God's Generals vs. the Biblical Model for Church Leadership

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org and with me I have my co-host Bob Scott, former co-founder of Kansas City Fellowship, an author of some say they blundered breaking my decades of silence on Mike Pickle at the Kansas City Prophets and the International House of Prayer. Bob it's good to be back and very excited for today's topic because it's one that really fascinates me in multiple ways because I was raised under this. I thought that this was a biblical core doctrine that all Christians

must believe this and even after my family had escaped the cult from which I grew up in, I still thought that this was the this was the way things were supposed to be in Christianity. So as I started visiting new churches I applied the new church framework of doctrine and framework of authoritarian control basically off of what was programmed in my head and it took me a long time because nobody ever really stopped and said you know this is not how it is this doctrine that you came from as faults so you assume it's true and what I'm talking about is

the fivefold ministry. There is a passage in the Bible that talks about the the different roles in which people play some being apostles, prophets, teachers, etc. I get that it's there but the way that Laterane twisted this turned it into an authoritarian pyramid of control and basically it was a way in which they could manipulate the masses. So it fascinates me that this exists but even more it fascinates me how many people still submit to that type of authority. Well I think where it gets confusing is because the way that it's written it says first the apostles and people assume that first

means they're the highest rank right you know and it's all ranked and then prophets they're ranked number two you know evangelist number three right and it's a pecking order right but it just happened that the apostles came first because they happened to be all students of a Jewish rabbi called Jesus right and when you mix in the Joel's army nonsense with all of this Now it becomes a militarized version of authority, you know, right? Because apostles are generals. You heard that whole You know, what do they call that that connection there? It's like if you're a possible. You're a general gods generals

Yeah, exactly Well, what one of the things That I've always felt was that it It's almost like sometimes with these scripture verses, you know, it's like they They get twisted to fit a need like we need to have structure and hierarchy. So therefore, let's fit this verse as The foundation on which we're going to build this hierarchy, right?

In my reading of the New Testament and the Gospels and things like that I see it very differently because even the word ministry, right that we throw around Is Basically a Greek words that means weight on tables It's a servant Right, in other words, it has the exact opposite Connotation as how we see it today. So, you know, I grew up Roman Catholic, right?

And so when the priest came in right to an event He was honored. He got a special place of preference, right? You know, it was like a big honor, especially if you were an Italian family if you had a son or a cousin or somebody that was A priest, right? It was a it was a thing of stature yet the whole tone and and direction of the word ministry in the New Testament is about serving others Absolutely, I mean even even in Matthew 20 it says you know the rulers of the Gentiles and Jesus goes on to have this

This concept of the authoritarian structure of of the Gentiles He says it's not so among you Whoever's great among you must become the least among you basically they must become a servant Yeah, so deacons, you know the concept of deacons and all that these were these were men or women who were helping the poor or the widows, right?

They were serving the community, but they were serving the community with their most basic needs, right? They were waiting tables as it were. They were washing feet. They were making sure people had food Shelter, right? It was it was very pragmatic and whatever it wasn't The kind of world we see it now or it's something that you get ordained to do and an institutional structure And now you get to be a deacon at your church, right? Right You know, I mean and it's a it's a stature, right?

It's it's in you know, it elevates you above everyone else, right? Yeah, and you know the in some of the Pentecostal circles they They have the foot washing ceremonies. I don't know if they did this in international house of prayer, but Jesus is basically taking all of people who are wearing sandals, their feet get dirty because of all of the sand and the lowest form of servitude among everything that they did was washing the feet. And so he's basically teaching them, if you want to be like me, you will humble yourself to the lowest possible

way that you can be and you'll wash one another's feet. What's funny is it wasn't until gosh, I want to say it was like three years after I left the brand of cult and I just suddenly noticed, wait a minute, these churches, these new churches were attending, don't do this, why?

Because Jesus said to do this and then I began to realize, no, that was set as an example and in today's world, man, who cares about the feet, we're all wearing shoes, we don't have sand.

It has an entirely different meaning in today's world. It's a cultural context in the new testament, because these are people that wear sandals. Exactly. Who have, you know, coming into a house with dirty, smelly, stinky feet from walking, right? So it's, you know, it's, it's kind of like, you know, it's like if somebody came to your house and they're tired and exhausted and you sat down and gave them a foot rub.

Right. Right. It's like your wife. How about a rough day, honey? Can I, you know, can you massage my feet? Right. It was that kind of a thing. It was, you know, it was a kindness. It was, it was hospitality is really what it was, right? I think, though, to your point, that example at the last supper is really quite profound.

