Guilt By Association: The Tangled Web of NAR Leadership

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Adam Short. Adam, it's good to be back and to talk all things in AR, and there's so many things going on right now from the in AR and the politics to all of the scandals breaking to even things, as you and I were talking about beforehand, things that are coming down the park that we don't even yet have all the details to, and I look at the history that

I'm digging into, which is now I'm focusing primarily from 1965 to 1980s, and I look at everything that was created then and look at what's happening now, and basically it's just history repeating itself over and over again. Yeah, absolutely. Well, great to be back, John, always a pleasure, as always, and so yeah, lots happened, I think since you and I last did an episode and gosh, in some ways it feels like a year has passed just because it's been so much compression of just stuff in the fan, and probably anchoring that was the Firefly Iop KC report, which I know

you and Jed are kind of diving into that pretty extensively. Yeah, so you have that plus you had literally the same day, and I mentioned this with Melissa on our podcast in our last episode, how it was Monday, February 3rd, we had literally the three groups that I was a part of over the year. So Bethel, Iop KC, and Morningstar all had major momentous events happen the same day, February 3rd, and it's like, you know, I don't, I'm not laughing about it because it's not a laughing matter, but what I'm laughing about is you wonder, is this, is there coordination going

on because like you had the Iop KC report was released, and we were all, you know, expecting that in February 3rd, and it did APM Eastern plus or minus. Well, one hour before that, John, Bethel released their, it is technically a public statement, but it was specifically directed to the BSSM alumni of which I'm an alumni of that school, my wife and I, but it's interesting because it's a public statement, but they, they released it just to alumni, but it's public, so it's like just enough to be able to say it's public, but like not really a public statement out

center. So that happened also February 3rd, and then at Morningstar, another lawsuit was filed that same day. So it's just wild to look at just the volume of, you know, uncovering the scandals, but then also third party validation of what we knew to be true about Mike Bickle in the IHOP situation and then, and then Bethel, like, you know, finally making a public statement about Sean Bolts and the prophetic, the prophetic data mining as it were.

So a lot has happened to say the least. And I can say, you know, at least from the limited study that I have done, all of these NAR networks, that's really the power of the NAR as all of these networks connected to each other. Well, whenever one goes down and impacts the entire network, so they're all kind of watching to see because they know some are going to go down. They have to know that some have some dirty laundry that might get aired. So I have a feeling that, yeah, it's probably as connected to what extent I don't

know, but what's really odd is that we had the same thing to a smaller scale in the Brannem cults. Everybody had dirt on everybody. And in fact, Charles inherited some of the dirt from that his former pastor had collected on the other guys. And so these guys, they all know the dirty secrets. They don't say it, but they use it to their advantage during certain periods of time when the information is needed. But in the end, the problem is that they are all connected. Many of them know some very bad things about the others.

But nobody really steps up and does anything about it. And for me, if you're not stepping up and you're not protecting people, you're part of the problem. It's not 100% pure plain and simple, pure plain and simple. You have to really be on the guard of the people that you're trying to protect, if you're trying to protect them. And if you're not kind of a shepherd, are you exactly? And this brings back to my remembrance. And this is a conversation we've had my wife and I extensively. And then now some others who are a part of the, you know,

the group that we've been a part of here, the SSM processing group that my wife started. But it is this clip, this video clip, and Steve Cozar, I don't know if you familiar with Steve Cozar, the messed up church, shout out to him. He's been doing a lot lately here around these subject matters, right? So there's Sean Bolt stuff and then I hop and, and I mean, he's been calling the stuff out for years. But I've only been aware of him since here recently, past year. So anyway, he did a kind of a montage recently.

And in that montage is a video clip of Bill Johnson from Bethel, and I actually remember, I remember, I think I was president at Bethel when Bill said this, I think I could be remembering it correctly. But anyway, the clip is a bill basically saying of Mike Bickle, that Mike Bickle is one of the most important people alive. Okay. Right. And now to Bill's defense at that time, this was years ago that he said this, Bill probably maybe didn't know anything about Mike's double life. And you know, you want to give him the benefit of the doubt

for having not known that really dark stuff about Mike at the time. But here to your point, here's where this becomes a problem is like, now that it is public, and it's not just credible accusations slash allegations, it is now corroborated by a third party independent investigator that has done has released an actual report. Okay. We all knew it was true. You know, when the victims came out and shared their stories, but it's it's all been confirmed in this report that came out.

So the question becomes to your point, John, why is there absolute silence from Bill. Chris mentioned it once publicly last year and basically stood up and said, Mike Bickle's my friend, you know, I don't really care what he did. He didn't say it like that. He doesn't say I don't care what he did, but he's basically the gist is like, he's my friend. I love him. That's like, but don't you have a responsibility to come back to the table, come back to the stage and tell the body of Christ like, hey, this guy is not a safe person, you know, and stand up for victims.

