Dominion or Delusion: The Lust for Power and "Stuff"

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 the Kansas City Fellowship and author of three books, the latest is some say they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Profits, and the International House of Prayer. Bob is good to be back and talk about the seven mountains of fun. We are getting into dominionism today, which is something that fascinates me

because at your historian, we talked a bit offline. You think logically and historically in the same way that I do, and when you see what has developed today around all of these movements, and largely to people who I think the issue is that just many of them have not read their Bibles. So whenever these apostles and prophets and whatnot, these evangelists come out and they teach this stuff, the people aren't familiar enough with their Bibles to understand that it's a little bit off what they're teaching, and it's relatively new, and I've actually listened to some

of the speeches by these guys, and they try to say that this dominionist theology has always existed, which, you know, if you take it, take what they say with a grain of salt and just kind of think outside of their box, in a way it kind of did, but it did not exist in the way that they present it, and so today I wanted to deep dive into that and see how can we make sense of this nonsense that has developed into the new dominionist theory? Yeah, we're going to get ourselves in trouble again, John.

Which we like to do, but no, it's an interesting discussion, and I think relevant.

Truth be told in our current political environment right now, there are a lot of people close to the current president who come from this worldview, people that are advising him,

trying to tell him where he needs to go, what he needs to do, and who he needs to do it through, and so it's a very relevant topic. I sort of feel sorry. for the guy, though, in a way, because given the fact that he doesn't have a theological background or much understanding of Christianity, I'm sure it's a little bit overwhelming.

And so some of the people that are speaking into his life I have concerns about, which I think a lot of other people do, too, so the whole concept of the Seven Mountains and Dominionism is a very relevant topic for the moment, because there's a lot of that thinking that's driving some of what's going on right now.

We may not hear that word, especially from the political class, but at least the religious leaders that are currently have a voice, they're being driven by it. For me, it's interesting because it's such a hot political issue right now.

You're seeing religion and politics merge together in this weird way, like, you know, a lot of these guys, they condemn the Catholic Church, which is interesting, because the very thing that Martin Luther led the Reformation against, they're bringing much of that back into the world, into the United States, in Protestant religion.

And so you have this weird mixture of church and state that they want. They want to claim this as our new dominion. And, you know, if you go historically from a biblical standpoint, just using Bible history alone, you have all of the foreign pagan nations and you have the children of Israel and King David is close friends with the king of Tyre and various nations.

They were creating trade alliances. And you don't see them trying to push dominion over all of their alliances and say, you must convert to Yahweh. Instead, they have a political alliance in relationship, even though both are serving one serving a pantheon of gods and one is serving Yahweh.

So you don't see that being pushed. And if you walked historically through the Bible through each one of the various scenarios that's being taught or history that's being written in the Bible, you don't find the politics of Israel enforcing dominion in the way that they enforce it today, because it simply doesn't work.

Whenever, in the book of Kings, for example, when it's talking about all of the different kings of Israel that rise up and they rise up and then they fall into idolatry, they rise up again, they fall into idolatry and think about that alone.

So they had the mosaic law, which is essentially what the NAR is trying to recreate today in various forms in the Bible. at states. With the idea that if they can create law and dictate it to people who don't align with their religious views, they can enforce it in the world will be bliss. Well, even the little testament shows you, the children of Israel themselves tried to do this, and it failed miserable because every single king that rose up fell to idolatry. Most of them fell to idolatry.

And in the end, what was being established wasn't a kingdom in the way that Israel thought. So if you walk backwards through time, which is something that I like to do, I like to start with the present and then go back and see where did this weird notion come from. There are a lot of major milestones along the way backwards. And I thought it would be fun to talk through some of those.

Yeah, one of the things that is a red flag for me is when you separate out ideology, philosophy, you know, perspectives without dealing with the soul. I have seen so many great ideas go to hell in a hand basket if you want to use an old cliche, right? And the reason was because of humans. In my first book, savings in my boy, I have a phrase, and the phrase is transformation of the soul is the soul of transformation.

So where this gets tricky is that Jesus never tried to establish himself as having political authority over the Romans. Right? He didn't start a political party. You know what I mean? He didn't run for office as it were. You know, he seemed disinterested in that. What he was interested in, was changing human hearts, right? What Jesus was focusing on was the establishment of the Kingdom of God, which to him, yes, outside of creation, there's God ruling in the heavens.

