them. Everybody else is getting squeamish, right? You know, but it's the same thing with sexuality.

The way sex was viewed in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and today, completely different, right? Oh, yeah. Very different. There's a whole lot of things in there that are contextualized by bigger, by bigger issues, being, you know, and, and, you know, there's, there's almost this idealized worldview of the Bible, right? It's lost. It's, it's humanity. I'll give you another example, the Gospels. One of the things that people just sort of assume is that, you know, these, these are the stories of the people that were there. But actually, no, what these are, these were

books that were written decades later. They're not news reports, right? They're not there on the scene reporting as events are happening. These are 20, 30, 40 years later, and often they're the second generation, like it's, you know, it could be, you know, Peter telling someone, you know, Luke is doing his research, right? He wasn't in any of these events. He's researching what's going on.

talking to people. Well, what he's writing about is events that people are interpreting, oh, this is what Jesus meant, because it's not just, you know, like the news of the event, right? It's got, it's got these interpretations when Jesus said, this is what he met, right?

So this is where it gets really tricky. And people go, well, it's, it's the word of God. I go, well, I'm not debating that. I'm just saying it's the inspired word of God. In other words, it's, it's, it's like humans that God is working through, right? That are telling their perspective of things. Yeah. We've talked about this last week. There's not a single person in the New Testament that has any concept that there's a whole unseen world that's controlling their lives, bacteria, viruses, DNA, right? You know, you know, chemical imbalances. I mean, there's all these things going on that they would never have any understanding of. So they assume something.

They make the assumption that it's either these capricious gods living on Mount Olympus or wherever, right? That are controlling all these human events or it's a spirit. Yeah. I can't tell you it's got to be a spirit because we can't see it. Yeah. I can't tell you the amount of hate mail I got for that. And you probably saw some in the comments. But it's true. You know, I've watched these debates between, they're not even between Christian and atheists, but just debates between evangelicals and non evangelicals. The evangelicals will say that these gospels are witness testimony, eyewitness testimony, but pinned by God, you know, everything we

should read exactly as it is written. And then I'll watch the guy who isn't evangelical. He'll say, oh, so the guy that was writing was with Mary and Joseph before Jesus was born and the look on their face, man, because there's no way that's possible. You know, and so I get what you're saying.

I'm not debating the truth. Oh, yeah. Right. And neither I'm just don't don't assume this is a newspaper report. Yeah. Understand this is historians later looking back and this is all verbal. Like these are stories that have been verbally. No, it might not make them inaccurate, but there's some whoever's writing this is doing some interpretation here, right? They're not just telling the story. They're they're putting a, you know, moral and ethical philosophical something behind behind all this. So again, I'm not challenging that it's not the word of, that's not where I'm after here. But I'm just trying to get people to understand this isn't scrubbed. Like this isn't

some sort of, you know, you know, it's, you know, we're like in this. you know this it's not isolated from the rawness of life and i would think people would be encouraged by that meaning that's where i live right and so yes this is this is you know my life as well so that's where you know i'll give you an example of of of something where this fits in this is kind of fascinating Dracula right we have this whole horde on horde genre right of frankenstein and all this but where does Dracula come from right a lot of people talk about

prince Vlad from romania who suck blood but actually where this starts is the plagues oh yeah right and what happens is is that in the great plagues the black plagues people are bleeding out of their eyes their nose their ears their mouth so the perception is somebody sucking their blood yeah right because it's coming out there's no wound there yeah like it's just coming out right so nobody can see it so it has to be a spirit or something right that's doing this but then a funny thing happens it's weird because people that have garlic seem to not be as affected by this spirit right so then people started wearing garlic necklaces and garlic hanging garlic

everywhere in their house right because garlic kept Dracula the blood sucker away from us nobody at that time would have understood that garlic is a natural antibiotic yeah right so you see so they're making the connection that this prevents that but they have no idea what the science of it is they just know it works so you had all these people running around with garlic necklaces not understanding was that when you consume it that's what kept you know the spirits away we know and the problem is that it really all goes back to the fundamentalist debate of the early 1900s

they wanted to make it such that you could not question the literal interpretation of the text they said that is the divine and so if you believe the literal interpretation you have the holy word whereas the other side of the debate which I'm I'm not saying that either side was right or wrong there are extremes on both ends but the other side of the debate was that this was a divine the gospels are divine even though it was written by very falable human beings who had a worldview that doesn't match ours today and some of the things that they wrote we would not have written them in the way that they did in other words

in a black or white view which is unfortunately the way that most people are indoctrinated in these cults in a black or right view black or white view you would say that they wrote the gospels incorrect and the other side of the debate says no no no no you don't understand this was a progression of humanity I hope time. That was what they knew and understood. They saw the thing as a demon that was cast out. But like you said, chemical and balance, mental health disorders, every one of them in the Bible is a demon. We know it's a day that you can take a little pill and it fixes

the chemical imbalance. I've watched miracles happen. And the real question comes back to in the latter rain, you say, no, that's not a miracle, that's medical science, that's the devil. But most of Christians who weren't latter rain would say, no, that's a miracle.

