Breaking the Spell: Questioning the Foundations of IHOPKC and Branhamism - David Fish

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 very special guest, David Fish, pastor and researcher. David, it's good to have you on here. I only want to say it was last, what was it? Thursday or Friday. I came across your Twitter feed talking about being formerly involved with IHOPKC to some extent and Branamism and you reflecting on all of the the journey that you have made and I thought it would be great to have you

come on and just talk about that journey. So maybe if you could tell everybody a little bit about yourself and how you came to come into contact with all of this. Yeah well John first and foremost I'm honored to be here. I love so much of your work and it's beautiful because as I look over your channel and your podcast there's people from so many different perspectives which I think is great and so what I say will probably be very different from what a lot of other former IHOPKC people would say and you know some different perspectives on

you know the NAR or the neo-charismatic movement or whatever terminology we want to use but I appreciate that you you give a lot of space for different voices so I'm I'm thankful to be here and and yeah I mean I grew up from day one in a charismatic church and you know I would say I would say a solid church in many ways and my parents were or pastors and great people so I I don't look back like many people to kind of a very manipulative or coercive childhood I never really felt that but we were definitely in what I would term the

neo-charismatic movement and and so within that I grew up hearing all of the stories I mean I knew all the names I knew Branham I knew A.A. Alan Jackco T.L. Osborne I mean you you go down the list I knew of them and and then as I grew up to be a young adult when I was in my really in my early teenage years 13 14 15 I started to get really deeply involved with IHOPKC really from a distance at first just listening to Mike Pickle's teachings I mean I devoured everything I would I would I would this was the kind of kid I was I would fall asleep listening to Mike's series on the book of revelation

which was like, you know, 200 sessions long, you know, and so you know that that brought me deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of the prophetic history and Paul Kane and Bob Jones and and all of that and eventually I would start going to IHOP KC every year for conferences, I went to their youth camps called ATC which was hundreds of teenagers who all knew the names Bob Jones and Paul Kane, so what a weird group of teenagers, you know, to get it in a room but but I was very very deeply deeply impacted and later on my wife and this was we didn't meet at IHOP KC but she was a three year former IHOP U student as well so we kind of shared

that history so yeah that that's a 30,000 foot view of kind of how I ended up in in IHOP KC in kind of the broader we call it the prayer movement it's kind of what we call it which is its own animal and yeah and then I I started on the journey as I shared in my in my post on Twitter or X or whatever they call it these days you know a couple of years ago once really really about a year ago I think I started to have questions a little earlier but really about a year ago when the Mike Pickle news broke it was like for so many people a moment of I need to reexamine not necessarily everything I believe though I respect the the people that have gone on that journey for me it wasn't let me reexamine everything I believe but it's let me examine everything that's tied to this particular tree

and so that's kind of been what I've been doing for the last you know a year and a half or so awesome with say fun scary terrifying and a lot of work type of journey to go down I can assure you I did um whenever I started my journey I did really start from the ground up I tried for several years not to I wanted to just you know the phrase I hate the phrase and I've had to say it a couple of times in the podcast but don't throw the baby out with the bath

water in my case the bath water was so dirty man I didn't want the bath water right so there came a point from me I want to say it was seven years in that I finally decided okay I'm starting with the blank slate what is Christianity give me Christianity 101 and I started just finding everything that I could find for it and against I read everything I'm literally just taking it all in and in some ways that scary because you don't know where you're going to end up but in other ways it has helped what I do now because like you said I have a wide variety of people that come on of all different beliefs and it's always funny when I see that first person comment who doesn't understand that it is a variety of people and so if I have a guest that say is anti-carsman

and they hear the guests, they think that I am too. You see it all in the comments, right? Or vice versa, you see both sides. So I've learned that I can learn something from everybody if you'll just open up and talk and examine what we say.

So it makes an interesting platform to say the least. But so you had quite a history just in what you said. I remember listening to those types of series on revelations from random that I listened to at night.

And I'd go to sleep to it thinking that it was so blessed to be sleeping to the screaming voice and all of this end of day's theology. What was that like for you? I guess during it and afterwards, after you realize what this was, knowing that the focus wasn't really something healthy to go to sleep to.

I mean, certainly not. You know, with Mike, I think that's what set Mike apart from even the William Brannems. Or, you know, if you were to look at Mike's demeanor and his personality, if that's all you had to work on, you would say this guy's not connected at all to the healing revivals of the 40s and 50s, right?

Because like you said, Brannem, and even though Brannem was known to be more stuff spoken, he's still, he could get going when he was preaching and he could start, you know, raising his voice.

And, you know, the majority of those guys, the Jack Cows, the A-Allens, you know, it was yelling, it was flamboyant, it was showmanship. And I think that's where so many people got drawn into Mike is if you watch Mike's demeanor was very even keel.

