Grace or Control: Bethel Church and the Battle of the Mind - With Adam Short

Hello and welcome to another episode of the bitten subject because it was so legalistic and they would use the word, but then they were throwing all the legalism that that you had to do to earn this said grace. But there were some other caveats too, which are interesting. And I'll let you introduce the topic at

them. But I've got a lot to say. I actually am on the edge of my seat, John. I'm very curious to hear how that worked itself and what the practical experience was for you in the brand I'm called. I'm very curious to hear how similar or different it was to kind of what I've experienced and a lot of us have experienced in the hypercarsamatic movement. Some people call it a hyper grace movement too.

And I actually had not heard that term until fairly recently. It's interesting. It's kind of like the NAR concept too. When you're in it, you don't hear about it. But once you're out of it, you kind of take a look and you're like, oh, that's what that was.

So there's a specific spin on grace that I want to talk about. Really in the context of a few different movements and slash manifestations of this movement. One of which is Bethel, right? Another is IHOP KC. But a little less IHOP KC, more Bethel today that I want to hone in on plus also quasi-bethel, which is a specific prophetic figure who has recently come under fire for some of his prophetic practices. And just to watch this play out as to how leaders handled warning people or the lack thereof, right? And I think that this comes back to the concept of what I've thought the best word to describe is unidirectional grace.

So yeah, it should be fun to see other- This all plays out in our combo today. Yeah, well, you know, I have a different perspective than a lot of people who I'm working with, who have escaped the random side of things.

Because it really wasn't that hard for me. I actually lived quite a boring life. I had no desire to do all the things that everybody gets railed for from sermon to sermon. And I'm not female.

So most, I would say a vast majority of the rules were for the women to try to keep, quote unquote, keep the women in line, which I feel really stupid saying now in this day and age.

But that's, you know, we were stuck in a cult from that was literally stuck in time from the 50s and 60s. But that was one of the things that we did. We kept the women in line.

But I was kind of a boring guy. I liked my instruments, which, you know, there was a little bit of tug of war because I was told by my father's side that the, any instrument with strings was the devil's instrument.

And so I'd hear this nonsense from my father's side and my grandfather, which was the pastor at the brand of tabernacle. Then on my mother's side, I'd go to their church and they're all playing guitars and whatever.

And one day I just stopped and thought about it. I go to my grandfather's church and they would do things like they would call me a side and they would say, you know, William Brandham said the guitar was evil, John.

And, you know, I'm taking all this in and I said, why? And they said, because stringed instruments are of the devil. Now, I'm kind of a smart man and I looked at them and I never said it, but I was like, Grandpa, do you know that the piano that's in your church right now is a stringed instrument?

So anyway, all that said, I lived kind of a boring life. I never wanted to do any of the things that were targets for the legalistic doctrines that was there. And so I really didn't have any trouble with it at all and my family was kind of in the upper tier.

So the rules that were for the vast majority of the cult weren't the same rules for me. So anyway, there's multi levels of grace and legalism and I had, see, you're coming into terms with the hypergrace, which I'm now understanding and kind of trying to digest that.

But picture the extreme far opposite of that is what I grew up in. So, and I want to hear more about that. That's fascinating to me. It's like you have oil and water trying to mix, right?

Where grace and legalism or grace and law like actually can't mix their antithetical to each other. So I'm really curious like how that happened. But to your point, like the stringed instruments, that's interesting.

I didn't even know the piano was a stringed instrument. So you learned me something. It's basically a big harp that's laying down and the keys just strike the harp inside. So it's a strange instrument.

So to put it in proper perspective, what it is that was in Branemism, which in effect was in most of Laterane, because we were stuck in the 50s and 60s. My favorite passage from the Bible through all of these years growing up was Ephesians 2, 8 through 9.

You're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, not of works. So I, like I studied my Bible, I knew this passage. It was my favorite passage. I even for, I can't tell you how many years, that was the signature in my email.

I had that exact statement from the Bible in my email, but I had no idea what it meant. So we were taught, what's the best way to describe this? Because it's brainwashing at its essence, but Candid camera has this show.

I was mentioning to this with a Steve Montgomery yesterday when we were recording, Candid camera used to have the skit where this guy did what's called double speak. And when he started talking, you were more confused when he finished talking than you were before he started, because it's just, the words really don't go together.

Well, what these ministers did, by and large, every one of them, they would preach grace. And they would say things like, it's not of works you do, but grace you're saved through faith in Jesus Christ.

And they would read this, they would quote this exact passage, and they would say, but to get that grace, you have to do this, this, this, this, this, and this, and this, and this.

And they kept piling it on. These things just got over time as the years went on, the stack of weights on your shoulders from the legalism was so heavy, because they were just stacking new things that you could do, new things you couldn't do.

And it was ridiculous, but they was talking in circles. You're saved by grace, not by your works, but oh, by the way, you have to do these works to inherit this grace. And then all the while, they're over there behind the scenes, doing, you know, being involved in immorality and crimes and stuff like this.

And they're preaching all this stuff. And it's like, do as I say, what is that, how does that go? I always get that same stuff. Do as I say and not as I do.

Yeah, and that's just it. So, Brandon, one of the weights that everybody else had, and I did sometimes, not all the time, was television. Brandon preached so heavily against television. You cannot watch TV.