Right. That if Jesus is in fact, you know, the Son of God, right, that He would, as Paul said, take the form of a bond servant and humble himself, right? It's like you, here is this person who in every way should be revered, right? Who should be set apart? Who should be other? Who is at the top of the hierarchy? And yet here he is on his hands and knees doing the servant thing, right? Because it typically wasn't the owner of the house. It was the servant who washed the feet, right? So I'm just saying, I've always read that. And then sometimes I actually

get a tear in my eye because I think it's just profound. It's just so humble. Somehow or another, we've lost all that. We've lost that heart, that posture of heart and ministry. And it's, you know, I mean, Jesus talked about, you know, how when you go to an event, you know, don't sit the first seat, you know, I mean, don't walk in there because, you know, you think you're somebody sitting the first seat, you go sit in the back and wait to get invited. Right? There's just all these stories and parables that he talked about, right? Where it's all about not being defined by your role.

Right. And that's really the key issue here is because they've turned, they call it the offices, if you're in one of these movements. These are the offices of profit. And there's no biblical concept that teaches this as an office, depending on how the text is translated and I've read a few different translations, you can't apply a status of hierarchy with all of the teachings of Jesus.

You only can, if you try to make this doctrine fit, you have to pick and choose which sayings of Jesus that you're going to listen to. And my question after leaving this religion for a few years, why would you not pick all of it?

If you want to, if you want to listen to the words of Jesus, why pick and choose just a few? But the problem, because of Laterane and because the doctrine became so widely accepted, not everybody stayed in Laterane.

So some of these ministers left the Laterane, some of them left Pentecostalism altogether, and they entered other denominations. In fact, during Laterane, all the denominations were welcome. So they even had participants who weren't Pentecostals.

And it's not that I'm speaking out against Pentecostalism by no means, but this doctrine was widely accepted by a majority of people who were in Pentecostal circles. And then that broadened once the other denominations picked it up.

Now, I've had interactions with local pastors whenever we attend churches. And I can almost tell you which ones have read the words of Jesus and which ones have been influenced by Laterane because there's just this air about them that they're greater than everybody who's in the congregation.

Well, I'm of the perspective that what's called the fivefold ministry is not about hierarchy. It's about function. It's about what they do. So for instance, Paul talked about himself as an apostle.

Well, what did the apostles do? Well, what we know is that the word itself means ambassador. So he was a puzzling. He was being an ambassador. That was his role. And so what we know, or we think we know from history is the apostles scattered, right?

We see markdown in Egypt, right? We see traveling. And as they're going and traveling, right? They're ambassadors for what? They're not, what's interesting? They're not ambassadors for the church. They're ambassadors for the kingdom of God, right?

That's one of the other interesting little twists here because we always say church, church, church. Jesus never talked about church. He talks about the kingdom of God. And everyone in the early church, what we call the early church was actually...

focused on, I'm in the kingdom of God, right? And so he was, and so a lot of Paul's terminology is actually very secular, right? Like his word for the Church is Ecclesia, right? Which is a political thing. It's where, you know, it's where the Greek men gathered, right, to vote. I mean, it's interesting. He uses, right? And the word for apostle is ambassador, right? So one of the fascinating stories to me is Paul's interaction with Agabus, right? Because now you have these two things, right? You have apostle, and you have prophet, and they have this interaction, right? And it initially looks confusing if you don't understand

Paul's worldview, because your Agabus tells him if you go to Jerusalem, you're in trouble. So don't go. Like, he's warning him, don't go to Jerusalem, because if this happens, you're going to get, you know, arrested, right? Yeah. Paul goes anyways.

Right. That's one of the things that was really shocking to me whenever. So after we left the Brandham cult, there was no, there was no Bible study. This concept didn't really exist. We had things that we would call Sunday school or Bible study, but you generally, he was studying the words of the prophet, because he was the top of our tier. And when we entered a normal church that had a normal Bible study, and I became involved with the men's studies, et cetera, they began talking about the, some of the meanings behind the words, which was a new fascinating concept for me,

because I had only read the King James version, and I thought all other versions were evil. That's how we were trained, right? And on there, forget this one guy, this guy was very intellectual.

And he, he was a deep thinker, and he started explaining in a very easy way for me to understand that one single word in the King James version that I was reading, it might take an entire paragraph of words for me to understand the full meaning of what was being said. But because it was being translated for English, you can't go word by word and write a paragraph for each word.

And likewise, whenever you try to understand how the differences came to be between all the different versions of the translations, there exists other issues with the, I don't know if you studied text criticism, but how the Bible came to be itself. It was the result of translations and translations and copies and copies of other copies. So as I'm beginning to unravel all of this, he starts talking about the word apostle and he's going into the Greek meanings, which I'm not a study of Greek, I don't, I know it, I know basically I can look at the symbols and

I can see that they, they look fascinating, but beyond that, not much. It's hieroglyphics, man. But the word came from the root to send away, and that shocked me, man, because in the Pentecostal circles that I came from, there was not a single apostle that got sent away.

Not one. Exactly. None of them. They were all, they wanted to be kingdoms. They were set as a kingdom. Yeah, it was like a game of thrones, man. They wanted to be in their kingdom, and they wanted their servants.