He was not like a screamer, he was not, you know, so and he would also say a lot of the right thing, right? So I'm sure people have told you, Mike every year would give a teaching called the seven signs of a cult.

And he would teach you about what a cult is. And of course, the whole point was, we're not everything that I'm teaching. So you're safe and you're good and everything's fine. But, you know, with Revelation, it was a very particular pre-millennial, you know, intense expectation.

And really, that's what motivated all of IHOP KC. The word, I think a lot of us would use is everything was about urgency, which I know was similar in a lot of the random cults.

There was always something coming really soon. And there wasn't necessarily a lot of definition always about what that is. But, you know, and Mike would always go back and forth, he would clearly, and I would, I will assert this confidently, he would clearly wink at you and say that the return of Jesus was going to happen in his lifetime.

There is no doubt in my mind from his words that he not only believed this, but wanted... you to know that he believed this. And again, he would always say, I can't predict it, but this is the generation where the Lord will return.

I mean, that's, you know, that goes. As I'm sure you've gotten into before and we might could get into again, that goes into the latter reign, that goes into the billion soul harvest, the end time revival, the manifested sons of God.

All of that is connected, but yeah, I grew up just kind of thinking, this is normal. And then I did start to realize just from talking to other friends and other Christians, you know, Mike's theology of, for example, the song of Solomon was not a normal thing that most people were into.

And so, you know, when you're in the prayer room and you're listening to the singers sing, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. You know, that's not the kind of worship song that you hear on the radio, you know.

And so I think I, oh, I think I did know at some level. This is a little bit different than I thought. But reading the prophetic history, I was just in awe. And again, the one of the biggest, I mean, there's no other word for it other than lie.

The one of the biggest lies that many of the senior leadership team at IHOP KC have tried to tell over the past, really over the past five years. No, it's more than that. Really the whole duration of IHOP, but especially once they were challenged by a particular group in 2014.

There was a group of students, all of which I knew, who went before the leadership and said, you are requiring us to believe in this prophetic history, which is Mike's private stories and revelations in order to be a part of this community.

And we don't want to do that. And they would always say, no, no, it's not essential. It's not essential. You know, but you couldn't stand up and say, you know, I don't believe that an angel visited Mike Bickel in Cairo, Egypt in 1983.

You know, I mean, for you to say would be to undermine everything, which is what really revealed that the prophetic history was the foundation of IHOP. And even if they didn't explicitly come out and say, you must believe this in order to be a Christian or in order to be a part of this community, it was understood.

And so I listened to all of these teachings and I believed that, you know, it was 80 degrees when Bob Jones met Mike Bickel wearing a giant fur coat. You know, and then all you have to do is type in March 7th, 1983, we have weather data and the weather didn't get above 50 degrees that day.

And you know, if you said 60 and it was 50, I get it. But if you said it was in the 80s, which is what Mike said and Bob Jones, and this is, in the whole point, this is supposed to be a prophetic sign.

The fact that Bob Jones is... wearing a huge fur coat and it's 80 degrees. That shows you, oh, Bob's a strange guy and God speaking, something unique here. Well, it was a cold day.

And so it wouldn't have been odd for him, you know, and then the unexpected comment, you know, I read about the comment. There's gonna be an unexpected comment that, you know, and then of course we learned that the comment had been seen long before Mike had said it was seen, you know, and so you go back now once you start questioning it.

And so anyways, as a kid, I was just enthralled by it. I thought it was amazing and it was very similar to what I read in these books about Brannum, right? You have the halo, you have all of the, his childhood experiences, you know, so really I would argue that Brannum is one of the earliest examples of a prophetic history that we see in this movement.

And I think Mike, whether consciously or unconsciously, was directly drawing on the persona that Brannum built around himself because the whole point is nobody can validate 90% of these things. And that's intentional. They are personal, many of the stories in the prophetic history are Mike alone in a room and a foreign country.

So there's no way that I can say that's wrong unless it has something falsifiable and very little of it is falsifiable. So anyways, yeah, I love that kind of stuff as a kid. And then once the allegations broke, I think myself and many of the other people who are impacted by the prayer movement just said, I'm gonna go from A to Z with the entire prophetic history with everything Mike taught.

And I'm gonna see that really holds up. You know, as a kid, that's just it. These movements focus on experiences. And if you're a child, you're wanting those experiences. So whenever they're telling them to you, you want it to happen to you.

And I remember the same thing. I'd hear these things and I'd go out and try to make them happen to me. And of course they didn't. But like you said, Brannum had a prophetic history.

It wasn't that Brannum was the first. Brannum was copying several others. John Alexander Dowey, for example, he used to go town to town with a satchel of people who claimed that they had been healed.

