Behind the Curtain: The Inner Demons Driving Hero Worship

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandom.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder of Kansas City Fellowship and the author of two books, the latest of which is some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Pickle, the Kansas City Profits, and the International House of Prayer. Bob, it's good to be back and I'm a little excited for today's episode because I've wanted to do this with you for some time. After the very first one that we dropped with you and me,

I started getting all the craziest feedback, man. It's like, oh my gosh, you know, and it's funny because for my original YouTube site started and I think it was maybe August of 2012. It's been a long time. That website or that YouTube site went until the cult literally brought it down and then I've started the new one probably three, four years ago. They've tried to bring it down. I've, you know, I'm in battles constantly, but since I've started this, I get all kinds of feedback, as you can imagine. Anytime you address a cult, there are people from both sides. They want to

attack it for whatever reason. But the feedback from the feedback that we're getting for your podcast, it's more about the perspective, which is interesting to me because this is really a podcast that is almost solely and entirely about perspective. So I thought maybe it'd be a good idea if we just talk through perspective a little bit. That's kind of like my favorite words.

No, I'm rude. You got me all excited because I love the whole idea of perspective. And partly the reason for that, I've spent a lot of time in the nation. I was in Boboay. I actually have three books. The very first one is called Savings in Boboay and it's about 16 friends of mine that were martyred there on a piece project. And so by virtue of that book and the story, I ended up in the middle of doing a lot of racial reconciliation. When you're in the middle of conflict, what are you actually dealing with? You're dealing with a conflict of perspectives.

Two people looking at the very same situation in two completely different ways. I actually, on my Facebook, book page. Yesterday, every Tuesday, I kind of put a little article out. And I talk about Cartman's relational triangle. And Cartman was a psychologist in San Francisco that basically said that in any conflict, there's three personalities. There's a persecutor, right? There's somebody that's accusing, right? You did something wrong. There's a victim.

You're the one that did it wrong. And then there's a rescuer. And he talks about how everybody plays one of these three roles. So you see this a lot in family dynamics, right? The older sibling attacks at younger sibling about something they said or did. Then another sibling steps in to rescue the situation. Then they turn on the one that's the prosecutor. And then they become the victim. And it's spent, right? And so you see this all the time. That's where perspective gets really interesting. Right. There's a song. And I can't remember who sings it. It might have

been a old Southern gospel song, but walk a mile in my shoes. It comes from the saying, you know, you can't know me until you've walked a mile in my shoes. And that's really what this podcast is all about for me, because every perspective that I get from people who come onto the show, and I don't care what, you know, what you believe, what you don't believe, what your background is.

I want to know your perspective. I want to know the bits and pieces of the puzzle that I don't have. And you really can't get that if you alienate people. And what I find really ironic about some of the feedback that we've gotten. I've even got some from email that some of it's a little harsh and I don't share with other people. But you can, you can look at the YouTube feed and you can see some of the comments. But what I, what I come to understand is people have been an environment where they want to suppress opposing thought. And so when somebody has a different perspective,

they really want to shut it off. I have, it hasn't come out yet. It will probably come out before this podcast drops. But there is a really intelligent guy who was involved with the NAR and has some unique perspective on a lot of information that I'm still trying to tap into his brain and get. And he mentioned just casually in the episode, he was talking about what's his name, Robert's Leardin. And he was talking about, he was in Robert's Leardin's church. Robert's Leardin was outed as being homosexual during this time that he was in there. And the irony is

Leardin was physically assaulting him to try to cast the demon of same sex attraction out of him. And he did not talk about even where he was currently. He just said this thing happened in the past.

I get attacked left and right. And Oh, I was in the works with a rather famous podcast, this, this person had a lot of views. I'm not going to name who it was, but he was inviting me to come help spread awareness of branemism and I guess he was watching the show and he heard this guy say this and he called me up and said, I'm not having you on the show because you didn't chastise him on your podcast.

And how can you get somebody's perspective if you're not going to at least be nice to him? You see how the triangle works, right? You were the prosecutor, right? You basically pointed out something, right?

Right. Then there was a victim, right? So people perceived, okay, John's prosecuting the situation and he's attacking William Branum, right? And so, will it, Branum becomes the victim, right? And then what happens is the people that are, you know, think that you're victimising somebody, decides they're going to come rescue the situation by attacking you, then you become the victim, right?

And they all pile on you and then somebody comes in to want to rescue that. But where this really gets played out, if you know anything about law enforcement, right? This happens all the time.

There's a reason why you never see a single officer show up at a domestic disturbance call. My friends and the police force explained it to me because what happens is you got two people pounding each other, right?

They're in this violent attack, right? You step into the middle of the situation and they've team up and attack you. Exactly. It's the weirdest thing, right? They're like one minute to hate each other and they're violently angry and then the minute you try to come in and rescue the situation, they both turn and attack you.