So circling back to the Paul Agabas thing, here's what I think is going on. Agabas is absolutely right. He sees something, but it gets down to this fascinating to me. How do I interpret that?

What does that mean, right? And here's why Agabas is telling him, don't go, you're going to get into trouble because that's what he sees, right? He thinks that's bad. I think because Paul is a sent one, he's an ambassador, right?

He looks at it as opportunity. See what Paul understands, which turns out to be true, is that if I can get to the rulers of these territories, these provinces, these nations, with my message of the kingdom of God, right?

I can change a culture, right? I can introduce the gospel to the masses, because in those days, everything went through the rulers, right? So what we know as the Catholic Church grew not because Billy Graham crusades and call the Theums, is because if one of the ambassadors, one of the apostles in the fifth century, got to a ruler, and he converted to Christianity, everybody in that nation converted to Christianity, right?

That's what happened in Rome, right? Everybody always thinks it's constantine that changed everything, and what people don't understand it was constantine was the one who just abolished the persecution, right? And embraced Christianity, but it wasn't until two emperors later that Christianity actually became the official, you know, religion of Rome, right?

And so, but see, that's exactly what Paul wanted. He wanted to get to those guys, right? It didn't happen for 300 years, but you know, him going to Rome and his mind was, I'm in proximity to the emperor, right?

And if you think about what happened and apply it to the models that we see today for the five-fold ministries and what developed into the NAR, it's so upside down because the apostle, like we said, is an ambassador, somebody who sent out, and it isn't that they're sent out to become an authority.

over a region. It's so that they can humble themselves enough to teach other people how to learn Christianity and how to teach others. In other words, we want to empower the little people to help this religion spread, and that's how it spread. But in today's world, it's not like that. There is no impairment of the little people, unless you're outside of these circles that have this five-fold ministry structure. In the five-fold tiers, they do not want the little people to supersede the authority of the tiers.

I sort of wonder if Apostle is actually missionary. In other words, when I see what missionaries are kind of defined as in our modern church world, that to me is the closest sort of expression of what I think Apostle was, right? They're missionaries, right? They're ambassadors, they go. To your point, one of the things that I ended up uncovering in my little curiosity and research is when I was in Bible school, as an 18-year-old, trying to read all these heroes of the faith, the Huts and tailors, the CT studs, all these great missionaries in India, China, and Africa, right? They were always the heroes of the story. As I learned

from Norman Grubb in the 80s, the reason why they were the heroes of the story was the London Missionary Society was the primary funder for missionaries. All these reports that came back to London were all embellished because they needed everybody to know how successful they were so they could get more money, right? It's always about the money, right? And remember, Norman was the son-in-law to CT stud in the friend of Evangelion Booth, you know, so he had a front-roceded all this. What was discovered years later when misiologists got into the kind of research mode, what they discovered was that in reality, the vast amount of converts in Africa,

China, in India, were actually converted by their own people. In other words, these guys, they went in there, but they were able to find two or three key people, right? Teach them, but it was those that went out and preached the message. It wasn't the CT studs and the Huts and tailors, and I can't remember the lady in India, but, you know, they weren't the ones holding the meetings. Yeah, right? And so those, there's all these people, they got no credit, right? Yeah. And the white guy from England, or the woman from England, right? They got all the

credit, even though they didn't actually do the work. Exactly. That's one of the problems I have. When I hear the phrase Hebrew of the faith right now. I know that it's wrong for me to do this, but I associate it with a cult type environment because heroes of the faith and the Bible, this concept defies the teachings of Jesus. You are supposed to humble yourself. Like I said in the, you know, the Matthew 20 example, the least among you is the greatest. And what you're describing with the missionaries, I think you're right. I've almost came to the same exact conclusion

because in that, in that structure that is mentioned in, I can't remember words from Ephesians somewhere, I believe Ephesians four, maybe in the structure of this mentioned, they do not mention the missionaries, but that's what the apostles were doing. So as they're going out and humblings themselves, they set the model for other people to teach others about Christianity and to help them become Christian leaders. So this is the most important role in the entire kingdom of Christianity as it existed back then, but it wasn't important in the way that it's being taught today. It's not like they're heroes of the faith,

it's like they're the ones who spread it the furthest. Well, one of the things that I think has gotten lost and why in some ways I think the modern church has sort of gone off the reservation is that not only was Jesus teaching focused on relationship over structure, right? He never built a structure. That's something I find interesting, you know, because there's all this stuff about Jesus building in church, this is church, and I'm looking at this going, where? Like he's years later.

