Circle of Apostasy: Russian Mysticism & the Rise of Charismatic Extremes | Converging Apostasy

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Steve Montgomery, the author of the converging apostasy and a quick outline of hands-on eschatology, a matter of timing and agency.

And together we're examining the themes of apostasy in the New Apostolic Reformation and its history. Steve, it's good to finally be back. It's been a while. And to talk about this subject today, which is going to be very fascinating for me, I, up to this point, I have studied most of the things that you've talked about in the podcasts and read through your book, so I'm familiar with most of, most of it up to this point. But when it gets into the subject today, which is the Russian themes of apostasy and Russian mysticism, it's something that just fascinates me because

it's this whole other world that I have not yet tapped into. The closest I've come is, you probably seen these videos trying to remember the name of them, but it's a spy show and they're going into Russia and the Russians have all joined this mysterious cult and it's taken over the Kremlin and they're trying to get breakthrough, you know the story and I'll let you explain what it is because everybody should know that history. It's kind of famous, but that's the limit of what I know towards Russian mysticism and Russian history, but it has had a huge impact on the rest of

the world more than most people realize. Yeah, it's going to be back again also, John. One thing I can say is in the larger, but they converge in apostasy. I have a section called from Russia with love, question mark, and it talks about people like Alexander Dugin, who's a real problem if you read what he has to say about his life and his worldview, or quite alarming, especially with his influence on Vladimir Putin. And then one of the biggest names in that mysticism from Russia is actually Vladimir Solirov, which we've already talked about him. So this is some similar stuff,

but it's not necessarily focusing on those two guys. So even as a preliminary to that, it's just, it's just crazy. You know, this happens, John, where you're not really looking to find out about something and people that, you know, they say, what are you, what are you seeing there? What were you talking about?

Well, this is based on a short drive in the Houston area. And if you've heard of the Houston, that's not always a short drive due to the bumper to bumper traffic jams that you get.

And it's also a big city spread out a long ways. So in my short drive in Houston, I had these two, two aspects that I ran into, which is kind of like the converging apostasy, which essentially you have one from the right.

That's very, very generally speaking and one from the left also very generally speaking. So the left would be mostly your new age and esoteric type folks. And then the right would be anything coming out of the latter rain and tilting on it, a Christian identity.

And so yeah, there's many points in which he's converged. But more particularly this is what I observed when I was on the roadway in Houston on the right, meaning on my right hand side and also the right religiously politically.

There was a bumper sticker on the back of a church, excuse me, on the back of a truck, which said, keep America great. So okay, I kind of get the idea where that one's coming from.

And on the left, there was a car and had a sticker on the back that says as above. So also below my wife said, what is that? I kind of wanted to hold back because it's an awfully big subject.

But sufficient to say it's a completely in the new age or cultic esoteric realm that you run to that phrase. And this actually led into we have a talk since the fourth of July.

But I had some neoplatonist leftovers that I ran into. Okay, so one, you know, leoplatonist, we talked about calling down angels. It's a big, a big component with that belief system. So one, as I recall here in his song, all the way back in 1984 by Amy Grant, she called it angels.

And she says pretty much basically the divine protection can at times come in the form of angels. So to quote her, she said, got his angels watching over me every move I make. Angels watching over me.

Okay, so that's going backwards. Now go back just to this recently big event that we had for the fourth of July. So if you happen to be watching the TV. The popular singer, I was going to say country, but she goes country pop, other stuff.

Treasury Yearwood got on the singer a couple of tunes. So, because of the nature of the song and because I just can't let go, I have to dig in and find out for myself.

I found out she doesn't attend a church called Christ Church, USA in Nashville, Tennessee. Okay, fine. That's good to know. But I looked at it a little bit more in particular and they believe in quotes of spiritual gifts, which means they speak in tongues, prophesied, and do other things and maybe have a connection to the North.

I don't know that. But on the online, they labeled themselves as a non-denominational church that teaches the fivefold ministry. Okay, John, for you, myself and many others, we kind of see a red flag going up there with the fivefold ministry.

So, let's hear what Yearwood has to say about angels in her song. She had a song called Bringing the Angels and she performed that, like I said, the 2025 Fourth of July celebration in New York City.

So, I was just different in any way from maybe grandson. Essentially, it's this. And this is the Neoplatonist angle. Yearwood's song puts the human will as what is engaged to call angels. So, she says, direct quote here, I'm bringing the angels, I'm calling them down.