And he'd pull out a paper from the satchel and read it. Well, the movements also had, they have one thing in common from Mike Bickel to Dowey to Brannum, all of these guys. They create a tale that's woven through their version of Christianity.

So the tale and the Christianity becomes one and the same. And if you don't believe the tale, you're not a Christian in their minds. But then they spin it such a way that you can't prove, you can't prove a negative.

But they spin it in such a way that you have to really go down the path and prove that it didn't happen, which as you know, that's incredibly hard to do. But fortunately in today's world, we have newspapers and data.

and we have things that can kind of corroborate some of the stories or overturn them if they were fiction. Right, and that was really one of the other things, which I still, it would take, I really want to call up a department of religion in a major university and just say, I, if one of your PhD students is really desperate for a topic, I've got a gold mine that they could work on because one of the things that would take so much work, not only in terms of research, but also in terms of acquiring the necessary materials

is comparing and contrasting all of the different versions of the prophetic history because they changed sometimes significantly over time. And it was taught at so many separate points in the history of IHOPKC and not just IHOPKC, these stories were being told before, of course, with Kansas City Fellowship and everything that was happening before the foundation of IHOPKC.

And so it's one of those things where, and a friend of mine, Matt Hartke, he was the first one that began to notice how significantly the stories changed over time because there were certain, for example, obviously, there was predictions made early on in the prophetic history about a huge revival that would sweep over Kansas City.

Well, one of those predictions is made just before Mike gets persecuted, which is what we were always taught because I'm sure you've heard the story of Ernie Grillin and Ernie's the one who writes the, well, he gives the famous message, should we just keep smiling and not, whatever, whatever the title is, do we just keep smiling and say nothing?

And then he's also the one that writes the aberrant practices document, the famous aberrant practices document. Almost all of which is true and would remain true. But Mike, again, would cleverly spun that to us every time Ernie came and repented.

Ernie, what the interesting thing is, one, we don't really know if Ernie actually repented at all. We kind of, he did sign the paper, but things can be twisted in so many different ways.

And so from what I understand, there's a couple pieces. I think Ernie, if he repented, he repented for any harm he caused to the body of Christ, but he made it clear that his repentance was not saying that all of that stuff still wasn't true.

So that's where it got twisted to us was Ernie repented and therefore nothing he said in the document was accurate, which of course is totally false. The other aspect was Ernie himself had skeletons on his closet that ended up coming out at the end of his life.

And I can't prove this, but again, given what we know about the tactics. So for example, Jack Deer saying that Paul can... and recorded every conversation he ever had with anyone to store it as blackmail.

You know, my personal theory, which I've told people is, is I think that Mike maybe knew about Ernie's sin. And maybe that's where the sudden repentance came from. And I will never know. And I know I'm not totally attached to that theory, but it would make sense because it came out of nowhere and Ernie, to the end of his life, believe that what he collected in that document was true.

And then of course, a couple decades later, in a lot of ways, not necessarily Ernie's life because of getting out issues, but that document has been really vindicated in a lot of ways. Yeah, I won't go there as to whether the repentance was real or not, but I will say that I know from the men that was working with these guy, Paul Kane, is one of them.

They wanted so hard. They wanted so badly to find dirt on people. And why is that? Why would you need dirt? I know in a criminal world, why you would want to have dirt, but why in a religious world?

Why would you want to have dirt? And I'll just ask the question, and I'll leave it on the table. You know, people can see what they want. But these guys, like you said, these guys are inventing new stories.

They're spinning the fable differently. That was one of the things that hit me like a brick wall because whenever you think of something that's spiritual, it's really black or white, it's set in stone.

If it comes from God, it's not going to be ever changing. And so whenever we would hear one doctrine another, I would think, well, this was a message from God being sent through a human.

So therefore, it must be consistent. It can't be changing. Or otherwise, what kind of God is this man? And whenever I first discovered all of the different, the versions were so significant that it became different stage personas.

Whenever I discovered that there were different stage personas in each version of history at a different personality, even sometimes with different commissions and who knows what all else. I realized that number one, this whole thing was just a stage act.

But then I'm looking at, there's this video that's out there called, I think it's 20th century profit and follows up with another video that they come in a set called, Deep Call It To The Deep.

Well, you can see on the platform with this guy who's spinning all of these fables, hundreds of men, I don't know how many are sitting on the platform behind him, but in the audience, there are thousands of people.

Just in his campaign team and voice of healing alone, I think I've counted at one time, there was over 200 people that are all at one time in this big conglomeration. Well, these guys went to the same conventions over and over.

They heard the same different stage personas that I had recordings to hear, but the difference is, while I, I'm hearing them over and over and over and gradually getting this brainwashing. These guys would go on tours of their own.