He's either a reformer of Judaism, right? Yeah. Or he just doesn't care about institutionalism, because all he's got is these 12 students that are kind of traveling with him for three years, and they're witnessing all this stuff, but even at the end of that, they're not even really sure what they're doing. They don't show up for the crucifixion, and they only kind of get it after Jesus comes back after he's resurrected, right? Yes. And then Pentecost hits, right? And suddenly these scared little confused men become these little dynamos, but again, what are they doing? They're

traveling, right? So the reason why I say it's relational is even in these situations with the missionaries, what were they doing? They were going to these nations, they were building a relationship with the indigenous people, the key leaders and the indigenous

of the indigenous tribes as it were, but they had all the relationships. And so in my view, when I look at it, Christianity moves relationally, right? That's the track, if you want to say, that's how the message goes. It goes relationally. It goes through people who know each other, right?

Fiamo. these friendships, you know, associates in business, right? It moves relationally. There's very few people that tell a story that somehow on their own without any influence, suddenly discovered God. You got to be kidding me.

The disciples didn't have a leadership conference before they went out. Well, and what's even more fascinating about that whole thing is the relationships even within the disciples. You got three sets of brothers. Yeah.

So half of the disciples are brothers, right? Right. Right. And they're all from this little area, right?

Which is not even the spiritual area, right? Yeah. None of them are from Jerusalem. Like I said this other day, I go, think this through it. This is kind of wild. If you were going to start a movement, a religious movement in the first century, that was going to change the world, right?

Given our modern mindset, what you would have done is you would have gone to Jerusalem, which was the epicenter of the ministry world, and you would have picked the theologians and the scribes and the preacher, right?

You'd have gone there. Yeah. Jesus ends up picking 11 small business owners and an ex-government employee. The whole strategy just defies, it is in complete opposition with what we see today. Because there was no, so in the fivefold ministry, there's this concept of controlling doctrine.

One of the reasons why that the tears exist is so that if a person in a lower tear steps out on doctrine and goes into a doctrinal division, the one at the top can decide which is the doc, the correct doctrinal split.

That's one of the reasons why this exists. But look at the apostles. They fought with each other over core doctrines in the Bible, right? So the fact that we see them fighting, the fact that you described them scared disciples, the fact that they did not know that they were intended to be an authoritarian figure tells you plain and simple that this was not meant to be.

Well, you know, I mean, it's obvious when you read the New Testament that there is a perspective collision between Peter and Paul, right? And why? Because Peter, who grew up under the Roman oppression who is part of a whole culture that is waiting for the Messiah to come to free them from the tyranny of the Romans, who are massive crucifiers, right?

I mean, everywhere they go, they're putting people on crosses, right? I mean, they were terrifying, right? So here's Peter who lives under this incredible oppression. He's living, under the Nazis of the ancient world.

And Paul's coming along and going, well, we need to let the Nazis in the church. Yeah. Right? And Peter's got, what? You know what I mean, it's like, what? I mean, Peter just had a really hard time with this.

And you can understand why. I mean, he'd seen some, you know, Jesus wasn't the only person Peter had seen crucified, right? And so it's, it's, this is hard. You know, and Paul's coming from way, in a way north, right?

He's in a completely other part of the, of the world that, and, and, and very much more Greek, right? There's a much more, you know, so it's kind of interesting to me. I just think one of the, the things that gets missing and a lot of these world views is people don't take the time to go back and study the anthropology and the history and the culture of the time, right?

They don't really, you know, one of the things I always try to do, not only when I'm reading my Bible, but just in between all that is read other sources because I want to understand, how are these people thinking?

Like now. What is their view of the world? Because if you don't understand their view of the world, their perspective, you read these things completely out of context, and to your point, you end up developing these wild theologies that are so disconnected from the, you know, the, the earth, the, the dynamics that, you know, that they were actually taking place in, that we get these weird, you know, kind of world views, and we've lost a lot of that.

I mean, you, as you all know, you can, there are recorded stories of biblical stories, not necessarily the New Testament, but a lot on the Old Testament from the other cultures. Right. Right. The Assyrians have a different worldview or different perspective of different battles they had with the Israelites.

The Bible has a Jewish perspective. The Assyrians have an Assyrian perspective of the same event. Yeah. You would not know they were the same battle. Right. Exactly. Right. One of the problems that I have with the five-fold ministry doctrine is the fact that whenever there is something that is really, really important that's mentioned in the Bible, it's stressed very clearly, you understand exactly what the problem is and how to avoid it or how to fix it.

Bible is pretty clear whenever it's something that's important. When it's something trivial, it might be mentioned casually. There is no clear description of what these roles in these offices are. And because they're so obscure and people are trying to turn them in.

into something that's really not in the text, they have to go outside of the text to try to define what these roles mean. And a problem with this existed in Latter-Ain. William Brannum, who's the king prophet among all of them, they were all respecting him as the Elijah that came, which Charles and I are gonna get into that some in our revival history, but they all respected Brannum as the chief prophet.