And like you said, protect the people that are in their charge. And that's that's not happening. I don't expect it to happen at this point. Like I've lost all hope that that's going to happen.

Well, based on the structure and the history, I would say that it can't happen because so one of the things about a destructive cult is that it is destructive. And the people who are in it, if they were to critically think about how destructive it is and how wrong it is, just outright wrong, they would just get up and walk out because nobody inwardly who is in control of their mind wants to be in a cult, not even the people who are the victims in a cult.

But given the chance to think about it, they would get up and leave. And so in essence, the cult structure is like a house of cards. Cards are built. You pull one little card out, and the whole thing just starts to crumble. Well, think about the dynamics of a cult.

You have a group of people who believe that they're in a quote unquote movement. There's a movement. There's a movement by God. God is protecting as God is with us. And then you find out that one of the leaders is a predator. Well, that's going to instantly cause people to think, wait a minute, if God is leading this and the one who's helping to do the leading from the human side is a predator, is this movement by God. Suddenly you have this mass exodus, right? Yeah. Well, because of the inner networks, you've got all of these different entities and a federation who are networked together

through the inner networks that are all part of the global movement. So now you've got this on a much larger scale. One global leader falls, well, what about the rest of the movement that are all connected to each other, right? Yeah. And if you go back in history, go back to the laterane movement. The things that men knew about William Branham, men and women, the things that they knew and covered up and did not say is unbelievable. There are instances where you can find in the history, you can find somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 ministers rising up against Branham

himself saying, no, this is, this is wrong. What he's saying, this is, this is bad stuff. He's starting a cult. And then you can read, it turned in the, as it's forming what became the charismatic movement, many of the leaders in that movement started prophesying Branham's death because it was so wrong what he was doing. He said, it's gone into error. We prophesy he's going to die.

Interesting. He did die years later. But anyway, all this is out there, right? And this is the same movement that now supports him and uses him as a stepping stone. So his ministry was filled with wonderful signs and wonders and they give you the caveat. He went into error at the end.

A period of time that I'm talking about wasn't the end. It was 1955-ish. I want to say 55 or 15 years, that's 10 years before he died. 10 years before he died. And if you think of the timeline of Laterane, this is kind of in the middle, you know, Laterane late 19, what was it, 1948 through 49? Yeah, we're really personally magazine and all that stuff. Yeah, so you got from 49 all the way to 65. Well, this is half of it. This is not nowhere near towards the end. But see, the problem is they built a movement and he was actually one of the four runners of the movement. So if you pull

him out, now everybody who's in the movement critically thinks, wait a minute. This is one of the leaders and he's saying something horrifically wrong is the movement of God and they all start to walk out. Yeah, no, it makes sense. Like if that were to hit the fan and the mass crowds were to find that out. Yeah, it makes sense. Like you would have, it stands the reason you probably have a group of people that would stay to the end, right? That would just, and it kind of reminds me of If you've watched any of the documentaries of the David Kuresh, Waco Cult, which trigger

warning, of course, if you're sensitive to that kind of stuff, but I remember there was one documentary, it's been a couple of years since I saw it, but there were people that actually got out of the building when the ATF and the FBI were there, and David Kuresh let a select few people out of the building, it was because they had a really good FBI hostage negotiator who was able to convince David to let, and I don't remember how many people, but there were, there actually are some survivors that they interviewed who got out of the building and survived, and they got out before the building burned down.

And what's interesting though, this is great, this is, this really rocked me when I saw this in the interview. I don't remember her name, but she's probably in her 50s-ish now. She was a child at the time, and she was one of the children that was let out of the building, okay?

You had guns everywhere, you got the ATF, you got David back there in the building and his people who had guns, and it was just like, it was like a tender box, and the video shows her walking out, they have original footage of the girl walking out of the compound there, and then getting to safety.

Well, in the documentary they interview this woman, and I'm not faulting her, please understand, I am not faulting her, one Iota for believing this still. She was a victim of unbelievable, unspeakable, horrific things in a cult, but a cult on steroids, really a death cult, and, but even now, to this day, in her interview with the documentary people that interviewed her, she still was like, she still believed a lot of the things that they were taught way back, what was it, 30-something years ago, in the cult by David Krish.

It just goes to show how powerful this stuff gets, and how embedded this stuff gets in your mind. So I guess I shared all that to make the point back to what you were sharing, yes, I think there would be a mass exodus of people if that news were to break, and the mass crowds would know, hey, there's something really wrong here, leaders are involved in really dark stuff, thought them would leave, but then I think also there are people who are so committed and die hard that they actually might physically believe but still believe this stuff for many,

many years to follow, which is just wild. There's another little known fact about the Waco standoff, so the government knew that this was a cult and this was... mind control and that many of the people who were taking part in this were victims.