So they would go listen to this guy tell story A, then they go off do their thing, they come back to the convention next year, will they hear the different stage persona telling a completely different fable.

So these guys all had to have known. There's no way that these guys didn't know. And none of them stood up and said, wait a minute, this is a bunch of malarkey. How can you say this is a God if you're making it up?

And so then the thought hit me, okay, out of this big mess, I struggled to believe that every guy in it was bad. I think there had to have been some good. But I also struggle to see any majority of good.

It seems like there's this big conglomeration of people who are just, they're in on it together, collaborating and finding dirt on other people, which again, I'm not going to go there. But the way this worked operated very much like organized crime.

Yeah, absolutely. And again, we, you know, when you read Jack Deers account of the way Paul Kane operated and the saddest part, of course, is it was even with his closest friends and his closest, you know, younger leaders that he was supposed to be mentoring.

And you know, this happened at the end of John Wimbler's life, you know, where the Kansas City prophets, in many ways, threaten Wimbler with prophecies to not say what he really thinks about them.

And you'd like to say why couldn't Wimbler and other people have just recognized that such a shady criminal behavior. But when you've seen again, and you'll understand this, there will always be things in the life of random.

And this is what people have to hear. There will always be things in the life of random or the life of Paul Kane or Bob Jones that are, that will never be able to be explained.

And because that's what people who are still on the inside hold on to, right? So Jack Deer will tell you that Paul Kane was one of the worst people that he's known in his life.

You read that article, but he'll say, Paul told me there would be an earthquake. And the next day there was an earthquake. And you think to yourself, there are always going to be those things, whether it's God, whether it's the devil, whether it's just a total random coincidence, whatever it is.

And so that, though, is what keeps people in so long is the one unexplained thing. Well, but I still can't get over that because again, when we look at random, you know, the prayer cards, right, you know, that that seems to be a very huge dominating up rationale behind his words of knowledge and his discernment ministry.

Now that we know what we know, but again, you'll meet that person that says, but Brannum told me something that no one could ever know. Yeah. And you can't deny that that happened, but I think what you have to do is say, you have to put that in the context like you said of, there was so much evil, so much coercion, so much manipulation that I think as hard as it is, we have to let certain things just live in the realm of mystery and not try.

Because again, I can't prove it was demonic. I can't prove it was God. It, you know, so I think you have to say, look at, and this is, I believe what Jesus says to do in Matthew 7 is look at the overall fruit of the tree.

And if one apple is 95% rotten, but there's one good bite, you know, you shouldn't call all your friends to come over to the apple tree. And you know, you could just say, I don't know why that one bite was good and the rest of it was rotten, but I do know every other time I bid into it, it was rotten.

And so I think, you know, particularly with Brannum, you cannot overstate how important Brannum was to every single prominent charismatic, neo-charismatic leader all the way from the mid 20th century to the 21st century.

It's like why was I as a 16 year old in all of this man? Well, my parents to their credit because they were, you know, they're great pastors and great people. They didn't teach me about Brannum.

They didn't inculcate me with Brannum, but our platform was open to the people on the traveling prophetic circuit. So this would be people like Paul Keith Davis, and people like James Maloney and others.

And you know, I remember James Maloney coming to our church and of course, this would be a fascinating episode on its own, how many different people have claimed the mantle of Brannum because Maloney was one who directly said, I am the descendant of Brannum, like I am the one.

And the way he said that was, the way he showed that rather was, he just literally did everything that Brannum did. So he came to our church, he grabbed the same hand that Brannum grabbed.

He said, he told us when the angel of the Lord arrived, so to speak, he gave words of knowledge, some of which were accurate, some of which were not. But, and he literally said, this is the same angel, right?

And of course, like, you know, I know you've pointed this out many times, they're the only one that can discern the angel. And so, you know, you can't stand up and go, wait, but I, you know, and so there is a, there is very much a dependence, which if I were to, And again, I'm not trying to deeply psychoanalyze because every single one of these individuals were different, but I do think for a large amount of them, there was just an ache for significance and how good does it feel for everyone to have to ask you when the angel is here

and when the angel's not here? And there would be a big kind of, there would be a big emphasis on, we can't start healing yet because the angel is not here yet. And so you'd have to wait.

So you're just sitting there like, first of all, when you think about it, as a pastor, I think to myself, wait, so God can't just heal people. Like we have to wait until the angel gets here to mediate and so it really becomes, it's funny because you think about how brand-um and most of the healing revivalists were rabidly anti-Catholic, you know, just, I mean, to the nth degree.

And yet their actual theology was in many ways very much, very Catholic in the sense of, they believed that they were mediators of God to the people. And so I made another post on X the other day where I compiled, and it took me five minutes, it could have been an hour long, I compiled at least, I don't know, seven or eight clips of brand-um saying, do you believe in me as a prophet?

