Derek Prince & Dark Legacy of the Shepherding Movement

Hello and welcome to another episode have 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 researcher minister and friend Charles Paisley the founder of Christian Gospel Church.org and the author of come out of her my people. Charles it's good to be back and to talk all things deliverance ministry. I'll never forget the first time I started just even mentioning deliverance and because a lot of my website has critical information about some real scoundrels just the mention of deliverance you get all of these people to just get up

at arms man like what's he going to say he's probably going to say something bad about deliverance ministry and the funny part is you know I have seen things that have happened that I just can't explain in the brand of movement and I realized that some of the things that happened we're in a movement that by and large I can't say was a movement by God there's so much fiction so much faults teaching doctrine some things were actually anti-biblical and when I look at that and then combine it with some of the things that are happening I don't know what to do with that

but whenever I start publishing anything skeptical when I did start publishing things skeptical or deliverance it's really funny because some of the things that are publishing are undeniably faults like there there is no question that these guys were using gimmicks and stage tricks in the examples when I publish them but you get all the deliverance people up in arms like we like this false thing we like the stage trick and I look at the whole thing and I equate it to going to watch you know a magician on stage I like the magician I really do but the difference is

I separate the magician from God because when I go there I don't expect that the magician is doing it by the hands of Almighty God he is tricking me and I know he's tricking me and it is a fun stage trick so on the one hand I give it to the people who are in deliverance ministries and who enjoy this kind of thing yes it probably is enjoyable but on the other hand you have to take a healthy level of skepticism and look at the whole thing and say yes part of this is a stage show can God do these things well the Bible says that he can't

and so I'm not to discredit God for it, but why do they need to use trickery whenever they're doing this? And more to the point, why do they need to use techniques that prey upon the minds of people who don't have critical thinking engaged?

And that's the big question that I'm gonna ask for this podcast. Yeah, you know, there's so much there, John, and a lot of times the people who come from that background of ideology, which hey, John, we do.

And we know very well, you know, even just to kind of talk about it in that way, you know, immediately causes people to turn off and not listen, right? So, you know, there's just ways that you can't even start a conversation with people on this stuff.

And, you know, when you look at the, when you look at the deliverance, when you know you're right, John, I mean, there's stuff in there, which is so obviously false. And people, just, they're more focused on making an excuse for the false, right, than actually doing anything about it.

And that's incredibly problematic. I know. Now, in our last episodes, we wrapped up talking about the post-Branum history of the message. And we spent, you know, about 35 episodes talking about the big events in message history from, what about 1966 up through the 1990s?

And today we're shifting gears a little bit. And in my book on message history, you know, the final chapter of volume two, I started to look at how the message influenced the groups who created the new Apostolic Reformation.

And today we're gonna start talking about the groups and the people who will eventually connect with dots between the Laterane Movement and the new Apostolic Reformation. And it'll take us probably I think four or five episodes maybe to walk through all of that.

And this is gonna be our first one kind of in that arc. And, you know, as we start this off, I do want to first explain kind of the angle and motivation for the reason that I'm even doing this because I know you and I, John, we do have a little bit of a different objective or different areas of interest in this.

And I know what I'm focused on, what really interests me the most is, I try to help people leave in the message. You know, and with these other movements that we're gonna start talking about today, well, I do have a lot of knowledge and awareness of them.

My really my main interest in looking at these movements is to determine whether or not their safe places to go when you leave the message. That's really my main motivation even in looking into these things.

That's really the primary interest I have in these groups. Are they safe groups? And for me personally, you know, I don't want to have anything to do with any branch of the Laterane Movement.

I mean, that's just kind of where I have landed. I think a whole lot of that is a mess. I think the Laterane Movement and its doctrines are a cult factory. And I do still want to be Christian, you know, who follows Jesus and believes the Bible, but a lot of the extra biblical doctrines of the...

Laterane movement, the fakery within the deliverance movement has proven to be so destructive over its long history and harming people. I personally don't want anything to do with that anymore, John. Tracing out the branches of the laterane ideology, for me, it's an exercise in identifying places that are not safe, and that, more than anything else, is really my motivation into looking into the other branches of the laterane movement.

And the truth is, John, the deliverance movement does come straight out of this stuff, and they have several of the core doctrines of the laterane movement in it, which is why they have the fakery, and which is why dangerous deadly things happen so often in the deliverance movement.

The deliverance movement has killed probably tens of thousands of people. I think it'd be very safe to say tens of thousands of people have been killed by the deliverance movement. Certainly thousands of deaths that can be documented that were caused by the deliverance movement.

Did they help some people? Sure. But then they killed thousands of people, too. You have to balance all that out. When you talk about the fakery and the other stuff, I just kind of tend to just jump straight into the, they killed people.

They killed people. Hope or treatment killed hundreds of people. You go through the people where these practices, they killed people. Derek Prince. There's people who were killed by Derek Prince's ministry. They're people who were killed by T.L. Osborne's ministry.

There are people who are killed by the Shepherding Movement's ministries. There's people who are killed by them. All of these things led to deaths. There are people who died and all of this stuff.

Anyways, I don't want to go there, in part, because I A don't want to kill people and I B don't want to be killed myself, so that's the kind of stuff that the crazy end of this that it leads to.

That's just the worst end. There's all kinds of middle of the road, bad stuff that happens in between there, too. Anyways, back then, if you go back in time, I think, John, as we start this off, tracing out the branches of the Latter-Rain ideology for me, like I said, it's just really an exercise in identifying the state where it's not safe to go.

When we talk about the new apostolic reformation, that is exactly really what it is. That's a branch of the Latter-Rain movement that I don't want to go to. Besides all that, too, there is also another reason that I'm reluctant to talk about these groups, John.

I know we've went back and forth about whether or not to record on these people lots of times, and I have always been very reluctant to get too deep into it. Another reason, John, that I'm kind of reluctant to talk about these people is it's hard to talk about what comes between the Latter-Rain and the new apostolic reformation without talking about these people, because some of these guys are very key guys who are responsible to spreading these very dangerous ideas, but they have complicated legacies.

One of them... They were in this ideology and then they left this ideology and they they they kind of sort of left it anyway and so it gives them a complicated legacy and some of them they they pretended to leave but they didn't really leave you know there's there's just a complicating factor in and each of them kind of have some nuance and It gives them just very complicated legacies and for and some of them also John have really massive following some of them have followings just as big and bigger than the message the whole message itself right

And so when when you're dealing with something that big and that complex, you know I feel the need just to be very careful and how I approach it because you know we're dealing with

We're dealing with things that for people are it's their whole world, you know You know, we know what it could like to come from these backgrounds John It's it's these people's whole world that grew up in this stuff. It's their whole life. It's their whole identity And so it's just something I feel personally the need to be very careful in dealing with it because you know Depending what people do with it could be very impactful to their lives and so anyways I'm just feel a very strong need to be cautious talking about this stuff and people I'm talking about are people like

John Wimber people like Derek Prince people like that and one hand they are very guilty in spreading this ideology They are but then on the other hand, there's a lot of people who were saved and became genuine Christians because of that And and it makes their makes their legacy something really complicated to talk about but here in our next few episodes That's what we're going to tackle because there's really no way to talk about the events that lead into the birth of The new apostolic reformation without talking about them and really the very critical role that they play in it all

I agree and you know People often in the comment feeds will ask me my agenda or they will mistakenly give me an agenda. They'll say John has this agenda and Honestly, the agenda that I have if there were to be one is simply to document the history because so many of these groups are Erasing their history and they'll create this wonderful ministry that they're building on top of just complete nonsense and heresy But then whenever it's exposed that the person or person's responsible for their foundational doctrines Turn out to be complete lunatics They'll just wipe that chapter away from their history and so I'm just kind of piecing together the history as it goes

But you can really tell the cult mindset whenever somebody just gets up in arms when you publish the accurate Factual histories if they're trying to cover that up. There's a reason why they're trying to cover it up You mentioned John Wimber. I have to be very cautious because I Can't really label his group as a cult and you know his church is by and large have reformed quite a bit But the problem is some of the key players who are Really lifting up and supporting the group. They're guarding that history as though they don't want it out. They want to keep it secret from the members.

And I see this as a huge problem, so I'm documenting the history. Some of the figures that we're talking about and some of the names you've even mentioned, I don't even have any real problem with.

It's just that in the chain of events leading to the new apostolic reformation, these people played a part. They played a role in some way or another. Some of the things that they did were questionable.

And we referenced that, we talk about that. But they were used as stepping stones to what came later. And if you look at the mess that happened now, and then understand that we really need to learn from that history, we need to learn from those mistakes so that we can see what's happening today.

If I had an agenda, it's to learn from the mistakes. And even in my own work, when I'm documenting this stuff, I make mistakes. So I go back and I correct those mistakes. And if it's a huge mistake, I'll often publish some sort of a blog post or article explaining the mistake, why I made it, what's the correct information.

That's transparency. And the thing that I'm really targeting and advocating for here is transparency. If you erase your mistakes, you can't learn from them. And the people don't really understand. But more than that, because it's in the spiritual realm, it really skews what people perceive as spiritual.

So to think this movement is from God, because they've erased all the mistakes. God doesn't make any mistakes. But when you start to piece together all of the different things that happen to lead to where we are today, you can clearly see that there's a huge problem.

And that, for me, that is the agenda. Just simply publish the history, be transparent about it, let the people learn for themselves. And they can decide if your ministry's good or bad, but they need all the information to make that decision.

I think that's a very well said, John. And it's a very good way to look at things. And I hope that having said all this before we get started, that our listeners will understand the angle we're coming at in our next few episodes.

Because at the end of the day, like I said, I mean, I'm mainly just looking, where is danger? Where should we not go? What should we not involve ourselves in? What are the other branches of the latter rain that I want to stay away from?

And so if you go back in our podcast series, if you go all the way back to episode 32, John, so that's a long time ago that we recorded that one, what probably a year and a half, two years ago, episode 32, we did an episode entitled The Fracturing of the Laterane.

And in that episode, we explain quite a bit about how the latterane movement broke up into different factions starting in the 1950s. And if you want more details about how that breakup happened, you can go back and you can listen to those episodes, you know, in that time period.

And the things we discussed starting in episode 32 are really the starting point. what we're going to talk about today. And one of the easiest ways to understand how the ladder rain movement broke up and produced these competing factions is just to consider the elders at the Sharon orphanage where the whole thing started.

And John, I've tried to make a little diagram for this episode for the show. And I'll give a copy to you and put up on the screen maybe for people to look at, but in a nutshell, the ladder rain movement really took off at the Sharon orphanage.

That was the initial epicenter of it. The guys at Sharon orphanage, they met William Brannum in 1947. After they saw what he did, they decided they wanted to go home and do the same thing and be like him.

He's the guy who sparked it. And they went home and by 1948, they have started the ladder rain revival and they believe they are replicating what they saw William Brannum doing. And during the first year of that revival, the Sharon orphanage joined the independent assemblies of God.

And the independent assemblies of God, really from the first and second year of the ladder rain movement, they became the main central network of the early ladder rain movement. I think that is very important to point out.

And back then, William Brannum was the most prominent and the most influential preacher in the independent assemblies of God. And he remained that way until his death. And if you remember back in our episodes, when we talked about when the message really was born and so forth the years right after William Brannum's death, you'll remember that when William Brannum died, the majority of the message churches back then actually were independent assemblies of God churches, John.

Earl Martin's church, independent assemblies of God. You just kind of go down that list, a lot of the early churches back then were independent assemblies of God churches, okay? Quite a few of them work.

Ed Biscoe came from the independent assemblies of God, for example, there's all kinds of different ones we could go down that came from independent assemblies of God. So the largest number of the early message churches came from independent assemblies of God.

Well, you fast forward about five years after Sharon Orphanage joining assemblies of God and the Sharon Orphanage elders started to break up. And two of the elders were actually, two of the elders from Sharon Orphanage were actually from Erne Baxter's church.

Erne Baxter, William Brannum's right hand man, who had been touring within those years. Two of the people at those original Sharon Orphanage elders were from his church and Erne Baxter had been visiting Sharon Orphanage quite a bit through those early years.

And back right in that time, you'll remember Erne Baxter and William Brannum had a falling out. And when Erne Baxter and William Brannum fell out, at that same time, Erne Baxter convinced one of the elders that Sharon Orphanage, his name was Jim Watt, convinced him to break away and go work with him.

And when he broke away and they started working together, they moved up to the West Coast. Sharon Baxter's church was in Vancouver. This man moved to Seattle and passed her to church in Seattle.

want. They started working together and what they formed, John, was the nucleus that was gradually going to grow into the shepherding movement. Right? So when Jim, Jim Watts came out to Seattle, he took over pastorship of the Broadway tabernacle, which was also an independent assemblies of God church. And while he was there at that church at the independent assemblies of God, Broadway tabernacle in Seattle, Derek Prince comes back from Africa. He'd been a missionary in Africa and he comes to Seattle and he becomes pastor in that same church with Jim Watts. So he's pastoring a church alongside one of the original elders of the Sharon orphanage, okay? At the same time

they're working with Derek Prince. And as this happens, John, they begin to pioneer what's going to turn into the shepherding movement. And the shepherding movement was based around the five-fold ministry beliefs that George Houghton had been pushing from Sharon orphanage. And really the whole basis of the shepherding movement was really about coming up with a workable way to implement the five-fold ministry, which the truth is, that's the same thing was happening in the message in those years. And quite a few other ladder rain groups back in that same time frame. One way to think about the different branches of the ladder rain movement is you can think each branch

of the ladder rain movement is a competing group of a five-fold tier. It's competing five-fold ministry structures is what it is. As is, the schisms happened and the upper tiers split, they take off subordinate structures with them and you end up with these schismed, independent five-fold ministry structures in a hierarchy all pointing up, you know, to central apostles in each of these groups. And that's what each branch of the ladder rain movement is that. It's just a breakaway group of the original five-fold structure that got established at the very beginning of the ladder rain movement. And each branch is basically a

competing five-fold ministry structure, John. I mean, that's what it is. And in each branch had a little different formulation on what the manifested sons of God was. And in a lot of the cases, it was their different takes on manifested sons of God that even led to a lot of the schisms, right? And as those schisms happened, each branch tended to set up, you know, their own different top apostles and top prophets and then their own independent subordinate five-fold ministry networks. And that was happening in the Sheridan orfinnage or rather in the Shepparding movement from very early on. That's what Ernst Baxter and Jim Watt did when they left out of Sheridan

orfinnage. John, they started to set it up their new independent five-fold ministry structure, breaking away in their branch of the ladder rain. And Derek Prince is one of the very first ministers who joined in that structure with them, okay? And the Shepparding movement became very, very big, very popular. And they did a, used a really big five-fold ministry network all over the United States, Canada, and to a lesser degree in the United Kingdom and Australia.

And so, that's what it is. what it was. And at the top of their structure was earned backster. Again, earned backster had been a close co-worker with William Brannum. And Derek Prince had worked also with William Brannum a number of times too. Derek Prince did direct meetings with William Brannum.

They're on tape together, sharing the stage together. Aaron Backster and Derek Prince. And Derek Prince also was involved in that. So then you also had a man named Don Basham and Bob Mumford. And those two men actually played a key role in recruiting a bunch of people from the Jesus movement. We'll probably talk about them more in our next episode. And then last of all was a man named Charles Simpson. And so those are the guys, John, who are the top of the five-fold ministry structure of the Shepherding movement. One thing that you said in there, I want

to re-emphasize it because I don't think enough people get it. Whenever religious historians look at all of this mess, they often fail to connect all of the dots and understand what caused this mess. How did it evolve into this? Because they look doctrinally at each individual group. And then when they're comparing the history behind it, when the doctrine is so significantly different, they'll say, well, this wasn't a stepping stone for this ministry. These are two different things. But what they're failing to understand is exactly what you said. This is a competition, not a collaboration. And all of these ministries, for example, so Mike Bickel. Mike

Bickel was working with Paul Cain, who is Brannum's protege. Mike Bickel has this one sect in the NAR. And in today's world, people can clearly understand that when you examine Bill Johnson, there are some similarities, but Bill Johnson is not Mike Bickel. They're two different theologies. However, they do share sometimes, share the platform together. There are some videos of this. So there is a collaboration, but you had also a competition because Mike Bickel is, you know, he trained his group to believe that he was the end of day's profit, that was the the leadership. It was a competition. The interesting part of this competition,

it would be interesting to look at the mindsets of these people because while competing and saying that they are the elite chosen one, and in essence, they're saying the other ones who say that they are are not the elite chosen ones. They're while competing and collaborating. They don't really like each other that much. That's the funny part about all of this. When you go back into this history and you understand that the latter reign movement was much the same. You had all of these different competing people, each trying to say that their ministry was the next thing closest to

God while implying or suggesting that the other ones weren't. So where you end up with is it took me years to understand that, and I would have people who were from prominent laterane circles, saying, no, William Brannum was not a part of this at all.

And they would go back to their history and they would talk about the doctrine, how it was significantly different, how Brannum abandoned it. Everything they said was true. But what they failed to understand, people like you mentioned, A.W. Rasmussen, leader of the independent assemblies of God, big time laterane guy.

He was working closely with William Brannum, and Brannum called him, and I think the word was bosom friend. And same with Joseph Mats and Bosé, this was another key figure in laterane. If not for those two, I doubt it would, laterane would have spread as fast and as quickly as it did.

So these are key figures, but you had other figures in laterane that was completely separate and disconnected from Brannum. And you have to understand that all these ministries are competing and it isn't the doctrinal foundations that enable it.

It is the key components of a cult that bind all of this together. You talked about the fivefold ministry, that's one thing that's shared, because hey, what better method could you have to take full control of your people as to say that there's this hierarchical tier where I'm at the top and you people who are in the rank and file, members sitting in the congregation, you're at the very bottom, you're nothing to me.

I am the elite, I'm the spiritual elite. That was the mindset of these guys and when they had their competitions, what happened is it seemed to flesh out, flesh out all of the narcissists that were in the group because the narcissists are the ones that would rise to the top.

They have the perfect structure to enable a narcissist to take over and that, for that reason, many of them turned into a cult. So you have to look at the structure and the foundation and also significant, everything that you said, I'm thinking we could talk entire podcasts off of, but when you really begin to understand that Derek Prince was working so closely with key figures directly from the Sharon Orphanage in the heat of Latter-Rain, in a movement that William Brannum was one of two catalysts that created.

There is a strong connection there and we'll get into it later, but Derek Prince along with many others, they would say that they later denounced Brannum because he went astray. Earn Baxter did the same thing.

The problem is the way in which they do it because they can't disavow everything that they built from Brannum's foundation to create their ministries. So we've got an article and maybe I'll throw it up on the screen where Earn Baxter is talking about Brannum and he's saying things like the fruits of his ministry are not good, he went astray.

They all say this, he went astray. But then he'll go back and he'll talk about the power of God that worked all. on the stage with Brannum during his ministry because that same foundation was used to create his own ministry in several hundreds, countless others.

But Earn Baxter was one of the people who was on the stage when he witnessed Brannum lying through his teeth about the power of his ministry and the deliverance that he had. So we have, if you go back through our series of podcasts, you can go back and you can see examples where Earn Baxter was there.

William Brannum was lying about somebody being healed. In fact, some of the people died who Brannum said, I healed them of this disease and they died of the very thing that he healed them from.

Earn Baxter was there, so he knew he was lying, but he can't disavow that because his entire platform that is making him millions of dollars. I don't know how rich the guy was. If you disavow that, you also disavow your ministry and if you disavow your ministry, you disavow your income.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website 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.

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I do have a slight difference in the origins of this because I don't personally think that William-Brannum created this ideology. I think he popularized it, but I don't view him as the creator of the ideology, but he definitely popularized it and he introduced a lot of these people to it.

And you're correct though, but William-Brannum is absolutely, William-Brannum and the message is absolutely critical to these people. You take Derrick Prince. Okay, so Derrick Prince, I'm gonna talk about him quite a bit here.

He was a minister who came from the United Kingdom. He went to, I guess, Eaton College, which is like the most famous, so we're all the kings and queens and royalty in Prince William and King Charles and all, that's where they all went to college, John.

Yes, we're here, that's where Derrick Prince went to college, like the it school of the United Kingdom. And you just come out of there and you naturally, you just by default, became important and famous, right?

I mean, it just seems how it is from what I... stand over there. It's kind of like Harvard times 10 in America, right? He went to Eaton College and he ended up coming out of there and became a Church of England missionary working in East Africa, like in Kenya. And in Kenya is where it seems like that he came into contact with the Latter-Rain movement at first because at the same time that he was in Kenya, the assembly, the independent assemblies of God was also doing a big mission out reaching Kenya at that same time in the early 50s. In fact, they had, if you go back

and you look, the British government had invited them in and they were doing revivals in the Mao Mao concentration camps to convert the Mao Mao rebels to Latter-Rain Christianity, John. I mean, that's what's going on, honestly. And so somehow through that, Derek Prince seems to have come in contact with the Latter-Rain guys. Well, he comes back to the United States and he gets pastorship first of Broadway tabernacle in Seattle. What was that? That was an independent assemblies of God Church, right? So clearly he's he's coming in to independent assemblies of God. And you're right. I think a lot of people misdiagnosis thing, the independent

assemblies of God in the 50s was the largest main branch of the Latter-Rain movement. And it remained that way into the 60s. The mainstream of the Latter-Rain movement was the independent assemblies of God. And Sharon Orphanage was inside a member of independent assemblies of God.

I mean, and so was all the early most of them at early message churches, okay? So that's what you look at. And Derek Prince comes into independent assemblies of God. He becomes pastor of Broadway tabernacle, starts working with earned backster and Jim Watt elder from Sharon Orphanage. And yeah, he gets introduced to the full gospel businessman and gets starts getting invited to talk at the full gospel gospel businessman conferences. And I've heard people say, oh, see, he's just a full gospel businessman guy. That don't have nothing to do with the message.

Now you silly people. The full gospel businessman was was was a third of their board was the message cult. The message was was a dominant faction of the full gospel businessman. So I mean, from Derek Prince is coming into this ideology. He is being popularized by this ideology. He's be given a church by this ideology. He's being invited by this ideology to preach it. It's conventions.

Okay. Derek Prince comes in and he is he is in this. And from early on, John, Derek Prince is he adopts the core concepts of lateral reign. He's teaching last day revival. He's teaching his version of manifested sons of God. He's preaching fivefold ministry. And and here's the thing where I think we're again, if you've had only ever been in this ideology, you think full fivefold ministry is normal. It's from other, but no, fivefold ministry only comes from this ideology.

Fivefold ministry does not exist outside of the lateral reign moon and its branches. this is where it comes from. And a lot of the things that Derek Prince taught came directly from this ideology. And he taught a lot of it for his entire life.

And when you get to the end of his life, Derek Prince, he died in I think in 2004. In 1997, roughly, Derek Prince repudiated some of this stuff, John. He kind of repudiated it and said it wasn't, you know, it was, it was a mistake. The shepherding movement was a mistake.

You know, the ladder rain movement, he kind of rejected the ladder rain movement. And so this is, these are the sort of things that give people like Derek Prince a complicated legacy. Okay, so for all but the last seven years of his life, six, six, seven years of his life, he taught this ideology. And then the last six, seven years of his life, most of which he's too old and sick to actually preach or do anything anymore. He suddenly doesn't believe in this anymore.

Now, John, would you call that and people like that, I feel like this is a guilty conscience biting these people when they're on their deathbeds because they knew, I think they knew all along.

Right. And there's a number of them. They get on their deathbed. And in the last year, the last point of their life, when they're terminally ill or what have you, they recant all this stuff.

And, and, and, you know, apologize for. Derek Prince is one of the guys who did that. And, you know, people can have these deathbed conversions and all that. I think that's good, right? And God bless Derek Prince, you know, if he, if he got rid of all of this.

But when I talk about these earlier phases of Derek Prince's ministry, when all these problematic things were happening, I feel like based on what I understand and have read, I'm not saying Derek Prince didn't say himself. Like he, he, he also said it was all bad. And so what's going to happen? Like, you're going to look in the comments of this and our future episodes. And, and you're going to find people saying, Oh, no, Derek Prince is wonderful, Derek, don't tell me he's wonderful like that. Derek Prince himself said this was bad, right? And, and if you disagree with the things I'm going to, you know, continue to go on and say, I would

encourage you to actually listen to Derek Prince himself when he said all this stuff was bad, okay? So like you either respect Derek Prince and believe him when he said this was bad, or you don't, and you stay in the ideology that Derek Prince rejected at the end of his life. So, anyways, that this, these guys have complicated legacies. And so Derek Prince, like I mentioned, he, he came from, um, Eaton College, he, missioned in Kenya, he came to the United States, he took pastorship in an I.O.A.D. church in Seattle, he started working with, um, elders of the Sharon

Orphanage, he started working directly with William Brannum, doing full gospel businessmen conventions. And during the, during the last years of William Brannum's death and at, or the years around that death and as, as things broke up, Derek Prince ended up in the branch of this ideology that produced the shepherding movement.

And, in practice, what they did is they set up a competing five-fold ministry structure to the message, right? They rejected the apostles of the message, John. Right, right? The message had its own apostles and prophets.

They rejected that. They also rejected the apostles and prophets at the Sharon Orphanage branch, and they set up their own independent branch, and they had claimed back to the very original through Gen-Wat. They could claim to be descended from the original branch through Gen-Wat.

And that's what they did at the very first. And so, like the early ladder rain movement, the Sheffielding movement, they emphasized very deeply the concept of submission of the five-fold ministry as a requirement for perfection or what they called it maturity in their system.

And in that system, the individuals have to submit to a spiritual authority figure for guidance and accountability, and really just guiding their lives. And in practice, what a lot of the people who do who follow this five-fold ministry structure is they actually give the role of the Holy Spirit to the preachers, and the preachers you serve the role of the Holy Spirit.

That's really in a biblical sense what's happening that where it goes wrong here. The preachers take over the role of guiding people's lives rather than connecting them into personal walks with God, right? And so, that's what they're doing.

And after Derek Prince left Broadway tabernacle, that church got taken over by Raymond Haas, and it became the flagship church of the assembly of the body of Christ, which was one of the subunits of the shepherding movement.

And they all got really radical, did a lot of crazy stuff there in the 1970s. They were still getting arrested for raping kids up into the early 2020s, in that branch of the movement.

And you never hear anybody talk about that stuff, but that really is true, that's what happened. And so, over time, the center of that movement, it moves from the Pacific Northwest, and it shifts into the American South.

And that's when you see Ern Baxter and Derek Prince, and all these guys end up kind of relocating into the American South. And they get the name of the Fort Lauderdale 5. And there's just a lot of really bad problems happening in this movement, as time goes on.

Over time, they're getting more radical, more radical, there's more abuse, there's more abuse, and it's starting to draw attention from outsiders that there's bad things happening inside the shepherding movement. And that's exactly the point that I was driving at earlier.

There are some very, very, very bad things that are in the structure and makeup of these groups in the foundational elements of their ministries. And I agree with you, whenever William Brannum was working with many of these guys, I agree that it wasn't Brannum that came up with many of these doctrines.

However, the way that they interacted with Brannum was in such a way where he was He was well acknowledged as the leader of the revival. So he spoke with an authority to the members, including Derek Prince.

If Derek Prince is working with these laterane guys, I have to believe, based off of everything that I fully understand about their ministry, when you have two catalysts that make up your entire doctrinal foundation, William Brannem and Franklin Hall, I have to believe that Derek Prince at one point in time viewed William Brannem as an authority.

So whatever Brannem said, it stuck, even though Brannem largely plagiarized other people. But then, like you said, you get into, now we're entering into the charismatic days. And William Brannem's dead, the shepherding movement is forming.

So many figures that emerged into today's New Apostolic Reformation or its direct influencing history was, you can't say that they were all in the shepherding movement, but there was such a heavy, heavy collaboration.

John Wember, I think I've published it in Ahtroa in a cover of the article on the video version of this podcast, but John Wember is working directly with these guys. And he's saying the militant language that's coming out of the shepherding movement in his speeches that are in the articles that are published by magazines like New Wine, which is a shepherding movement publication.

He's using the same militant terms, the same in a cult you would call it, the loaded language. People like John Wember are using the loaded language, which shows a deeper connection of influence than simply, here are two ministries and they decided to hold an event together.

It's deeper than that. When the loaded language is the same, there is a short-shared platform. There is a shared foundation for these guys. And yes, John Wember later denied it, he renounced it. But there's a period of time, whenever he's working with them and he didn't denounce it.

And Charles, if you were to suddenly discover that I robbed a bank and said, John's a bad guy, he robbed a bank, I disavowed John Collins, that's fine. But if you were with me and helping me rob that bank, you're still problematic, right?

You're still guilty because you helped rob the bank. Well, all of these guys are working together, they're creating what became this massive New Apostolic Reformation. They're all the bank robbers. You are correct. You were correct there with Derek Prince.

William Brown was definitely the leader of this movement and leader in the sense that he was the most influential and people took their cue from him. Derek Prince could not have become popular in this movement without William Brown's blessing.

Not possible. He could not have got invited to speak alongside William Brown as the keynote speaker without William Brown's blessing, right? That's just not how this movement works. Derek Prince had to get William Brown's blessing in order to share the stage with him.

And it was sharing the stage with him. It was Derek Prince sharing the stage with William Brennan that made him popular in this ideology. I mean, that's just the reality of the situation. And so Derek Prince, you know, he, he, I'll tell you another thing too about Derek Prince before we go just a little further.

Derek Prince said this was before he recanted and all along this Derek Prince is doing this weird sort of stuff. This is before Derek Prince recanted all the latter rain stuff. Derek Prince said that William Brennan had an evil spirit in him, John.

He said that when they worked together, he discerned that William Brennan had an evil spirit in him when they worked together. Kinda like Kenneth Hagen and some of these other guys did. And so right there, you just, you just take that right there all by itself.

Derek Prince, new William Brennan had an evil spirit. Yeah, he worked with him and didn't tell anybody that he knew he had an evil spirit. So right there, we can say Derek Prince by his own admission is a man of bad character, right?

He knowingly worked with people he knew was evil, right? Right? I mean, by his own admission. And when you're in this ideology, right? You're like, oh, wow, Derek Prince had the gift of discernment and he knew this thing in advance.

And you don't carry it out to, no. Okay, he knew about it in advance. Therefore, that makes him a bad person for continuing to go along with it. Right? Like that's the, that's the next logical step for this stuff, right?

Same with Kenneth Hagen, same with all these people, right? Now here's the thing. I don't believe for a minute that Derek Prince ever believes that he had a discernment that William Brennan had a, you know, evil spirit.

That's something he had to come up with later years when the bad stuff about William Brennan started to come out. He needed some way to excuse his behavior. And he said, oh, Gordon Lindsay and Kenneth Hagen, they made up these prophecies that they had before.

I'm gonna do that too. I'm gonna make up that I knew William Brennan was a bad guy all along, right? And Derek Prince, that's probably honestly what Derek Prince did. And I have such a low opinion, John, of people who did that stuff.

If they knew it was bad back then, if they really had a spiritual discernment that something was bad back then and they didn't do anything about it, John. While me and you and our family was trapped in that doomsday cult, what does that say about them?

It says something really bad about them. It really says something very bad about them. It says something very bad about Derek Prince. I'm glad he changed his mind at the end of his life leading gentleman.

I really am. But it says something really bad about him that he knew things were wrong and he didn't do anything about it by his own admission. Okay? So the shepherding movement, John, as it got going, it produced a magazine called New Wine Magazine.

And as you come up to the 60s, they start publishing that. And it becomes an important periodical message or a magazine of the early charismatic movement. So Derek Prince, Joseph Mats and Bozay, a lot of people like that were publishing in that magazine, right?

They were still closely affiliated. with independent assemblies of God. Joseph Matz and Bozay, the superintendent of independent assemblies of God, was one of the main contributors to that magazine, John. I mean, it's very early days. And here's the thing. There was still connections to Christian identity happening in that time, which I know we've pointed out before. Eldon Purvis was another contributor to the early days of the new wine magazine. Who is Eldon Purvis? He was a homosexual Nazi. He had the Christian identity movement, published in articles in New Wine magazine. The cross section was there.

And we also know through eyewitness testimony that Serpent Seed teaching was being taught at Derek Prince's Broadway tabernacle while he was there, not by Derek Prince, but by other preachers. So they were not very far away from the radical fringe of this ideology from the early days when Derek Prince first joined. Still. But anyways, that happened. And as I mentioned already, the center of the shepherding movement kind of moved to the American South. They set up shop in Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale 5. Earned Baxter actually ended up pastoring a church in Mobile, Alabama before it was all said and done. John, I don't know if I've told you this. I have

been to Earned Baxter's Mobile Church, John. I have back. That's probably been close to 30 years ago. I have actually went to that church in Mobile where Earned Baxter was. There's a message church very close to that. And we all went over to spy on. Or to spy on Earned Baxter once.

Boy, John, the being in the message is a hood, isn't it? So yeah, we went over. Some people took me over there to spy on Earned Baxter once. Service wise, in Alabama. Yeah. And so I actually got to see Earned Baxter church and Earned Baxter preach. And you know, when I was there, John, they're very similar to my branch of the message. I got to say I didn't observe a whole lot of difference from my branch of the message to what was going on there in that church. But the shepherding movement was large. It had an estimated 750 churches with maybe 150,000 members,

primarily in North America, you know, during the 70s. And Derek Prince, and the reason I'm kind of focusing on Derek Prince here is because he was the most prominent influential preacher in the shepherding movement. He more than any other rest of them took those ideas to the masses.

He is more responsible for taking those ideas to the masses in the early days of the ideology of shepherding movement than anybody else. And he had the largest audience because he was a televangelist, John. He was one of the men who got one of the slots on the CBN network from Pat Robertson when CBN launched, which happened, you know, just the year two after William Brannum died.

And so he has really, really taken that ideology far and wide in the years after, really right after William Brannum died and up into the 70s. And scandals and reports of abuse and cult-like behavior in the shepherding movement ended up kind of being an embarrassment to Pat Robertson because, you know, he's on TV. And Pat Robertson's worried that the shepherds movement is starting to make the rest of the broader ladder rain movement look bad, right?

He's he's worried. Oh, it's going to make make us look bad because the people started acting like a cult pretty early on. And and the way it started out was Pat Robertson encountered some shepherding movement follower somewhere at a conference. Um, and and he observed.

These people are acting really strange. Even for the ladder rain branches, these guys are these guys are acting very strange, you know, and doing weird stuff and submitting themselves in weird ways to their leaders. And so Pat Robertson's actually the guy who starts to try and confront the shepherding movement to get them to stop. And he he initially, I think it's the year 1975, he publishes an open letter to the shepherding movement and to the other factions of the ladder rain movement. Um, and basically denounces the shepherding movement.

But that doesn't actually work in order to get him to shut down. And Derek Prince is actually the main guy who leads the charge to defend the shepherding movement to Pat Robertson. And you can find Derek Prince's letters on all this or out. And through all that, he's like whole hog defending fivefold ministry, defending all of these things that, um, you know, Pat Robertson had attacked in his open letter. And what ended up happening is Pat Robertson started tightening the screws on Derek Prince. He threatened to get Derek Prince blackballed from CBN. Hey, Derek Prince, I'm going to cut you off from your audience if you don't listen to me. Right,

he, Derek, this is what Pat Robertson literally is doing. And finally, Derek Prince

leaves the shepherding movement. He does that in 1980. And here's the thing, when Derek Prince left the shepherding movement in 1980, he never made a public announcement. He never recanted the beliefs. He never said anything about the abuses going. He just basically silently left and said, Hey, guys, I'm moving on to, uh, you know, a new phase in my ministry. And and he never, he just kind of, he didn't disavow it. He just quietly exited and Pat Robertson let him keep being on TV, you know, and I think really if you look at it, it, I think it's safe to

say Derek Prince left the shepherding movement not because he had a genuine problem with its teachings or beliefs or practices. He left it because he didn't want to lose his televangelism slots on TV. That is really, I think, why he left the shepherding movement. And so the shepherding movement continued on without Derek Prince. But as you come up into them by, you know, the late 70s and the mid, the early and mid 80s, the abuses happening, the shepherding movements, you know, are getting more and more light put on them. And finally, um, Bob Mumford and Don Bashom

start to back away from the movement too. And, and admit, yeah, there's a use is going on here and we we repent we were can't of the shepherding movement and they leave well direct prince had already left a few years earlier john and he more or less gets out scot free and but don basham and those guys they're the ones who have taken the fall we know several years later when it finally comes to light all the stuff that you know had been going on and they apologize for it and move on now who never apologized

earned backster and backster never abandoned or began at this thing once no he took it to the end of his life but all the other guys left and and and Derek Prince he never recanted the shepherding movement and stuff publicly until I said about nineteen ninety seven just a few years before he died and even though he left the shepherding movement he continued to preach fivefold ministry he continued to preach all you know the key distinctive ladder rain all the way up to the last years of his life on the outside of it and a lot of people will

this is I think this is what makes Derek Prince particularly dangerous is that a lot of people say oh he left the shepherding movement he's not dangerous oh he recanted this stuff in nineteen ninety seven he's not dangerous but he is he is and he is because those teachings pervade his entire minister all across his ministry and they're they're in the whole thing he's teaching all of the key distinctives of ladder rain all the way through john and and he's teaching them and people are accepted them and he's just a massively responsible person for spreading

this ideology he's one of the most important and guilty people for having spread this ideology um... through his life so Derek Prince you know deathbed confession whatever you call it john whimber deathbed confession whatever you want to call it that's fine i have no issues with these people for doing that and they should do this if they realize hey everything that i have preached and taught and did was incorrect because my foundation was incorrect i have no issue with that whatsoever but the people that come after this to hide that from your members in what is developing in maybe it's not destructive call yet

but when you start covering up your history that's the makings of a destructive cult you're covering up your past it in st. dr. Stephen hasen's bite model this is the control of information the i in the bite model so you can't do this you can't cover up that past but what is happening today is because these foundations these false foundations were laid people want to cover it up because quite frankly like you just said there are ministries that would topple because of this so Derek Prince throughout his life john he he taught fivefold ministry he

he continued to propel that based the same base authoritarian model that was the whole foundation of the shepherding movement he taught that for his entire life really um his entire ministry he taught that from from from the early days of joining ladder In addition to that, Derek Prince is probably actually most famous, even though the five-fold ministry stuff was embedded all across it.

He's most famous for his deliverance teachings, right? Like that really is the thing that most people think of him for his deliverance stuff. And John, I have, I mean, if you look at Derek Prince's deliverance teachings, they were, they are incredibly problematic.

I mean, they are just about the worst flavor of the deliverance positive confession teachings of that came out of that ideology. They're really bad stuff. He taught basically that literally anything that's wrong with you is pretty well demonic possession.

And he taught that children are basically incapable of resisting demonic impression, and that I think in one quote, he says, 90% of the things wrong with kids are demonic possession. And everything, a lot of the stuff he comes back to is it's always demonic possession.

And he would instruct people on how to deal with demonic possession in their children, which usually resulted around strong discipline. You know, use your imagination, ladies and gentlemen, how you get a demon out of your kid.

Like he's, he's, you know, talking about all that stuff. John, he even taught that your babies would be, could be born, would be born demon possessed if you were bitter while you were pregnant, right?

Like he taught basically even that babies could be born demon possessed. I mean, and he, the stuff he did was really, really out there stuff that he taught. You know, he, he wasn't just preaching simple, you know, believe on Jesus, be healed.

Yes, you can be healed if you have faith. He wasn't teaching this stuff. I mean, he was, he was really teaching a lot of, really ugly, horrendous stuff for a lot of his life and his deliverance practices.

The exact same kind of stuff you see in these deliverance manuals where bitterness causes arthritis and diabetes is caused by a spirit of, you know, feeling rejected. You know, all of this weird stuff, that's the kind of stuff Derek Prince was teaching.

And, you know, it, it harmed a lot of people. You know, he wasn't to Hobart Freeman levels where, you know, hundreds of people are dying left and right. But yeah, I mean, a lot of people were very badly harmed and his, and his teachings are just tainted and to end with this stuff.

And, you know, like I said, when he got towards the end of his life and you'll hear people say this that he repented, he recanted from these beliefs. But I'm gonna ask, I'll ask all our listeners this too.

Can any of you actually find the recorded testimony or the written testimony where he rejected these beliefs? Can you actually find it? Because John, I'll tell you what, I have looked and I have looked and I have looked and I have looked and I can find, John, I can find sources referencing it.

Okay, without footnotes that are apparently quoting him. But I cannot find his actual... written and recorded statement rejecting these beliefs, John. I cannot find that. Now, did he? I'm going to take everyone's word for it that he did. I can't find it.

I can't find it anywhere. But I believe he did it. And I believe I can't find it anywhere is because people don't want us to find it if it does exist. And here's the other thing too.

If he repented from these beliefs and he didn't repent from them as loudly as he endorsed them in his life, did he really repent of them? Did he? I don't know. Maybe he did.

So I'm right on the fence of whether he did or not. I know I'm making a pretty strong judgment here on Derek Prince. And I feel like you just got to. You've got to just be honest and make a pretty strong judgment here. I can't find that he ever repented of it really. And even if he did, his ministry still has all these things published on his website today. All the core doctrines of the laterane ministry, the laterane teachings are published on Derek Prince ministry's website today. They still are. And so if he did recana these beliefs, whoever publishes all his ministry

stuff today is pretty deceptive in having not retracted all of the stuff that he taught on this subject. Right. And so Derek Prince, very, very problematic preacher and never really took responsibility for all of the harm and the abuse. And in his life, be clear, Derek Prince was involved in at least five cults, two of which he personally helped launch. And most of which had pretty horrendous sexual abuse of minors, tortures, things happened, deaths, all kinds of stuff that happened, you know, among the fallouts of his group. And that he was in. And so for me,

John, I know I'm going to get probably massacred for this episode, John, I don't want anything to do with Derek Prince. I don't want anything to do with his teachings. I hope he really did repent at the end of his life, you know, I really hope he did. But he's not a safe authoritative source we can trust or look to, nor are any of the people that he influenced and carry on the variations of his teachings. I don't want anything to do with that. And the funny part is I've had people say that this group's not a cult or this other group's not a cult. And a normal Christian circle, if somebody

did something, said something, taught something that you did, disagreed with, you would acknowledge him, you would acknowledge, yeah, the man's a Christian, I disagree with this that or the other. But you just move on. You wouldn't care whether or not, especially if they're dead, you wouldn't like continue saying, will you really respect this dead guy? And a normal Christian circle, you don't do this. But the problem is, and again, I can't label everybody who follows Derek Prince even as a cult. I can't say that they're a destructive cult, I should say. There is a cult

following of Derek Prince apparently, but I can't say that they're destructive cult. But if you're a normal Christian, aren't you a follower of Jesus? Don't you say, don't you acknowledge what Jesus taught the things that I really, really hold my Christian values to?

You don't go back to some dead human guy, and that's where this gets really interesting and weird. The dead human guys seem to have elevated themselves to a level and status that is far above any preacher.

The pastor at my church, if he were to die, and then years later I'm telling people, well, we had this really good pastor at my church, and I follow his teachings. They're gonna look at me like, I'm a freak, man.

But the interesting part is in this movement, you don't think that way. You really, you're so beholden to the doctrines that are taught by certain individuals that you have to take a step back and say, what's wrong here?

There's something wrong, what is it? As we wrap up here today, John, we've had to talk about the shepherding movement because of what comes next, because Derek Prince and these leaders of the shepherding movement, they are going to influence the group that we're about to talk about in our next episode.

And they're gonna be taking their version of laterane ideas and injecting it with certain people that we're gonna mention in the next episode. Next episode we're gonna talk about Lonnie Frisbee. Next episode we're gonna talk about John Wimber.

We're gonna talk about the Jesus people movement. And they are infiltrating that movement early on and injecting these ideas with certain people. And they actually had direct confrontations like with Chuck Smith, John. Chuck Smith said, Derek Prince was a false prophet.

That's part of why you threw out Lonnie Frisbee. You know, we're gonna talk through these things, okay? And it's important to understand where these people come from so we can show you how this ideology iterates and moves into its next phase.

Awesome, I look forward to going there. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-brandom.org in christiangospelchurch.org.

For more about the history of William Brannum and the healing revivals, you can read, come out of her, my people. And 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 Automal. You can find us at www.William-brandom.org