Narcissism in the Pulpit: Why Modern Preachers Think They Are Gods

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder of the Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books, the latest is some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Profits, and the International House of Prayer.

Bob, it's good to be back and to talk about this Christian world that we live in today, which is actually more like a dumpster fire than Christianity. And we're getting into some topics that I'm sure is going to make some people uncomfortable, but that's where you and I tend to go.

So we're in our element, but it's good to be back. Last time we talked about the Heresy Hunters and talking about how does it help, does it hurt, what's the pros and cons, and there was a subject that we were actually leading into, we didn't get into fully, but we're talking about, we're going to be talking about the issues that are existing currently in today's dumpster fire of Christianity, but instead of focusing on the people that are, people are pointed to as the issues, an underlying threat of problem that exists that enables this to happen in the first place.

And I think that's a, it's an interesting topic because we're going to have all of the Heresy Hunters who could potentially aim their fire at us. So today's going to be fun. Yeah, I think we need to have like some sort of disclaimer thing at the beginning of this, which says, inter at your own risk.

But the cool thing is, again, I probably said this before, but over the weekend got a chance to read the comments. There's quite a bit of comments on the last one you posted. And I have really enjoyed reading.

I normally don't, but I've really enjoyed listening, I'm sorry, listening, reading the comments and the perspectives of people that are, you know, kind of tracking with us. Like, it's like I'm realizing like, you know, you and I sometimes think we're way out there, but I guess there's a whole other group of people that are way out there too, because they seem to understand where we're coming from, which is always really nice.

so I appreciate all of you and your helpful insights as we unpack a lot of this.

I was telling John before we got on, I had a really interesting conversation last night with one of

younger guys that are currently sort of on a mission to expose a lot of the fraud that's out there currently in the ministry world and I was unpacking some things for him because there's, as John just said, there's a great deal of focus right now and who's wrong. What I don't hear any discussions are on what's wrong and there's an interesting dynamic, John, I'm sure you've noticed this. We're witnessing something right now that I described in my book which is called the circling of wagons.

You know, I talked about how in dysfunctional families, if you have an alcoholic parent or drug addictive parent or whatever, in dysfunctional families, everybody circles the wagon to hide and protect the one person and keep the family reputation. I am seeing that on a macro level right now within the church world and what's fascinating about it is it's our generation. It's all guys are age and older who I've known since I was in my 20s and what I'm watching is as I'm watching the system circle the wagons and protect its own. Why? Well, this is going to be hard for

some people to understand and please don't shoot the messenger but the reason why there's a lot of of circle in the wagons right now is the system is highly lucrative. Let me unpack this a little bit because I've lived behind the scenes in this world. I won't name names but I will say that before the whole Michael collapse there was some prophetic there was a prophetic ministry that was invited to Kansas City. That particular ministry walked away twice with $80,000. Wow.

Now, think about that. That's more money than most Americans make any year and it happened twice from two weekend speaking engagements. It is not uncommon for speakers to show up at these conferences and walk away with $10,000 to $20,000 when there's a group of them. Have you ever noticed how the same group of people keep showing up at each other's conferences.

You already say where I'm going with this? There's a system here. This system has been in play for a long time. And what's happening right now is instead of looking at, okay, we have, you know, we've got a systemic problem here. We have to preserve the system. We have to preserve the lucrative money making machine, right? And let's tell everyone that if you speak against us, you now have the spirit of accusation. Have you seen that one?

It's all over social media. And it's the same phrase that all of the defenders, right, of the guys who are getting busted are all using the same phrase and out of laugh about it, because you know, because you come from that same world. It's always the spirit.

Mysterious spirit that shows up. And now we're all dealing with a spirit of accusation. You and I come from a business background, right? What cracks me up, and I was telling this that the guy last night is I said, in the business world, or I've spent 40 years working with the NFL. In the business world, when something isn't working and we have failure, we do a post-mortem. We tear it apart. We analyze it. We pull everything out and nothing sacred, right?

Everybody jumps in. If you're in the NFL and you lose on Sunday, you know what happens on Monday? You're in a film room looking at every play you're getting called out. You ran the wrong route. You were off here. You screwed up here. You let that guy loose on the back end.