If you do, you'll be healed. Yeah. And so there was not just, and of course, the people will point out, well, you also said, you must believe in God and believe in Jesus. And that was the genius or whatever you want to say of brand-um was, he would say all of those things.

I believe, and again, who knows, I mean, I'm sure, I don't know what your take would be. I believe knowing that people would pick out the one thing out of it that he wanted them to pick out, which was that he was a prophet of God.

And I told people, I posted the quotes, he literally says, if you believe that I am God's representative, the tumor will leave. Right. And that is a completely unbiblical, completely foreign to all of church history.

And again, I say very Catholic, just in the sense of, not as a criticism of Catholics, but just whatever they thought Catholicism was, they had created their own version in that, they set themselves up as mediators in a way that they would have found distasteful if it was coming from someone else.

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.

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So I've traced the history of Christian identity. I came across this book, which is a great book if you haven't read it. Michael Barkun's Religion in the Racist Right. And it wasn't specifically written about this, although he does mention Branum in it whenever he begins talking about the two-seed doctrine of Christian identity.

He's going more towards the militant version, how it began its origins, et cetera. But he had not yet made the leap because Barkun did not yet realize that Gordon Lindsay, who was founder of Christ for the nation's Branum's campaign manager, Gordon Lindsay was a keynote speaker in several identity conferences.

So he wasn't able to connect all this together. But the theology that emerged from it was heavily anti-Catholic because as the Christian identity was going forward, they were teaching people that there would be a war.

They were joining together the manifest sons of God, doctrine from early versions of Laterane. So we must be militant and God sending the spirit of Elijah down to us to begin basically preparing us for this war.

And the Catholics were part of the war. So it was heavily anti-Catholic. Fast forward to today's world. I just had a conversation with another lady who had came out of the IHOP world. I think her story might come out before years, but she was also in the manifest sons of God, Joel's army stuff, but she was in the more militant than I think many people realize where they're literally arming themselves with guns and that type of doctrine is happening.

Very tied to IHOP KC and some other things. So I know that that exists and I'm certain that not everybody knows that that exists. However, if you read Barkun's book, you can see that this was a very militant thing that was being created.

Fast forward to whenever Mike Bickel takes it over, like you said, he's got this calm demeanor. You would never suspect that the underneath all of that framework is this very, very horrific thing. But keep in mind, the speaker, so Brannum.

Brannum was a speaker before there was a microphone. And when you're in these loud, in these auditoriums, you had to talk loud. Nobody could hear you if you didn't. when they got the microphones, they were so used to doing it, they're screaming in the microphones.

But in the modern world, you don't need this, except for there are a few parrots that kind of pair at that style. But now the style is to talk more deeply with the microphone right here.

Well, that's what's funny is at IHOPKC, there was still plenty of people who yelled very loudly in the microphone. So Mike was still an exception in that way, but it's interesting that you mentioned some of the militant aspects because one of the things that I rejected from Mike 10 plus years ago.

So I was never the benefit, obviously I think God in retrospect that I never lived there because those stories that you're hearing of the people who lived in that environment, that's where I was never a cult member, which is different from those who would say, and I would think it's accurate to say IHOPKC was a cult.

I was still cult adjacent, just being so influenced, but I could leave and go home, and I had friends who didn't believe this, and that's a blessing, you know? So I wasn't in that, but one of the things that I rejected first, 10 plus years ago, was Mike had a theology of the end times, and he would use the Psalms, so you know, no reputable theologian would ever accept what Mike did with the Psalms, he turned most of the Psalms into predictions of the end times.

And so the high praises of God in their mouths, a two-edged sword in their hands, he used that and other Psalms to teach that when Jesus returned, we would take up weapons and we would help him kill everyone on earth, basically, who was not a Christian.

And so you have this idea of, and again, then you have, then you have, again, the militant aspects of, you have worship leaders, prominent worship leaders that IHOPKC saying, I had a dream, and I'm gonna be killed during the Great Tribulation.

And so you have this literal violence and violent rhetoric, and things like that being involved, where you go, hey, Jesus is gonna return, and we're all going to kill people, because that's what the Psalms mean, and it's gonna be like a worship.