God has helped us to understand the chemistry of our bodies. And that's a miracle through the doctors, through God working through the doctors. So it really comes back to that fundamentalist debate. But I watched, I actually chuckled when I read the comment because I was of that same mindset. If you question the literal interpretation of the text, if you question the perspective of that worldview, and it wasn't Dracula that I went to, but it was some other example. But literally, they're doing exactly what you said. Whenever you take that position, if you were, if they were to have been given the same exact story in today's

world and watch the person go to a doctor, they would say, oh, the doctor cured the bacteria, praise God, right? But because it's written in the text and they can't critically analyze it, they say, no, it was a demon. And there was a demonic force that entered that individual.

Both sides, you know, the both sides, it's not, it's not even just an ancient world thing. So I don't know how much you've been to Africa. But there's still in the rural areas, a worldview that if a child is born with a deformity, they have a demon. Yes. And they'll kill it. Yeah, it's awful. So I'm just saying, you know, we live in this modern world of science, but there's still a lot of people out there that have this worldview. Now, here's my question. Do you believe in evil spirits? So here's the thing. And this is a very complicated way. I actually paused before

this off the record to think how I would say this. So I have studied science, world history, world culture, and things to extremes that most people would never study. And there was this, you can go look this up there. We even have his journals. There's a guy they called Hero of Alexander.

And his primary job was to go into the ancient temples. And he was using hydraulics, pneumatics. I think magnetism, he was using a lot of science of today's world to animate the gods and make them seem real. And to the ancient priests who would call in the people of the different ancient cults, they would say, here's the god we serve in its real. To the Christians, the pagan gods were demons. So you had this world of demons and gods. If we were to have entered into those temples today and see those ancient world, ancient things, we would say, no, that's

just hydraulics. One of the hydraulics was they had a vat of blood that they put under the deity in the temple, and they would light a fire under it, and when the wine heated up, it would go through the tubes and then come out the eyes, and it would look like it was crying blood. And they actually have the architectural designs of this guy from the ancient world, right? I would see that today, and I know how hydraulics work. There's no way that that's, that there are pneumatics, I guess it is. There's no way that that's

what a demon that's causing that. So if you understand what is, what the ancients are calling demons and what they're not, from that perspective, I can say clearly no. However, there are other cases in the Bible where it talks about the angels and the demons, and there's no way to prove that either way. So where I am currently, I wiped my slate clean. I can tell you with assurance that the fake gods in the temple are not demons, regardless of how the person who wrote about it understood them to be, but there's no way. Do you ever felt me live it? What do you, what time do you say my level is? Absolutely

comfortable. You can feel things come on you, right? So you can feel what God's presence is near, right? So there are things like that that you can't explain. So I put that in an entirely different category. There are cases where I can see clearly something was happening that I can't explain that was, it defies what God would have wanted, and I can't, I can't explain that, but then I felt evil. Yeah, I felt it, you know, and there are places, you know, because, you know, how we've talked that so often, things that we think are uniquely Christian are actually not uniquely Christian. They're all over

the world. So you get into any other spiritual discipline, and almost everyone agrees. There's some sort of presence of evil, you know, and I mean, so is that a demon? Is that a spirit?

You know, I mean, you know, we could sit here and, of course, none of us actually know, you know, it's like, it's, you know, probably until we die and we get on the other side of this, or we, you know, we shed our physical, I think sometimes our bodies are our limitation.

You know, that's why you see in the Hindus and the guys up in the Andes, like, are the, sorry, the Himalayas, you know, they're all trying to fast and somehow separate their spirit from their body in this world so that they can, you know, read some level of spirituality. I think somewhere, you know, after we die, we'll probably get this understanding, like, oh my God, I was an idiot. Like what I thought, you know, everything that I got, you know, was all filtered through this very narrow, you know, worldview of ignorance.