But it was the morals, ethics, and values of the Kingdom of God that transform our hearts and switch us from our default setting, which is based on our survival instincts, which causes us to lust after status and stuff, right? And this desire, this craving that so many have to rule over others, right? In other words, to be in control over other people.

And Jesus had a worldview, a kingdom of God worldview that was 180 degrees different, right? This is where it gets really confusing because he tells the whole parable about going to a wedding or a feast or whatever and the tendency or the way it was always done was the people that had status and stature always sat at the front, right? When they walked in, they expected a seat at the head table. And Jesus comes along and has now sit in the back, right?

Humans are driven by this desire to accumulate more and Jesus is saying, well, if you have more than one, give the other one away, right? In other words, almost everything that he talks about is is 180 degrees different than the whole concept of ruling and controlling others. He tells everybody being a servant is the way. And so that's where with for me, there's been a bit of a clash, right? Between the concept of dominionism, right? Which is where Christians rule and reign over everyone else. And we we establish, you know, biblical morality, ethics, all that kind of stuff over everyone else versus

Jesus who comes along and says, no, no, be a servant to everyone else, right? And honestly, you know, I've been walking with God since 1975 and I still struggle with these two very diametric kind of worldviews. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like, so here's where I was going with this. I think what Jesus understood was exactly what I wrote about transformation of the soul is the soul of transformation.

If you do not first deal with the heart and deal with selfish ambition and greed, like James wrote about in James 316, right? If you don't deal, you know, with your ego and your lust for stuff, greed, right? What you're going to get is chaos and evil. Well, everywhere that I have seen this dominion worldview, whether it was with the Catholic church, the Holy Roman Emperor, you know, everywhere you go, it never works, right? So on paper, it looks really good.

Like on a whiteboard, it all looks really good. But in reality, it's never worked. And the reason is it's because without the transformation of the soul, without the transformation of the heart, what ends up happening is the power ends up corrupting everyone. You know, I put lot of thought into exactly that because what they're essentially trying to do is they're trying to set an established set of religious laws that are mixed in our political system and then enforce those upon people who don't agree with the religion in the first place and there are two colliding worldviews and you can look at any nation I mean if you look at

Israel and Palestine and look how many decade centuries these two have been fighting each other over conflicts of ideologies it just never ends it what they're trying to do historically doesn't work but even more than that the the leaders that are pushing this they take prey upon people who can't critically think for themselves and that's really the sad part for me because what they do if you listen to any of their speeches on this dominionism they vastly oversimplify the issue they'll say things like their their laws are against our God therefore we must change the laws and it's not that simple you can't just change the laws and then suddenly everybody

agree and say wow this is wonderful now I now I'm obeying Christian laws even though I'm not a Christian it's not how it works and even if you so the seven mountain mandate which is a byproduct of all of this one of the mountains so-called mountains is the mountain of entertainment and they have been trying to conquer this mountain since long before the seven mountain mandate existed you can go find and Christian identity they were doing the same thing later rain was doing the same thing and what they're trying to say is that because there are so many people that are watching

television and movies that have sin in it they're glorifying sin I've heard that phrase being used and it's way oversimplifying the issue because I am I'm a fan of watching crime drama I love it I love watching a bad guy set up the perfect plot I love watching the good guys go undermine his plot and catch him and put him in jail I love that stuff but what he's doing is sin and these ministers will get up and they'll preach against whatever is the hot topic political sin and say they're glorifying sin because they're showing it on television they're showing it on movies

and they're totally ignoring all of the various other sins that are being shown in an in an entertaining way such as train robberies bank robberies divorces there's a vast number of sins that if you understand how entertainment works if you understand that there must be a climactic event there must be a some sort of a villain whether it's a person or a theme etc and then you have something to rise up and conquer that theme that's entertainment and that goes all the way back to Shakespeare you can you can trace the way that entertainment has been structured so for me it's entertaining and

if people were to follow all of this out to its logical conclusion. If what they're pushing actually got accepted, which it never will, but if it did, nobody would even want it, man. Can you imagine watching a television where there are only good guys?

There is no sin. Everybody's, you know, it'd be like watching the Smurfs without Gargamel. Well, circle back to your music sector. And the reason I wanna do this is, I actually have first-hand experience having a company for a decade.

What's interesting is, is that the whole of the music world is actually rooted in the church. This is what's so fascinating when you unpack it, and you really drill down. It all started there.