It's, anyways, it was just so very twisted, and that was definitely, there was definitely a militant strain. No one at IHOPKC would have said, take up arms or anything like that. So I wanna make sure I'm always, I'm not going too far in saying things that are incorrect, but there was definitely a utilization of really, extreme. Everything at IHOPKC had to be extreme. That was the pull. That's what made you want to be a part of it was these people are more legitimate, they're more genuine, they're more real than others because their language is so intense and they had so many ways of justifying the intensity of that

language but that's that's all we knew and that's what I always try to you know try to tell people because I think with all respect to kind of the really intense kind of reformed anti-charismatic folks what I understand where they're coming from so again no no hate at all I consider them brothers and sisters in Christ from my perspective but I think what's unhelpful is they jump immediately onto a lot of people's stories and just say how on earth could you not have known you know and again with with with random specifically I'll just say I've thought about this a lot

and from my vantage point from what I heard and from all of the the streams I was associated with we were taught a three-tier story of random there was three I would say false um distinctions that were always made about random tier one was um the earned backster idea that you can cut random in half and you can have random the healer and random the teacher and these are two totally different people so we can accept random the healer and reject random the teacher and that's how backster could feel comfortable saying the guy never knew

anything this is same thing that Jack Deere said about Paul Kane which again is that's what gets the lights going off is when you see generation after generation exactly the same the same errors the same scandals the same beliefs so backster says well the issue with random is he wasn't called to be a teacher and he tried to be a teacher and so that's where he went off and so backster will say I knew the whole time that he wasn't orthodox in his theology and as a pastor I go whoa like you you didn't think to say hey let's get this guy off platform and get him some theological

training and again the bent of the healing revivals in the ladder rain was so anti-institutional and so anti-educational that it would have been unthinkable to tell random to go study theology but so that was number one random the teacher and random the healer so let's still accept an honor random the healer even if we reject random the teacher the second one was the chronological tier which was the infamous random got off at the end that was what all of us yeah I mean if I could tell you John the amount of times I was told that exact phrase in fact a very prominent

neocarysmatic leader jumped on my Twitter post to tell me that once again and to say, Hey, Gordon Lindsey walked with him, he wrote the story, then Branum got off at the end of his life and the Lord took him.

And I'm sure you've heard that one too. The Lord took him because he was getting off. So that was, so tier one was Branum, the teacher versus Branum, the healer. Tier two was the chronological.

He got off at the end. And then the third one was the, he was manipulated tier, which was Branum, they manipulated his words, all of his teachings were twisted by a small group of people and turned into something that he never really said.

So together with those three things you create, and again, I'm talking specifically, that's the neo charismatic narrative of Branum. That's how we can hold on. But the question I always had, and I never asked seriously until now was, why is it so important that we keep Branum?

That's the question that I think you have to ask, why would we go to such lengths when they're so much bad that everybody admits, again, to their credit, at least they, at least they told us that Branum got really off and had heretical teachings.

You know, I was never taught that he claimed to be Elijah, so that was quite a fun thing to find out. But, but why is it so important? Well, it's important because of exactly why William Branum did what he did.

He taught, and they accepted without probably even knowing it, they accepted Branum's narrative that there had never been anyone like him, and there will never be anyone like him. Unless, now, the second tier, actually, you split into two groups, because guys like Paul Keith Davis, then took the latter ray and manifested sons of God theology and said, you know, there will be hundreds of thousands of William Branums in the end time revival.

So there was either two camps, which was more of the influence by the message cults and things, which is like, there's basically not going to be anybody else other than Branum. And so that's why, in my opinion, you have this desperation to keep a hold of Branum.

Because the question that I lay before people now is like, hey, what harm would it do to the name of Jesus into the reputation of the church? If we just let him go all together, what is so hard about that?

And it's because they legitimately believe that no one has been able to do what Branum did. And so you can't get rid of him. You have to keep him because he is the unique, anointed man of the 20th century, and he is the model we must follow, which is why then you get all, you know, we were constantly told to pray for the Branum mantle.

We were told to pray for the mantle of Branum to fall upon us. And so it wasn't just that we needed to study his life. It was that we needed to ask God to give us the same thing that he gave Branum because we weren't, if we didn't have that, God would...

and heal as many people. And we wouldn't see revival. We had to have the mantle of William Brandon. And the funny part about all of that is, if you knew exactly what type of mantle you were getting with this guy, that was working with the clan, that was working with the mob, that you would never want it.

And we got these. You want to take it off. You want to take it off. I live here in Jeffersonville, so I see the Gravesokers time to time. Sometimes I used to travel that way whenever I was coming from Louisville on purpose, because I could see people who were bowing down and praying to the Grave.

It's really, really bad what you see there. But the guys that are laying on the mantle of Branum right across the river in Kentucky, you can lay on the mantle of Colonel Sanders and maybe make better fried chicken.

So I'd prefer to go over there if it were me, but the irony is, so we began this segment talking about the very militarized, weaponized version of what this doctrine is, right? And then now we're talking about just spiritually speaking, they've gone off the rails and you mentioned the categories of how people believe in Branum.

The interesting thing is, the same problem exists in every one of those that I just mentioned. The reason why you have the extremists that are taking up physical arms is because the doctrines are so vague and they tell you just enough to head you down that pathway.