Well, Brannum was a very narcissist and he wanted control, but as prophet, he wasn't at the top of the tier. It was the apostle that was at the top of the tier. And so Brannum introduced this doctrine that claimed that Paul was the prophet for his age so that he could mix the offices of the apostle and the prophet, which is kind of funny, if you think about what happened in today's world, because when you go and listen to these apostles that exist today, none of which go out and our missionaries like we've described, many of them want to also hold the office of prophet

for their kingdom and they want to be the one who prophesies and the one who is leading through prophecy. So they too are mixing the roles and that's largely, I think that's why they chose Brannum as one of God's generals because he created this roadmap for what this should be.

And again, back to the original problem, the roadmap for what this fivefold ministry hierarchy should be, if it were to be a true biblical doctrine, you would find it in the Bible, you wouldn't find it so obscured.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website William-Brannum.org.

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On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. And the charismatic Pentecostal world, this whole prophetic thing, which was so central to the KCF world that I was in and many other things.

It's because people don't have a grasp of a world history and culture and all that. They sort of see this thing profit as being this uniquely Jewish or Christian thing, right? Not understanding the fact.

that every single culture in the world had a prophet. Now, they didn't always call them by the same name, right? But prophets in almost every culture were a part of the King's cabinet. They didn't have a role over people.

They had an advisory role to a king, right? And so, let's just take Joseph as an example, right? You know, Joseph is, you know, he's a Bedwen. And people don't, again, don't understand that most of the Old Testament is tribal.

I mean, they don't even understand that about the whole Arab world right now. Everybody thinks Arab and they think Islam. They don't really understand that in the Arab world, these are all Bedwen tribes.

These are people whose ancestors lived intense and traveled across the desert, grazing their herds, right? That's what the Hebrews were, right? So Joseph goes down, he's a, you know, their herdsman, their traveling around and he goes down to this culture, this civilization that's been around for thousands of years.

It has massive buildings. It has language and government and, you know, music. And I mean, it's an established culture. He's just a little heck, you know what I mean? In their world, like, you know what I mean?

He's just like the country bumpkin that shows up there, you know? But he kind of ends up, because he's smart, he ends up making his way through. And then suddenly he's standing in front of Pharaoh.

But who's around Pharaoh? You know what I mean? You have this whole group of people. You have astrologers, right? Because in the ancient world, people thought that the stars, right, could, you know, predict the future.

So he had astrologers in the King's cabinet, right? You had Sussayers. I mean, they would cut open animals, right? And based on the entrals, they would get messages, right? I mean, it's just, this goes on, right?

No, this isn't just unique to Egypt. This is every single culture, right? And then you've got all the vines, you know, and then you have the prophets, right? And the prophets were the ones who supposed to know the mind of God.

So the reason I bring this up is is that in every conflict that you see in the Old Testament, it's really a battle between our gods and our prophets and your gods and your prophets.

And whoever wins has got the real ones, right? I mean, that's how it was viewed in the ancient world, right? So, you know, you read all of this stuff in the Old Testament about Israel and all these prophecies about Israel.

Every single culture had the same thing. Every single culture had a history that God ordained them to be. And they were to rule the world. Every one of them had priests and prophets. Then, you know, that promoted.

that. And so when these battles happened, that's really what it was. It was sort of like this tug of war between our gods and your gods, right? That's why there's all these incredible stories about the underdogs, which are these little Hebrew people that are basically don't have any civilization until, you know, the time of David, which just starts to become something, right? Up against these big, you know, cultures, the Assyrians in the North, the Egyptians in the South, the Babylonians in the East, and they're stuck in the middle of all this.

Yeah, right? So the whole idea of prophets is, again, not a uniquely Christian or Jewish thing. One of the problems for today, we have separation of church and state. And because of this, we grew up in a world that did not have what you're describing. And a lot of people just don't care about history, so they don't understand that this is how things worked. What's interesting is we've come full circle because the NAR wants to reintegrate the church and state and set up this exact structure that you're talking about. But the, like you said, every civilization had

their prophets. And those whose prophecies failed, they didn't last very long. They were usually put to death. But because of all of this, because we've lost focus on that history as a Christian nation, and because of the influence of the latter reign, people have redefined what it means to be a prophet. I don't know. You've probably got it too. I've got it several times. You can look through the comment feeds and see it. But because I started an opposition to one or more of the cults, I get often members of the cults to come in and say that I'm a false prophet leading people

astray. I can't tell you how many times I've said this. I have yet to have prophesied something. It's kind of odd to me because that's like the number. If there was a Biblically defined office of a prophet, he would have one job that's to prophesied that's to speak the words of God.

But they have been so twisted into what they think that a prophet is that what they generally equate it to is if somebody is in opposition to my cult, the leader among them must be a prophet because my cult leader has taught us that he is a prophet and he is our leader.