Okay, that could go from anywhere from North to Latter-Ainta with a brand I'm talking like that. She then equates angels with all of them saints, a cloud of witnesses, which is so overemphasized by the narrow and other groups.

And she says that they can be experienced through human perception. She says, I can hear them, I can feel them. Okay, so just biblically speaking, are we supposed to be calling down angels so that we can hear them and feel them?

I would put my foot forward and say, no, we're not supposed to do that. I don't think she's heretic, seems like a great singer, but there's something out of balance here. So, I would say that this has clear New York Platons leanings like those of Jane Leade, her disciples in the Latter-Ainta River of 1948.

And with the Nar Profits, Gwinshaw, Cindy Jacobs, Jennifer LeClair, and Bell Hammond. My question is, which I haven't found the answer. How? Did this sort of idea get into Yearwood's song and evidently into her church?

Without asking her, it's difficult to know. However, if you look at the way that the Latter Rain movement shifted Christianity and up in, I should say upended Christianity, because it really flipped it on its head.

They wanted to create the notion that you needed these super apostles. It was a movement of super apostles basically reinventing Corinthian worship. Well, if you follow that out to its logical conclusion, these super apostles then become your spiritual elders and your spiritual guides, many of which ironically were claiming that they had angels with them.

Not just Brannum did this. There were several in the movement that did this. So then what happened is people began to associate the super apostle with the angel that they claimed to be with them and started to morph the mythology until such that the angel and the human became almost one and the same.

The problem is because the focus was so shifted upon the human being and the alleged angel that's with them, they started to think of these as almost deities, not quite, but almost. Then when they died, now they become God's generals, as you know, well, what if these generals come back and talk to us in spirit?

That wasn't that uncommon in the laterane movement. So they basically took the worship of the dead saints that they condemned the Catholics for and they brought it into Protestantism through this weird mythology. And like I said, this is developing in the United States, but in Russia something very similar was evolving at the same time.

Yeah, you're setting this up well with the notes I have coming up here. So the main point I'm looking here is, well, I'm thinking of it sort of a circle of apostasy. And so I'm thinking Russian, mysticism that kind of occurred in several places through several key people, but you see it very clearly in Russian orthodoxy.

And so something that occurred in Russia, which is more of a history lesson, that their instability became a breeding ground for apostasy. So there's a pretty much a direct link there. So the Russian empire became the birthplace of terrorism and political struggle between roughly 1861 and roughly 1917.

And there's what kinds of historical landmarks that happened in those time frames, which we wouldn't really wanna have time to go into that. So it was a government under siege by its own population, how one, by searching ways to crush the terrorism, which was so rampant too.

By saddering traditional views of morality and restraints against killing people, that's pretty extreme, and three by promoting a mentality in which everything and anything is permitted as a result. The Russian dream, you know, we're here to kind of like the American dream, make America great again.

The Russian dream was born out of largely a suppressed, uneducated faction of peasants who often turned to mysticism for the answers to problems they saw. It also grew out of something which we've seen happen here in the United States at various times.

It grew out of rejection of the intellectual scholasticism of both Catholics and Protestants. So this allowed the Russian Orthodox church to incorporate unorthodox practices for them. It included political utopianism and that goes into some clear political movements that we could look into and to religious esotericism.

Are there, here's one of those rhetorical questions, but are there parallels with the Russian dream and current tendencies of instability in America? You know, it's funny and that leads me back to the movie that I was watching and what led to all of my curiosity in this.

So I was, the movie I was mentioning was The Kingsman, I don't know if you've seen it, but it is, it is a great, great movie and they're talking about Rasputin. So Rasputin, anybody who's unfamiliar with this, this is very much like we see with the NAR today.

This is a religious entity being a cult led by Gregory Rasputin. I think I said that correctly. And he convinces, you know, the powers that be that he has this mystical power connection to God.

And I want to clarify one thing that you said, you're talking about, it's through the Russian Orthodoxy. However, if you look at Russian Orthodoxy to the Russian church to this extremism, as you do Christianity to Protestantism to this Protestant extremism that we have, it is the extremism on both sides.

The extremist cult that has the mystic views that can mystify the powers that be and take over power structures and governments, et cetera. You're having that happen in Russia. Well, what's interesting is the time frame of all of this because the Russian, as this is happening, it was after this that we start to see this really becoming a push in the United States.