They won't go as far as to say, now militarize yourselves. But the people who follow that out to the logical conclusion realize, that's what you have to do. If you want to survive, you've got to get weapons because they're talking about this Doomsday scenario where we're going to fight.

Take that to the Branum side. You've got the people that are saying that, you know, I love the one where Baxter says you split them in half and healings okay and then the doctrines not.

Like you, what on earth are you letting him teach for in these conventions, man? But more to the point, if you follow that out to its logical conclusion. So based on this healing persona, it was a stage persona.

Based on that healing persona, it was a divine being that came down on the platform with him that was working through him to do the healing and speaking through his mouth. And that's where the word of faith mess came from and all this other stuff, right?

So if you are to take that down to its logical conclusion, well, if you take the healing side, all of the nonsense that he said during the healing lines, which was also anti-biblical, anti-scriptural, you have to take that and accept it.

Every single pathway that you go down, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, you have a big problem with it. And then you have to say, here's the other thing. You have to ask yourself, again, for me as a Christian, and as a pastor, what was the healing for?

Because if Brannum is teaching incorrect theology, if he's drawing people away from the true God, If he's drawing the attention towards himself, well, as a pastor and as someone who believes, broadly speaking, in healing, even though I reject a lot of what would be called the healing ministries of the healing revivals.

But I believe God can heal. But I believe that the reason he does that is to point people to Christ. And so you have to ask yourself, what good would it have been for thousands of people to have been healed in Brandon meetings if they weren't pointed to Christ, if they weren't pointed.

And so that's the thing is when you look at, when you look at Brandon, and this is where I know that people who have kind of discernment ministries, sometimes they can get a little bit overboard in their taxonomies of all of the different movements, because there are so many connections, but sometimes the connections are so thin that it does more harm than good, trying to tie this person to this all the way over here and this all over here.

But here's what I'll say. There's an undeniable firm connection and it goes like this, from William Branham to Paul Cain, from Paul Cain to Sean Bowles. And why do I say that? Well, Branham directly had an influence on Cain.

Cain would have said that Branham was the number one influence on his prophetic ministry and the way he operated. And then Sean Bowles, who spoke at Paul Cain's funeral, said, here's the guy that's had the biggest influence on me in terms of my prophetic ministry.

Well, this is what helps you know that Branham's, and again, this is not proof, but this is what helps you really start to suspect that Branham's words of knowledge were not all of supernatural origin, is the two direct people that come next in the line were clearly exposed.

So we know that Paul Cain had genealogical software, we know he had access to information and we know that he confessed to using that. So not only do we, you know, as opposed to Branham with Cain, we have a confession, I was doing this.

Well, then you get to Sean Bowles and I was fascinated reading in your book and tell me if I get this wrong. I believe it was your grandfather who testified to a woman having put her old address on a prayer card or something like that and then I'm misunderstanding.

Right. Well, the same exact thing, well not exact, but a very similar thing happens with Sean Bowles where all of a sudden he gives a word of knowledge, I think it's 105 slaughterhouse, that's your address.

And the woman in the meeting goes, no, that's, you know, that's not my address. So, you know, you kind of manage the moment and move on, but then somebody I had the audacity to look it up and it turns out it's the same name of the woman but a different person living in the same state.

And so there's, you know, and I just, told people, there's no way the Holy Spirit can make that mistake. You know, I mean, there's no way the Holy Spirit can fails to understand that there's two people with the same name living in the same state, but this is not the right one. And so all of that information is publicly available. And so that's why I tell people, hey, you don't have to try to go all the way back to edward or Irving and Dowie, even though they're fascinating stuff, all I'm asking you to look at is Brannum to Cain to Bulls. And I think you'll begin to see that not only

not only can you kind of work forwards from Brannum, I think you can work, I think it's safe to say that you can work backwards to where if these two direct descendants, all they were doing, all I really believe, all Paul Cain and Chambles were doing was modeling what they had been taught. And they knew in their heart of hearts that no one is as accurate as Brannum Cain to be. And the only way to be that accurate is to supplement, so to speak, with information. And so the fruit of the tree, and Jesus says, you'll know them by their fruit, the fruit of that tree is wicked.

And again, I can throw Bob Jones and Mike Bickle right along with that, although Mike never claimed to have a word of knowledge gift. So he never attempted to operate in that space. But again, I still think he stems from that, that same tree.

Well, and to your point that you made earlier, you know, the Bible says, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign. But this movement by its structural and architecture was designed such that you had to believe the sign. And by believing that sign, then you had the faith to heal yourself. And then they took it even a step further with the healing came the salvation. So there's this chain of events you must believe the sign to get the healing, get the healing to get the salvation. And that's exactly the opposite of what what the Bible says to do, right? So to your point earlier, say it was real, you know,

who am I to say that you can't prove a negative anyway? Who am I to say that it didn't happen? That he didn't guess a name and address correctly? I don't care if he did or not.