They were mentally captured. So one of the strategies that they used, they had these big blasting loudspeakers and they played Barry Manolo music over and over and over. Yep. Well, that was to try to get into the mind and get the mind to focus on something other than the cult leader.

If you're focusing on Barry Manolo and I think Nancy Sinatra's these boots are made for walking was also played. It's kind of funny. Think about it. But if you're thinking, if your mind is distracted and you start thinking, well, that enables the critical thinking and the critical thinking helps to the escape.

I remember that. That was in the documentary. They actually showed they have original footage and it must have been FBI footage or ATF. I don't know. Or maybe it was the media. It could have been the media.

I actually kind of think of it. Some of the media tapes from their cameras. They were allowed to be there behind the line. But yeah, they had they showed those speakers they had up and this is God awful way.

Well, I mean, to me, it was God awful. Maybe somebody I'll love that music, but it's probably a step up and improvement from what they were hearing behind closed doors in that building. That's for sure.

So let's talk a minute about the one of the cult distractions, the one of the tactics that they use. And it works very well in the NAR networks is they will throw around the phrase guilt by association.

And remember, this is an NAR network. These guys are network together. So they are associated, right? And if one of the falls, then they immediately, if you're in one of the cults in the network and one of the others falls, immediately they start pointing fingers at anybody who connects the two and say, no, you can't do this.

This is guilt by association. I get it all the time because almost everything that I do on the history that I go through is connections, I'm finding connections that helped grow the movement and help it become what it is.

They make sense. Yeah. So Mike Bickle falls, well, now you've got Paul Kane, you've got John Paul Jackson, you've got all of these guys who were connected through Kansas City Fellowship, then you've got like the Bethel guys, the clips that were played, Mike Bickle is one of the greatest heroes ever, right?

Right. Well, when Mike Bickle falls, then anybody who's in any of the cults of personality that are connected to him, let's say, no, that's guilt by association, you can't do this. Right. So I'll throw this out there is a weird comparison.

So Morningstar Ministries, we have seen all of the guilt by association things that they've said. It finally comes up and you've got the promotion, the restoration, and you say, no, that's guilt by association, he just restored him, but say that that continued and got aggressively worse, to the extent that every...

Audi is suddenly aware that, no, this is a very destructive cult. I'm not saying that it is. You can make up your mind whether it is or not, but say that it got to that level where everybody's condemning Morningstar.

And Morningstar has this magazine. What does it call? I think it's the Morningstar Journal or Journal, yeah. Yeah, something like this, right? Well, yeah, they have the prophetic journal. Yeah. So say they've got the primary newsletter or magazine, whatever it is.

And the whole Christian world has said, this is a destructive cult, beware. Well, if you were to suddenly say, hey, I want to go and interview and be on the Morningstar Journal and show them my support, just not long after they get called out.

Well, that's supporting it, right? You would never do this. Be the same thing as trying to think of a good hardcore example, but say one of the Christian, popular Christian theologians, you take your pick of the name.

If you were to suddenly go to an atheist newsletter because the atheist newsletter says, hey, I want to interview for our front page cover of our magazine, will you do it? Do you think he would even do it?

Probably not, right? Because you don't want to associate yourself and show support for something that you know is wrong. So as I'm looking through the foundation of what created the NER now, I'm looking through, and we've talked about this before, but this people of Destiny magazine is one thing.

I'm going through, who is that from? Who issues that? So this one is from, what's his name? Tom Zach, Larry Tom Zach. Any name or is it Bill? I don't know him though. Yeah, so it basically became later, what was it called, they grew into a movement called the Sovereign Grace Churches, that's what it's called.

They grew into the Sovereign Grace Churches, but there was a period of time, whenever, so after William Branham died, the destructive cult didn't disappear. It just re-emerged in various locations. One of them was through Branham's campaign manager, Ern Baxter.

Baxter helped create what's called the Shepherding Movement. He and five other guys. And there came a point in time in which it became so incredibly destructive. They were, some of the shepherds were actually telling people what their congregants were allowed to buy and sell, who could get married.

They were, they were, they were, It sounds familiar though. Yeah, it sounds familiar. They were, they were requiring money sometimes for cover-up of sands. You, you donate to your pastor. You'd have to, your money would have to flow a certain direction.