That's why they scored. Everybody's held to account. And then we get to the church world. And the very same thing that everyone else does is now a sin. And those that want to do it have a spirit of accusation. You see how illogical this is? That's why I'm really struggling with this right now because of the fact that all the other areas of my life, this is considered a really good thing. A highly productive exercise. And suddenly now it's not. I've had the same type of conversation.

I think three times in the past two days with different people. But we're talking about exactly what you're describing. The church today has created this weird theology. And there's different variations of it. And you've got the people who believe the kingdom now theology or the seven mountains mandate or the kingdom. The Eology, John Wimber, however, he branded his, you got all these different flavors of what they consider to be the kingdom.

And each one of them, if you go back to the Bible and just read the words of Jesus, just simply type in a search engine, like biblegateway.com, type in the word kingdom. You're gonna find Jesus saying things like, no Satan, you can offer me this kingdom, but this is not my kingdom here on earth.

My kingdom is a heavenly kingdom and other passages. They're the one that I always like to go back to because if people could really grasp what is being said, he said the kingdom of heaven is within you.

And yet you have all of these theologies that are something different than Jesus said from ministers who have to be reading these passages. They have to know that they're saying something that is not what Jesus said.

It's actually anti-biblical. But what they've done is they've created this fictional realm. And because of the entertainment style gospel that exists today, they like to make the angels and demons seem like the television and movies portray the angels and demons in spirit world.

And the byproduct of that is they have created this atmosphere for the members involved that is an atmosphere of fear. They fear the demon world because everywhere you look, it's a demon and they're out to get you.

And it gets so bad and problematic that they get afraid to question authority because then they're mentally anguished trying to determine, well, is it the demon that's making me ask the question? And they start to think that they themselves are demonized and it's not the biblical way.

Jesus came and like he said, the kingdom is within you. You don't have to live in this fear. And the Bible says perfect love casts out fear. So this is definitely an odd message of perfect love that they're presenting.

But in the end, what they've done is they have created the perfect money-making atmosphere. The people can't question it or they're demonized. Some cases they're excommunicated. The leadership has ultimate authority and power. It lets narcissists reign.

And at the same time, money is all flowing uphill and large, large sums of money like you're describing. Yeah, and to make sure we're clear on what we're saying and what we're not saying is that we're talking about men and women who have big national and international ministries.

The vast majority, guys and little local churches, well, I'm not saying they don't have their issues because they do, because we're all broken and dysfunctional human beings. What we're talking about is the business of ministry that's gone international and national.

And these guys, they're like stars, right? considered other. But what's concerned me as I was sharing with my friend last night is still we're in this very interesting moment right now where we keep talking about who's wrong? Like who's doing it wrong? Because of the way that I'm wired and because of our you know the background I come from business and athletics. The question that I keep asking is what's wrong and here's why I asked the question. When the same thing keeps recurring over and over and over again it's not unique to a who. You have a system that's producing something bad over

and over and over again. Well what is it? Like what's happened? Like what's going on behind the scenes? Because the who was created in an environment they were incubated in some sort of soil right? That's not healthy. Another is we keep reproducing something right over and over again we do this. So I'm sort of in an interesting place because I'm watching the younger generation sort of in shock right now. You know I've probably spent the last years of my life dealing with huge disillusionment and shock but I'm not surprised at all. I mean I've been behind the curtain. You've been behind the curtain. You know what it's

really like and so you know and so what I really want to you know kind of go down this road and kind of ask and I've been talking about this actually for about five years now and there's there's something that's happened in the church world and in the beginning well let me just say this in the beginning in the early church right? You had a group of small business owners and a next government employee who were basically the founders of the church right? These are hard working blue collar guys they're fishermen right? They're hard they're

not then. How did they view themselves? And I think what's fascinating is go back and look at the original Greek word which was diaconus. This is the word that we now translated into English as ministry. That word is basically describing a table waiter or a servant. Even Paul the Apostle and all of his letters defined himself as a bond servant.