Well, this gets a little odd to me. Again, this is my weird worldviews. People can take it or leave it. But one of the things that you begin to realize when you read these Old Testament prophets, none of them were professional prophets. There is no job as a prophet. They were all farmers or they worked and got right. They all had other jobs. That's one of my Huge, and I mean, this is a, I wrote about it in my book. I have a huge problem with this whole concept of traveling profits who get offerings Like that, you know, that's their they have this ministry that I'm a prophet and I go around to these churches and I and I

Prophecy and I get paid for that so odd man But I mean it's so nor was this is what's so strange to me is that in the panic cost of world Like if you say that to people they just kind of look at you and give you what I call the head to it like huh?

Like it's so ingrained in people that that's normal and Yet what you see when you study it is most of these people had other They were making their money either as farmers or carpenter like they had skill sets, right?

Yeah, and then on the side they had you know, they would write these things or make these common even Isaiah I mean, there's a lot of people talk about Isaiah was in government. There's enough in here that it looks like he was somehow connected You know in the political world, but they they didn't make their money Prophecy I just find that whole thing bizarre like and not only a bizarre, but slimy, right?

I just think it's slimy. It's like you're like you and and I told a story and In my book about even with Paul came, you know, I challenged him on his whole stadium vision, right because You know every time he would cheer it, you know, he gets standing ovation and everybody's Like jumping up and down and and they're all excited You know, and you got guys like Luingle that go out there because of this prophecy and they you know They're gonna pack out stadiums like Billy Graham did because of all this Only What I knew why intuitively knew it, and so I pressed him on it

I said you know as well as I know that you're only telling half the story He started laughing right you get this what he look on his face and goes How did you know that and I know And he goes whoa and and what I'm talking about is is that all the context For all of it was that there had been some sort of cultural civilization collapse and these stadiums were empty like they were They were right the reason why there's no sporting events is because all of that had gone the whole Professional sports world had disappeared and they were just these you know empty stadiums right and and I said you

You know that when you saw that that the context was there had been major Collapse civilization collapse and he looked at me and he goes Well if I told people that they wouldn't invite me back Well, they're in lies.

They're in lies the other probably might have with this man because in the Bible they had scribes. The scribes would write down what the prophecies were and so that years later, if the prophecy came to pass, the scribes could pull out the document and they could or the scroll and they could look at and say, look, this is exactly to the letter what was said.

But these guys in today's world man, they were advised the prophecies and they try to make it fit. It's like straining at a net. If they can find one little word within the prophecy that matches in any way, shape, or form what happened, they say, look, I'm the prophet.

Well, I'm going to get myself in trouble for saying this, but as you know, I've always been very honest with you and I understand the fact that I'm on a journey and I don't know everything.

In fact, I don't know most things. I just know a few things and one of the my perspective is is I don't really think we got any prophets in the church at the moment.

At least not the ones who claim they are. Well, if you really want to impact this, I could show you all kinds of movies in Hollywood that were, you know, if prophecy is about the future, right, predicting the future.

That's one aspect of it. Hollywood and authors are far more accurate and far more on point about the future than anybody I've ever seen in the church world, right? We can go back and we can look at films that were done 30, 40 years ago and here we are now, you know, years later, and exactly what they showed in the movies has happened, right?

But at the time, everybody thought, oh, you know, the Isaac Asimovs and the Ray Bradbearys and some of these futurists, right, that everybody just thought, well, he's dreaming, right? He, oh, he's just whatever.

Well, those guys ended up being far more accurate with far more weighty things than everything, anything I've seen in the church world. Yeah. Most of what I've seen in the church world that deemed prophetic is encouragement, right?

And we need that. I'm not at any way suggesting that we don't need to be encouraged and we don't need, right? But just say it what it is. I want to encourage you, this whole thing that God showed me, you know what I mean?

It's like, you know, I had this revelation, you know what I mean? This need we have to position ourselves as some sort of this elite, you know, having this elite connection with God. I watch Mike do that for years.

I mean, the sad thing about KCF was is that many of the things that I experienced with Mike early on where he would define things as I had an impression. I had a sense, right?

I feel this, right? Over time, as these guys who supposedly had revelation, the Bob Jones, the Paul Keynes, the John Paul Jackson, the Augustina callers, all those guys came in. Those stories got switched to, I had a revelation.

God showed me. I was taken to the third have, right? And to your point earlier on in our conversation, that stuff morphed, right? Right, it morphed, but why does it morph? My opinion is, so I've heard this phrase often.

I had a revelation. In some cases, I was around whenever the quote-unquote revelation happened, and it was nothing more than an opinion. I had an opinion, and these men are not brave enough to say, look, I had an opinion of what might happen, and it did happen.

Because you're caught up in this world of angels and demons, you say, I had an opinion, and there it happened. So therefore, God must have given me a prophecy. And what's funny, it goes back to what I said earlier.

We've lost the meaning of profit. When you describe a profit, even in the description that you just gave, you're talking about the future events. There were two categories in the King's Kingdom of his advisors.