I mean, it was weird what happened. And there were even, there's allegations of sex. abuse. It's a minute matches exactly what we see today, right? Right. Yeah. So there is a period of time in which this was a, this was a huge entity in the charismatic movement. It was in the charismatic network, kind of like we have the NAR network today. Well, it came a point of time in which many of the charismatic leaders recognize, hey, this is even more destructive than my group. I don't want to take the fall with them when they go. So they started calling them out. Pat Robertson is one of

the guys that called them out and says, no, this is horrifically destructive, right? Well, what happened is right after he's called out John Wimber and a few other charismatic leaders went and started interviewing and holding conferences and basically claiming we want to bring unity back to this movement and went to the primary publication, which was new wine. And also this people of destiny, which was connected to the Shepherding movement. It's not a Shepherding newsletter, but many of the leaders in this were in the same network. So you've got people like Larry Tomzack and you've got C. Peter Wagner's in here, C. J. Bainey, who was also, I think he's

also sovereign grace, but Lauren Cunningham is in here. I mean, there's some big names. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Big names connected to this. And what they're doing in this magazine when it formed is they're preaching the basically the structure of the Shepherding movements of Thorotarian control was a common theme in this. So here you've got a movement who is creating an authoritarian control structure, the Shepherding movement. And you've got through the network, all of these other people who are saying, Hey, we like this authoritarian structure. So guilt by association is it can be thrown around. Yes, this may be guilt by association,

but if you have people who are supporting the themes that are presented in the magazine, it goes a little bit beyond guilt by association. Okay. Yeah. And when you throw some of those names out too, it provides some concrete sort of context for me, even though I was not born when all that, you know, the Shepherding movement happened and stuff. I was not around, but I was very much around for the sort of offshoots that I, and I don't know the history of this. So you have to correct me if I'm wrong, but like you mentioned Lauren Cunningham, you know, which he was the founder

of Y-Wam. And right, we're talking about the same Lauren Cunningham, right? The founder of Y-Wam. Yeah. Yeah. So you've got that sort of offshoot. And then what was the other one? Oh, yeah, C-Peter Wagner, which I don't know a whole lot about him, but like he was very much like sort of a predecessor or...

for father, if you will, of the current charismatic movement we're in. And even like quasi recently as 2008, when he was up on the stage in Lakeland, Florida, that bear with Bill and all kind of people, all these different, I forgot who I was there.

I went to the Lakeland Revival in Florida where Ty Bentley was preaching. And so remember this, but you got C. Peter Wagner, you got Bill Johnson, you got, and y'all have to remind me who else was on that stage.

I can't remember right now, but they were basically giving their apostolic blessing to commission Ty Bentley as a legit, like he's a legit commissioned apostle here that's running this revival. And of course, it was shortly after that, that the news broke about the affair.

But I'm guessing making the point that the Guilt by Association, but it's more than Guilt by Association, isn't it? Because the people that architected the movements went on to create their large organizations and their own influence, that we now find ourselves a part of today or used to be a part of in modern times.

So it's quite clear to draw that thread back and historically connect the dots, like you're saying you've been doing. I think that's necessary. I think one of the biggest takeaways for me is to learn, hey, you didn't just wake up one day and get dropped into a movement that has no history.

You actually got dropped into a movement with a lot of history. No matter what the movement is, whether it's Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, you name it, Lutheran, NAR, they're all gonna have their history. They all came from previous leaders, previous thought leaders and divisions and splits and offshoots and the rest of it.

So I think we would be remiss to not at least look at the history of where do we come from here? Where did this, we take for granted certain practices and beliefs and we're like, oh, that's just what we do.

But you have to stop and say, well, where did that come from? Where did that practice come from? And it turns out a lot of it came from, as you're saying, previous versions that have now been repackaged and propagated as something else, but we know that it's very much connected.

Absolutely. And even if you read the magazine itself, it's helping you make these connections for you because I'll take one page in particular. And this issue is the one that I'm really focusing on.

It's moving in the power of God, signs, wonders and miracles. This is the one where John Wimber basically created the battle cry for all of these guys. He created the slogan, we're building an army, not an audience.

And that slogan was used in, any conventions by these guys afterwards. And some names of like Bob Wiener's in here. Oh, okay. You just, you'd be shocked at the people that are all connected to this, but.

What are their names out of curiosity? Do they mention anybody else? I'm just really super curious. Yeah, so basically you can take pretty well any name in the charismatic movement. You're gonna find some connection.

Maybe not directly, there will be, so there will be some who don't want to be associated. So you can't cry guilt by association because they didn't associate with them, right? But so going backwards to some of the things that we've talked about in this magazine, the one that John Wiener creates the battle cry.

He says we're building an army, not an audience. And that basically became used in many of the conferences that networked these guys together. In that particular issue that really started this thing into what became the NAR, it's advertising here are some books that we recommend for you to read.