What's happened in the last 2000 years that we've gone from ministry being something where I lay my life down for others? I serve a group of people. It's where we get the word beacon from, right?

I serve others to now I'm a star. I have a ministry, right? You know, I'm viewed by others as extraordinary. I'm lifted up on a plaque like this is 180 degrees different than how this whole thing started when Jesus, you know, when they were Jesus disciples and he poured into them his kingdom of God worldview. Like, it's way off the reservation. We're not like a little bit off. We're 180 degrees off.

You see what I mean? Like, I know that sounds shocking, but think about this. These guys saw themselves as servants. You know, I've never told this. I don't think on the podcast. So my grandfather was the pastor at the Brannum Tabernacle here in Jeffersonville.

I can ride my bike to the church that he led for 50 years. After Brannum died, a series of events happened and he became the head pastor. Well, the NAR and the charismatic movement and the shepherding movement and many of these other movements, whether they like to admit it or not, they built much of their empire on top of Brannumism.

What Brannum did financially during the laterane revivals and the post-war war two healing revival as a whole, they wanted to mimic his financial structure and how did he achieve this? What doctrine was he doing that was enticing to the itching years? That's literally how this all came to be.

Well, at my grandfather's church, after this thing had spun off into a highly, highly destructive cult. One of the worst, there are documented evidences of the different destructions that have happened in this cult and it's unbelievable.

It's astounding. Jim Jones people's temple, the biggest of which, right? Many of these people say that Brannum went astray in his later years and so we like his early years, we discredit his later years.

Yet at my grandfather's church, not many people are aware of this. While my grandfather was there, I don't know if it's still happening because I've not been there, key executives from major, major NAR institutions were coming to visit and learn how this authoritarian structure was still in operation.

I have had some, I could name names and people, their mind, their jaw would drop but I have had people contact me and say, why are you doing this? I knew your grandfather I've visited his church many times and I'm like, wait a minute, you did?

And I've not seen and invited any of them. But they have they've actually some of them have reached out to me some of which wanted to I think get their dirt on me But who knows what why they did it but the point that I'm driving at The structure of the church the cult church that I attended That my grandfather led for years that these NAR figures are visiting and trying to understand how they did it It is so different from what other other Christians understand as church That they can't even fathom the authoritarian structure of it. So the word deacon like you said

It does mean servant. I studied this heavily because I was shocked that that's what it meant In the charismatic NAR churches, it's obviously much more Different than the servant. It's not somebody who's there to serve. It's a different structure altogether But in my grandfather's church the church where these NAR executives are visiting It means military police William Brannum in the years that they claim Brannum did not go astray These are the ones that they deemed to be the good years He he literally said there's a there's a book I've got it in the other room is called church conduct order doctrine or something like this

It summed up Brannum's doctrines on the church Establishment the building and structure and it said these are God's policemen. They're there to enforce They're there to kick people out of the church should they Violate our rules and they I watched as people did this This is during the years that these NAR people were there if a lady come in and she was wearing her best Sunday Best slacks and a blouse with the slacks weren't permitted. They would physically eject the lady from the church That's how these enforcers were and that's what these guys are visiting and and watching right so they're looking at how this

Authority authoritarian structure was created but beyond that They're also looking at other aspects of it like you said. I'm a business man. You're a business man How did the marketing work? How did Brannum market himself? What were his styles and his techniques?

What branding did he use for himself and you start to notice these other guy like Bob Jones Granted he may have been genuine, but many of the similarities between his life story and Brannum's It just it blows your mind man. Yeah, it's really wild isn't it?

Yeah, and and it's like it's like these guys either Maybe it's a genuine story, but maybe he was chosen because he matched that genuine story for whatever reason They they're down to the marketing to the structure to the This thing that is called deliverance ministries that Brannum is a large reason why this exists Not many people are aware he and Gordon Linsley held these big conferences that are teaching people how to perform these Stage acts because they created this functional kingdom of what they called, you know, God's kingdom, and created the realm in which all of the things, it's like a dungeon as dragons game,

all of these fictional demons that I've got a book somewhere that talks about how you cure the hiccup demon. That's how weird this gets. So they've created this fictional world and they teach people how to live in it in such a way that it's financially profitable and they've combined business strategy, marketing strategy with spiritual, spiritualism, not Christianity, but this whole thing, this whole package that has been created is an entertaining package that the itching ears love to hear. Well, you know, Jesus talked a lot about fruit, but he also talked about soil. And I think what I'm, what's on my heart for the

next couple of sessions is I would like to talk about the current soil in the church world. In other words, you could use this environment. I just pointed out something that's transpired over 2000 years, where there's been a fundamental shift from I'm here to lay my life down for others. I'm willing to be a martyr. I'm willing to die on your behalf.