You had the fortune tellers, and you had the profits. The fortune tellers are the ones who predict the futures. That's why it's called fortune, it is your fortune. And according to the mosaic law, these are the guys that you stone, because this practice is evil, right?

But in today's world, most of the profits that I have heard about something that they claimed as prophecy, it's usually borders on the edge of what you would call fortune telling. And if you read the Old Testament and understand the Old Testament, God gave Moses the mosaic law and said that if you keep this law, these 300 blessings, and it's just a number, I pull off top of my head, these approximately 300 blessings will come to you and your people.

But if you break them, here are 300 curses that will come to you and your people, and most of the prophecies, if you read them and understand what they're saying, it is because that there was some law that they had broken, some rule that they had violated of the old covenant.

And God spoke to the prophet and predicted that a bad thing was about to happen because of the bad thing that they had already done. So it wasn't a prediction of the future so much as it was God saying, look, you guys are messing up again.

Why don't you get straightened up? So you appreciate this. So I'm in a business meeting yesterday. You know, we're a company meeting. We're all sitting around the boardroom table with the owner. And, you know, we're trying to solve no problems.

And I'm sitting there and I get this idea. Yeah, right. It just pops into my head. And I end up sharing it with him. And he's like, oh my God, that's brilliant. He's like fist bumping me, right?

Now, in the business world, that's just the good idea, right? But somehow in the panic cost of the world, that's turned into us, right? You see what I'm going with this? It's like, it was spontaneous.

It just popped into my head. Nobody in the business world would call that prophetic. Right. He's like, you were inspired or something, right? But in the church world, somehow that all gets flipped over into, oh my God, he's a prophet.

He had a revelation and it all gets twisted. Yeah. And you know, I don't even so much have a problem with that. You know, there are, so there's this saying among the Pensacostals and some Charismatics that everything that happens happens because of God, whether good or bad.

And if you have an opinion of what is about to happen in the future and it happens, then you could say that that opinion was divinely inspired, God was giving you some clue. I don't have a problem with this.

The problem that I take with it is, when you're conditioned to believe in this way, it goes straight to your head. The people who do it, I've watched it. I've watched the people have an opinion that came true.

And I can tell you exactly what was said. What they said was an opinion. They had no way to even, they didn't even come close to saying it came from God. But after it happened, this was a prophecy from God.

I must have had a prophecy, God spoke to me because they've been conditioned to think this way. And the real problem that I have is that conditioning is harmful because some of the examples we've seen once a person who's got some severe issues, gets that into his head, then gets into the authoritarian ladder of fivefold ministry control, climbs up that ladder.

Now you've got a real problem. I think Paul talks about the gifts and he kind of compares it to the body, right? And it's this that and everything else. I mean, I have my own kind of word picture.

And it's basically were tenders of a garden, just like Adam and Eve, right in the beginning were tenders of a garden. And we have tools, you know, all these various tools, a rake of shovel, right, all these different things.

But the idea is these are tools to tend the garden, right? And to circle all the way back to the beginning of our discussion, if these are servant tools. Yes, right? These are tools to tend the garden to feed people, right?

This is about how many, where this thing whole thing has gotten twisted because of this whole fivefold hierarchy thing. is suddenly now it's become a status symbol, right? It's become this you know this this hierarchal thing where it establishes your your pecking order in this institutional world and I think it's gotten so completely distorted and I think that's why we've gotten so much trouble with the prophetic. I think it's it's so distorted right now right that here we have you know people now and this is what's so sad because you know as we were talking her before we got on the air there's a lot of

people getting busted right now for what they call data mining right that they they go on social media and they get information and then they stand up in front of an audience and they call somebody and they pretend that they're prophesying that they have revelation from God see everybody is getting mad because the person did that the way my mind is wired because I care so deeply about people and I spent my life trying to help broken guys in the ministry my question is what do you need to do that? In other words what's in your broken soul that you're so desperate

to be seen as a prophet right that you'll resort to any sort of manipulation so you can get reaffirmed right you see it I mean there's a desperateness it's sort of pathetic I guess is the way that you know as I'm kind of articulating this there's a patheticness to it right it's not it's like they're trying to find a steam and affirmation and you know some sort of stature with this and it's kind of pathetic it is right it's broken insecure men trying to pretend there's something that they're not so they can get affirmation yeah and once you begin to see the brokenness of it

right it's like yeah this is this is sad in a way so I know you know again I have a different reaction so many people are angry right now I'm sad yeah my my personality you know it doesn't get angry anymore I just I hurt because it's like gosh that's so sad you're so broken you're so you know we you know the word want to be that's been around for a long time I think the church is just filled with all kinds of wannabes and so that's to getting back to our our discussion about the fivefold it's like there's this desperateness to be defined you know to be given one of those

titles right because it reaffirms to you that gosh I'm somebody right it's kind of pathetic yeah one it's the border zone theatrical. One of the problems that I saw early on was this movement. It was a form of entertainment, which back during its era, the tent revival, these people didn't have much else. You go out in the country, there wasn't movie theaters. Some of this started before even television and the early days of radio, so they didn't have much. And these people would go to anything, some traveling roadshow, where you're going to go. And they're selling hot dogs out front,

you know, and it's more like a traveling circus. And if you were good at it, you could attract a lot of people. And over time, this became, it tied into the movie industry. I think, I don't know if you've seen it or not, but in my research, I've tied it directly to the Kardashian family.