That's why you never see a single officer do a domestic call because they'll give you a beat up. So let's get back to perspective here because I'll tell you where I sort of got my interest in the word.

And it actually comes from Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus and he uses this phrase, the manifold wisdom of God. And of course, if you know my story, I didn't come from a Christian background.

So when I started reading the Bible, I didn't really understand a lot. So I see the word manifold and I think car. It's like a manifold out of an engine, right? It's like, man, what do you mean, God's got a manifold, right?

It's like, what does this mean, right? Which then led me into kind of unpacking that verse only to realize that what it was talking about was the many faceted wisdom of God. The many side it, right?

You see this in Ezekiel when Ezekiel has his weird visions, you don't know what I mean. And you see these creatures with four foot. faces, right? Or, you know what I mean? It's like, it's like trying to describe God. Well, God's so diverse.

There's many facets. And so one of the things that becomes very difficult for a lot of people, especially in the religious world, is we're trained to think in diametric thought. What I mean by that is we see things either good or evil.

Right? It's like, it's either or. Exactly. They see it black or white, and the world is filled with gray. Yeah, and as a child, right, you're taught black and white. And that's what part of the maturing process of growing up is, is you get in these situations, and it's not so black and white. I'll give you an example, which is very unseemly one, but it's, it's an ethics question, right? And one of the battles that you wrestle with in an ethics is, again, what's right and what's wrong?

You have a Jewish mother with a newborn who's hiding with 20 other Jewish people as the Gestapo is going through their house, looking for them to send them to Auschwitz. The baby starts crying.

The mother ends up smothering her baby to death to save the other 20 people. Wow. Is that evil or is that good? That's terrible. And the reason I bring this up, that's a very real situation. That happened many times. Yeah.

And so how do you, how do you respond to those things? You see? And so one of the things that I got in trouble with, I shouldn't say, I wasn't in trouble, but people got frustrated with me about some said they blundered, was they wanted me to be more extreme, more dogmatic in my perspective. He's good. He's bad.

Right? He's evil. You know, they wanted me to be extreme. And what I was trying to get people to grasp is good and evil are happening simultaneously, often at the same time in the same person.

It's not always so cut and dry. Right? Right? Things get done wrong ways. Wrong things get done right ways.

And we all experience this, you know, at our age, we've been through myriads of these situations, right? Where it's like, huh? Yeah, what do I do with this? Yeah, I'm fascinated with history, all kinds of history. And one of the, one of my former fascinations, I haven't read anything in a while, but read a lot of biographies of people who were dealing with organized crime.

especially during the prohibition era. This was just, this was interesting history. But what was interesting is you can get into some of the biographies of the mob bosses. And these are very brutal guys that will just kill somebody in a heartbeat.

Yet they have also the softer side. And there are people who knew them that said that they were as gentle as a bear and as loving as a mother. You know, these guys and yet at night, they're just brutally murdering people.

And so it's hard to, it's hard to really put somebody into a box and say that the box is all one way or all the other way because people are very complex. Well, it's confusing in the mob because they have a code of ethics.

Exactly. It's hard, it's hard day like get your head around that, right? Like, wait a minute, you're killing people but they had a code. And they were very loyal to it, right? And if you broke the code, you got a trope.

So it's like, this is kind of weird. So there's all kinds of different things. I know for me the whole struggle that I've had when it comes to the ministry world and I thought it might be helpful if I back up a little bit because I don't know that people know where my perspective comes from.

So there's things that I've said in some of the past podcasts that don't have contextualization to them. And I share this perspective, but it's not attached to anything. So just for the sake of people that may be tuning in, if you know anything about my story, I didn't, I got raised Catholic, then quit going to church, became a Christian at 18, and by 19 I was in the ministry.

My ministry experience lasted for a few years and I was back in the business world and I was back in the ministry world and back in the business world, right? And then of course, most people would know by now in 1982, my vehicle and I started Kansas City Fellowship in Kansas City here.

Well, again, I'm 25 years old. So at the time, I didn't think anything of it. And hindsight, I'm almost embarrassed how young and immature I was at the time, right? Because you're like, wow, I didn't know what I didn't know, right?

And one of the things that was, well, let's put it this way, Solomon and Ecclesiastes talks about with much knowledge comes much pain.

For all of our pursuit, guys like you and I who are insatiably curious that drive us to unpack, drill down, get behind the scenes, the thing that people may not understand about guys like us is that, you know, we have this insatiable desire to want to understand to get to the bottom, you know, we like to, we want to know why, like, why do you think that way?

Why do you believe that? Why, right? It's like we're driven by the need to satisfy the why question. We need to know, right? Well, unfortunately, and fortunately, I have had the most profound revelation and have understandings of things that I'm so grateful for.

And at the same time, I have suffered unbelievable pain and disillusionment, gut-wrenching things. And it's hard, right? So you can imagine, it's 1986, you know, we're in the heyday of Kansas City Fellowship. You know, it's the time of the moral majority with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and Francis Schaeffer and all that's going on.