Well, what happened? Like, how did we go from, you know, music, they came out of the church world to the absolute decadence? And you know what it always happens? And the reason I know this is because I've spent 40 years of my life picking up the pieces of these artists.

And it's the same thing I just talked about. What happens is, is they start off, you know, recognizing that God's giving them this gift, and then that gift gives them status and stuff, right?

Status and stuff. And what happens when you get status and stuff? You get prideful, and you get arrogant, and you get corrupted, and you become self-centered, and you end up exhibiting narcissistic tendencies, and the whole thing falls apart.

So, I'm like, okay, this is really interesting. Yes, you know, you wanna, you want Judeo-Christian values to take over the industry. Well, it started there. But by virtue of the fact that it's all about stardom, and you know, idol worship, you know, all of this kind of stuff, it corrupted and destroys almost everyone that comes through that system.

So, let's take this political world, right? I think you and I have talked about this before, 1920s. Religious leaders realize that we're consuming copious amounts of alcohol. It's causing problems and marriages and all kinds of things.

So, the solution is we need to adopt Judeo-Christian value system, and get rid of alcohol so we can get rid of the drunkenness. So, the religious leaders doing dominion, you know, whether they're dominion, dominionism worldview convinced the federal government that we should outlaw alcohol, because that's the problem, right?

It's the problem. Well, what happens? It doesn't solve the problem. It turns. into a mess, man. Prohibition, mafia, mobs. Exactly. What it did is it created an opportunity for evil to prosper. The very opposite of what the religious leaders assumed was going to happen happened.

Suddenly, evil people discovered that human beings who haven't been transformed in their hearts, right? They haven't had this transformation. We'll figure a way around the law. Even Paul the Apostle, when he's writing, you know, in the book, you know, in his letter to the Roman Church, is talking about how the law actually increases sin.

It's like the more you tell people you can't do something, the more they rebel. And so this is where it gets really crazy for me because I'm, you know, a sociologist and somebody who loves to study human psyche, you know, I mean, what drives humans? Like what's underneath us?

It's the very thing that a lot of these people are talking about and want to see. We've already seen before and it never turns out well. It's never worked. So it looks good on a chalkboard or on a whiteboard, right?

It all seems like, wow, this would be amazing if we could do this. But it never works because we don't deal with the root issues. You know what I mean? It's like putting a lipstick on a pig, I guess.

That's another, you know, ancient, you know, rural kind of thing. But that's what dominionism a lot of times. And my, from my perspective, it's like putting lipstick on a pig. Okay, let's all do it. Let's it all looks right, right?

We're going to do all these right things. But it doesn't work because humans don't have their hearts changed. So therefore they just fight the system and and come up with all these workarounds. Well, and to make it more fitting of an example, it would be as though the farmers were to say, if we put the lipstick on the pigs, we don't need defenses to keep the wolves and prey out, because the lipstick will keep them away.

What I've seen whenever the Christian ministers push this nonsensical agenda, what I have seen is the non-Christian communities understand because they're critically thinking about the religion, even though they're not in it. They're critically thinking.

And they understand how absurd some of it is. And so as the religious agenda gets pushed, you find the people who aren't religious trying to circumvent those nonsensical rules through the nonsense itself. And that is a result and byproduct, in my opinion, of the religious leaders who are taking prey upon people who aren't critically thinking. If they were critically thinking, they would understand that, no, the lipstick is not going to keep all of the predators away from the pigs. You must have a fence around them. But that's not what we- have. And you know, your example of the prohibition and all of the mess that was created, you can

find it not just with alcohol, but with practically everything that they have tried to push throughout the history that I've been able to examine. You find the same examples being the same problems being created whenever they push these things. So whenever I began understanding that there were strong ties between Laterane and the prohibitionist movement through one of the key figures in the message was William D. Uppshaw, who was also a clansman. He was working with William Brandner's mentor. He was one of the few men who went across the nation pushing the prohibitionist movement, right? Well, they were collaborating with what was an entity, a business

that was being established called the Supreme Kingdom. And if you think about what it was in its era, it included the prohibition. And interestingly, some of the leaders were drunk in alcoholics who were sleeping around with women in their drunkenness. It was a weird mess. But they were rising against their rising in the Christian fundamentalist movement to fight Christian liberalism.

Much like you have today with the NAR pushing their political agenda, that was the political agenda of the era. And they were saying we can't allow them to teach evolution in schools, and there's a various list of things that they're trying to push against. So they created the Supreme Kingdom. And the theology, this is in mid 1920s, I think it is. The theology that they had is almost exactly what the NAR had. It was founded by leaders of the clan. William Brandner was attending revivals under this thing. We have evidence suggesting he was in one of the

revivals in Nashville, Tennessee in 1928, I think it was. But they were pushing this as a means to create and establish the Kingdom of God in the United States to fight the opposition, which is Christian liberalism. And from that developed into what we had, the laterane movement, the charismatic movement, all of these are building blocks on top of each other. So their history remains intact, but the political sins that they're fighting change from era to era. The things that they were fighting back then, most of the NAR would just laugh at and say, no, we want our alcohol. We

like to drink. But they don't, you know, they don't care because it's not a hot political topic. So what I have seen is when these movements arise and they try to claim dominion, what they're really saying is, I'm a bully. I don't like the people who don't agree with me. So I'm just going to make all of the opposition. I'm going to forcibly convert them. And we've seen what happens when you forcibly convert people Roman Catholicism is. Well, don't you think underneath it? Because as a historian, I think you'd agree with me that one of the themes all the way through history

as the few want to control the many, right? That's not unique to religion. That's just a human trait that you have certain alpha figures who love the status and the stuff. And in order to get the status and the stuff, they have to control others.

So one of the things that concerns me deeply about the whole dominion thing is you fall back into this trap again where it looks so good, it sounds so biblical, but underneath it's being driven by this lust for status and stuff.

I saw it, you know, we can bring it up to the current thing before the election, they had these events and watching religious events and Washington DC to support Donald Trump for president, right?

And the NAR guys put on a few of the events. And I was watching some of this and I was watching the arrogance of some of these religious leaders standing up saying because I am an apostle, because I am this, I declare, right?

And I just said that I thought, gosh, this is sort of embarrassing, you know, because it's like, what's driving this? This need to tell everybody, I'm, you know, in my view, and this is kind of a sidebar, I equate apostles with missionaries.

I don't equate apostles with a system, right? A religious system where they're ruling at the top. I see the apostles as the missionary servants who go sacrifice and lay their lives down to bring the good news to other people.

I have a completely, almost opposite worldview of what is apostolic. One common theme about all the original apostles, they all died, they all got martyred, right? They weren't sitting on top of a geopolitical, religious institution ruling.

So let's go back a little bit because I've been thinking about this from the perspective of the early church. You know, as we were talking earlier, it seems very clear that at least the original Christian community had this perception that there was a dominion event about to happen, which was Jesus was going to return, and say, and up his kingdom on earth.

There was this sense of eminence that this was gonna happen, well it didn't. And what ended up happening was the early church spent 300 years being persecuted. They were this minority sect, this minority group of people that were living in hiding, right?

You go to Turkey, to Cappadocia, there's all these underground cities and people were hiding, right? They were hiding from the authorities who saw them as a threat to their kingdoms.

And then along comes Constantine. And can you imagine if you're living in 300 AD, and you've been living for at least 200 years on the run, constantly wandering, if they're gonna, Romans are gonna raid you, crucify you, take all your stuff away.

And suddenly the ruler of a nation converts to your faith. I would imagine there was just in this incredible sense, oh my God, it's the Seven Mountains, right? Right? It's like, oh my God, our guy is in power now.

And so I could see that. I could see how they would think like how exciting this is. In fact, this is how crazy it is when Constantine wanted, you know, Constantine was so confused as what actually was the truth about Christianity.

He convened the council of Nicaea where he sent out this invitation to all these bishops to come in like of the thousands that were out there, only like a few hundred came because they all thought it was a trick, right?

They had been so conditioned to get beaten up and killed, right? That didn't even wanna come because they thought there was a big trick to get them all there and they was gonna kill them all.

But that didn't turn out to be the case. Well, then what ends up happening, right? We see Constantine decide that, it's not cool to kill Christians anymore. So he legalizes Christianity saying yes, this can exist in the Roman Empire free from persecution.

What people don't understand is a Constantine didn't make Christianity the official religion of Rome, that happened two emperors later. Well, again, what happens? Everybody's all excited. Now the Roman Empire has converted to Christianity.

This is the kingdom of God on earth, right? Our political leaders have embraced all this. Well. what's the fruit of that it didn't turn out very well did it didn't turn out very well no no because what ends up happening is by time you get uh...

few more hundred years down the road the popes are are feeling so threatened by the other geopolitical power houses that they have to then create a holy roman empire so they can have an army to go to war protect their status and stuff so the reason i'm bringing this up is i'm going to say something that maybe controversial to people but hear me out it seems to me that whenever the people of god the christian community lose their spiritual power in influence in other words the truth the reality of what they believe is impacting people whenever they lose that

they always turn to government and an institutional power to try to force people yeah and you get into this thing with jesus where i said this to people before the religious leaders were driving people to judias and out of a fear that if you don't conform to our ways bad things are going to happen to you jesus comes along and he draws people right he talks about i'm living water i'm bread i'm i'm i will feel feature hunger right he comes from a completely different perspective and he's drawing massive crowds because of it jesus has no political power

is not no wealth but he's got this incredible influence the first generations of christians had this influence but then they lost it so then they what do they do they turn to the roman emperors 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 branham historical researches website william dash branham dot org on the book's page of the website you can find the compiled research of john collins charles paisley steven mcgummery

john mccannon 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 your list to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

What's really fascinating about the history, the actual history, is that it is so different from what you hear whenever these leaders try to push the dominionism agenda. Whenever they talk about the martyrs and the Christian persecution, they spiritualize it because they want it to be in this realm of spiritual warfare. And so they try to frame it into a mythology that doesn't really coincide with history. It doesn't exist in history. But the early Christians, if you think about, there's a, I can't remember what book this is in, but there's an instance where Paul is talking

about the Unknown God. And he's going and say, look, you worship the Unknown God. Now, let me tell you more about Jesus. And that is an example of how polytheism worked. They didn't care what God you served. You could have all kinds of gods. You could serve this God. If you had this ailment, you could serve this God. If you wanted to be a mighty warrior, whatever it was, it was, it was a pluristic society of gods. And the politics and the religion were all combined and merged in the ancient world. And so I've heard ministers say that they persecuted the Christians because the

devil was rising up against them. Which it may be, but they paint this picture that it was solely because they were Christian that they were persecuted. But it's more complicated than that. In a polytheistic religion, whenever the enemy nation comes in and tears through your kingdom and destroy your land and pillages, your villages, the first thing that's going to happen in those ancient religion, politics, societies, they go through and say, okay, which one of you are serving the weaker God? And oh, by the way, here's this group of Christians. Their God is Jesus. And it's only just a

few years old. So that must be the weaker God. And that's likely how the persecution happened and began. But what you don't find whenever Paul is going to the unknown God, the people who are worshiping the unknown God, he doesn't try to forcibly convert them. It's a situation where he's coming to them and he's trying to, like you said, trying to change their heart. Because if you change their heart, you have a convert. If you forcibly convert them, what happens is you have persecution. This, you have manslaughter. This turns into a big, big mess.

Yeah. And I hope people hear my heart here. But I have real concerns right now when I see the religious leaders in our nation all co-zing up to the political powers. I'm not saying it's wrong.

But what I'm saying is, I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm saying is based on history,

cozying up to political powers, and having them implement or institutionalize or create laws or whatever to fit your agenda has never worked. Ever. Yeah. And some for some reason, well, maybe we know what the reason is.

We, it's like we keep doing it. There's this meat, right? And so what concerns me is where are the spiritual leaders?

Then I'm going to throw this out here. Where are the spiritual leaders who have such stature, who have such wisdom, who have such influence that the presidents of the United States come to see them.

You see, it's backwards. It's like what we have right now, is we have a bunch of weak Christian leaders who are all grappling at the foot of institutional power so they can get their agenda done.

And I got to say, I got red flags going off all over the place. And I'm honestly, I probably am an anomaly here because everyone else seems to be so excited about this. And I think it's the greatest thing and we're in the, in fact, you hear this all the time, we're on the verge of revival and blah, blah, blah.

I'm thinking revival. We're going to get a revival from a political leader. How does that work? You see where I'm going with this? It's like, we have lost, I think of Peter, what was that line where Peter comes up to the cripple guy who's begging and he goes, silver and gold, I have none, but rise up and walk.

It's like, we want silver and gold because we've lost the power to say rise up and walk. Is that makes sense? It's like we've lost the capacity to actually transform people. And so that's what I'm deeply concerned right now.

I feel like we're missing the boat as it were that it's either they've lost hope that there's going to be a spiritual transformation. And so therefore, we're going to grasp on to political power.

Or the truth of it is, is there actually being driven by a lust for status and stuff? And this is really... very personal because they want to be seen as being near power. It is such a mess.

And you know, looking outside of the religious realm, just think, put yourself into the minds. If you're a Christian, put yourself in the mind of a non-Christian. You see this leader who doesn't resemble Christianity at all, not in any way shape or form, who doesn't behave like a Christian, who doesn't act like a Christian, just the fundamentals of Christianity, the basics, the love of your neighbor, that kind of thing.

This man has none of it. And yet he's being touted as the leader that's going to lead this revival. So if you are a non-Christian, what you see is, like you said, it isn't him going to the religious leaders.

It's him using the religious leaders. And he used that to his benefit. That's actually, in my opinion, that's probably what got him elected. He used that to his benefit and the whole religious world, who's under this umbrella, doesn't realize that they're being used.

But the non-Christians do. And if you are a thinking man, you know, it doesn't take a smart man to realize that if you have an entire group of people being used, you can also manipulate that entire group of people.

So the way that Christianity will shift after this worries me even more than what I see right now, because in that hierarchy, what you have created is you've taken all of these central figures of maybe not destructive cults, but there are many cult followings that are under this pyramid.

And now they have just come under the umbrella of one single central figure. One of the more intriguing characters that I've been watching is Franklin Graham. You know, I think I told you that Franklin was a year ahead of me in school.

But Franklin's kind of cozyed up, you know, he's one of the guys that's in this inner circle. And the reason it's intriguing to me is because his father did the same thing. And at the end of his life, he's on record to say, and I regret it.

For the very reason that you just articulated, I got used. I thought that I was having influence and I was actually upon to get votes. And that's one of the things, again, that I got a red flag about this.

And it's like, you guys are all under the illusion that somehow or another, you're having influence and you may be just getting played. Yeah. That's what's always happened, right? You see this over and over again through history, every, it's like, you know, you saw it in the, you know, you, you saw this struggle in ancient Israel when Samuel is having to deal with the fact that the people now want to king, they want to be like it.

Everyone else, and they don't want to be ruled by the priestly sect anymore. They want to be ruled by the political sects where they go get Saul, and then they get David, and then we get Solomon, and then we get a mess after mess after mess.

They get the whole thing as a mess. For every one good king, there's like four bad ones. They can't all driven by what? Alpha, Shambish, and Ingrid, and so, but what's interesting is all through history, the political class wants to be endorsed by the religious class, and that's just not distinct to Christianity.

That's in almost every situation. They want the priestly sect to endorse the king's sect, so there's always this weird relationship going on. My problem is that with Christianity, I see a philosophy, you know, worldview of Jesus that's so different than dominionism.

You know, it's 180 degrees. It's servicism. It's not about ruling over others. It's about serving others. That's the transformative message. For people who are unfamiliar with history during that time period between Jesus and Constantine, the Roman Empire was plagued with plagues.

All kinds of plagues, and what would happen was the wealthy who had their summer cottages on the ocean and the Mediterranean out in the country all fled the urban areas to go to the rural areas to avoid, you know, hitting the plague.

But the poor remained. Well, who went in there to help the poor? Christians. The reason why Christianity became so influential in the Roman Empire was because there was a whole group of people who cared for others more than themselves, and did what Jesus said in John.

There's no greater love than to lay your life down for another and win into these plagued riddled cities and nurse these people and die doing it. Right. That's influence. It's so backwards because when you do it the other way and you don't convert the hearts, but you forcibly go try to take over and try to enforce whatever is your religious philosophy.

What happens is the children who grew up under that oppression. It is oppression. You have people who are being oppressed, good or bad, whether you agree with the laws that are being pushed or not, they feel like they are oppressed.

They do not agree with what is being dictated to them. So the children rise up and they try to overtake it. They see the oppression. their parents, they rise up and now you have small wars. That's the other thing that really bothers me about this because as you try to enforce all of this mess, what happens is you're creating the next generation of wars for the world. I was explaining to somebody the other day that if you step back again and get the bird's eye view of history, every generation is a reaction to the one before it. That's why history zigs and zags are giving an example right now. They're

all freaking out because Gen Z is ultra conservative. So you have this very liberal generation of millennials who now are having conservative kids. And that's my grandkids generation. So I watch all of this and it's very fascinating because how did that happen?

Like the millennial parents that are very liberal are going, wait a minute, where did that come from? Right? It's the same thing that happened with our generation and our dads, you know, the World War II thing. They were, you know, our fathers were military born and raised and disciplined and loyal and institutionally loyal and then we came along and everything was about rebellion. We did the exact opposite. And that's the way history's always gone. And so to your point, that's exactly it. Whenever you raise a religious generation, the next one will rebel and be unreligious. And the reason for that, again, I'm going to keep harping on this point

is because you've institutionalized it. It becomes about rules and regulations modifying forcing behavioral change and not dealing with the heart. Trying to impose something on people before they've actually had a transformative heart experience for the Holy Spirit's gone in there and flipped the switch from it's all about me to it's all about everyone else. And unless that happens, unless that switch is flipped, I don't care how brilliant your dominion theology is, you are not going to get what you want and you're going to get the exact opposite. And I don't mean to be so boxing here, but I'm to say it's so obvious if you're a historian and you

just study the facts. They say that the definition of insanity is trying to do the same thing over and over and try to get a different result. What's funny about this is the ministers pushing this thing. If you look at the ministers' kids of any minister out there, they're the ones who usually rebel the most, right? Because they're being the most oppressed, they're forcing their opinions, their religion, their ideology on their kids. And they're the ones that go wild, man. And so History repeats itself, but even in the family unit, they're seeing in a small scale what they're trying to do on a global scale.

Yeah, that happened to me actually in 1975. I did not come from an evangelical Christian home. I'd spent 11 years as a Catholic and seven years as an existentialist. And I had gotten, you know, I had made a decision to follow God in June of 1975 and then in October I was in Bible school.

So it only been a Christian like for three months, right? So I'm all excited to go to Bible school, only to get there and find out all the other students didn't want to be there.

And the common theme to your point was they all have been raised in Christian homes. In fact, at least the third of them were either PK's or MK's. And so here I am, all excited to learn about my newfound faith and meet all kinds of other passionate people at school, only to find out they couldn't wait for classic.

The answer they could go skiing or get out of there, they did not want to be there. I mean, you know, I had fellow classmates, females that had already had abortions, you know, had already been busted, you know, for drunk driving.

I've said this before, Franklin Graham was popping wheelies on his motorcycle down the middle of Estes Park. I mean, they didn't want to be there. And I remember when I was raising my kids, I kept having this phrase go through my head.

He's the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but he's not your God. An institutionalism, once the force, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the historical God on people. Yeah. Not your God until you have that experience, you know, until you have a John Newton experience, you know, the famous slave trader who finally has this epiphany that, oh my God, I'm wretched.

And we get this incredible, him amazing grace from a man who suddenly comes face to face with his lust for selfish ambition and greed, his lust for status and stuff and goes, oh my God, I am so ugly inside.

I am wretched, the fact that I would treat other humans this way. And he has this incredible conversion experience, right? And he spends the rest of his life doing what? Serving others. Where did that go?

See, that's what it were. What's really bothering me, my soul. I'm agitated about it because where has that gone? Where is that kind of true conversion experience happened? Now what we want to do is we want to close you up to political people and have them change the rules and force everyone, you know, down this road, which is we just talked about is not gonna work, legislating morality, legislating ethics, legislating that and then forcing people to behave, you get the exact opposite fruit.

Well, it goes back to something that you said earlier, it's the generation after that you see the consequences from the generation before. In the Laterane movements, it began, because it came out of the post-World War fears, right?

The Laterane movement, it began as a platform of fear and they were having large numbers of quote unquote converts. And if you really think about that, were they really converted to Christianity? Was there really a change of heart?

I can't answer that question, but I see volumes of people coming into this thing and then you look at the leadership that emerged from it. There are various splinter groups that emerged from it.

Many of which turned into very destructive cults. They had people who were also their converts, many of them who were converts in the Laterane, but what they were taught wasn't something that was a version of Christianity that required a change of heart.

In fact, many of them are angry at the world and they want to forcibly convert the world to whatever is their cult structure. From that emerged charismatic Christianity into the NAR, and many of them traced their roots, God's Generals key example.

They traced the roots all back to this, right? So the question for me really forms out of all of this mess that we see today was there really a Christian conversion in those people.