The United States, certain, devious characters wanted to take over the government and what better way to do it than through religion. It largely failed during the early years as attempting to do this. But now I look at it and I have the same rhetorical question you have.

Did they actually do it? Is that what's happening now? Yeah, Johnny and point well taken about to clarify because anything you say about any of these movements or individuals You have to kind of take it with a grain of salt because there's so much more background to it and you can't over generalize And say that everybody in the Russian Orthodox Churches or fanatics or something like that that would be incorrect But that does lead to something that was more like when you laid out the example of a Protestant letter named NAR Okay, obviously not all Protestants are in the NAR and then you lay out this typical, I mean this similar parallel with Russian Christians, Russian mysticism

Eastern Orthodox Christians, they're not all identical to one another so that's a good point So one of the points though that I found very interesting and we've been talked about it and I said at the point I forgot which video this was in but I said I said I may be shooting from the hip here so don't quote me And I found that I was I was basically correct that there was a movement in which in Russia which the leader claimed to be Christ Or how many times would have heard that happen in different movements and religious sex

So he claimed to be Christ as followers because her persecuted so much went from Russia to other locations And some of them even made their way over to the 90 states and so we'll get into that and yeah Mr. Rasputin has a little moment to shine coming up here So one of the mystical groups that I was pretty much unaware of except for that vague thing I was talking about It's spelled K-H-L-Y-S-T-Y, at least they, that's what they call them So the clues, at least they, who were they and what were they like Well so happens that a fellow named Danilo to a leap of it, I'm going to have a good time with Dave today

So in 1645 he founded the Klee State religion or sect It has been said to be the root of all Russian sectarianism So that's a big statement but there's some evidence to support it The leap of it was eventually arrested for spreading so-called demonic illnesses And so the government did not like what he was up to His followers would beat themselves in self-flagulation to be made what they called martyrs So if anybody's seen the movie the Da Vinci Curve 2003. There was a monk, an albino monk named Silas, and at one point maybe his back is exposed. He's got numerous scars from the same thing, beating yourself

into submission to Christ, but incorrect way of viewing things, I would say. So this group held secret Badinye ceremonies, and they called on times of rejoicing, very glee similar to what we might call praising worship service. But something interesting that you would relate to John is just like William Branum after his death myths arose about Philippe Vich's Presurrection and Second Coming. And you go back to the Bible, it says there will be Christs and false Christs, and when you read this you don't think that people will actually do it, who would be stupid enough to do that, and who would have the the gall to do it and call

themself Christian when the Bible so plainly says this, but you have to understand the way that these guys do it is in many cases they won't outright say that they are the Christ. What they will instead do is they will drop hints for you to follow little breadcrumbs to lead you to that conclusion, and after they've hooked enough people to believing that they are the Christ, then they can openly declare yes I am, or sometimes they like William Branum, he did the same thing, and it wasn't until the last, I want to say it was like 30 days before he died, was the only time

that he ever declared it fairly publicly, and even then he didn't come out and say I'm the Christ, instead he said the Elijah of this day is the Christ, but he had convinced his followers that he was this Elijah, so they leave you these breadcrumbs and they set themselves up to be beyond the Super Apostle, they are the Messiah. Yeah, yeah, and one of the things that I find extremely interesting, not good, but this is this is a question I kind of posed to myself as I was gathering information. I said to myself, how do the beliefs and practices of the Cliste compare with those

of the Naur and their ideological forerunners? So here's what I came up with in my searches, just like the 17th century mystic Jane Leigh, they became known for the Leigh's claims to quote, personify Christ. This was a big deal for her. She said that over and over and over in her writings. You don't necessarily hear that in the Naur, but you get pretty much the equivalent of it and how they carry out their doctrines. Like many esotericists, they say.

The Jesus was just one of many who became filled with the Spirit of Christ. You get that implied in some people with the nerve and some manifest God, some of God teachers, but it's even more clear in the ascetic world.

They also claimed that their leaders of each of their congregations, which they called arcs as in a ship and arc, each of those arcs had its own Christ and its own mother of God, so like the Moody's, you get the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

The Cleastay would chant what they called the Jesus Prayer over and over to experience the presence of God. Now if John, I know you've done this, I'm not sure who's listening if they've heard about this before, but pretty much you can say anything from the Bible, from just nonsense.