And the reason I'm bringing this up is because what people don't understand is history or maybe you do understand, that's kind of sending. So I don't, I shouldn't say that. What is important to understand?

Is that history has this way of repeating itself. One of the reasons like guys like you and I don't get overly, what's the British phrase? Are knickers in a twist? Well, maybe I do.

No, because we've already been there and done that, right? I remember when I was a little kid, right? I would see all these dramatic things happening. And I go hang out with the old guys, they just didn't seem to be moved, you know?

And you'd ask them why? And they go, well, Ben, they're done that. Right? How do you saw that back 40 years ago? Right? Well, what the current crowd that's all caught up in the Robert Morris, Mike, Bickle, you know, what's that, you know, the Texas mess down there with the television station, you know, they all think like this is the first time this has all happened, right?

Like, oh my God, you know what I mean? It's like, it's never happened before. Well, no. And let me explain. So it's 1986, right? And all of a sudden, there's a massive scandal, as Jimmy Swagger and Marvin Gorman, two Pentecostal preachers who have big international ministries go to war and metric, you know, Louisiana, right?

And it comes out that, you know, Jimmy's seeing, they're seeing prostitute. It's a mess. Like, and I'm 24. No, by this point, 86 out of 29. So I'm 29 years old. And I've got these guys.

is they're in a room, there's meetings, I'm running back and forth between here in Springfield because that's where the assembly of God headquarters are, it's a mess, right? I mean, of epic proportions. I mean, Jimmy Swaggerd had a massive global ministry.

So I mean, it was massive, right? So I'm in the middle of all that and I'm seeing the human side. Everybody's on the outside looking in, looking at scandal. I'm sitting there with two very broken human beings and because of the way my personality is and I have an empathic kind of nature to me, I feel bad, right?

Cause I see two broken guys that know they failed. Like they blew it and they know they blow it and now they're trying to figure out what happened, right? What happened to me, right?

I was you, Bob, you know, I was you at 20 years old, wanting to change the world and look at me. I'm a failure in front of the whole world, right? Fast forward a year later and what ends up happening?

We have Jim Baker who ends up getting exposed as having this relationship with Jessica Hahn. And now we have P-T-L, right? So the whole day start thing, you know, all the whole Robert Morris, Mike Pickle, I already live this.

I live this in the 1980s. Yeah. Right? So I feel like I'm living in the movie Groundhog Day. And not a good one. You know, the hard part about all of this is people are very complex as I mentioned and the way in which people are trained to read situations is very black and white, especially in these people.

And it becomes even more complicated whenever you think about the way in which it turns into a stage persona and they become, I don't know what you call them, super heroes of the faith or whatever, because they have trained people to see things through a very black or white lens.

And a lot of the ways in which they see things, it's so constrained to a box that whenever something happens outside of that box, they don't know what to do. On a very limited scale, I can say it like this.

In Pentecostalism, it used to be that women were not allowed to cut their hair at all. And now on today's Pentecostal world, you see women with all kinds of new hairdos. But back then, they read the passage in what is it, Corinthians, second Corinthians, about the woman's hair is a covering.

And they read it in a very, very black or white way. Their black and white was literally, it says this, so then we do this. Without applying any thought whatsoever into the culture that Paul was writing to.

the phrase at the end that says explicitly, but we have no such custom in either to the churches of God. That part was omitted, but they read that one phrase is black or white, let the woman's hair be long for her glory.

And so it was taken black or white. Years later, people were allowed to think outside of that box, and so Pentecostal, not all, but a lot of them have adopted a different, more broadened view of this passage.

So they're trained doctrinally to be black or white. Well, then what happens is you have a minister who, some of them, I'm not going to say all of them, but some of them really do begin with good intentions and end up as a train wreck.

And so they start out their ministries, they're on fire for God. They've also been trained in this black or white reality. Well, when they become this big superstar, that black and white reality does not apply, and they start to see a little bit outside of that box, and some of them, because they have been manipulated to think in a black or white way, they can't behave themselves properly outside of that box.

It's like another good example, if you're a parent and you over-correct, over-garde your children, and then suddenly they experience some other child that has freedoms that you don't allow, they go hog wild, right?

Well, some of these ministers, they're constrained in that box, and then once they step into the superstar realm, they start to see over the edges of that box, and they don't know how to behave themselves.

Well, as a result of what happened to me in the 1980s, I also had a lot of pro-athletes, some very high-profile business executives, you know, people in the geopolitical world, and then, of course, because what was happening in Kansas City went all over the world, I had a lot of these people showing up.

That's where the whole concept of the Joseph Company began to develop. So years later, I ended up starting my own organization called Joseph Company Global, but what Joseph Company Global became was a consulting counseling business.

And so I have to be very, very careful here, because I know things that need to stay in the counseling space, right? Yeah. But so people understand where I'm coming from. I have, well, to be honest with you, I guess if there's a word picture I could use to describe it, I have lived in the sewer of the church world.

It's my world. Wow. The men that come to me come to me at a place in their life, usually in their 40s. where they're utterly broken. And many of them have had some sort of a moral failure that not anybody even knows. And what happened, of course, is that I didn't ask for this.

It just landed in my lap, right? I didn't ask for Jimmy Swagger to marvel and go on and think, yeah, and didn't ask for the Jim Baker thing to happen, right? I didn't ask for any of this. It just happened. I didn't ask for all these executives or whatever. But what I realized was that, you know, stardom is such a two-dimensional view of life, right? You know, do you see these athletes on television? You see the guy in the pulpit. You see the actor in the movie or the musician on the stage and you have this two-dimensional view of them.

And it's all based on their gifting, right? And so they become idols. They become heroes. They become stars, right? There's an impression in image, right? I mean, we live in this image-driven world. But behind that is a human being. And in every single case, a very broken one. And so because God made me filled with empathy and compassion, I started caring more about the man than the ministry, right? It's like, I don't really care who you are. I don't really care what everybody thinks of you. My question is, who are you? And what was interesting was, is that I

began to discover something. So when I talk about my perspective, about ministry and what's going on, people just have to understand that it's from a very different place than everyone else. Not many people have my point of view because they haven't been in my world, right? So that's not to make that elite because it's not. It's ugly. Like, it's messy. There's nothing fun about it.

It's exhausting. But one of the things that I asked these guys, because again, we're why guys, right? One of the questions that I asked most every one of these guys when they come in that space, why did you go to the ministry in the first place? Because what said from the pulpit, right? Which everybody wants to hear, well, God called me, right? That's the facade. God called me. And I'm not debating or suggesting that he didn't.

but there's always something deeper and I don't want to oversimplify this but just because I want to turn into some sort of deep psychological session here. I ended up realizing that there were really two primary reasons for why guys went into the ministry. The first one was they were trying to slay their own inner demons. They were very aware of their brokenness and thought that if they could put themselves in the place of ministry where every day they're focusing on the Word of God and building the church and all that they could either slay or in most cases cage their inner demons. So a lot of what it comes

out right right now you know you're you're hearing all these things while they weren't able to cage their inner demons. They knew about this when they were young. Right. And so they thought if I could go into the ministry if I could be in a place where I'm praying and worshipping and preaching the Word and all of this kind of stuff I can keep these demons at bay. Often when you see dogmatic preaching you know what's actually going on they're fighting their own demons on the pole standing on the stage looking at you screaming at you

there's a demon looking at them you know their own little inner demons going you're worthless you're right and and so they're fighting through and you're getting all that energy on the other side but you don't see what they're fighting through with their own head. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter reign charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation you can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website you can find the compiled research of John Collins Charles Paisley

Stephen Montgomery John McKinnon and others with links to the paper audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top and as always be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research we want to thank you for your support. I know exactly what you're talking about with the inner demons although I had a funny conversation

with a person who had escaped the cult and he said John I no longer think of the world in that term where there are these literal demons out there and I said, no, man, that's a common phrase.

Inner demons is referring to the things that you struggle with and make that in the open for anybody who doesn't understand that. But where it gets really complicated for me is this. I understand the counseling aspect and I understand struggles.

Every human has their own struggles. Whether they want to admit it or not, there are things that they fight, you know. There are some things that there are levels of these inner demons. There are levels of problems that people have.

Some of them are somewhat benign. Like I come from an Irish background and for a long period of time, I really, really struggled with temper, which was common among the Irish. I had an Irish temper, right?

And it really took me to understand how it was on the other side of that temper and understand and relate to how people experience the temper that I began to start to overcome this.

And that's a mild thing. You know, I can get angry at somebody and it might hurt their feelings. Take it to the other extreme. There are people who pray upon other people and that's where this gets really tricky.

Some of those people, like you said, may have struggled for decades with the same thing. But there's also levels of progression in that struggle. So where the gray area falls for me, it's understood that people like Bickel has struggled with this for decades.

And where it gets really problematic as some of the leadership did know it. But what we don't know and what really hasn't been announced very much is to what extent was that and what level in the progression of the predatory nature was he whenever they understood it.

So it's not just, it's not black or white and is he all good and is he all bad and even worse, it's not black and white as what was his problem initially and what did it become and how much did, how much were people aware of this?

So for me, it gets that complicated and then try to think that from a counseling and church leadership perspective, especially in a cult where you're being told that this is the closest thing to God that we have on earth today is this guy.

So now their perspective is skewed because he can do no wrong. And at what point did they have enough information to cut it off and stop it? So you've got all of these questions, some of which may never be answered.

Okay, I'll only address that, but I want to add my second point to why God goes in the ministry and then I'll circle back and address Mike's situation because I think there's a reason why that happened.

The second reason why I discovered men went in the ministry was the search for significance. There was this. need inside to feel significant, to feel like their life mattered, that they had a role to play. And the reason why this is important and the reason why in my counseling sessions with these guys, we had to drill down to this level. What is your motive here? Because if we don't deal with this root issue, everything else is going to be tainted and you're never going to, you're going to be constantly struggling. Right? In other words, we got to deal

with this. But it's amazing how many people go into ministry in this search for significance or another way of say this affirmation. And it's two places they want affirmation. They go in the ministry believing they're going to get affirmation from God. Right? And they go into it because they're going to receive affirmation from people. So without, again, we could be here for days, there's an addiction, an emotional addiction dynamic in play here. And that's what they don't understand. Okay, let me circle back to your thing about Mike. I saw some of these,

I didn't understand all of Mike's or I was too young. Remember, right? It's like, you know, I'm this is 8687. I'm in the middle of just getting exposed to this world by 89 and 89. I was out of there, right? So I really didn't have an opportunity to, to, I wish I, what I know now, I wish I would have known then. I just didn't, right? I was just too young. Yeah. But I had tried to address some root issues with Mike and got nowhere because every time that I would try to drill down on a particular behavior that I thought was unhelpful and problematic. He would always

respond back with some super spiritual lingo and spin the whole thing and, and make an excuse for why that thing that I thought was dysfunctional was actually a God thing. I didn't understand until in the 90s, even what the concept of narcissism was, right? Because I didn't know about narcissism in the 80s. I never even heard the word, you know, that I can remember. But the reason why to your point, you get in to these situations where you can't even correct people is because there's this narcissism.

that's taken root, right, in their soul. So every time I would suggest Mike look at something, he always operated, well, but I'm God's chosen, right, so therefore, and he was an excuse or he wouldn't manipulate or whatever, right, and so he couldn't, I don't ever remember him taking responsibility for anything.

Yeah, which was really, I didn't figure it out until later making, wait a minute, I don't ever remember him going, that's on me, I'm sorry. Yeah, ever.

So where did this happen? So I don't get narcissists. They don't come talk to me. Yeah.

I'm somewhat incompatible with narcissists. Yes. Well, I have an aversion towards it, right, now, but more than that, narcissists never think they need help, right? So they're never going to come and seek you out.

Because whatever you tell them, they've got a reason why you're wrong. So what I get is the guys that really have hit the wall.

There's a thing out there with men, I've heard it all the time, you know, you call it a midlife crisis. And it's interesting because it always happens after 40. Typically, I should say always, typically it happens at 40.

Why 40? And the reason is, part of the reason is that as men, our bodies start going through a huge transformation. And we start losing the strength of our youth.

And what ends up happening is, is we don't, we lose the strength to keep up the facade.

Yeah. Right? In other words, what ends up happening is you get tired of pretending. And as you start letting these walls down, right? And you start facing, you know, it's like suddenly, you know, the caged inner demons of your youth or whatever that are way back in the dark recesses of your soul, they escape.

Because you can't keep them back anymore. It's like you lost the ability to tame your, you know, your tigers. And I see this all the time because the guys that come in, they're just worn out.

And this is the phrase I hear. Like this is like every single time you hear the same thing, I just can't do this anymore. Right. That's when you know it's like, okay, I know where you're at.

And guess what, you know, I tell them all. Welcome to being a man. Welcome to humanity. You're not alone in this. We all have gone through this. It's just you're in a unique situation and the dynamics involved and you can't doing anymore have all kinds of repercussions. Then there's another piece to this. I know I'm rambling here, but I just want to get all this in and then let you just come back and give your two cents on this.

There's another problem here. Not only are all these different people pursuing something to get significance and adoration and all that. We have a whole congregations of people who because of their nature want heroes. They want stars. They want somebody other, you know, which is the word holy right separate other. They want somebody that's the they want the man of God. They want the guy who's overcome, right? They want to follow somebody. And so what ends up happening is they put all this expectation on this person to perform. To be the hero. To be the guy with all the answers.

To be the guy that can fix everything. To be the guy that's going to inspire us to do it, right? And what ends up happening is when they come see me that they've reached this place or I just can't do this anymore. I can't live up to everyone's expectations. What gets even bizarre is when you drill down and you ask them, Oh, why did you have that affair? You know what it really was?

They wanted to escape the jail. Yeah. That they'd built for themselves and everybody else to put them in. And it's like, I just got to break out. Yeah. I can't do this anymore. You know, psychology fascinates me more than history even. I love reading about psychology and trying to understand it. I probably if I had my life to do over, I'd probably become a counselor or a psychologist. But one of the problems that we have and really amplifies what we're seeing here is the deliverance ministry culture that was created. See, William Brannum and Gordon Lindsey, they created this notion that they could be like Harry Potter's of the world and go around

just cast a spell and then a demon flees you. But you and I who were near and close to people who had significant problems in leadership, you understand that deliverance doesn't always mean what it is projected to mean from the pulpit. Sometimes deliverance mean you're coping with something. Deliverance really means, you know, if you're a Christian and you believe God can heal and help you, it doesn't necessarily mean that he takes away some of your struggles. It just he gives you the power to overcome some of your struggles.

And so a good counselor will help continue a person down the right path. And then as the struggle is intensified, they had continued to help even more to keep them on that path. But what you're describing is somebody who's been on the path for a very long time and they get just so burnt out that they can't contain their own struggles.

They really need counseling, they really need help. But unfortunately, you're in this new apostolic reformation deliverance culture that is some of the people who have the struggles inwardly are telling the people that they can be delivered forever from the same struggles that they themselves have.

Robert Sleerdin, as I mentioned him earlier, is the same exact example. He's trying to cast the demon of homosexuality out of this guy while he himself is trying to keep that demon contained, right?

So they're projecting this false persona is the problem. And now complicate that even further. And this is where I was headed before, I don't think my thoughts came out very well. But so you've got this culture where leader is trying to suppress problems in a deliverance ministry culture where they're not supposed to have problems in the first place, surrounded by a bunch of people who are in that culture that are trying to be the quote unquote spiritual guides for the spiritual guide.

And whenever they see the problems and the struggles happening, well, he's got the deliverance power. Can he not cast out his own demons? Well, yes, he can. He said that he can. And so the guardrails all come down.

There isn't a checks and balances scenario in this type of culture. That's why I go, I've gone to extremes to try to publish some and document some of the hair-brained nonsense in these deliverance ministries because it is a fantasy culture.

It really doesn't exist in the way that they say that it does. And just as a point of clarification, I use the word demons. I'm not always talking about a little literal spirit. Yeah, I'm talking about the things that torment them, right?

That, you know, that can come from the way you were raised and whatever. But when you say that, picture Tom and Jerry with the little red devil on this side and angel on this side.

What's hard for me and the reason why I ended up doing the whole Joseph company global thing was I just felt so bad for all these guys because for one, the ministry world amongst ministers is highly competitive.

You know, it's like on the outside, it all looks real spiritual. But behind the scenes, they're like stealing each other's people and trying to out- do each other, I mean, we've had, you know, previous discussions on these episodes of the dueling profits and the one upsmanship, right?

And so the ministry world, you know, if there's a weakness there, you can really get caught up in that. So therefore, it's not really a safe place, right? You saw what happened with the Gorman and Slager, right?

The minute one guy found out the other guy had an issue, he used it for leverage, right? It's like they were jealous of each other because they were competing for dominance, not only in New Orleans, but in the assembly of God.

So there was like this competition going on. That's why it all came out. It didn't come out out of righteousness. It came out of competition, right? So, you know, there's that. So it's not been real safe for guys in the ministry to come forward and say, I got issues.

That's why they don't come see me until they've crashed, right? It's like until they have the rack, you know, and they got nothing else to lose, right? I can't tell you how many guys have said to me, I'm, you know, after they got outed, I'm so relieved, which is so weird, right?

Because you, you know, the congregational people are all sitting out there horrified, right? And it's scandalous and, I'm up, up, up, up. But the guy who actually gets exposed is telling me, God, I feel relieved.

Right. It's really sad. I don't stress you anymore. It's, well, isn't that sad? See, that's how exactly how I looked at it. I started crying the first time I heard it, and I went, oh my God.

I didn't think this through. You're absolutely right. I can see how this is freeing. It's like, yeah, I can be me now. Yes, well, I'm a failure.

Okay, welcome to my world, right? And so anyway, so again, we're talking in generalizations, but I hope it's helpful for people to understand, you know, our perspective. Now, I need to say something here, but we need to get a woman involved in this conversation.

Because it's not, we're always talking about the men that fail because of the fact that they're typically in the leadership roles in the church world. But there's a whole side of brokenness from the female side of this equation that I'm a little uncomfortable addressing, though I have a great deal of experience with it.

Given where I'm at, but right now, it's sort of, let's dump on the men.

You know, it's the men's fault. It's not so cut and dry. things that I know and have seen, but I'd rather for a woman, you know, but it's hard because there's a sister code in order for a woman to come on and talk about the perspective of brokenness on the female side of this equation, they have to break the sister code.

And so, you know, I'll get annihilated if I go over on that side, you know what I mean? I wouldn't go there with you, man. Yeah, it's just brokenness all the way around as this where my point is here is it's just not, you know, a problem with guys in the ministry. We're just all broken. I mean, it's, you know, it's, we're getting back to Romans again, right? All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Yeah. I won't go too far with it because people will just pounce on it, but I understand exactly what you're saying. There's the human element.

I think that's the best way to say it. There's the human element and both sides, whether it's even in the cases of a predator, you have to sometimes think through how, how all of that came to be.

You know, he, I really feel sorry for Mike Bickle. I know I'll probably get hate mail for that, but whenever you think about the fact that had he got counseling and help early on in the 80s, think of the good that he could have done for the world, but he didn't get the help that he needed.

And his, he basically had no checks and balances. And so it progressed in such a bad way that it turned into a mass. And he's not the only one. There are, there are many, many others. And so I, well, I kind of, so what's the key to that, right? So now as we're all guys looking back, if I was listening to us, the question I'd be asking, well, how do you know? And what I would say is the tell, tell sign is, do they exhibit humility and teachableness? Right. In other words, what I discovered with Mike, he was untouchable. He was never wrong. Yeah. It was all right. And so

for me now is, you know, an older guy, the first thing I'm looking for when I'm interacting with these guys is, is there a teachable this? Like are they approaching this from a place of, I'm, I'm here to understand, I want to learn. I'm, I'm willing to open my own soul up and explore this.

How can I get better? I want to be a better person, right? When you see that, it's just enduring to me. It's just, then that out what that does for me is it unlocks the compassion in the discernment in me. It's very, I don't understand exactly how it all works. But if I start caring about you, I will start tuning into things, right? It's like compassion is the key in my soul from locking whatever spiritual gifting that I have. But one I don't see that teachableness.

I walk. I know this is pointless, right? This is just, that's a no-go zone for me.

I mean, I'll be your friend. You know what I mean? And I'll talk to you, but I will never collab with you. I will never work with you. Yeah. And I think that's what, so to finish my thought, what you're saying is along the same lines I was headed.

I feel sorry for him. I think had it been in a situation where there were proper checks and balances in place and it wasn't this deliverance ministry culture, I think people could have recognized that there are people who are fit for leadership and there are people who are not.

And the root of the problem is exactly that. If you look beyond all of the problems that happen, the grooming, all of this, just look to the simple leadership. He should have been shut off immediately.

And had he been a member with a good group of people to help him with his inner problems, it would have never escalated to the place that it became. And you can apply that same exact philosophy to each one of these people who are making the headlines right now.

Many of them were not fit to be leaders in the first place, but they've been in a system that has really allowed them to flourish with no checks and balances. One of the things in the book that I tried to point out is that while in the moment right now, it's easy to cast stones at the leaders that have failed.

We in the congregation have to take some responsibility because we're the ones that have demanded or wanted the star.

We've wanted the hero, right? That's we've created this expectation. And in some ways, we've created this environment for all these guys to live up to, right? They feel this intense pressure to perform for you, to keep you happy.

And so I think we have to be very, very careful when pointing fingers to realize, you know, it's yes, there's brokenness in the leadership, but there's equally a brokenness and those of us that are sitting in those chairs and what we're demanding from these guys.

You know, I think that's the point that, I know I'm gonna get all kinds of hate mail for saying that I feel sorry for Mike Bickle, but I think that's the part what you just mentioned.

I think that's the part that people don't grasp. For every leader that we see fallen, their sins are being widely published to the world and they're at the very bottom of, you know, a hell that they themselves created.

I'll just say it like that. But think about the ones who did get help, who got help early, who still struggle with certain things. were able to contain and overcome, and then became great leaders and made great change.

I'm not going to, I can't pull any names off the top of my head right now, but not everybody who became a successful leader has always had a perfect past. You'll find people who have changed and reformed.

And that's why counseling exists. And I really think had the counseling been involved early, I think a lot of things would have changed. Okay, so let's unpack this a little bit, because one of the things I pointed out in my book that was a bit shocking to me was the Harvard Business Schools Research on Narcissists.

Because in the counseling world, that's considered a negative attribute. Yeah. What they discovered for fortune 500 companies in big organizations, it's an attribute. But is it an attribute that is positive in religion? That's really the question.

So now we're getting down, because here's, but here's the problem. And this is what I was trying to get to at the back end of my book. Is the problem is, is that we've modeled our church culture identical to the business world.

So back up a little bit, after World War II, well, before World War II, 65% of our population was rural, right? So you had relationships and traditional values. And after World War II, my dad's generation through the GI Bill got all went, got educated, and they started businesses.

Those businesses grew like crazy. And what started happening was, is for the first time, packed up and moved because your company sent you places, right? So suddenly the relational dynamic of staying within a small geographic area got split.

And families were spread out all across the country, right? And so what ended up happening was, is that it created this whole different culture. But the model for business, right? So what did these guys, all these guys went into the military at World War II.

They were 16, 17, 18, 20 year olds, right? Who came from the root? What did they learn? They learned the military top down structure, right? Efficiencies, all that. What did they do when they went into the business world?

They built the same model in the business world. That's why you have presidents and vice presidents, right? All the way to the end ranks, right? Just like you had in the military. Well, then what happened in the 1980s, is we got into church growth.