And it's the devil's box. And that spread, they're all throughout Latin reign. It's, you know, that's not unique to Brannemism by no means. But my family was with the Brannem family. They were in his home.

They saw his television. They saw the televisions in the rooms of their children, which was very uncommon back during the 50s and 60s, right? This wasn't a thing. And so I grew up, a lot of times, we would have a television.

Then we'd move to a... eight where the preacher was just harping on the television all the time and we'd blow it up with shotgun or whatever we did. We'd make it unusable. So no demons got out of that box. And then we'd move to another state and we'd get another one. So my head, that's why my head is kind of like it is. I'm like a ping pong ball inside.

Yeah, that's, that's just another example of the hypocrisy. It's just interesting because that's totally different than like Bethel and you know, I hop and Morning Star and all that. Like I don't ever remember there being any teachings about like you can't watch TV or you can't do this that the other. Actually, it feels very graceful at Bethel. I was just saying it Bethel.

You know, it feels like there's a lot of freedom there. It feels like you're being empowered to make your decisions and be led by the Holy Spirit, right? Of course, there are standards that were in place that I think are reasonable. Like, you know, I think just common decency and things like that. But but here's where there is commonality. I think between your experience and randomism and Bethel, I'll just talk about Bethel for a minute. It's really fresh in my mind right now because of several things that have happened here recently. But it's like you're a B.S.

is in student and largely you are empowered to discover your identity in Christ and discover the power of the Holy Spirit, walking the Holy Spirit and all that stuff. Meet other people like that and stuff and but what I think how this stuff makes this way out in practical life is when especially recently when these scandals have hit the fan leaders have been discovered as having been involved in immoral behavior, some criminal behavior. And you have varying degrees and levels of accountability across the organization and network, right? So if you were to put this on a

on a flow chart or kind of like an org chart, you'd have the top people at the top and then you have it radiate down. You've got the senior leaders, you've got the middle managers, then you've got the lower middle managers and then you've got the students and then interns and the whole organization is like this big pyramid. Well, the interesting thing is is generally speaking, the further down you go on the pyramid, the more accountability that is exerted upon the people lower on the rungs. However, you cannot always use that same logic up the pyramid. For example,

I'll give you a couple examples what I'm talking about. There are some pretty well-known leaders who were called in some criminal behavior. Well, I'll just say there's one that I'm thinking of right now. I'm not going to name names, but it's put...

Public information, if you were at Bethel, one particular leader who had been involved in some nefarious, I'll just say nefarious activity that was illegal, okay, sexual stuff, all right. And those of us that have been outside of Bethel for many years, we heard about it, but we didn't really know any specifics.

I just found out yesterday, some of the specifics, and I'm not gonna go into it right now because I don't care to repeat it, but I knew this person, this leader, I worked directly under his wife as an intern at Bethel, had had huge respect for both of them, still do for the wife, but I have liked lost all my respect for the husband who was caught in this stuff.

I'm getting to a point. There was some accountability as I understand it, as I'm hearing from the inside, there was some accountability that was done for this particular leader to, do their internal quote-unquote investigation and confront him and hold him accountable, but the wider general community of Bethel, to my knowledge was not informed about it.

There were certain people that were informed, but not the whole organization or people, like the little people, if you will. So what I'm realizing is this is unidirectional grace, this is what I mean by that concept, because there's grace for, and it's not even actually grace though, it's this fabricated concept where leaders are given a pass and sort of like, hey, wink, wink, we know you did this wrong, but we're going to confront you, and maybe they really did confront, maybe it was a legitimate confrontation, they tried to hold him accountable, but like one year later, he's back in ministries,

and there really was no consequence. So why does the leader get to be the recipient of grace like that, but then further down the totem pole, if you were as a student, if you were caught in something like that, or you'd be reprimanded or somehow held accountable, or maybe asked to leave the school, so you get what I'm saying, there's a varying degree of accountability, depending on where you're at in the organization, so it can flow up channel, but it can't flow down channel, generally.

I don't know if that made any sense, but that's kind of what I'm trying to say by this unidirectional grace thing. Right, I know exactly what you're meaning, so I would call it double standards grace, but so here's the thing.

A lot of people will hear what I previously said, and they'll say the charismatic movement is nothing like this, John is stuck in the brannemism. old and he's trying to match this to many of the different movements.

You've probably seen it in the comments, like John Wimbler's stuff. Anytime I mention the similarities, everybody just tries to nail me to the cross over it. But here's the thing. It isn't that you can compare doctrine for doctrine and say that all the doctrines match and therefore it's the same movement.

You have to look deeper than the doctrines and look at the framework. What you have in these movements, the framework is elitism. And in the Brana movements, we had this weird other thing for grace.

So the rank and file members, they could be saved by grace if they did all of the works. Jesus could save them by grace, but you have to do those works or Jesus won't save you.

That's the weirdness. And then in the upper tiers, like you're saying, the double standards, the double standard grace, they're forgiven of anything. They would like large, large doctrines that just really impacted the lives of some people, such as swimming.

In the 50s and 60s, Pentecostalism could not have men and women swimming together. They thought the germs would, I don't know what it is, they thought it was ridiculous, but this was a thing.

And so they even went so far as to forbid the members from having swimming pools. And that was widespread. You're not allowed to have a swimming pool or swim. And the Brana family had a swimming pool, man.

When you're in those upper tiers, and see if you're friends of the Brana family, you too can swim because the Brana's have a swimming pool. And everybody else, I mean, even people who went to the swimming pool parties would go back and they would preach against the swimming pool because they're supposed to do that for the little people.

So you have these tiers of elitism, but then there was this other weird doctrine. So when the cult were the elite bride of Christ, however you want to say it, and my neighbor, my neighbors who are Muslim, if they are kind to me because I'm this elite, will they too can be saved as long as you be kind to the bride.

This was a real doctrine, be kind to the bride. And specifically, because of the upper tiers, if they were kind to a rank and file member, no, it doesn't matter. But if they're kind to my grandfather, they're going, they've got their special place in heaven, man, because that's how this is, right?

And apply this to the NAR, this hypergrace thing. So what happened is, Pentecostalism had a different focus. You've read the Bible passages about living the letter of the law versus understanding what it means to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

They created this weird doctrine of Pentecostalism that if you could speak in tongues, you had the evidence of the Holy Spirit, this was your works that you had to do in order to climb up the ladder of salvation, whatever it was.

Whenever the Pentecostal movement began to split over the ladder rain, the ladder rain introduced this idea that, no, that's wrong. Our works is to save people through this divine healing thing. It's part of the atonement, it was called the dual atonement, you had salvation and healing, so you had to accept your healing, and then you could be saved.

It was weird as weird can be. Charismatic movement comes along after William Brandham dies, and they realize that it's very highly unpopular to have all of these weird rules. Not only that, it's not financially profitable if we sever ties between any group who doesn't have our various letters of the law that we're following.

So let's open the door to everything and have this hypergrace thing come in. But, where I'm heading to a point with all of this, they left the same framework there. The doctrines were different, but the framework was there.

The elitism is there, up in the upper echelons of the cults. You can see that these elite figures, they can be saved no matter what they do, because they're not focused on the letter of the law.

They're basically, they don't understand the reason for the grace itself in the first place. Their mind isn't on living a good life and being kind to people, and love God above everything else, love your neighbors yourself.

It's more on this elitism. Am I part of the group? Am I following the group's rules that we have established? And, like it or not, am I in the upper tiers where I can do anything I want?

Yeah. So maybe we should just all become Muslims and be nice to the broad as you drink your tea right there. That's interesting because there's so much of that. I wasn't high up in the deal like you were, but I was far enough into where I observed some of the hypocrisy.

And to be fair, I feel like a lot of the leaders at Bethel were reasonable and lived. I think what they preached, but there were definitely a number of them that did not. Now that we're finding out now.

But like the whole swimming pool thing you mentioned, like I had no idea that that was forbidden by the pitocostles back then. That's so crazy. You'd be shocked as soon as we were forbidden.

So here's what it reminds me of actually bringing it back to Bethel. It reminds me of the mental gymnastics that you have to jump through to keep. yourself in good graces, no pun intended with God, right? And I'll give you an example, and I've said this somewhere else recently, I think, with maybe it was on our podcast, I can't remember.

But there's a quote that Bill Johnson is very famous for saying, and I might be getting it not quite verbatim, but it's pretty much this. I cannot afford to have a thought in my mind that that he doesn't have. And if you think about that, if you think about the outworkings of that in your practical life, think about that. I can't afford to have. So this gets back to the thought stopping, and it also gets back to perfectionism, right? So ironically, on the one hand, Bethel is preaching this very grace-oriented message. And in fact, as a matter of fact, Bill also

says something often, this is another quote from him, in an environment of grace, all seeds grow. And that is sort of the framework of allowing the good and the bad to happen, right? We talk about mixture, particularly when it comes to manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, and now parsing through what was fake, what was real. Well, I'll tell you why you've got a lot of mixture is because of the framework where all, you know, it's like all seeds grow. So it's, we actually, or I say, we, they, Bethel, as an organization actually believes that that's okay to let the bad

stuff happen, even if it's leaders doing it. So you've got a grace message supposedly, but then alongside of that, kind of like what you're saying, you've got this hyper, it's like a legalistic, super legalistic framework where down to I, I actually cannot have any negative thoughts in my head.

Bill did a meme recently on social media where he said complaining is unbelief. Well, I got news for you. There's plenty of complaining in the Bible. And yeah, okay, to be fair, when the people complained to Moses, God kind of got mad and did some stuff. I mean, I will concede that, but there's also a lot of complaining that happened in the Psalms where David, you know, he's pouring out his complaint to God, his lament. And could it be that actually oftentimes your lament is a, is a natural process as a human that you go through to navigate pain, grief and loss. And it's not

unbelief actually. It's acknowledging what's happened to you. And it is working through it within the context of your faith rather than this perfectionistic you know, I've got to have every thought perfect in my head.

And so you want to talk about the pressure that comes with living like that. Like, I'm still, I still have tapes in my head and I've been out of it for 14 years. And there's stiller tapes going through my head that I have to like catch myself sometimes.

I'm like, okay, there's another, there's another perfectionistic tape trying to play right now. So it's hard to unwind that stuff. When you've been baked or I don't know, baked is the right word, but you've been rolled in it, you know, inside and out and you're trying to like, just continue to let that stuff kind of fade away.

Yeah. What's funny is there's some history behind this. And if you understand the history, it'll scare you all the more when you think of the NAR and Bethel, because, so, if you've read my book, combat, what is it?

It's a weaponized religion from Latter-Rain to Colonial Dignidad. I talk about this to a much larger extent than I will here, but in the 50s and 60s, there was the communist scare. Everybody was freaking out.

And Richard Nixon goes to the family breakfast. And this one was not the one that was by the Fellowship Organization. They were in collaboration with the full gospel businessman. They're both holding separate national prayer breakfasts.

So there are photographs of Brannum and Nixon and, you know, the heads of FGBMI, the heads of Voice of Healing, magazine, et cetera. They're all in this place. And Nixon gives this address to the men in these groups and women saying that we want you religious leaders to fight communism from the brain.

We want you, in other words, we want you to change your sermons to brainwash is probably a better word to describe all of this. But he's literally saying, we want you to manipulate their heads where they are against communism.

That's essentially what's being said. Now, I don't have so much a problem with being against communism. I understand that, but the means to get there was quite dastardly. And so Brannum introduced this theme into the laterane movements called the greatest battle ever fought.

And it's in the mind. And so you've got this war going on in your mind back and forth between good and evil in your mind. Well, that was a direct quote from Richard Nixon.

Nixon said the greatest battle ever fought is in your minds. And so we must fight this communism. So this developed into Brannum taught, and I can't remember what year he started. It might have been before Nixon, but at any rate, he heavily taught that sin was unbelief.

You don't believe so there's... for your sin. So therefore all the sin is in your head. You, you're thinking it and there, therefore your thoughts become an action and therefore he's, he's taking the greatest battle ever fought to your brain just like Nixon instructed him to do. What's interesting about all of this is if you take away, you know, look past all of the doctrinal differences because the charismatic movement is really just a rebirth of the latter reign. Charles and we're going to be getting into that in our in our revival history series. But what they did was

they started thinking that you could take the legalism that the Pentecostal movement had physically and now apply it mentally. So we're going to use essentially they're using mind control techniques. We're going to use these mind control techniques to make you think that this war is happening in your head and we're going to have hyper grace. You can do anything, not anything, but you can do practically anything you want, but that battle is still here in your head. I'm going to give you mental legalism. So you can't think about these things. You can't, your mind can't focus on unhappy

thoughts. Your mind can't focus on questions. All of the things that, you know, are basically the marks of a cult. They put them in your head and they imprinted in there. And in doing so, they wreak havoc with your life. I mean, what it does to you, it messes with your psyche and it actually makes people physically ill. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And you talk about all the mental health, mental unhealth for people that have been in this all this mess. Like, dude, it's a real thing. Like, I've suffered through it. Like, I've shared previously. And it's interesting, too, because I've heard

that line, I remember hearing that line years ago at Morningstar. Like, what, how did you put it? The greatest battle is the battle of the mind. Like, that was a very common theme. And incidentally, that segues into the way they've ice-segeded that into, was it the book of Ephesians, I think.

Yeah, the book of Ephesians where it talks about spiritual warfare and taking thoughts captive. I might get in the beginning of the reference wrong, but taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, right? And sort of emphasizing that in the Bible with this overlay of like you're saying, my control. But it's real. Like, it does get so deep into your mind, your brain, your mental health. And like I said, I mean, I am still unwinding and unraveling a lot of that.

It's still in my own head of my control. And you feel it come up when you speak out about the leaders getting caught doing bad stuff. Like, the mind control, sort of, I can the back of the mind that says, hey, you're not supposed to be talking about this, you're not supposed to be criticizing your leaders.

They're gonna come after you and you're not honoring them, which of course we know what honor culture actually is. It's silent culture and it seeks to squash any dissidents or difference of thought. Even though like a Bethel, which is again, another ironic thing, another cognitive dissonant thing, cognitively dissonant thing, which is ironically Bethel was a place where they would bring in speakers from different spectrums that actually disagreed with Bill and Chris.

Like they would, and I remember them talking about that. Like, they're like, we wanna bring in people have differing perspectives that we don't all agree on, we're not gathering around agreement here. And while I appreciate that, in practice, I think you still, in that system, you still knew what you were to believe and what you were not to believe.

You also knew what you were to do and what not to do. And then, you know, the biggest thing you don't do is you don't dishonor the leaders. Even though it's not pitched that way, it's not like said that way, but you're led to a conclusion like sort of second nature that you don't do this stuff.

Like you just don't criticize your leaders and all the social capital goes up the ladder, you know, up the pyramid. So all of this stuff is tied together. Like the mind control, the grace, what we call grace, but it's actually not real grace.

It's not the grace that we read about in the Bible. It's something different. And yeah, I don't know, I don't know where to go from here, but yeah, the mind is a big target for the little people the little people that are in these movements and they are the ones that suffer and sort of are left at the back at the end of the day.

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

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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You mentioned this. spiritual warfare and that's actually the perfect example of what I was talking about earlier because The not I know people will take this wrong because the Bible does talk about spiritual warfare But what they've done is they've twisted it they use that framework the greatest battle ever fought as in your mind And then they thought well what if we can what if we can make this battle illustrated and so you've seen I don't I don't know how much you've studied of the history of spiritual warfare in the NAR, but you've got these

Bozos who take a group of people up to Mount Everest because they're going to pray to the Queen of heaven in the sky. Yeah, whatever it is nonsense, right? Yeah, well, that's the greatest battle ever fought in your mind because they're they're not fighting any physically Visible thing. It's it's in their heads. So if they can take a fictional entity and put it in people's heads and say this is your war. This is your spiritual war Now you're fighting this battle and they're they've basically expanded the greatest battle in the mind because they can create the battlefield

And that's what they're doing and that's one of the reasons why I Charles and I were gonna get into Derek Prince, but once you understand where this quote-unquote Deliverance ministry comes and how that is so far different than deliverance from the Bible and you understand that this is a This is a fictional thing that they're doing to your heads You begin to realize that this is a plan strategy these guys know what they're doing they understand the power and the financial benefits of creating this image in your head that you go home and you dwell on it

So you can think about I was with I'm gonna try to say this in a way that doesn't hurt the feelings of a friend But I have a friend who's caught in this mindset of the spiritual warfare and my friend is handicapped and I was with them and they were trying to find a parking space and Granted being handicapped I understand it's difficult. You've got to find a place where you can get close to the work, etc But I watch this person Turn this into a battle between good versus evil the demons are trying to

Trying to make me not get a parking spot and God literally this person was praying Lord Please Lord please give me that parking spot and

This person just darted into the parking place Cut off another person who is getting ready to pull into that parking place and then got down and thanked God for winning the spiritual war Now I'm sitting here watching the whole thing unfold and I'm kind of embarrassed because I saw the eyes of the person who almost got the parking space Who should have by all rights got the parking space and This was a little lady that was really sad and I was it bothered me it really bothered me But in this person's head is planted this notion that there's this

War at all times raging and every single aspect of our lives is either controlled by an angel or demon Yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely no, I completely understand where you're coming from there and it it is it's like I mean Derek Prince is a heavy hitter too like Especially the more of the older school charismatic although I remember in my early days And when I was at Morningstar like there's a lot of talk about Derek Prince and In that book. I remember reading that book and they shall expel demons I believe it is by Derek Prince

Something to that effect as a title. I was a young believer very young. I was a teenager actually When I read that book and I get Lord when I read that book John I would go to bed at night completely Full of just fear. I mean like so scared of the dark scared that At any given point there's gonna be a demon that jumps out you know behind the shell for whatever So like to your point that was a real

Experience I had just being made aware of whatever that was I mean I'm not saying there aren't demons. I've seen them in Africa and in here But they're they're quite prolific in Africa. I will say Um just stuff that you can't explain in the natural That I don't really want to get into right now, but Um, but to your point. I think you're absolutely right on like There's this Sort of world that's Illustrated. I think you said illustrated and painted for you that everything is either angel or demon And it's really binary. It's a binary way of looking at the world that either it's owner off

It's either good or bad and that feels really good when you went when you when you feel like you won a battle like you went up Mount Everest and you know, you you you yelled at the stars or whatever you did and you feel like you brought down the queen of whoever Like that feel that makes you feel powerful as a person. It makes you feel like hey, I'm caught up in this You know intergalactical

Farward you know battle or whatever and that feels really good as a person, but the problem is yeah It it it's outworkings is like what you said with the parking lot like I'm I'm going into the parking lot and this is a demon that kept me forgetting my thing Um, so yeah, it's it's kind of to the point of insanity where every little detail Is down to a demon and and that's that is I honestly I think that is Insanity like you're living in insanity at that point yeah, and You've lost as a person and I don't fault somebody living that way. I live that way for a long time

But here's what you lose when you live like like that you live you lose your sense of agency as a human right and it gets back to the perfectionism and And I think they know this I think they know that if they can get people's mind controlled like that.

And they can get them to believe that everything is either an angel or a demon. Like all of a sudden, you have basically unleashed an army of robots. And it's either good or bad, and it's an angel or demon.

But what about the human? What about the human decision? What about the humanity of living? What about the imperfections of being a person in this world that's not perfect and not meant to be?

So I think one of the best exciting things is watching people come out of these movements and rediscover their agency, their voice, and their humanity. And like being sort of extricated in a distance from this framework of, you know, binaryism, if you will, if that's even a word.

I would agree with that. One of the exercises that I did whenever I left the cult, and I began to, I read the Bible over and over I've mentioned this a few times, probably 10, 15 times in a lost count, trying to understand everything, but specifically the way in which we were taught grace was so wrong.

I knew that it, I knew there must be something more than this. And I kept coming back to that passage, you know, love, love God above all things, love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus said the entire law and the prophets, which meant literally the entire Old Testament summed up in this thing, right?

So this was a very important subject matter for Jesus. It should be for us too. And I began to apply all of the legalistic things that we had growing up and many of, like the television, how does that fall in those two categories?

Does God really care if I'm watching Scooby-Doo, which is, we've had this conversation, that's like my favorite thing on TV, Scooby-Doo. Does God really care? And if I'm watching it, does it really hurt one of my neighbors?

I don't think so. And so I took that and I took that out and I no longer held that law no longer had me burdened. And I just went one by one by one.

And when you stripped that away, you suddenly realize, wait a minute. There's a whole lot of things that are in our life that can't fall through that category. And then whenever I began to evaluate everything that was birthed from this laterane movement, and we're talking everything from the neopenocostals to the cults, to the charismatic, to the hypercarrasmatics, to the NAR, all of these things.

And when you look at it like that, and you think of that as the architecture, you suddenly can see, it's like the matrix when you take that pill, man. Suddenly you can see how all of this fits together.

It just all fits like a glove because they have lost focus of what that passage meant. Fully lost focus and one of them may be focused on signs and wonders and doing the stuff or whatever it is.

Another one may be. focused on works, righteous, legalism, but it's all the same thing. They're all fitting that mold where they've totally forgot the words of Jesus. Yeah, absolutely, man. We've so over-complicated it and corrupted it.

And like, yeah, it's all summed up in love. And, you know, church leaders have a lot in common with politicians. You know, it's like over here in the Carolinas, we got hit by a real bad hurricane back in September.

And, you know, just, it was probably the worst disaster ever to hit the Carolinas and just complete devastation. And, you know, I'll tell you what's been amazing is to watch people who on Twitter who didn't even believe in God, right?

They have zero claim to believe that God even exists. And, organizations like Samaritan's Purge have been everywhere. They've been feeding people. They've been building houses for people, repairing people's houses. And they're actually doing it in Jesus' name.

Like, they make no apologies about it. They're, they do disaster relief. That's their sort of their mission. And so, they've been everywhere. And incidentally, they are based in Western North Carolina right where the, you know, for disasters, epicenter was.

So, people who don't even believe in God see that happening and they're like so dumb, they're not dumbfounded, but they're so amazed by it. They're so impacted to see like, oh, wow. The Christians are actually going in and loving people.

They're building houses for people. They're feeding people. They're, you know, delivering generators or were portable heaters or supplies or tarps. And that right there is love. Now, does it mean that somebody who goes out on the street and prays for somebody to be healed is not loving that person?

I don't think so. I think they're, you know, that's an expression of love too, but it's like what Jesus said to, I think the Pharisees, you strain out a nat and swallow a camel.

You miss the entire point when you mix the money in there, the power of the fame and everything else. And now you've got this superpower Christianity that's largely focused on signs and wonders. The question isn't, our signs and wonders legitimate.

The question is, should we, should that be the primary focus of the gospel? And I think to your point, John, I think that's what you're saying is it really is actually pretty simple. People can tell if you love them, they, you know, they can tell if you care about them, they can tell if you're doing this for another notch on your belt versus you actually care about them.

And the crazy thing is, is God will heal people through broken, This was like all of us, even when we're doing it for the wrong reasons, that's the wild thing. But then there are also a lot of people who were harmed through what they thought, you know, what they were told was miracle, but it wasn't a miracle.

It was something else, it was a slight of hand or a deception or something. So again, back to the mixture, there's just so much mixture in there. Yeah, I think we need to get back to the simplicity of loving people and do away with all of this other fluff and excess.

I fully agree and I can say from experience, it will change you when you do that because every person, you know, Jesus said you should love your enemies. That's one of the Bible passages, one of the other common traits among all of these movements, whether hypercarismatic or not, watch what happens when somebody speaks out against them, watch the sudden vicious attacks, and you can tell, it's just not rooted on that proper foundation, they've lost focus, they've in the charismatic movements, it's the signs and wonders, they've got so focused on that, they forgot what it means and why

this exists, you get to the more legalistic Pentecostal circles and you know, it's, did you baptize in the same way we do or not, well, I'm going to cut you off. You're no longer my brother, you're no longer my fellowship.

That's a thing. I don't know if you've watched what's his name, Dr. as a Walter Martin, I think it is. He, he got, yeah, it's crazy. He got involved with trying to understand all of the different groups that were all connected.

I think you could see a lot of what I'm finding in my research. I don't think he had taken it to the same level, but he gathered, he gathered, I think there's the UPCI, gathered them into a room and he was trying to determine, could they fellowship with another Christian if there was a doctrinal division?

And they said, absolutely, we can, we're not a cult, we can do this. And then he asked them, okay, how about the way they baptize? You could watch, I mean, literally this is recorded.

You could watch their faces, you could watch out turns, and suddenly they all, it's interesting. They got very upset with him, and he, I can't go as far as he did, but he branded the UPCI a cult because of this.

He said, what is that acronym? You said UPCI, the United Pentecostal Church International. Okay, I know I had heard that, but I didn't know what it stood for. Okay. Yeah. Is that like the old school, like, mainline Pentecostal?

Well, that's a loaded question. That's a loaded question. That's another topic for another day. So the Pentecostal movement has grown and split and grown and split and grown and split over doctrinal divisions, which ironically, the reason why I'm entertaining the thought a little bit is because...

It fits exactly what we're talking about today. The groups rise up, they draw a line in the sand and say, you're either with us or you're against us. And then they split. And so then you have the assemblies of God.

And you have the, it basically made this conglomeration of several different Pentecostal groups. And then in the, I want to say it was the late 30s. They all tried to merge them together, didn't quite make it.

And ironically, in the mid 40s, right about the time William Brannum launches into fame, it's when they all merge together. And it was the Keel Auditorium in St. Louis, I think, was their main facility that they were, their auditorium where they were using.

Well, this is exactly where William Brannum becomes famous with little David, the levitating boy. And they're going into the Keel Auditorium and showing how they can levitate for Jesus. So all of this, all of this started with this weird mess that it wasn't focused in the right place.

They totally forgotten what Jesus said. And doctrinal lines in the sand. And a lot of people miss it because if you try to examine the connections between these groups, doctrinally, you'll get so confused because they'll draw a line in the sand and say they're no longer a brothers, they'll create another group.

And they don't see that connection. But if you understand how all of this works and you look just a little bit below the doctrines, you can see that all of this is all tied together.

It was a false movement from the beginning and then they continued into a bigger false mess. It's interesting. And it just reminds me of like for those of us that didn't come from like the old line, whatever you want to call it, main line, like old-school Pentecostal, like we have stuff in common with them.

When I say we, I'm talking about those of us that were like places like Beth or Morningstar I, KC, things like that. Which is as I, as I learned more about the old line, best where I can come up with the old-school Pentecostal predecessors, if you will, to us.

It's, it sounds different in some ways, but similar in others. But like to be thrown in, like you wake up one day and you meet the Lord and you're thrown into a movement that had so much history that preceded it and you have more in common with it than you ever realized.

That, I think that's the learning for me. Like I didn't know anything about what you just said. As far as like St. Louis and what it was at UPCI or I thought you were talking about a UPC code that you scan when you go in the store.

Yeah. Well, and that's the irony, right? All of these groups came from this foundation and people just don't have any clue where it came from because they don't teach that though. They've whitewashed it, they don't want, they're not proud of their own histories.

We'll see, and here's another thing, and I'm, starting to bring up Paul Cain in this private Bethel group. And I, you know, I don't know if people are aware as, I don't think people are as aware of Paul Cain at Bethel as they were of like William Branden.

Like we were, we learned a lot about, we had to read all those blue books, those William Branden books at Bethel. But see, they didn't talk about Paul Cain at Bethel to my recollection.

I knew about Paul Cain though, because I was at Morningstar years ago. And then I was at I.P.K.C. later. So Paul Cain was like, he basically walked on water if you went to Morningstar or I.P.K.C., because he was one of those Kansas City prophets.

But like, I had no idea, no earthly idea, John, that until I came across your stuff, that all this stuff was like connected. There's a whole history there. And you know, Paul Cain was Brandon's protege, blah, blah, blah, the rest of it.

So anyway, I don't know if that made any sense at all, but I'm just like trying to make sense of how so many thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, especially from the younger generations, even younger than me,

we actually don't know that we came from this stuff, this dark history. We're told the version of the story that William Branham was a legitimate prophet of God who had an incredible, never seen before anointing the operating spirit of, or gift of healing.

Like, that's what we were told. We were told he didn't end well. That's how, you know, they told us we had to read the first six books, but the other six were bad because he didn't end well.

I think it's the first six, right? And then the, the latter six are the ones where he started claiming to be Elijah and all that stuff. Right. I don't remember the details. Well, that's the funny part of all of this.

You've brought me to my final point for this podcast, interestingly, and we didn't compare notes. You just magically got me there. Oh, we didn't. But the other commonality between all of this mess is that where Christianity is focused on Jesus and the message of grace and love God, love your neighbor as yourself as the foundation, well, all of these movements have a foundation of humans.

And as far back as you want to go and any of the histories that I've written about, you can see it in the histories. They look towards human figures and, you know, back in the day, they weren't called quote unquote gods generals, but they had other names for them.

And they would say, our heritage comes from this human. And then a new group spins off. Well, they find out, okay, that human wasn't so good, but our movement kind of came from them, so we're going to say we liked him for a certain period of time.

but then after that, we no longer like him. It makes sense. And then that splits again because if you base your movement off of humans, humans make mistakes and sometimes big mistakes. And you have some very good con artists that were among the groups.

And some of those con artists have their heritage in this. So a movement will understand that, oh, wait a minute, our entire movement was based off of a con artist. Let's forget that guy.

And let's rise up a new prime figure. And this is going to be our, this is our new founder. We'll erase that history. Well, then the new founder turns out to be a mess.

So the next spinoff of that, they cut off the new founder. It's creepy. Yeah. And it just happens again and again and again through time. As far back as you want to go, you can see this happening.

And so people like you, no clue that some of these movements came from this big mess. And I'm just starting to introduce the idea in this group. Like, hey, y'all, we had a pretty dark history.

If you care to go down the rabbit hole, even a few inches. Like I've probably been down the rabbit hole, two or three feet or six. I haven't gone down nearly as deep as you have, but I've gone deep enough to basically figure out what's going on, okay?

And so I guess in my mind, I'm like, well, is there any hope? Like if this is just going to continue, if this is all, you know, they've been doing this since, you know, God knows when, is it just going to continue?

I mean, what's the use of even calling anybody out then if it's just going to continue? I think that's the question I have in my head. I sort of get really cynical about it.

And like, oh, well, it's not going to make any difference. People are just bad. And there's no expectation. There should have no expectation in everybody changing. But then I have to remember, wait a minute.

There is a real God. Like I believe there's a real God. Like he exists and he's talked about in the Bible. There's a, there's a man named Jesus that came down and I understand some people don't believe that.