You can chant the phrases from Buddha, and if you do it enough, you're kind of zone out and you get a mild euphoric, mild hypnotic state. So they would say the Jesus Prayer over and over and they would say, oh, it's the presence of God.

Here's what they call the Jesus Prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me. A sinner. So you can know that's scriptural, but its use becomes the vain babbling and repetitions of the paganess Christ inferred.

Like participants of the Laterane and the Nar, prolonged fasting was promoted. As a result, they became known as the Posnika, also called the Fasters, loosely translated. This one was a bit odd, they were very extreme, rather than submit themselves to what they saw as apostasy, they needed to do the advent of the Antichrist, some would actually set themselves on fire, calling this the badness of the fire.

Okay, yeah, that's in scripture, but it's not meant to be carried out in their way. Also like someone else, like the Valentinian Nostics, they were instructed to keep the ritual secret, I wonder why.

To guard this secrecy, they would be Russian Orthodox outwardly to kind of keep things cool with the public and with their fellow villagers, but they would be cleased inwardly. You know, I have very little to say because I don't know much about this group, however, the arrested for spreading these demonic illnesses.

It makes me think back to one of the things that Brannum did in the Revival, was he claimed that as his position of super prophet or super Apostle he had the ability to can't to condemn people and in doing so give them cancers or various diseases which he was claiming to be these were demonic possessions so he's literally saying He can he can give you this if you question his authority and people believed it and we have an example if you go to my website type in The man from Windsor. There's this one guy that he he says this guy

I was passing out these prayer cards and this guy figured out that I was having the people write the name and the address on the card and then I was just reading the cards So he was going to fake an illness on his card and I struck him down and he died right there on the platform And then he tells the story again and he says and the guy ran screaming from the platform And he tells I mean there's I don't know how many variations do the story but there's so many you can tell it's clearly was made up

Otherwise, it will stuck in his head But he's doing the same thing. He's he's casting these demons and I You know in this one aspect. I'm not a big fan of Russia, but in this one aspect. I think people like this should be arrested Yeah, I agree Now this you know, this could probably be something that because you brought up Best mutant There are some things if you've got some younger listings you might call this pg13 Some of the stuff coming up here, but The next thing I had here for this group and some other

musical groups in Russia Was drunken the spirit and the pleasures of the flesh somehow these two came together So very similar to Suified derbishes the effect of their whirling circle dance Was set to be like spiritual beer Hmm, okay, if you think really hard about some praising worship services, especially those that are very cult like spiritual spiritual beers not too far off the the mark So after this dance where they're whirling around The worshipers would fall to the floor Some please they were said to then engage in group sinning which I believed would purify then from the lust of the flesh

Like the medieval brother of the free spirit It was through this time a sinful quote rejoicing that salvation could be obtained Uh, and this could only be by total repentance That was salvation to be obtained because unless you'd sinned completely you cannot be Completely saved was there logic on that one And so to rejoice in this way they met in a secret location where they so-called called down the spirit They did this like the many modern day people who produced the presence in the norm and other words like those participated in the Toronto Blessing in 1994. The cleast day would rejoice through rhythmic movements,

ecstatic dancing, speaking in tongues, or if they thought were speaking in tongues, and falling to the ground in convulsions. Oddly, they then drank clavus, which is a mild alcoholic beverage and ate pastries. So I think they had one up on the Toronto guys, literally got to have some pastries.

So cleast day practices are brought to life further by a man named Edvard Vinsky, and he wrote a personal encounter of Rodinie ritual, which was Rodinie's celebration, and he wrote this in 1964, so you can see that they were continuing on for quite some time. According to Rodinie, where white flax and shirts were worn over their naked bodies as they went down to the cellar of a peasant lodge, then they let candles and started to chant repeatedly the Jesus Prayer.

They would then start the time of so-called rejoicing by whirling around in place, crossing themselves, which oddly they do a different way. I can't duplicate it, but it's different than typical Catholic would cross themselves slightly different. And they were continually with their bodies, as I said, you know, that legislation thing. Some started screaming and sobbing.

Then the Christ of their art cried out, brothers, I feel the Holy Spirit goddess within me. He then began to prophesy, shouted out incorrect words, mixed with these intolerable words, O Spirit, O God, O Lord. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, 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-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So I hate to admit it, but

She lost me at pastries. My mind went straight to that and I'm hungry. And I'm thinking, why in all of these services that we had all of these similar things, why did they not pass out the pastries?