One of them is by FF Bosworth, who came out of the John Dowie cult. He was a leader in another cult. And so they're advertising his book, Christ the Healer. Another one, Gordon Lindsay, who was, you know, he's the leader of Christ for the nations, but he was also William Brannum's campaign manager and he was a keynote speaker in Christian identity conferences.

And you know, they felt a mention that when they want you to read his book, T.L. Osborne, they recommend that you read his book called Healing Sick. Osborne believed that William Brannum was God in the flesh and openly declared it in 1966.

You've got all things are possible, David Edwin-Harrill. It's basically his book, a description says the important figures include oral Roberts, William Brannum, Gordon Lindsay, and T.L. Osborne. So this is like the summation of all of the different cults that are created.

So if you understand the cults that this movement was built upon, then understand that when Brannum came, and he brought unity to all of these groups, and he started saying things like we're building an army, and they began to use term, military terms, like invading, we're invading the youth culture.

So here's your good book with Lauren Cunningham's youth culture. I mean, there's all kinds of connections in here that you just wouldn't believe. But in the end, what happened is the battle cry for the military slogans.

Having a military slogan is not that bad. Whenever I'm doing business, sometimes I'll say, yes, we need to invade this sector, maybe. That's different than what where John Wember imbed it up. He started saying that any who are in opposition to this movement will die.

That goes a lot farther than just simply... by using a military slogan. That's a pretty loaded statement. And then if you look at what Mike Bickle said about Joel's army, so you've got John Wimber, let's build an army, you've got Faulcane, who worked with Wimber, who's bringing back and resurrecting Joel's army, then look at some of the things that Mike Bickle said about what will be the outcome of this army, and it was very militarized.

Yeah, there was a ton of language and teaching Iop about Joel's army, and it made its way out into other branches, even at Bethel. And I remember people like Lou Engel with the call, and he would come to Bethel sometimes, but even pre-Bethel, I sort of was influenced by Lou Engel's teachings because he would talk about Joel's army, well, he would talk about the army language, I don't know if he specifically talked about Joel's army, I can't remember, but there was definitely a lot of the army language in there, so, and even the worship music, I remember Rick Pino,

there was, I loved Rick Pino, frankly, still love his music, but there's army stuff in that, and I think even like Dutch sheets, let's talk about army stuff, so it's like, okay, where did that come from, and I think you're making the point, this is where it came from.

I mean, but here's what, it should be the devil's advocate for a second, but what if somebody says, but that's actually in the Bible, so it's in the Bible, isn't there a reference to Joel's army, or isn't there a verse in the Bible about that, maybe not, but what do you do with that?

And I think, and I'm just being, I'm just trying to poke you a minute, because it's like, okay, for the people that are saying, well, hey, what if it's in the Bible, these guys are just teaching what's in the Bible, and I think I know the answer to my question, which is, it's not that it's in the Bible, it's that you took it as a message, as a way to rally people behind your so-called mission, and then it became, it really became a harmful effect, and a harmful mission, because of all of the abuse that happened, but I'm curious

what you think about that, like, you know what I mean, like, what do you do with the fact that stuff like this does show up in the Bible, it's like, it doesn't legitimize it, I guess maybe it makes the point that people took it and exploited it, right, or what would you say to that?

Well, so the first thing, Dutch Sheets, when we talk about the spider web of connections, Dutch Sheets was, for a brief period of time, executive director, I think it was, at Christ for the nation, Gordon Lindsay's Institute, so he's part of this, right?

But to your point, yes, the Bible has language about wars and invasions, and if you read the Old Testament... you understand what it is. It's more than a book. The Bible is a library of books.

And some of that library includes histories. So it has histories of wars and battles. Much like if you were to read American history, you're going to read that America's had some battles, right? What's missing is the context. These guys that are preaching the wars, they often tie it to modern events and modern situations where there is a much better scripture that's applicable.

And what they try to do because there's a lot of power in engaging an audience if you can get them to rally against something. That's why they use the tones and the phrases and the verbiage that they use. You get the people angry at something and well that something is their focus. Now they've got a focus. They've got a target. Let's build an army instead of an audience.

And let's focus on that, which is exactly what Wimber has instructed these guys to do. But if you take biblical context away, you can make it say anything you want. I could read.

There's a passage where God instructs a prophet to eat dung. So what if instead of using a military passage, I engaged an audience and I said, okay, we're all going to go home and we're going to eat some things that you're not going to enjoy.

Exactly. It's the same type of thing, right? I'm taking that scripture out of context. The difference is nobody's going to do it. Nobody's going to go home and eat it. But if you rally them against them, it's not really a very motivating tagline to say, hey, all we all need to go eat some dung.