And I don't, that's totally fine with me. I don't criticize you for not believing that. I'm just saying like for me in my process, I have to come back to that and say, okay, yes, it may be true that this has been going on for frickin' ever.

You had a leader that comes up, find out he's a bad guy, bringing the other one up, a hero worship, over and over and over. But I have to come back to this is that my hope is not in people.

And our hope is not in people ultimately. Our hope is in a God that we can't see. And anyway, I guess that was the punchline. That was a punchline. But that's where I have to go in my head.

Otherwise, I'll end up being depressed and more cynical. Well, that's just it, man. You can't, if you really understand what Jesus said in that state. And you really understand why he said it and what the implications of that all throughout the New Testament because they do have implications if you understand it.

You realize that this whole mess, the way it was created, it has a foundation that's not Christianity. It's just totally something else. It is not Christianity. And when you understand that and you are suddenly faced with the fact that to apply that passage to your own life, you have to love people.

It's actually harder than all of the rules that they could possibly ever give you because you have some conflicts with some people, right? And more than that, so people have asked me why I don't come preach.

I've had, in fact, I just got an email, I want to say it was two days ago, why I don't come preach at their church, and I'm like, no, man, do you not understand that most of the people, a vast majority of the people listening are into this hero worship kind of thing.

And if I do that, they're going to paint me in that same picture. I don't want to be that. I want to, I want to be where, like you said, if a person who doesn't, who has chosen to the pathway of atheism, I want to treat them in the same way with the same respect as I treat the other person because that's what I would see Jesus doing.

If you read the Bible, Jesus doesn't scorn them and say, be gone from me, you atheist. I will never have my part with you. He shows them the love that makes them want to come back, right?

So I can't live like that. I've finally decided that all of this mess wasn't a Christian movement. It wasn't Christianity at all. Right. I just can't live like that. I'm going to be nice to people because inwardly, inwardly, that's what I want to be.

I want to be nice to people. I love it. Yeah. You're such a kind person. That's one of the things my wife, as she said several times, like she's watched your videos and even when she came on the last time, like, man, John is such a kind person.

So it shows. I'm with you, whether the person's atheist or agnostic or Buddhist or whatever it is. I'll be honest with you. I feel way more comfortable oftentimes talking to non-Christians and I do Christians.

I think part of one of the reasons I've actually forgotten most are all of my Christian and these and anyway, which I'm perfectly fine with, but I find it very comforting and sort of, I don't know what the word is, very, I find a lot of relief in talking to people who don't believe in God because they're very real people largely.

People just say what they think, they're very open, they're not, they don't gaslight you. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so that's very relatable as a human. So, you know, I just, I find it very life-giving. I also find it life-giving to hear other people's perspectives, like you've said.

Yeah, and that we could do a whole full podcast on just that, I think, because there was a point in time after I had left that it began to bother me. I went through exactly what you're describing.

I'd rather go talk to somebody who's not talking Christian Ease because it's totally different language in many cases. And it bothered me for a long time, and my wife actually got a little upset with me because I said, I want to talk to normal people. And this was offensive because she was deeply, deeply embedded in various church things at the time. And I realized over time what I said was wrong. And it was just as offensive in the other direction. And I get it now.

But what I was trying to say and couldn't formulate into words is, I like to be around, if you're a Christian, I like to be around a Christian who understands that concept that Jesus said. You don't have to speak a different language. You can talk to everyone. You can be friends with everyone. You don't have to scorn me if I'm going to talk to somebody who's got problems, you know. And once I realized that, then I could apologize for the sins of my thoughts for for what I said. But the intent was the same. I like to be around people who like other people.

Yeah, for sure. I think it's relatable, right? Like as humans, we're meant to relate to each other. And when we're being our true authentic selves, then that can happen. Whether it be, hey, you're fluent in Christian ease or you're fluent in booted ease or Islam ease or atheist ease, whatever the ease is, right? Like you're being true to yourself as a person.

And people can tell like they can tell you're being vulnerable. You're being open, not that you have to share every dark secret with the person. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying like, you're being yourself, you're showing up, you're being your own self. And the facades come down.

And you can honestly talk about the stuff that you've been through in your life. So, yeah, yeah, it's a good philosophy to live by, which again, we could do, we could do another podcast on that if you want. But so my Muslim friends, I treat them with the same respect and kindness that I would anybody, they're my neighbors. I even go to some of their celebrations and they have some dog on good food, man, it's unbelievably good. But because I was kind to them, and because I showed them the same respect that they're not getting from other Christians,

that's the irony. They said, why are you different, John? Why don't you hate us like Christian? the street. Right. I said, that's not me, man. Well, they got interested more about my religion. So we started taking a walk every morning. I could tell them everything about what I believe.

And that door would never have opened if I had of, you know, met them with the same level of disrespect that flows through all of this mass. So I think that's so good, man. We need more of that in the world, which is so polarized and we're so apt to jump on each other and attack each other. So I love that. That's so cool. Yeah. Well, this has been great fun. I think we could talk about this for the next two hours, but yeah, we'll wrap it up. And we'll spin off the next podcast where we can talk about other deep thoughts. That's good. Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed

our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation.

Awesome. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.

Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.