For me, the bigger problem is there's so many other problems to look at, right, just in his life in a stage persona, but look beyond that to his doctrines. Once you start comparing the doctrines to the Bible, and you realize that this in every way is what they're describing when they describe the anti-Christ spirit that's coming in the New Testament. If they're resembling that, and yet they can do these little signs, why on earth would you want to focus on a name and address?

It's such a such a small thing. So we've got several people now who are coming out of all different types of movements from that were built on this platform that was created in the Laterane. From the IOP KC to we've got some in hypercars mania you have some of the people are doing I'm not saying everyone but some people are doing the same kind of tricks and we've got you know it's a wide variety of people.

What would you say to each of those people who are suddenly waking up and realizing that this bill of goods that I've been sold isn't quite what they told me it was. Sure no that's it's a great question and again what I would say would be different from what a lot of other people that you have on say for me where I've come down to is I hold like I said earlier I think it's I think you need to be content to leave a lot of things in the realm of mystery because if you try too too hard to figure out again like you said well this one woman testified

that she was completely healed by William Brannum and that he told her something that no one could have ever known and and if you go down the rabbit trail trying to figure out why that is and why God may have done that I think it distracts just like what you said from the fact that the gospel is simple it isn't complicated you do not need I think one of the most harmful things from this entire movement is you know we were joking about the mantle theology but the mantle theology stems from what I would say is effectively a two-tier version of Christianity which is

and by the way again with one of the prominent leaders who commented on my post he he totally affirmed that two-tier theology he said in in clear terms he said you should be grateful to God that you don't have to endure what the prophets endure in other words he was speaking of Brannum you should be thankful that you you know and I'm sure you've heard this many times the the weight of that anointing and the weight of the mantle of the prophet is so heavy and so I would just tell people that's not what Jesus taught that's not what the apostles taught

you know first John John says you have an anointing that abides and it comes from Jesus dwelling in you and so this theology of grades and levels of anointing so you can't speak because you don't have the anointing that Brannum had and you're not as important to God because you don't have the anointing that so-and-so had I would just tell people that that's not true and that in Jesus there's neither Jew nor Greek slave nor free male nor female in other words these distinctions that we like to- used to have the important people and the non-important people,

that's not the heart of Jesus, that's not the message of Jesus. And so my biggest thing would be, don't accept that you are lesser. That's the term that was used a lesser vessel. Don't accept that you're lesser than William Brannum.

I would say every Christian who's ever lived, and again, I wouldn't say William Brannum was not a Christian, that's my personal view. But I would just say even if he was, every Christian who's ever lived has been just as important to God, just as worthy of knowing their story and knowing about who they are.

And so for me, where I've come to is, I still believe in miracles. I still believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but I believe that the vast majority of genuine move of the Holy Spirit happens off of stages where the lights are not visible, where no cameras are rolling, and it's some 80-year-old woman in a back room who has prayed and studied the Bible for 50, 60 years.

And she prays, and for whatever reason, not because of positive confession, definitely not because of word of faith theology, but for whatever reason God in that moment chooses to heal that person. And so I think the one thing I can grab onto is not Brannum's healings or Dauy's healings, but it's just the fact that ordinary people for thousands of years have seen God move in inexplicable ways, and it's not able to be manipulated or controlled or put in a bottle.

So again, this idea that Brannum could do it every time, that's such a harmful idea because it produces the idea that God is effectively a vending machine who can spit out the same miraculous thing over and over and over and over again.

And my personal journey tells me that it's a lot messier than that, it's a lot dirtier than that, it's a lot more painful than that. A lot of people die, a lot of people are not healed, a lot of people struggle with chronic illness, and then some people are healed.

And to live in that tension is difficult, but I believe it's possible. And so I don't believe you have to necessarily go the route of cessationism, again, I understand why some people do. But for me, I would just say I think it's possible to not go that direction, but to also completely reject what we see in the lives of William Brannum and Paul Cain.

And again, any miracle that's genuine is going to point people to Christ, and it's not going to point people to a name or to a celebrity or to a ministry. It's definitely not going to cause you to feel the need to give a bunch of money to someone.

And so I would just say, I think God's real, I think God still moves, I think the Holy Spirit still does things, but I think we have to have an incredible amount of discernment, and we do not need to dig through the mountains of garbage of many of these movements in order to find something that God's already made freely available to us in the gospel.

Awesome. Well, that's very good advice. Thank you so much for doing this with me. Yeah, it's been a pleasure, John, anytime. 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-Branem.org.

For more about the laterane revivals, you can read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Branem and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and

www.William-Branem.org www.William-Branem.org