You know, I mean, it's like I think actually the truth be told we don't know most stuff like one of the problems We have in the modern world is we make this assumption when we care we compare ourselves in the modern world to the ancients like we think Oh my god, you know here these people 5,500 years ago. Don't even know about bacteria, right?

We're so enlightened, right? But I think we're still children in understanding. I think there's a whole Realms of things that we haven't even begin to understand. So that's one of the reasons I think humility is a really Key point here and and just saying I don't know. Yeah, you know, I mean there's a whole lot of I don't know I'm not afraid anymore of saying I don't know, right? Yeah, I don't I don't I'm I guess I'm secure enough at my own skin I don't have to pretend I know You know and I and I've said this to some of my friends in the

Charismatic Pentecostal world that are into spiritual warfare right and I've said to him I go, you know, I Can't argue with you because I don't know, but I'm telling you it looks like to me you're playing a video game Like you're like blasting, you know these characters, right? And it's like that's what we're doing And so there's all you know, it's like you know things that are happening and it's like we got to call that spirit down over that Nation and we've got to do this to that spirit over that and I'm like, how do you know all this stuff like?

Well, it's in the Bible. Okay. Well, that's You know what I mean? It's like that's great, but how do you know that it's you know mean? And so that's where I get a little bit you know, I'm just honest with people. I'm I'm I'm not gonna You know get on your case about it. I'm just saying I can't go there with you Because to me there's I don't I don't see it, right?

And now there's no way to prove any of it. It all looks good, right? It sounds good. It don't I mean, but what's the reality? Yeah, but I do know that I have seen and experienced in my own life The impact of something the level it something evil Right now if we want to call that a demon or a spirit, you know what I mean? Okay, but I know evil exists, right?

It's not just about acts. There's something the level it that exists Yeah, and I think that's the key to understand what you're describing as the evil versus the fantasy worlds that have been created If you can separate that in your mind In fact when I when I first began my research I started down the path of trying to explain The spiritual warfare. I call it nonsense, and that's probably offensive But the the things that people believe that cannot be proven I started on the path of researching and documenting that but then I realized that there's number one

There's no way to prove it either way, but number two. I don't know if I really believe that. And so I stuck with the history. Historically, I can document, yes, this guy was creating pneumatics and hydraulics and temples. That whatever he created was man's design. It was not demonic. But the focal point of, I think, of all of this, of the critically thinking is this, when you critically think, you hold fast to things that you can accept, acknowledge and understand, and then build upon that to greater things that you can accept and understand. But what these movements have done, they want to take the things that can't be

proven, many of which aren't even biblical. They're just extra biblical things that they have. And they want to make that the focus. And anybody who questions that focus and intent, they say that you're, you're on Christian. You don't believe the Bible. And the irony of all of this is many of the people who proclaim this haven't read the Bible. They don't know that it's extra biblical what they're saying. And that's fine. If you want to believe in fantasy, I don't have a problem with it. If you want to read Lord of the Rings and that's your fantasy, that's fine too.

It's no, it's really no different than many of the aspects of the spiritual warfare that people believe. It's a fine fantasy. And it has the name Jesus Christ with it. So maybe it's fun. I don't know. It's just not fun to me. I'd rather stick to the things that I can prove and move beyond that. And people will, they'll call you anti-Christian if you don't believe in this extra biblical thing. And for me, I just, I finally had enough. And I said, nope, I'm sticking with the history. And I prefer to critically think about all of the things that I believe. And that way,

I can truly stand on what I believe. I can move forward with it. And for me, it's a very personal journey. Many of the things that I have accepted and believed, I don't talk about on the podcast because I want to stick with the history and the podcast. And as I grow, as I mature into what I believe, I still picture myself in infant right now and what I believe. As as I grow and develop this, that's a personal journey for me. And I want you as the listener to have your own personal journey, not mine. I don't want to tell you what I believe and make you believe what I believe too.

Yeah, the early church had nostics, right? And the whole key to nosticism was secret knowledge. Yes. To your point that we're in that world right now, right? We have all these people that have secret knowledge that we can't prove anything. Yeah. And it's just not fun to me to have that secret knowledge. You can have it if you want. I don't want it. Thank you so much for doing this. I really wanted to dive into critically thinking and who best but Bob to come on and talk about that.

But we got ourselves into trouble now. We probably did. I will send you half of the hate mail and you can help me resolve half of it. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-branam.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. Available.

Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon.