Christian Degree Mills - When Ego Replaces Education in the NAR

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Dr. Jed Hartley, son of a prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer. Dr. Jed it's great to have you on and to talk about all things I hop KC and education and doctorates and you know magic doctorates and fictional doctorates and all of these degrees that people give themselves when they don't actually have them.

Well I think that's an excellent introduction Dr. Collins. Dr. Collins sounds way more better than Dr. Jed for sure. I suppose Dr. Hartley would be what I would actually go by but yeah when you throw doctor in front of something I get why people I get why people make it up and I get why people want to put that that doctor in front of their name because it sounds good sounds sounds fun.

You know it's kind of funny I don't really care you know if my name has it my name doesn't have actually have some titles that I never ever use but I went to college to get my Bachelor of Science so I guess you could say that I'm BS and that's probably the best thing although I got my associates and I never actually finished that because education was discouraged in the Brandham cult so I don't know if we've talked about this but it plays directly into what we're talking about from a historical perspective so I'll get into

that but assuming that I had continued and got my BS I'm John Collins and I'm full of BS. Well as yeah BS is also I also have my degree in BS so I'm here with you I also I did all of my I don't know if I've said this I'm here I went to I got a master's well I went to a master's program did all my master's coursework was writing a thesis about basically the philosophy of religion had like a mental breakdown because this was before everything that had happened at IHOP had kind of come to the surface

and I remember this like two years of just trying to write this thesis being There's something really wrong. I was talking about the freedom of beliefs and how in certain communities, you don't have that freedom of belief and talking about that as a right freedom and access to clean water and to food.

We talk about these as human rights. And I was engaging with that sort of subject and then it became just too much and too difficult for me. And so I kind of put it to the side.

So I have all of my master's coursework completed and I still have to defend and finish writing my thesis about it before I can get out of where I'm not just viewing BS and I can put an MA in front of my name.

So working on that one. Awesome. When in the random cults, the higher education was strongly discouraged. In some cases, even low level, like there were particular sects that the children could not even get an elementary school education because it's of the devil, my brother.

And the history behind it, which we'll get into, like I said, is a little bit fascinating. But what it becomes for people who were allowed to have it? In the main sect, it was interesting.

They strongly taught against it until my grandfather, who was the pastor, until his daughter, which is my aunt, married somebody with a master's degree. And then suddenly everybody can go to college. It's suddenly allowed, right?

In that particular church, now outside of this, they were kind of frowning upon it. But there's a high level of double standards across the whole movement. But what Cheno and I were talking about recently, there's this problem when you're in a cult and you're indoctrinated in a certain worldview.

And you're indoctrinated that outside of this worldview is death and destruction and doom and doom and you're going to hell. Well, what happens is people kind of bottle up an isolate and they don't experience things outside of this.

So we heard sermon after sermon of, you know, it's okay, we understand in today's world, you must go to college, you must get a degree because that's how you and your family survive. But oh, by the way, we see all of these people who go to college and they leave this message, my brother.

Yeah. And they start talking like there's these demons that are just influenced the whole system, which is by design according to the history that we'll get into. But what happens is it, like for me, I really should have finished.

I should have went on through and maybe one day I will. But while I was in it, I was in it just long enough to get my job and I was indoctrinated to think that's good enough.

I don't want to go any further, I don't need it. I have a job. Yeah, yeah. And I think that the way that you are taught and you're situated around education, like that never goes away.

You feel a lot of your, it takes a long time to like retrain your brain to think of these institutions. And I fully agree, maybe it wasn't as like explicit

in our community, but there was, I mean, a huge hesitancy towards education in general or particular types of education. And I remember there being a lot of what I now think of as just projection, you know, because what do people say in these sort of insular communities where there are intense sort of religious dogmatic beliefs that you have to adhere to?

What do they say about education systems? They say it's, you know, if you go to college, you're gonna get brainwashed and it's all, you know, propaganda and it's all this, you know, and it really is a lot of projection of like what we are experiencing in our community.

Like I remember going and thinking, going to college and thinking that I was going to have to like defend my beliefs from an onslaught of individuals who disagreed with me and who were gonna pick apart my faith.

And like throughout all of my undergrad and my masters, there was never one time where I ever had to defend being a Christian, I wasn't always a Christian during that, you know, like, but like certainly when I was in my undergrad, I would consider myself Christian and when I was like there was never anybody who was like, oh, I can't believe you believe that.

Like I was in Kansas City, like half of the people around me were Christian, same as my master's program. I'm doing a masters in philosophy and like of my cohort, like three out of the seven of us or three of, we're like explicitly Christian and one of them was even a pastor within.

And it's just like that there's this idea that you couldn't hold on to Christian beliefs if you went into academia. But what the reality was is that you couldn't hold on to cult beliefs as well.

Those were the things that were challenged. Those were the questions that were raised, that critical thinking in general is going to posit because when you have, when you're a part of a community in a system that requires such a specific method of thinking, any other method of thinking, any other sort of external beliefs will, be devastating to the sort of integrity of the system because it all falls apart as soon as you're like, well, does this make sense?

Does this make sense? So yeah, some of those, like my views on the end times,

obviously became much more difficult to hold when I went to secondary education and ends when I started having to like, you know, we're doing politics and I'm like, you know what? My theory that the world is gonna end in 2015 and that, you know, Jesus is gonna split the sky and that, you know, the tribulation is going to start.

I don't really know how that fits into contemporary secular, you know, politics. And so maybe this doesn't fit well in the conversation that we're having. Like those were the things where you're like, ah, this doesn't work.

But like, yeah, it generally was very unoffensive in education and also like, they have other things to do. You know, the professors there are gonna be like, here's some of the things that we believe there, but they're interested in just completing the class and doing this, like it's a job.

It's not, they're not there to like mold your mind where the community that we were both involved in, respectively, were very invested in what we thought, where it was like critical that we believed the same thing that they believed.

In secondary education, no one cares. It just doesn't matter. But it took me years to kind of get over that sort of innate prejudice that I had been given towards the education system. The point we're trying to drive at later in the podcast is all of these faults, doctrines, and all of these degrees that they're giving.

But before we get there, we probably should talk through some of the history so people understand what this is and why this is so complex. But there's a problem that exists in the cult world and that is control.

You're taught from the top down that you must be controlling. And so because the cult leader is controlling the parents, the parents then become overpowering and overbearing and overcontrolling of their children. And that is by design, every cult operates like this.

So let me give an example. I'm a father, I taught my boys how to throw baseball, like all good fathers should do, even though I'm not a baseball fan or I'm not into sports, I'm more into music.

But I taught them, you put your left leg forward and then when you throw the ball, you step and you put your right leg next, right? Because they're right handed and that works better.

And I tell them when I teach, my, children something, teach them why. Here's what you do, here's why you do it. And they learn from it. If I were to take them to, say, join a league, and they have a teacher who's saying, all right, now we're going to show you how to throw a ball, you're gonna put your right foot out first, and then step with your left, which is awkward.

Number one, it's awkward. The kids go into experience and then decide for themselves, no, this is ridiculous, this doesn't work. Number two, I have trained them, and because I've trained them, they know, well, this guy, this guy didn't know what he's talking about, dad, and that's how children work.

That's how, as a parent, that's what you do. You teach your kids, and they learn from you, and you don't have to fear them going and learning how to throw a baseball, and correctly, because you've taught them, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in the, in the cult world, they have taken, they'll do that with baseball, but send them to a church where they're being taught false doctrine. They have this fear that suddenly, your kid's mind's gonna be hijacked and stolen, and the demons gonna infest them, and plague their body with demons, whatever is the weird nonsense, because it's so flipped upside down where in the religious world of cults, you must control otherwise, everybody has powerless to the demons.

You've built this fear of being captive, captive by demons, held captive, right? So, that problem existed for decades, and the history behind it is very complex. I go through it in my latest book from Christian identity to the NAR, but multiple streams of white supremacy, religion, evangelicals, fundamentalists, multiple streams came together, united against the education system.

The white supremacists wanted to fight the education system because they were, obviously in the 60s, it was the integration of schools of black or white, but before this, long before this, it was to establish a separation, a segregation.

So, the segregation didn't exist, widespread, so we need to step in and fight the school system. You had the fundamentalists who were stepping in, because, oh my gosh, they're teaching evolution in school. Even if I teach my kids that evolution is not correct according to whatever is your religious philosophy, they might accidentally catch the evil spirit of being taught evolution, whatever it is.

So, you had the fundamentalists who were stepping in for an array of different ideologies that they were fighting against. Then you had Christian identity who was at the same time starting to merge with white supremacy and being taught that Catholicism was the number one enemy.

And so, they were fighting because now you might have Catholics in your school and they might teach Catholic ideas. And so, they wanted to set up different school systems. systems. So all of this laid the background for what we're talking about today.

What ended up happening is there were many religious leaders that fought education itself. We should homeschool, for example. We should take our kids out. They don't need school at all because the rapture's coming.

Doomsday's in a day. We don't need it. So they were fighting the school system in a variety of different ways. And some of the figures who were involved with this, like Charles Fuller, who founded Fuller Theological Seminary from which there were great figures in Charismatic and NAR came out of this.

He was a public speaker touring with this fundamentalist league that was trying to undermine the school system and promote Christian identity. Now, I'm not saying Fuller Theological Seminaries like that now, but he was one of the key figures and I have some photographs of him at some of the rallies in Indiana, interesting enough.

So this was a big, big deal. And so they started creating these institutions where they could teach you only what they felt was approved by whatever was the cult or, you know, some of these weren't yet cults.

But whatever was the approved doctrines, and they started setting up seminaries, some of which weren't accredited. But you could go get your degree and you could feel comfortable, mainly as a parent, you could feel comfortable that your kid had a piece of paper that said something, whether it was valid or not.

And that's really the history behind how all of this got started. You can see the convergence of multiple streams contributing to this sort of education hesitancy because it isn't just like, like, obviously it was the communities, the cult communities that both you and I sort of erased it and had this element, but it's kind of an element of just evangelicalism in general right now.

I remember the, you know, the movie God's Not Dead. Have you ever watched that? I've not seen it, but I know what you're talking about. I'll just tell you the plot real quick, and it's pretty funny, but the plot of it is basically there's this young man who's going to a public university that is being taught, he specifically, he's going, I think it's a philosophy class, like an intro to philosophy class, and the teacher there, the professor, played by Kevin Sorbo, is a staunch atheist.

The conflict of the film is that the professor makes everybody in this, like, intro to philosophy class sign a document saying that God is dead, right? And he's like, well, I want to, I want to skip this section if we're talking philosophy.

to be, I want to skip the whole, like, dease section and just get into the good stuff. So he wants all of everybody to sign this ridiculous paper that says God is dead, which, OK, just as I remember finally studying Nietzsche and reading the whole where that phrase comes, because it comes from Nietzsche, like God is dead, and we have killed him.

And it's from the parable of the madman where a madman comes into a market, and he's like screaming about God is dead, what festiv- we've killed God, what festivals of atonement now shall we do.

And it's actually, now Nietzsche criticizes Christianity a lot, but in that instance, he's actually criticizing the secular moralist of the day who are like, we don't need God, we have rationality, we have our own minds, and we have created this world, and God is something of the past.

And so now we can create a perfect society together. And Nietzsche is writing this to be like, do you not understand that the whole fabric of society is built around a belief in God, and this madman is like talking about the collapse of society now that we have killed God.

So like it isn't even a criticism of Christianity, that particular passage. So like even the using the God is dead rhetoric is just fundamentally misunderstanding in the material. But the premise is just absolutely insane, because never in a million years, would that be what happens in a school?

You never have to sign a document. Like that's a totally invented conflict. Like I went to, like I said, I went to and studied philosophy never, well first of all, never did they dismiss like a deistic beliefs because like a lot of the history

of philosophy has been intertwined with like the history of religion, like Plato was religious, Aristotle was religious, Socrates was religious, like all of the Western philosophers

were all influenced by Christianity. It only within like the last hundred years do you even have like more secular, non-Christian philosophy and like the entire, you know, Kirchgaard, Kamu, all of these existentialists, like talk about religion if they are not explicitly advocating for religion.

And so this notion that like the higher education is going to stamp out. out and require you. It's like that, I don't know if you grew up with this, but in the 90s, it was a huge thing where it was like, one day you'll be at school and there's gonna be a school shooter who says, do you believe in Jesus or do you not?

And if you say you believe in Jesus, they're gonna shoot you and it'll be great to like die and martyr for Christianity. And it's like that, that's just, you're a vending world that don't happen.

Like that's just not happening in the United States, you know? And this whole like martyrdom complex is just fabrication.

It's just fiction. And so anyway, the plot of God is not dead, is he does not sign the paper. He makes the protagonist makes a statement of his belief and that he cannot sign the paper even though his girlfriend is pressuring him to sign the paper and everything.

And then they hold a trial where he defends God and the professor accuses God. And it's just, it's so bad, it's so bad. Like it's depressing, both from an artistic perspective and from just like a, you don't, there's plenty of things in the world to be angry and frustrated about.

There's plenty of things to work towards of like, there's a lot of discontent and disarray in the world that you can address and be like, we should fix this. So why are we inventing problems?

Why are we coming up with issues that just don't exist and making whole fiction narratives to make it seem as if the world that we live in is fundamentally a different world, you know?

That there's this weird martyrdom complex in higher education that is, or there's this, there's a weird martyrdom complex that says that higher education is like coming after a Christian religion. It's just, yeah, it's ridiculous.

You know, it still goes back to what I said earlier, whenever, whenever somebody would go to college, the ministers would say, and we watch brother so and so, he went to college and he left this message, he left the code, what happens?

And it's very ironic because it's to the detriment of these groups, what happens is they create these straw man arguments that don't exist. And when somebody goes and they see the straw man argument, first, what happens is the indoctrinated fear suddenly hits them and, oh my gosh, I see the straw man.

But over time, as they begin to understand what the straw man is and how wrong it is, then they realize that they were lied to in the first place. Yeah, that's what really opens the door and many people do leave the cult whenever this happens.

And that problem has existed like I mentioned the fundamentalists. So evolution was the big thing and You know the snopes the scopes trial all the monkey trial all this stuff that was happening right Yeah, that was just directly mixed into the Christianity of the world. Yeah before Evangelicals became what they are today They were part of this. That's how it developed and What's really interesting is Since the theory of evolution was declared what I can't remember what year was 1800 something like that Since that declaration we have actually seen animals that have evolved in different ways

You can totally if you want to look at it You can go if you don't believe me you can go to the Google and just type in what animals have evolved since 18 What is it 1850 something like this?

They're the obvious ones are animals or Creatures that are living in darker regions and they're of the nature where they have to be camouflaged to survive We they're skin color changes and there are tones that everything changes about them or What's another good example that elephants and their tusks?

So there are now tuskless elephants, right? We're starting to see these changes these adaptive changes And this happens all across wildlife what's really interesting is you find people who were Hard core against evolution Who actually mentioned that in certain aspects that we were seeing things evolve Which is a total contradiction and to the person who's critically thinking wait a minute They're saying on the one hand that evolution doesn't exist and we should fight it and on the other hand They're saying that they have seen it and they're given examples of it Which do we believe this is a straw man and

The other good one So the young earth theory I know that I know that most of our audience is going to condemn me just because I talked about the young earth theory But if you ever ever watch cosmos the way they explain it and especially the Neil deGrasse Tyson reboot of cosmos There are things about it that are just undeniable In the way that it is presented and the way that he presents it is We look out at the stars and we see all the planets and he gives this like this calendar of when the world when the earth began

The time in which it would take from the light which is a constant to go from the star to us is constant We know that measurement the star would have actually burned out by the time it hit our eyes to look at it And so when you think about all of this being created you really have to go back to Okay, how did all of this come to be when God you know if you believe Genesis and you believe that that is a literal interpretation God created all of these things well for them to for the people to have seen them in the early books of Genesis

And they saw the stars. Those stars would have taken so many years to hit their eyes. So there becomes this conundrum, right? How do you explain the days and genesis versus how do you, how did the light hit them?

And I'll go back to my baseball example. If I were teaching my kid the young earth theory in this case, I would say, now we know that God created everything and we created the light.

He created the light beams too. And the light beams were just on the chest of hitting us. And then when the kid goes to school, he's not afraid that somebody is going to teach something wrong.

But what these guys did in the fundamentalist groups, no, they're going to teach science. And that science is going to contradict our worldview. So therefore, they can't go at all. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKennan, 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-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

Even before the recent questions of evolution and the earth is and stuff, what was the one before that? It was whether or not the earth revolved around the sun or the sun revolved around the earth.

And like you could be excommunicated for advocating for what a heliocentrism or the belief that the solar system is the sun is at the center and we're not at the center of it. And I think that that's, there's a spectrum of this.

And people are going to be challenged by the thing that I'm saying, not everybody's going to love what I'm about to say right now. But there is a lot of egoism in especially cult Christianity's, right?

Because it's, we are a part of the End Times church. We, God, has spoken to me. It's very, God through me, through my community, through my place in time. And it's very the history of the universe, all coalesces in me as an individual.

visual and my church as an individual like that is the that is the international house prayer narrative That's the message cult like the belief that you know The all of all of these different alligias that that came to be and in the sort of roots of the Pentecostal church of like I am I've read the Bible and I am Continuing the spirit of one of the great leaders of the past like this. It's this very like egoistic You are at the center of the whole narrative of the universe sort of thing and I've talked about that in the past but

When you get into education, especially science One of the biggest things that you learn is that you're not that big of a deal like you just aren't The center of the universe. There are other cultures. There are other people groups There are billions of people on this planet. There was a recent study that was even just like Hey, we've probably underestimated how many people are on the planet because we fundamentally underestimated rural populations and that there could be as much as like 10 billion people on the planet instead of just the 8 billion

So the world is like in of itself much more vast much more eclectic much more diverse in its thinking and Experiences than we are led to believe and then the universe is larger. I mean every every millennia there's a discovery of science that's like oh Oh my goodness the universe is so much grander and more expansive than we thought it was and we are a dot in a speck of a molecule within the vast ocean of the universe and That is not I think that that's something that a lot of people really struggle to

Believe like that's just it doesn't and I think that that totally and perfectly coalesces with a view of a great gut Like I don't think that those two things have to be opposed that you can believe in Christianity and Believe in God and still understand the vastness of the universe and the relative insignificance of of Your human life, you know in a cosmic scale like those those things don't have to you know It's like one of the great paradoxes of of religion is like you both are Of the utmost importance and you are a drop in the bucket like it's I think that there's something beautiful to that but

in order to push away these uncomfortable notions of insignificance We have villainized scientific and academic research that just deals with reality, just deals with the fact that we're in a big, fast, open world in universe.

And we aren't that separate in some ways from the other animals that roam this planet, that we evolution, this idea that we came from monkeys. And it's like, well, which that's not what evolution posits, we didn't evolve from monkeys, but that's a different thing.

But it's only absurd because it makes human beings feel less significant. But that's the only reason that it's absurd. It's just because we couldn't be the same. And for a long time, people thought it was absurd.

Race races weren't the idea that this race could be just as intelligent as this race was like a lot of racism that saw different races as fundamentally different. And we're so aghast by the differences to believe that we're just one race among many in the world.

And not to compare that to evolution or just the sort of dealing with the insignificance that your culture, your community, your people group, your even human beings in general, Earth in general is not like the only thing that exists in the universe.

It's just a hard pill for a lot of people to swallow. And I think a lot of these, it's a spectrum of it. But a lot of these cult communities that are super egoistic, that really need the narrative of the universe to coalesce in their story are fundamentally fall apart when you bring in the light of just the reality of other belief systems.

And so I get why they're threatened by it. Like I get why I was taught to go to the IHOPU or to go to the Y-WAM University or to Bethel. Those were the schools that I should go to instead of going to a public university.

Because all of those universities will not threaten this belief, and I say universities very loosely, because they were great academic institutions.

But all of these churches and church colleges would not threaten this idea that like IHOP is the forerunner church that's bringing in, you know, is at the forefront of the end of the known world.

old, like that wasn't going to be challenged if I went to YWAM or if I went to Bethel. And so I totally get why they feel threatened by it, but they should be threatened by it.

Because it's a bad, it's a bad belief system. And anytime you get out of the like wings of the dogmatic egoism of those communities, you realize how like silly they are. And so that's the, that's the challenge.

It's funny whenever I listen to you talk, because I also record with Bob Scott. Many of the things, the themes that he brings to the show, they cross over with some of the things that you say very frequently, we'll have conversations.

He and I just recorded one, when did we record it? I guess it was two days ago. We recorded talking about the how these cults are indoctrinating people to everything is always about me.

And what they're doing is basically they're indoctrinating a, you know, a narcissistic personality disorder among the people. It's me. It's me. It's me. Give me. Give me that kind of thing. And it's showing its way through society.

Everybody's posting these selfies now. And back, you know, 20 years ago, people would laugh at you if you're doing this. Why you? I don't want to see more of you. I want to see the world.

I want to see other things. But that's how today's world has become and it's very weird. But one of the other things that he talked about, you were talking about the race theories, et cetera.

A lot of people don't realize this, but even in mainstream, not religious-centered institutions, they were teaching eugenics, which is basically this false notion that you can take races and you can improve the human race by selecting breeding and a bunch of nonsense.

When you combine that with the white supremacy, with the Christian identity and all these other things that are flourishing, this was toxic. And yet, it was widely believed. And now, obviously, it's not taught in the schools.

People realize that, no, this is a little bit wrong. But that's what was happening in this era and many of the leaders who were founders of the charismatic movement came out of that type of environment and it's not really their fault.

They were just raised in this environment where people truly believed that they should have selected breeding. It's a really weird mass. But what happened was, like I said, the history brought it to the point in which they were so hardcore against the education system, especially in the 60s during civil rights, that they started to try to create ways to circumvent the education system.

Right. One of the ways they did this was these theological institutions. And it was, I don't know if it was a widespread problem, but they were springing up these institutions. that were somewhat outside of the US legal system because there's a separation of church and state.

So I can create a religious institution. You can't stop me. I can give them a degree. You can't stop me. But the problem was it was not accredited. So people got a piece of paper and you know there's this real gray area back then. Yeah he's got a degree. Well does he really? And what's interesting is before that became as widespread as it did, there were significant figures in laterane that were claiming to be doctor and there were a doctor of nothing. Many of them did not even go to these things to get their fake degree. They were just, they were knowledgeable and so they got the

nickname doctor. And among the movement, the nickname was just as powerful as having the actual piece of paper because we don't need the paper. The world is ending. We're going to go into the next world. So that's, that's what had William Brannum's publicist quote unquote doctor leave ale. The one who basically all of the literature that we have today, he was a strong proponent in helping organize and create that and swaying the movement in many with various ways.

He was not a doctor, but his nickname was doctor leave ale. So then William Brannum and Gordon Lindsey started holding these seminars where you could go and get trained on quote unquote deliverance how to cast out demons and all this stuff. Well they give you certificate and that became as powerful as actually I would say argue that among the movement it probably became more powerful than having an actual doctor's degree because now you could go to any church in the entire community and I know how to cast out demons. I have this power now because I went to the school.

And that developed into this weirdness today where you know people are getting these degrees that mean nothing nothing at all. But within the movement itself it is powerful. Yeah and it is, it is sort of like just a brush like who's going to put it on their resume and who won't you know because it's not everyone has the audacity to do these things like not everyone. There's a lot of people who understand this even within the community who would be like I'm not going to put doctor, I'm not going to be doctor heartily if I didn't do my doctorate you know but it goes it goes with I

think a lot of the history of the the charismatic and pedicostle movement where you have faith healers who are sort of taking the role of doctors and and denying so in the similar sense in which you would have these faith healers who are like don't go to doctors like Jekko was one of these and we spoke about him a couple of episodes ago but he would tell people to ought to go to doctors and a lot of these different faith theaters would say the same.

And they sort of took this medical or pseudo medical anointing and were like, come to us and you'll get healed. Don't go to the doctors to get healed, come to us. And so it's sort of the co-octing of the medical profession without doing any of the like rigor of the medical profession.

And I understand having hesitancy and being like, oh, the medical profession doesn't always get it right. There's, you know, I get being like, well, we're over prescribing these things. You have to do the work.

I don't understand this. I like, why I grew up in a community that was like good, hard work, don't cut corners, no participation trophies. Like this was the mentality that I grew up with.

And the rhetoric that I was being taught and like as a good, you know, Christian, conservative, Midwestern individuals, like you got, before you get the reward, you got to put in the work. You can't just have a microwave generation, you know, where you get things instantly.

And then on the other end, I realized like, that's just all we were doing with the community. You had people who were practicing medicine or practice, you know, having their own sort of alternative medicine or their healing or something like that.

They were preaching without studying the Bible. They were, you know, putting doctors in front of their names without actually going to do the, you know, four years of undergrad and then the however long, seven years in total, eight years, however long it takes to get your PhD.

They just weren't putting in the work. They could have put in the work. Those were, those options were available for them. They could do this, but instead it was just like because they disregarded and devalued the institutions that weren't directly created within our sphere, they had this notion that you could just create whatever you wanted and you could hand out titles.

And again, super egoistic, super narcissistic view of just being like, well, I am smart. So therefore, I should be a doctor and I've done the work. Like, I've read all of these different books.

So I've, I should be a doctor. And it's just like, no, there's a reason why like the label becomes really meaningless and ridiculous. And this was a problem back in the early 1900s where people were practicing medicine and never studying anything.

And like there, there was reasons why there were sort of rules put around these systems. And then you have people, Ow, who, so I'll probably tweet something before this episode comes out, I'll put a good Twitter thread together because I've been wanting to do this for a while and so I'm going to reference it here and if people want more specifics, they can go to my Twitter and it will be, I will have this information first time I've ever plugged myself, it feels weird, I don't like it, but there's a man named Lance Wallnow, you know John, do you

know who Lance Wallnow is? I do, I haven't published much about him because I kind of avoid the living whenever I'm publishing about people, but Wallnow is a very, very outspoken supporter of William Brown's ministry, so I do go there sometimes. Yeah, and he kind of became famous because he had some prophecies about Trump or something and during the first election and so he kind of rose to prominence for a while, I don't know how prominent he actually is, it's hard to tell with some of these guys whether or not they matter at all within

the community or whether they're just, you know, loud online, but he's certainly loud online and I was looking up some of his stuff a little while ago and I noticed on some of his books, it was Dr. Lance Wallnow and I was like, what, what did he study? And so I went to his indeed page and this is why people should look at the Twitter because I'll have it more specifically and detail it. But I followed his Twitter or sorry, I went to his LinkedIn page and I like saw the institution that he said that he got his PhD from and I went

to their sort of thing and it was like they had pictures, I remember going to the website and they had pictures of like this big university campus and I was like, I've never heard of this university come to find out that that the pictures of the university campus was like Arizona Theological Institute or something like a totally different institution and they just like rent out one of the rooms to give their diplomas out like that's the so they like have this big picture of the institution but like they only just like rent once a year a conference room

to like give out the diplomas and I'm sure that the Bible school like just doesn't even know that they're using those pictures and then and and on it I'm reading through and I'm like okay, well it seems like it's an accredited thing and it might be a small school and then I'm looking at the accreditation And I was like, what is this accreditation program?

Because like, you know, years ago, people started making their own institutions. And then it was like, okay, well, they're not accredited. And so that what they've started to do is make their own accreditation institutions.

And so lo and behold, I go to the accreditation institution and I like read about the accreditation. And one of the founders of the accreditation institution

is Lance Walnell. So he created the accreditation program that accredited the school that gave him his own doctorate degree. And if you read their sort of like method of doing it, is they give like basically honorary doctorate degrees to people who have written books.

And like, then they give out degrees to people who read those books and who minister with them and stuff like that. So it's just like, you know, it's just a circle of people who like all are congratulating each other without any sort of rigor.

Like from what it seems like Lance could have done absolutely zero coursework or any research outside of his own like writing his books to actually get this PhD.

And he's, I mean, even if he did do work for it, you can't be the founder of the accreditation program who accreditates the school that then gives you the PhD. Like that's just, you can't do that.

You gotta go elsewhere, you know, like you can't, you can't forge your own degree and put it up on the wall. And it's one of those things because it's like, you know, we deal obviously both you and I John have like done research.

I mean, you far more than me, but we've spoken about people who are doing some pretty horrific things in this world. Like the Mike Bickels who are praying on people or even like my father who's doing like fraud in a way that is very insidious and stuff like that.

And I don't really know what to make of the Lance wall now because it's like, should he be in prison for forging his PhD? I don't know, I don't think so. Is it really, really, really ridiculous?

Yes, absolutely. And does it like contribute to why? Like when the Christian community is like, we are persecuted, no one takes us seriously in academic institutions. And it's like, this is why, you know, like if you, if you're like, oh, I went to this institution and I went to IHOP you and none of my- I credits transferred over to UMKC when I was doing this and they don't respect this.

And it's like, yeah, people don't respect it because shenanigans like this are going on. And no one's, no one's holding them accountable. Like I said earlier, not everyone has the audacity to of a lance wall now, to just like put doctor in front of their name and to like create this convoluted scheme.

It almost would be better if he didn't create the institutions and like this like work around. Like it would almost be better if he just was like, I don't respect academic stuff. So I'm just putting doctor there because it would be like a little bit more transparent.

But the whole like dog and pony show of creating this institution. And so it's like, they know their line because if you weren't lying, you wouldn't put the picture of the university that you're not a part of on it.

Like you wouldn't put the bit. Like if you were just like, oh, we're a humble group of individuals and this is that, you know, I'm pretty sure that they, this is another level but like I started, I started getting the weeds but like some of the people who are even on the board, I'm not entirely sure if their pictures weren't just AI generated too.

That's a different level. I'm not sure that was, that's me get my like red thread and pictures and up against the wall but I mean, regardless, you know, the smoking gun of course is just Lance name being on the very accreditation thing that he's a part of.

But it's just, you know, like I said, it's just very silly and it undermines though like respect of the community at large, you know, because it's just, what are we doing? What we're not trying, we're not trying hard, we're not thinking, we're not engaging in critical thought, we're not attempting to.

I mean, you have the all of, all of you, you know, Western history, you have some of the greatest thinkers of the world were within the Christian community where like the greatest artists of the world where the Renaissance itself was like inspired by Christian and Catholic thought.

Like there doesn't need to be this hyper separation between the rest of the world and us

and the more that we create these insular communities, the more we get these weird, convoluted messed up doctrines

with these, you know, con artists who are leading these just very unchecked and un, like zero accountability

systems and institutions. I feel like we have. come full circle in this podcast, because at the beginning I said that I almost had BS, but if I were to do this, if I were to set up some sort of a fake picture in me being it, but it raises the question, if I did it, and then I said that I had BS, would I actually have BS, or would I have more BS, or would I have less BS?

That's the question. I have no idea how to answer that. Yeah, yeah, and I think that there's like, I know that we were both being a little self-deprecating and making jokes about having BS degrees, but I do think that there is something about being humble about your education, and so my partner works at as a professor

at University of Illinois, and she's done the work. She's done her post, she got her doctorate, she did her postdoc, and my education, compared to her education, pales in comparison, and it's good for me to be reminded and humbled all the time of just being like, damn, she's smart, and she's had to work for it, and if I'm proud of the fact that I graduated with honors

in my bachelor's degree, and I'm frustrated that I didn't have finished my master's yet, but I will, and I completed my master's coursework and did great, I'm proud of the education that I've done, but I recognize that it is not significant in academic worlds, because there's just people have to put in a lot of work to separate yourself from the rest of the group, you gotta really roll up your sleeves, and you gotta get to work, and there's no other way around it, and I really respect the people who have done that, and not all of them, we've all met people

who have PhDs through prestigious universities, who you're like, I don't know how they slip through the cracks, it's not, I don't wanna glorify or not pretend, like there are still a lot of problems with academic institutions, of course there are, but there's something happens when you failed to respect worlds and institutions outside of your community, and it will just set up this sort of dogmatic situation where you have to, and your children have to, and their children have to hold this sort of prejudicial view of the rest of the world, otherwise the whole power and structure of your community falls apart,

and it's very different than the like, I taught my kids how to throw a baseball and regardless of wherever they go, this works for them, this is the mechanics that work, it's like, you know, you have set them up for failure, and now they don't, you know, it'd be like teaching them how to throw a baseball where you have to, do some religious pre, you know, like the basketball free throws, you know, how they all have their routines and stuff like that.

If you instead of teaching someone how to shoot a basketball, we're like, okay, you have to spin the ball three times, do this and stuff like that. You're setting them up for failure because if they, you know, go to any other world, they're going to be like, you know, shot clock violation.

You can't do that every single time. It's just this sort of like creating these sort of dogmatic beliefs and routines and systems that just fundamentally fail in any sort of outside world and then demonizing the outside world for that rather than recognizing the insufficiency of the community that you yourself have created and lived in.

Well, I can tell you didn't get your doctor's degree from one of the credited NAR institutions because you spin it seven times, not three times if you want the actual glory of God to come down on the baseball.

That would make way more sense, of course. So so much more we could say about this, but I think people get the point. There's this is this is not right. What is happening? This is this is a little bit of a mess and it is still going on.

One last thought too of like we didn't hit on it. We hit on it in previous ones, but like it also then leads to really sad situations of young adults getting wrapped into these institutions that are created that are phony institutions that don't give you a whole lot of life experience or knowledge.

Don't have, you know, they're not useful. The degrees are not useful in any community outside of that community. And so you're then tell, you know, fallacy of sunk costs. You're now like, well, I can't leave the international house prayer because my degree is only valid here and like maybe a few other sort of cult like religious communities and it's really heartbreaking.

I know that a lot of people, myself included who like that, that was the first, you know, I went to YWAM and I did this like my first foray into the academic world was through these phony sort of religious institutions and you have to, it sets you behind in your career.

If you're wanting to ever branch out of that world, if you want to be anything other than like a missionary or other than a prayer leader at IHOP, you know, it sets you behind and I'm feeling that and I know that a lot of other individuals are feeling the cost of that.

So as much as like the Lance Wall now thing is silly and ridiculous and we can kind of just like shrug our shoulders at it and be like, this is dumb, I don't know why he does it.

It lends to this sort of more predatory. where young adults are think that they are going to institutions that are, if not prestigious, at least competent, you know, believe that they are doing, giving a proper sort of like investment of their time and money.

And of course, it isn't. Well, now you've talked me into it. Next time we're going to have to go deeper into Y-WAM. It's about time. We probably need to address it, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's do it. 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.

www.youtube.com www.youtube.org