To ministry now is an elite group, a small group of elite people who are chosen and we all follow them and adore them and idolize them. And they've, we've created a celebrity environment around them. So, but there's two things that have happened in our lifetime that I think I want to point out. And again, I hope people will be gracious in that I'm, I, I have a passion for sociology. So I'm just funny. Where most people want to be on the front row of meetings and events, I want to be on the back up high. And the reason is is that I'm one of these guys that

likes the 360 50 foot 50,000 foot birds. I view where most people are like, I'm going to be in the front so I can experience it. I'm more interested in what's really going on here right now and what's happening across the whole of the crowd, right? So this is going to be a 50,000 foot kind of insight here. But in our lifetime, there are two things that have happened that have absolutely transformed the church environment or the soil of the church world. And they've happened in our lifetime. One of them is that we have adopted

a culture of narcissism. Now, again, I think initially people kind of will push back on that, but let me develop this here in a minute and explain Do you a little bit more about what I'm saying and why this is so key because it's become so ingrained in our culture right now that we don't even see it anymore because it's happened over decades.

And the second one is we've adopted a culture of entertainment. So let's start with the culture of narcissism to give some perspective here. You know, our grandfathers, you know, we're alive during the Titanic, right?

When the Titanic disaster happened. One of the things you hear or read about in the Titanic was how they didn't have enough light bolts, right? So what happened? The mentality of our granddad was it's my role to lay my life down and sacrifice so that others can live, right?

And so they put the women in the children in and lots of men went down with the boat. And they didn't think twice about it and we're talking about multi-millionaires, right? Take a buster, people like this.

These are high profile people with millions of dollars who like, that's interesting, right? Then look at our dads. World War II happens. Evil hits the world on both the East and the West, right?

What do our dads do? They rush down to sign up to go in the military. In fact, they're so driven by laying their life down for others, they're lying and saying they're 18 when they're 16, right?

In other words, our dads had the same thing that their fathers had, which is my existence, my role, my place in society is to lay my life down for others, to sacrifice on others behalf, right?

It's one of the reasons why when they came back and used the GI Bill and got a college education, they built the biggest, most dynamic economy in the history of humanity, right? They worked their butts off.

Now, what ends up happening? And this is some of the dynamics that are in play is that our dads came back from the war damaged. My uncles had PTSD, whatever. And if any of you have watched the sound of music, you see the bear and bond trap kind of figure, right?

With all the kids and he's distant, right? He's other, there's like this gulf between him and the kids. And a lot of our generation grew up like that, right? He grew up with dads that were emotionally distant.

They were broken. They struggled with nightmares. You know, I had uncles who lived their whole life with guilt because they survived the day and their best bodies didn't. I mean, you know what I'm talking about?

It's like that was the generation that raised us. So what happens in the 1960s? What does our generation say? Where's the love? Right? Yeah. And the reason why this is important is because it's an our generation.

There was a fundamental shift from we to me. Our dads saw themselves as existing in a world of we. Right? It's our communities. It's our family. Like we're here for we. But we became so driven by our emptiness of soul that we started this whole thing like, okay, where's the love?

Well, the problem is laws and rules aren't loving. So let's get rid of them, right? So we did all these things, but in this space, and this is where again, I don't want to get preachy here, but I want people to understand there's a very specific thing that happened in America that launched all this.

And it started with a woman called A&Rant. Now A&Rant in some circles is considered this incredible philosopher because she had a huge impact on my parents' generation, right? So A&Rant for the people that don't know was born in St. Petersburg, Russia like in 1905.

And she came to the United States. She had relatives in Chicago, but she came here because she wanted to be a screenwriter in Hollywood. So she worked with Cecil B. DeMille and people like that, right?

And then in 1935, she released her first novel, which was called Fountainhead, and she got all kinds of critical acclaim. And then in the 1940s, she started getting involved in politics and then in the 50s, right?

Which is the precursor to the whole hippie movement which was in Greenwich Village there. You had Jack Carol Wick and Dylan and Alan Greensburg and all these philosophers. And she would hang on out with these guys, right?

And she started gathering this whole group of people around her because that's exactly what happened. You had like these little cults, right, in Greenwich Village. And she had this whole following because she was a very, very smart woman.

In fact, I know some of you know the name Alan Greenspan. Alan Greenspan was, I think, the Federal Reserve President. Alan Greenspan, when he was in his 20s, was... one of her disciples. That was involved. But anyways, she ended up, what's key here, she ends up having an affair with one of her disciples, a guy named Nathaniel Blumenthal, who later changed his name to Nathaniel Brandon. It was really important, because history moves on relationships, right? There are 25 year difference between the two of them, but they have this relationship. In 1957, which is the year I was born, she published what

most people consider as her magnum opus, which was called Atlas Shrugged. A lot of people have heard all this. You know, our generation, if you went to college, you had to read all this stuff, like that's how much influence she had. Anyways, Aaron had a philosophy, and her philosophy was called Objectivism. That was what she called it. And let me read how she described it. She said, Objectivism is the concept of man as being a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason

as his only absolute. Now, the reason why this is important is her philosophy literally infiltrated all of the Ivy League schools in America. Objectivism became a thing in the 50s and 60s, like huge, right? All of our political leaders, all of our business leaders, all these people were highly influenced. Well, break that down. You know what Objectivism is? It's all about me. He said, I'm God. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can

learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical

Research, we want to thank you for your support. You know it's funny because you and I came to inclusions, but from different angles. See, I began trying to understand the entertainment world of Christianity that exists today by studying early history. So I went way back 1800s and before because after I left Brannemism and I started entering into Christian churches, I didn't really understand it. I was a student of my Bible when I was in the cult. I read my Bible.

I've mentioned this a few times now, but I was programmed and manipulated where I could read entire passages that were totally condemning what I was in, but I was mentally programmed to block and misunderstand those passages. But I did read the whole thing. Then after I left, I read it continuously, non-stop, just as much as I could read it and wipe all of that garbage out of my head, I did. But the problem I ran into is, as I'm going into the churches, what I'm reading doesn't really match what they're doing. The whole strategy, it just felt like entertainment. I went to

a couple of the bigger ones that had the lights and the gases that flow from the stage and all the weird stuff that they have, the dry ice or fog machines, I guess they're called. That's definitely entertainment, but even in some of the smaller churches, the structure and style of the sermon itself was meant to be entertaining, and rightfully so, right? Because people aren't going to come back unfortunately. If they just hear the pure gospel without some entertainment, they'll never show back up. The doors would close, etc. So I began in the early years. I began to study, well, how did this

shift? In World War II, like you mentioned earlier, and I think we mentioned a lot of that in the last episode we did. But I want to go back to that because World War II had a humongous impact, not just within Christianity, but things that we take for granted today. It came because of World War II and the fears of World War III. One of the things that happened, which I'm very thankful for, I'm a big cartoon fan, and the shorts was in its heyday after World War II, because people could not, they could not really sit and have a full feature of cartoon and pay attention to it,

because there's so many fears and anguishes, and you know, people have died. Many family members that I know who went to fight in Germany, they're now dead, and so these little shorts that they could play before a feature film, people loved it. And the Bugs Bunny cartoons that everybody looks at and thinks this is, you know, the 80s that these came out, or I was a little surprised when I actually learned it. Most of my favorite ones were from 1939 up until like 1947. That's when the really good ones came out. So you had this world of them, this shift in entertainment.

Well, what happened with that shift is that, you know, back then they did not have the cartoon network, they did not have all these TV networks. Like you mentioned, maybe before we were talking, I grew up we had three channels over the air and you're really lucky if you got all three, many times you only got one or two.

But before all of that existed, people went to the religious arena to have their entertainment. So these traveling ministers would come in and set up a tent in some remote area. Well, that was the entertainment and they're selling hot dogs from hot dogs stands outside.

I mean, it's like a circus, right? You walk up and they step right up, step right up and see the traveling preacher kind of thing. And that was their entertainment. But then as the entertainment industry began to shift, Christianity somehow shifted with it and through every stage of this, what's odd is if you study the kingdom with its angels and demons and the way it spawn in the Christian world, as this was happening, those versions of angels and demons ironically match what was being portrayed in Hollywood.

And so as people are going and they're watching these, well, ministers, they're in the entertainment industry already. It is an entertainment gospel. I mean, example McPherson. Yeah. So if I can make what they're seeing on television and screen match my sermons every time they see it on screen, it's more powerful.

So there's more power in the sermons. But in doing so, you're creating this fictional world, right? This is something invented by Hollywood fast-forward into today's world. You have people that literally believe that everything negative that can possibly happen to them happens because there's a demon out there to get them.

And there's some people, I've met people who are scared to walk out their door because of this. And it's taken away the power that when the Bible describes Jesus conquering all and he says it is finished, it takes that burbage out of the Bible completely.

It is finished no longer exists in this world. I'm going to get myself in trouble here, but okay. So when I joined the Instagram, I joined it because I wanted to see what my friends were doing.

I wanted to see their grandkids, right? What I did not understand was I was going to be exposed every day to thousands of pictures of people posting of their own face, right? Well, you're all laughing, but let me explain something to you.

That would have never happened in previous generations ever. People would have thought that's absolutely rude over the top. Self-centered, like something right now that's a technology that we all use every single day and we think it's so awesome.

Almost every previous generation before us would have said, that's gross. You're so preoccupied with yourself. It's sort of like, what was it? Sleeping Beauty, mirror mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?

Or preoccupied with posting pictures like it's non-stop, right? And it's, sorry, it's all BS. It's everybody's dressing up and trying to present this facade that I'm this somebody, you know? I mean, when the most popular people that people are following, right?

Are all entertainers who are posting pictures of themselves not stop and some of them in very risque outfits? Like, what's wrong with us? See, I'm immune to this because I've got this ugly mug. Nobody wants to see me posting that.

So how did this happen? See, this is what I'm trying to, I'm hoping people will track with me because here's what's gone on, which is really bothering me. Is that for at least a few hundred years, maybe longer, the church world impacted secular culture.

Right? You can, there are a number of books out there that are great books that explain how diabolical the world was, and how the values, morals, and ethics of Christianity transformed cultures, right? But since World War II, the cultures are impacting the church.

There's been a reversal going on, and I don't think people are aware of it. And the reason why is it's happened over decades, slowly, a little bit, right? And what I'm trying to do is explain to people how this started, right?

You know, as anybody that studies sociology knows, and the reason why certain groups of people went right after academia, is academia is where the ideas start, and they trickle down. That's the bastion where worldviews get shifted, where things get shifted.

Academia is where that happens, and it filters out because what happens is you've got a whole bunch of 18, 19 and 20 year olds who have virtually nothing in their head, go to these universities, and are told this is where to look, what to see, and what's important, and this is how you should view everything.

They're given a set of glasses and told this is how you view life. And they walk out there, and that's exactly what they do. And until they face some sort of life crisis and disillusionment, they're just little echoes in the system.

And what about this? Where did this start? And that's what I'm trying to explain. Anne Rand, who's this name that most people have kind of heard of it, but they don't really know who she is.

Her worldview, her philosophy of objectivism had a huge impact. And here's where the next chapter of this goes. So she's seeing Nathaniel Brandon, who's 25 years younger than her, have this toward relationship and then they break up, right?

Well, who is Nathaniel Brandon? You know who he, what he becomes? The father of the self-esteem movement in the 1960s. Nathaniel Brandon is the guy based on objectivism that starts talking about, you know what the problem is?

We just don't love ourselves enough, right? And he starts what he calls the self-esteem movement in California in the 1960s, right? And we throw off all the rules and we become self-indulgence and it's all become self, right?

And then we go to conferences where we're taught about self-fulfillment, self-awareness, self-love, self-strengthening, self-care, self-acceptance, self-access, self-actualization, self-adjusting, self-advancement, self-actualization, right? This list can go on and on and it all starts with one interesting, little four letter word called self, right?

And it became so, it's so normalized now that we don't even realize that we've become what? Self-centered, Nathaniel Brandon brought into American culture self-centeredness, i.e. narcissism. That's why we have this culture of narcissism which has now impacted the church world.

It's everywhere. There's no difference between us and them. It's such a complicated thought. It's really difficult to get it out in the way people understand. When I'm talking about what happened in the church after World War II, it is a flood.

Somebody opened the flood gates of culture and culture is entering into the church, entertainment, all aspects of life, basically. And ironically, it transitioned to people who are saying that we need to go conquer these seven mountains of things that have shifted in our church world view.

But Anne Rand and her history, you know, I can remember, I'm old enough to remember reading columns in the newspaper from Anne Rand Essayser. I don't know if they were fresh and new, they might have been republications, but I remember them.

And I'm almost positive, although it's a very old memory, I'm almost positive. I heard a minister read from one of her columns who's either her or the dear Abbey as one or the two, but I heard a sermon that was based off of that.

And Anne Rand basically took everything that the world had held us culture and tried to flip it upside down. One of her, when you talk about just simply the self-importance, it doesn't even skim the surface of Anne Rand.

She was a hardcore atheist, which makes it a little ironic that she's being read in the book. And man is God. But she believed and taught that your mind is basically the God. You need to feed the God of your mind.

And that's, that's was her philosophy. And one of the, one of the things, she would hate it me. She would have absolutely hated me. I had to take one of these tasks for one of a client that I had, a personality test.

And they actually set me down with the counselor afterwards because they said, my altruism was too high to be doing what I was doing. I could not, they said, you are off the charts.

And she showed me like this bar graph. I'm fully into the red. I'm beyond, I think her exact words were, John, you are in a position of your managing people, but you're in such a weird position because you would actually die for those people you're managing if given the chance.

But Anne Ran taught that this type of selflessness was evil. So whenever she created the God of the mind, she rated altruism as a pure evil that's in this world and went through various stages of trying to describe this.

So she's coming out hardcore atheist and the Bible says there's no greater love than to lay your life down for no man. She's teaching that that is evil. But the church is absorbing all of this culture from entertainment industry to things like Anne Ran to, there's a whole slew of other things that is, it's all coming into the church.

While the biblical church is not something that is swayed and structured by culture, it is trying to define and establish good morals so that you can be different than the culture. So what I see, yeah, the called out ones.

So when you've got all these isolationist cults and this NAR mass, where they're trying to say that we're being discriminated against because they're in the entertainment industry and all of this, they don't understand that it's a problem of their own making.

Right. Well, they don't realize how infiltrated they've become by these philosophers. You know there are now, in our lifetime, this happened. There are 600 English words that start with self. I mean, think about that.

There are 600 words now in our vocabulary in English that start with self. It's, say again, this has happened so slowly over such a long period of time. We don't even realize what's happened to us.

And it's become so normalized. Right. I mean, if you think about it in the Old Testament, didn't God tell them not even to make an image of themselves? Right? I mean, think about this.

How far this thing has shifted? We've gone from, no, do not make an image of yourself to, hey, everyone, look at me. Look at me, look at me, look at me, you know what I mean?

And what's the whole ministry world? Whole ministry world is, look at me more than them. It's just insane, like this whole thing. I sit there and I look at this and I go, we're way, like we're so way off the reservation.

And here's what's crazy about it, is we don't know it, and we all think we're what? Normal, right? We're a, I love this one. We're a New Testament church. Really? You have no idea how different your mindset, your perspectives, your worldview is in the early church.

You're not even on the same planet. I went to one of those New Testament churches and the guy come out, yeah, the guy come out and it was interesting for me because I had left this authoritarian cult that was stuck in fundamentalism and he was teaching these sermons filled with grace, which is a concept that we didn't have in the cult churches.

But he comes out and he says, we're a New Testament church. Well, I'm sitting here in an audience, I don't know how many thousand people, well, he's a hologram on the stage. They had recently expanded, they had all these campuses and they didn't have ministers to fill them.

So they set up a hologram projector. And so he's saying that and it's all entertainment, man. It is such a big, massive entertainment. It's almost like this thing has been like, you know, like a drip you get in the hospital.

It's been this drip that's got into the church's bloodstream and decades and decades and decades later. We've been transformed and we don't even realize it. We don't realize, I mean, I grew up, I remember even back in the 80s, we used to say ours, we, no, it's all me and my.

And especially in the ministry world. So my first half of this equation is that we have a soil in the church and narcissistic leaders. That's why right now the reason why most of these guys are fighting so desperately to get back in the ministry is because they're so distorted in their brain that they think they're indispensable.

Like they think the rest of us all need them. They're so important to what God's doing and they're going to have a very rude awakening in the months before they die and they're going to realize how significantly in them...

important they are. I remember seeing pictures of old robberts in his little house, you know, as an old man, you know, and, you know, he was just this shriveled up, you know, somebody that very few people even came to say, you're gone. Like, we live in such a narcissistic culture right now and a news cycle that's 24 hours that you're done. Like, you have your time in the sun and then nobody cares about you anymore. And that's what these guys can't get through their head. We don't care about you. They all have this weird distorted sense about themselves that they are absolutely

vital to what God's doing. Therefore, we'll have double standards. Therefore, we can have these facades, these ministry facades, right? And because, as I said earlier, most of these guys aren't anything like what you think they really what they are. There's there's two versions of all of them.

It was very little authenticity. Again, not in the local pastors that are working their butts off to take care of their congregates. I'm talking about the guys that need to be on TV and shop and make $80,000 at these conferences and they write all these books and they keep telling you how you should think and where you should spend their or send your money, which is to them because they're indispensable. That's narcissism. Absolutely. And it explains why you have so many different ministers who are trying to mimic and recreate brand. Why the guys are coming to visit my grandfather's

church when he was still alive? Because brand, I'm set up a strategy where people could be elevated and be looked at. Show me. Show me. Show more of me. You know, the books, even the propaganda that was sent out, a man sent from God, this kind of thing. If you go back and read the voice of healing magazines, which was from its inception, it was the ability to create a ministry in a stage persona. And they were all doing the same thing. I had an angel. Angel came to them. Well, they're all other. There's all of you. Yeah. Pions. And then there's me. Right. And I'm other.

Right. I'm on an elevated plane. I have elevated revelation. I have an elevated, right? That's whole, as you and I call it, the man of God model, right? That's so, whatever. They don't even realize it's all narcissism. It's all rooted in this narcissistic worldview that's crept into the church world.

It's nothing like the early church sacrificing, laying your life down for one another, all of that. The narcissism thing, while it's in the church world, it's predominantly in the ministry world. The entertainment culture I want to talk about is our problem. Us that sit in the chairs and what we want from our ministers. Where we go. So we'll deal with that next time.

Yeah, that's that's a subject that fascinates me because I'm I love entertainment anyway, but the fact that entertainment culture has shifted and molded the church is just mind boggling when you think about it. You read about these great men and women of old who they molded the characters of others because they had solid really reputable characters. And then I don't know what happened.

It's like after the entertainment culture crept in, everybody's trying to instead of being this person that stands out in a crowd, they want to be somebody who can be like the other guy that stood out in a crowd years ago. And you think about, you know, the grave soakers and all the weirdness that goes on, they're trying to resurrect something that happened years ago rather than standing out in a crowd themselves. So that will be a fun and exciting episode. Well, it's the pressure. This is the thing as somebody that deals with young guys in the industry, the pressure.

They're all under the entertain people. Yeah, when we come back, we'll we'll do that one soon. Okay, sounds good. 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.

And for more about Mike Bickle and the IHOPKC, you can read some said they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.