And what did we do? We ended up bringing in business consultants who took all the same models and methods, put Christian verbiage on it, and taught everybody how to grow their churches. And now we have a corporate church model.

So all these big, that you see are built on a model that's business related, right? Therefore, the narcissist guys are at the head of all these massive church organizations. When I read that in your book, I was like, I was shaking my fist shouting, yes, somebody finally gets it, man.

This is a business, this is not a religion. Yeah. So, you know, there's a reaction going on right now. George Barna addresses it in some of his research. What's happening more and more is our generation, that he calls us the Dunns.

And the Dunns are basically people who kind of got saved in the 70s, the Jesus people movement, that whole thing. They've just been through the whole show. They've grown up in the corporate ministry world.

They've seen the shows, the superstars. And they got their thrills. They went to the meetings, got all excited, right? And then at the end of it ended up feeling empty. And realized where life really matters with my friends.

Who are the people that I've been walking with for 40 years? We've raised our kids together. We now have grandkids, you know what I mean? What we care about more than anyone, anything else is each other.

And what's happened is in the most interesting way because of disillusionment on the big corporate church model, they've ended up going back into a more of a home church model, right, which is more relationally driven, which, oh, by the way, was exactly what the early church was, right, it didn't become a big business model until after the 300s, right?

Until the Roman Emperor has decided to give the religious guys all the big idle temples and all the big, right? And this whole hierarchy develops. And then we got a Holy Roman Emperor now.

And we have all these things. And that's set this whole model in place. Then we had a reformation, which basically kept the same structural top-down model, right? We just changed the theology a little bit.

A little bit. And this thing has just been perpetuated. And so here we are now, and guess what's happening? You know what I mean? It's that whole same thing again, where people are just going, this is emptiness.

Yeah. People have lost the true reality of what the religion was intended to be. And what's interesting is, if you just simply open the Bible and read it, it's very plain to read right there.

The people are the church. The old temples that they had in Jerusalem, all of that was coming to and end as they transitioned into. the new covenant into the gospel. And I could go into a sermon, I won't, but the transition that was happening, Jesus was telling the people quite literally, the kingdom is within you.

And I think that's the big thing that people miss. They, in this type of religion, this deliverance culture, the kingdom isn't within them, the kingdom is usually within the person who's on the stage.

Well, I'm of the perspective, get back to our word, that Christianity is actually profoundly simple, and that humans, because of their need for significance, have complicated it. Because when you go back and you just look at what Jesus taught, it all can be summarized to your point, our love for one another.

How will they know, remember that? How will they know, by your love for one another? And almost everything he teaches, it's relational, right? It's how do we relate to this? How do we relate to that, you know what I mean?

And somehow the whole relational dynamic got lost. And I know there's a lot of churches out there really struggling to bring that back. So this isn't kind of a slam on that, but even with all of that, there's still this need or this desire, something in people we want to star.

It's still this attraction to go to the church in town that's got the best worship, and the best text of happening on Sunday, right? And have all the programs, and it's kind of like, unbiased ticket to Disneyland, right?

We got, look at all the rides they've got, right? And I can understand that when you're a parent with kids, right? It's like, yes, you know what I mean? My kids want to go have fun, so I can see the attraction to it, but there's a whole lot that gets missed, and it creates so many vulnerabilities, and the guys that are up at the top, I mean, they're in the stratosphere, and more times than not, those guys are profoundly lonely, are living in, you know, it's like I always think of Rapunzel, you know, that whole story of Rapunzel's like up in the tower, right?

And it's like that, there's so many guys, this is my experience, I can only tell you my perspective from, but there's so many guys that live in a tower isolated from real relationships. Right, I laugh because whenever I see people on the YouTube feeds, they're in this world where these deliverance ministry cultures has created these stage personas, and they're looking for people to follow them, really, rather than following Christ, and, you know, the Holy Spirit was sent to lead in guidance, you're not supposed to have the guy on the platform, and I always laugh when I see the comments,

I don't know if you see him or not on YouTube, but they say, you John, you're trying to create a following, and I'm like, you're watching this on YouTube. seen my face. There's no way I'm going to make a following with a face like this. But it's not about that. It's not about trying to lead people into the kingdom. Jesus said the kingdom is within you. And if you can just simply read that, I think that in of itself sums up everything that we're trying to say in this entire podcast, you know, you have the power within yourself. You just need

to go in deep inside your soul and find it. And I think you'll be surprised at how much easier that is. But anyway, we could talk forever. Thanks for doing this. Well, it's been interesting.

I've opened up, I guess, and shown a side of myself that most don't know about, but hopefully it's helpful. And we'll give people a little bit more understanding of what goes on behind the scenes. And even though I know there's a lot of anger out there. There's these are humans broken humans. You know, so I love Bob Dylan so much. Everything is broken.

Well, I think it was helpful. And if not, we'll get some comments that we can address next time. So all right, we'll do it. Yeah. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-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.