It's your point. That's a great answer because look at what the devil himself did with Jesus. He quoted the Bible. If you truly are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread.

And he was referencing the devil was actually quoting the Bible. He was weaponizing the Bible, wasn't he? But then Jesus returned his answer by stating that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, which I believe is Deuteronomy 4.8, if memory serves. So Jesus quoted it back to him. So it's like the moral of the story isn't, hey, y'all got up on a stage and quoted the Bible. Good for you.

And you rallied a movement of millions of people. The moral of the story is, what was the heart and the intention behind using the Bible to motivate people? Like,

were you, did you intend to or was your motive or was your end goal to create this movement that put you on a platform that, that incidentally resulted in you- making a lot of money to why you're at it.

So, you know, and then now you look at it, and it's like the church is a business. And maybe it was a business back then during the time frame you were talking about, but now it's really a business.

And it's so easy because you've got the internet, you've got all the different channels and platforms and this, that and the other. And like before you know it, your Bethel church and you've got $80 million in revenue, and that was a two year old figure.

So it could be maybe approaching a hundred million. And that doesn't even hold a candle to daystar. Daystar is purportedly a $1 billion organization. It's like, how did we get here again? And I think that's kind of what you're trying to uncover here with these historical connecting the dots to real people, real events who had real teachings that resulted in our church world being shaped quite dramatically by what they thought and did.

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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So there's a reason why I chose the term weaponized religion for the last two of my books. So if you take the Bible, which is a, like I said, it's a library of books.

It's a collection of books. It has many things in it. There are good things in it. There are bad things in it. There are people who do good for the world. There are people who do bad for the world.

If you teach it in such a way that you can take any phrase because it's in the Bible and apply it to a Christian, where do you go with that, right? So if you take, for example, there are long passages where Jesus is telling Christians how to be and how to live.

And it says, if your brother faults you, how many times you forgive him seven times, you know, 70 times seven, right? You're constantly loving, you're constantly forgiving. That was the Christian theme that Jesus was bringing.

But now in these churches today, they're saying, what do we do about the opposition? The opposition has risen up, and they disagree with our politics. So we need to invade the Seven Mountains. We need to conquer them.

We need to bring war against the enemies. And in the end, I think there will come a time whenever this whole movement realizes the absurdity of it, because you cannot convince people that you are intent on doing good if you're forcibly trying to change somebody's opinion, because you cannot forcibly change somebody's opinion.

A person who's forcibly changed, they're still the same opinion. You've just showed dominance over them. So whoever is out there, who they've conquered, they're going to eventually rise up and reconquer. And Jesus came along in the New Testament and said, no, we have a better way.

Let's show them love. Let's fight these battles with love. So you've got the whole NAR, which has this very militarized version of Christianity. They want to create militant followers. Like Wembers said, we want to create an army, not an audience.

They truly want an army. But that's not what Jesus said. We want disciples who go out and show love, and rather than these big, massive amounts of money flowing through it, Jesus said, when you go out, take nothing but the clothes on your back.

I'll provide everything for you. It's totally opposite from what they have in the NAR. Yeah, totally opposite. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I mean, look, the disciples kind of try to do the same thing, where they, and the bigger crowds, like when Jesus made his entry into Jerusalem, writing in on document, I think the general public thought that Jesus was going to come and take over the government, right?

And he was going to set himself, behold, the king of the Jews is what they said, and they waived the palm branches, and it's like, well, yeah, he's the king of the Jews, but he didn't come in here to, like, take over anybody.

He actually came here to give up his life. And we have, we have just missed the whole point, like, and like getting back to the seven mountain stuff, like, oh my gosh, absolutely. The seven mountains is, it really is this domination.

It is dominionism. It is. And I think a lot of people have a sincere desire to influence for good, like, to come in and the business world or the government world or whatever it is, education and science are, you know, and try to bring in the kingdom of God, but you're missing the forest for the trees because if Jesus were here, he would, I think, turn over a lot of tables first of all.

Come to your church and be like, hey, why? I don't sell in millions of dollars in merch and CDs and royalties and everything else. And by the way, your pasture flies a jet or it's got a nice Aston Martin or, you know, sports car.

Like, hey, you know, we didn't really do that when I was on Earth. Y'all might have gotten this low wrong. I mean, you start to fasten out the donkeys. I mean, look at Jesus.

He came in. So, we don't even know what that means in modern culture like, yeah, yeah, he rode in on a on a donkey, but that'd be like us today. That'd be like riding in on a one of those three-wheeled tuk-tukes that they drive in Asia.

I've been to Asia. I've seen them. They're like little bitty pickup trucks and it's kind of like a van in the front. You got two, you got three feet seat or three people sitting in the front and then there's a little bed in the back.