Dima Shigerian was, you know, part of the conducting for businessmen. Exactly. So all of this has this theatrical aspect to it. But the problem is, like you said, whenever you try to, whenever you try to build yourself up to be something that you're not, you're up on this ladder that it's very hard to get back down from. And while you're up there, a lot of people, they don't even want to be up there. That's the funny part. They're trapped in their own world of their own making. So it is sad. I'm sad for multiple reasons, but one of the reasons that makes me sad is

that this continues today. And we have seen some vicious leaders that are just, you know, ruthless, they're abusing people, et cetera. I see this as continuing because as long as the people will uplift this type of religion, then they're going to continue to have these types of people.

Yeah, I just did a Facebook post yesterday about this, this subject because there's, you know, guys that have for various reasons had to step down on a ministry, right, that are now either making or planning a comeback. And it's got people, knickers in a twist, as they say, right? Like people are really upset. And it kind of surprises me because they're like, well, where am I? This has always been that way. Like there's nothing new here.

No, right. It's called. But I, but I, what I realized is a younger generation who just doesn't have a, a good grasp of church history. And so they're horrified right now that this is happening. But again, you know, if you're a historian, you know, there's like nothing new here. Welcome to the church world, right? At the same time, what I talk about is, well, here's, here's the other frustration. The other frustration is they're angry at the other church leaders for not calling these guys out. Yeah. Right. Which is never going to happen. Because again, it's, it's, it's,

it's like, you know, I wrote about in the book, you know, in a dysfunctional family, they circle the wagons, right? Yeah. I mean, ministry world circles the wagons they will protect their own and and the reason they're protecting their own is because many of them have all the same problems right and so it's you know there's that but what i'm trying to get people to understand it's not a really a leadership problem right it doesn't really matter what other leaders say because what these guys all understand is there's always people out there that are looking to be led and fed

yeah and they're going to show up in other words this doesn't stop until people stop giving their money and attending these guys meetings right and so the problem isn't other leaders saying you know this guy's off base because even if they do people will still follow yeah right and so you know i don't know that this is a solvable problem you know there's you know there's just this need in in some human beings to be led like they need somebody to tell them what to do how to do it when to do it right they they they want to abdicate their responsibility to

govern their own life and defer to somebody in a position of authority and these guys all know that right they all know that they're very persuasive right and they know that if i can just get one or two rich guys right because of the 80 20 year old 80% of your money comes from 20% of your people yeah it's the same thing you know everywhere even in business so they know if i can just get one or two rich guys i'm back right and i may not have hundreds of thousands of people but i'll have thousands yeah absolutely right and so that it's it's that's the the real thing for me it's

like if we're going to stop that then people have to stop it like don't keep pointing your finger and getting mad at some leader right they're not the problem it's the people that show up to the meetings yeah it's a it's almost like a chicken or egg thing for me because the people have been manipulated and trained to be sheeple they've been trained to seek leaders instead of trained to become leaders and it all goes back to the upside down model if from the inception of all of this mess if they were teaching people to rise up and become leaders that mindset would

have entered American Christianity and gone abroad into worldwide Christianity that to become a Christian you train others to become Christian leaders and everybody who is a entry level person who's just understanding Christianity they come in with the aspiration to become a leader and to lead others that's the model that is described in the Bible but not at all yeah discipleship that's not at all even the the word discipleship they've it's meaning to mean something else. But anyway, we could go on for hours on this. But I have a severe problem with this doctrine. And I'm shocked that it is allowed to continue.

When you look at like we talked about the discipling, the shepherding movement, you find key figures who will rise up and say, that's wrong. But they'll still teach this doctrine, not understanding that it's really technically the same thing. They're still propagating the same thing. So we go on forever. But thanks for doing this. This has been great.

We're getting ourselves in trouble here. But I hope people will understand. We're just two guys trying to process our experiences, right? And I was just realizing this the other day. I am on the verge next year of been in this ministry world for 50 years.

Wow. Now I left the ministry world in 2000. But you know, I've kept on the periphery of things. So whether people like it or not, I got a few experiences. I have a front row seat at some things. So my opinions and my perspective aren't based on polling stuff completely out of the ether. These are real world experiences. So that's what they are. There are perspectives.

Well, that means something. There's a lot to be said about experience and just the history that's in your head. I want to, over the course of the next few weeks of podcasts, just extract some of that. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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