I'm not gonna say that no, there was none because I'm certain that there were Christians in there, but the movement as a whole, whenever you see those, there's photos online of like 100,000 people in auditoriums for these Laterane conventions, right?

Were there really 100,000 people who said, I want to change my heart, I want to live in the way that the New Testament teaches. I want to live like Jesus said, love God, love your neighbors yourself.

I want to start with that fundamental and then build Christianity on top of it. Was there a change of heart? And what you see instead in the movements that exist today, if there is opposition rather than try to show them a better way and teach them, like as shown in the New Testament, they want to force them and say, we're stronger than you, we're now more number than you, we want to forcibly convert you.

And it shows that there wasn't a change of heart for at least the people that we see publicly. Yeah, one of the things you and I talked before we get on the air was there's a common theme all the way through the groups that embrace dominionism, which is there oppressed.

They're in a weaker position. It's always the person in the weaker position and it's sort of like a wrestling match. And what that what They're trying to do is a reversal like you're on the bottom, and now I'm going to do a reversal move So I can be on top, but it's always about being on top That's what that's what concerns me because Jesus kept talking about the fact that the guy in the bottom actually has the power See this is the class of these kingdoms to me It's like this collision here that we're talking about between the kingdom the real kingdom of God and how it operates

Verse this Geopolitical version of the kingdom of God where we dominate others and we control them That's the real struggle, and I think you know If you go back to what you just talked about what was driving all these guys?

Well, they were poor. They were in a minority right and I'm talking about the latter rainguys, right? They're all poor They're all You know in a minority group Like all the other minority groups who now want to do a reversal because they want to be on top They want to be in control. So what's really driving it?

Is it really about Jesus in the kingdom of God? Or is that about their need to control others and their lust for status and stuff That's what I think is the million dollar question because whatever that is underneath whatever's driving it Whatever the root is I I think that's the big question and from my understanding of Jesus worldview you can judge the root by its fruit Absolutely What happens and we've just discussed it's never worked Well the reason it most likely has never worked was the motives way back in the beginning weren't right It wasn't driven by a love for others. It wasn't driven by laying your life down for another for others

It was driven by me wanting to you know to be seen as somebody powerful and influential and me wanting to have more stuff That's really what was driving it So again, you know where we got to be careful here is you can get a guy in the pulpit And he can be a great order and a great speaker and be a dynamic personality and it all sounds good But what's really driving it? So I think The probably use an overused Kind of word picture. It's it's the men of Issacar who knew the times and seasons. I think right now

More than ever. We really need to be discerning and And and get to what's underneath things what's really driving it now what they're saying Not what it looks like right. It's not about words and pictures It's about what's driving this.

What is the motive here? You know, that's exactly right. And I've been trying to think, what's the solution to this? There really isn't a good solution because you have so many people that are claiming Christianity but have obvious signs by their fruit that they have no change of heart.

And more problematic than that is there are people in leadership now who don't show and display the fruits of having learned what is Christianity. For me, it was as simple as, I read the New Testament.

I read the Old Testament. I read it all over and over and over washing all of this nonsense out of my head. But I read it in a critical way. I critically thought about what I was reading.

And if you can read it in that way and you can critically think about what it is you're reading, you understand the consequences of the actions that were taken in the Bible by certain people.

You see the consequences of their actions. And that's one of the biggest, I think that's the most powerful thing for me to read and understand is learning that there are consequences to the many actions.

But I don't know what the answer to this is. Maybe, let's do this. Let's open it up to the audience. What do you think is the right way to solve this problem? Just let us know in the comment feeds.

Yeah, we love the comments. What it tells us is that you're an engaged audience, that you're listening. You're pondering these things and you're coming back with a perspective because the thing that I've learned in life is that it's like Paul wrote in Ephesians, the manifold wisdom of God, the many face, the many faceted.

So John and I are two guys just trying to dialogue back and forth and share our perspectives. But when we hear from the audience and you guys share your perspective, it's really great to hear and we appreciate it very, very much.

And I'm grateful that you're so engaged with the issues that we're talking about. I was actually a little surprised after the first few that we did. I thought we were going to get an onslaught of hate now.

We actually didn't get... Give very much. We'd got a few, but there wasn't much. And the comments seemed to be overwhelmingly positive, which tells me there are people out there who really want to critically think.

So I'm actually... I'm glad that this is helping someone. Yeah, we got a good audience of people listening in that I don't take that for granted. Yeah. 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 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.