Sometimes they cram all kind of stuff like bags of rice and people sit in it and whatever else. That's a tuk-tuk. Jesus would have ridden a tuk-tuk straight on into Jerusalem today, not an Aston Martin or a Learjet.

Okay. Y'all. Well, it resembles very much what happened during the Spanish Inquisition. They went out and they tried to forcibly convert everyone. Well, you can't forcibly convert somebody and history has proven this psychologically as, you know, you just simply can't do it.

You, a person who's convinced against their will is of the same opinion still. That's interesting. I've been down to Mexico. I have seen places where this, you know, the result that was created was you had weird things, man.

I don't know if you've been there and seen some of the statues that they make, but I've spent time in Mexico, several areas of the country. Yeah. So they, they came in right and they tried to convert everybody to Catholicism.

And so what you ended up with was the snake god, whatever I'm drawn a blank on what the name of that snake god is, but the snake god is part of the, the Christianity sculptures that are made.

I've seen some weird, weird things. Oh, yeah. Like the syncristic, like maybe it was the Aztec. Was it the Aztec? Yeah. Aztec's mind. I mean, it basically all across the, you know, all across the Southern hemisphere.

But the concept is the same, right? So the NAR has this seven mountains mandate and their goal is basically to rise up in each one of those seven, quote unquote, mountains and overpower the opposition.

So in other words, instead of convincing the people that your way is better, let's instead increase the numbers so that we overpower them and our vote has a heavier weight than their vote. Well, you're not convincing the other side.

And as soon as they, you know, procreate, that side builds up, that battle will always rage. But Jesus said there's a better way. Let's convince them. Let's show them through love that our way is better.

Right. So it will never end in the strategy that they are. I think they're going to accomplish. It will never be successful. Yeah, it will never end. I mean, it's like there's nothing new under the sun.

We as people try to do that when Jesus is here, we'll probably keep trying doing that long after we're gone. But it still matters to talk about this stuff and call it out and draw attention to it.

To hopefully pull the blinders off of a few people to see what they're in, right? And see, hey, I might be in something that's got some pretty dark roots. And maybe it would warrant us getting back to the basics, like you said, to love.

And I mean, honestly, people can feel if you love them and you care, as opposed to if you're trying to convince them of changing their opinion. I'll never forget, I will give credit to Bethel on this.

There was a saying at Bethel, when we'll give credit, or credit to do. But the saying was, if you can talk, or how did it go? You can talk a man out of an argument, but you can't talk a man out of an encounter.

So, and that's kind of personal to me because nobody could ever talk me out of the encounters I've had with God. I don't care how smart you are, I don't care what argument you've got, doesn't matter.

I know what happened to me. I know I encountered him. He changed my life. And I believe in him still. And I understand that not everybody does. That's fine. I know a lot of people who have fully deconstructed out of their faith, they don't believe in God anymore, I have no problem with that whatsoever.

I don't have any problem if you believe in a different religion, whatever. But for me, that is a personal experience I had. No person gave it to me. No person can take it away from me.

And it's far deeper than even a cognitive belief and something. It is actually, I don't want to use the word existential because that word has got other connotations that aren't as good. But it is an existential molecular life altering experience.

And so back to your point like, what would happen if we did get back to the simplicity of, hey, people just, at the end of the day, people just want to be loved, all of us, that matter where we're from, but plan it, we were born on, or anything else.

So let me give you an example of how absurd this is. And this one strikes home with me because I'm a fan of fiction and cartoons and comics as we've mentioned. Well, when they try to conquer these mountains and they try to convince people that they are conquering them for the good of Christ, because of the way that this thing has been built up in the NAR and we're talking now in the history of the charismatic movement, what they try to do is demonize the enemy.

So we're the good guys. They have the demons. We need to go conquer them. And they bring invisible enemies into the scenarios. So they start saying that these people are bringing in witchcraft. These people are bringing in, who knows what, right?

And it's very... easy to do whenever you're talking about the mountains of entertainment, because that's what entertainment is. If you read King Arthur, King Arthur, and the Sword in the Stone mythology, well, you've got this whole magic thing that comes in with Merlin, well, they can say Merlin is evil.

Merlin, you're letting your kids worship the evil to anybody who understands that fiction is fiction. They would just simply laugh at him and say, no, you guys are freaks. Well, they have a whole two page spread on He-Man, and what they're saying is that, and again, He-Man is fiction, guys.

It's not real, but they're saying that there's pagan occultism in these cartoons and toys, and what it's doing is it's converting your children to the occult. Don't go on it, He-Man, why'd you have to do that?

Well, and you look at the history of it, right? So years later, they did the same thing with Harry Potter, which is great fiction, if you want. Basically everything that I love, all of the fiction, the fantasy, the sci-fi, it's all evil, man.

You know what, it reminds me, this is hilarious. It's kind of off topic, but it's related. I got to say this, I got to give a shout out to Brian Regan, the comedian, have you heard of him?

No. Okay, if you ever get a chance, Brian Regan, anyway, he's a hilarious comedian, so there's one little sketch he did where he's like, I went to the doctor, and the doctor said to lay off dairy, and then the whole list of other stuff, like all this stuff that he loved to eat, and he's like, the punchline was, away with your happiness, and it's like the funniest punchline ever, and that's what I thought of when you say that, like all the stuff I love, they just demonized it, and they wanted me to like get it out of my life

because it's... Well, if you think about it, I mean, so the reasons why they're able to do this, whenever you're thinking Christianity, you're thinking good, and when you think evil, you think of all of the things that are violating the 10 Commandments, well, you can really apply this to everything, so in a Western, you've got bad guys who are robbing stage coaches, they're violating the 10 Commandments, that's evil.

We shouldn't allow our elders to watch this because the evil spirit of stealing is going to get on them. Where does it end? Right. You can't make it end, it turns into a straw man argument, it's what it becomes.

Well, and I think too, it's back to a fundamental question of, can you legislate morality? Of course, we want to have laws that are good and bad need to be defined very clearly in our laws, of course, right?

But you start to conflate the legislative and legal framework of our country with the Laws that are found in the Bible and then by extension, we think that we can impose that and legislate that as Christians in these systems. And that's really when it comes down to it, I think that is actually legalism, isn't it? Because yeah, if you're trying to back to your point about imposing on people and exerting it upon people externally, like, that never really will take. That never really will work. I mean, you might get compliance externally, but at a heart level, right? Has there been any fundamental transformation

that's happened? And that's why Jesus' message is just different than any other message out there, I think, because in my opinion, now somebody probably disagrees with that. But like, from the inside out, you're getting transformed rather than this imposition of legislation, is legislation of morality? Well, and that's just it, right? So as this movement was being birthed, it was being birthed with signs, wonders, and miracles was the theme. It wasn't to love that Jesus was bringing in the New Testament. Literally, it was saying, if you follow all paths out to its logical conclusion, we're going to have so many signs, wonders, and miracles in

this movement that we're going to convince the world that Jesus is the true God, that Christianity is the true religion, and everybody who is of God will come into this and the end of the world will happen. That's literally, if you follow out to its logical conclusion, that's what it is.

We're bringing down heaven by showing these signs, wonders, miracles. And that's not what Jesus said to do. He said, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign. And these, so these are like directly in conflict with what Jesus was saying. So in the end, the whole movement, you have to really take a step back and say, is it of God? And to the point that you were making earlier, so you've got these movements, you've got these leaders who are following and you've got what looks to let be somewhat of a collaboration between them. Well, think of what's happening.

They've got a movement that's advertising. Signs, wonders, miracles. You have one entity fall. Now you have to wonder, well, where their miracle is real. If this is a predator and God clearly, this was not a move by God. I'll just say it like that. Where does his miracles come from?

It becomes the he-man argument, right? So they're bringing in the witchcraft, so we should denounce that. And you can't do it because they're pillars in the NAR network. You have to not, you can't demonize the people who truly should be demonized because they're all part of the network. Yeah. And like it reminds me of how many times lately over the past year and a half since the Mike Bickle stuff hit the fan. You've got leaders standing up in their various platforms, telling the little people, the little peon peasants, like us saying, y'all need to stop talking about this.

You know, you're gossiping, and it's a Darvo, it's 100% Darvo, deny attack, reverse victim, and offender, D-A-R-V-O, since when did it become ethical for the person that did the abuse to flip the tables around and call the people that are calling them out on it as the abusers, right?

And that's what they're doing. And then it's like, oh, we all need to attack the people that are speaking out because they're the problem. Are you serious? Like that's where we're at. Like we're very much in the thick of that right now.

I am in it every day. My wife is in it every day when we're trying to do our little bitty part to pull the curtain back and push the tide forward and try to help people to have the victimized and harmed.

Well, every person who's doing their little part helps towards the larger goal. Yeah, so I hope, I think it does, I think you're right, but sometimes you do feel like you get a set back.

It's like, is this worth it? Well, this has been fun. We've went all over the place. We literally went from all of the weird events happening at Bethel to He-Man. So hopefully somebody's got something out of this.

Man, if not anything entertaining at least, right? Exactly. 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, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

For more information, you can find us at www.William-Branum.org. www.William-Branum.org