Because then it wouldn't have been so bad. But what you said in that, I want to pause just a second because I don't think people realize the implications of this. You can have the same ecstatic experiences simply by getting yourself into this mental state where you are susceptible to those spiritual experiences.

But without the pastries, you can hype yourself up and you can have a quote unquote spiritual revelation just by getting into that mental state, that euphoria. And it really, it's a psychological technique more than it is a religious thing.

However, if you're in the Pentecostal variations or the charismatic variations of Christianity, you are trained to believe that by entering that psychological state, it is a spiritual experience and therefore anything that comes out of it is from God.

The problem and the question that's raised is when you can do it without having anything to do with Jesus or Christianity, you could go with your blueberry pastries and have the same experience. Can you really say that that blueberry pastry gave you a heavenly experience?

I don't think so. Yeah, I think I would have to be a strawberry pastry, actually. I couldn't make it work. But no, that's a good point, John. So what always comes up in my mind when I'm looking at these things is you influence the cleast day.

Then take too much searching until I found somebody who influenced Jane Leade who is probably one of the central people, the entire occult world who influenced Helena Blavatsky and even Satanist, like Alistair Crowley, look at this guy and say, oh, yeah, he was really something.

And that is the German mystic, Hikob Boen or Jacob Boen. So he had a very significant influence on some other Russian mystics, but this included the cleast day. And to be more specific, Boen's ideas were brought to Russia in the 17th century.

What a busy time that was spiritually. By a fella who I probably got a mispronounced his first thing, tier-ness, cool-on, and Quillman traveled to Moscow and began to spread Boen's mystical revelations. In 1669 at the age of 18, Quillman said that he had a vision of Jesus.

Well, when did he had this vision of Jesus? It was directly after reading Boen's work called the Mysterion Magnum. Quillman's followers believed that he would bring in the new millennium. This is kind of a mouthful here, but try to break it down.

It's easy to understand. Similar to Norfolk, who are following this urge to take dominion, to establish the Seven Mountains, and then carry out the written judgments of God, Senator to that, Quillman said that his goal was to have Protestants and Ottomans joined forces to destroy Catholic Europe and the Pope in order to establish the Kingdom of Jesus.

Well, unfortunately for Quillman, he was tortured and burned up the stake for heresy in 1689. So like I said, Steve, I'm, you're going outside of my research a bit, and my brain is crying squirrel.

First you mentioned pastries, and my head went there. We started talking about drinking, drunk, and the spirit, and the squirrel that hit me at that point was this lady that is known as Hatchet Granny.

I don't know if you've known this story, but there was a lady literally nicknamed Elderly Lady, nicknamed Hatchet Granny. Her name was Carrie Nation, and she would go into the bars and the saloons during prohibition with a Hatchet, a literal Hatchet, and just smash all of the beer and whiskey.

The funny part is the, you mentioned the circles that are happening here, so you have circles where people go into ecstasy, and they can augment it by drinking, and they assume this is a spiritual thing, which obviously it's not.

Well, then it goes into these weird circles where any sort, any form of ecstasy is bad because we've seen the bad on this side. Now let's go to the far extreme to the other side, where we're literally smashing property with a Hatchet, and then we're just going back again to, in the NAR, I had a conversation earlier today where the leaders of the NAR are getting exposed for their drunk and parties, and some of them are in religions where you're not supposed to drink and they're a frame of mind.

So it keeps going in these weird, weird circles that spins, but in the end, what you're saying is correct. People find ways to get into the spirit of ecstasy, and you find some bozo who is just nutty enough to say, I have a religion about this ecstasy, and I'm going to teach you how this brings you closer to God, but you need to get there through me.

Yeah, and you know what, there's an expert that I'm sure you've, well, I'm absolutely sure you've read about his findings about this sort of stuff in religious cults. What reset, when I got out of the group I was in, what was very apparent was, you could believe literally anything, but if you went through these certain processes in ways to, you know, get your mind in this altered state of consciousness, you would, you'd subscribe that to you.

the the belief system which was wrong backwards. So I would have this joke about actually there was there was a religious cult actually there's a kind of a thummy there knows that religious cults and they called it the church of Bob all praise Bob and yada yada blah blah blah then they would do certain things to get them quote in the spirit of Bob and you know they were hyperventilated fall underground and sell these odd things but but the fellow that I know you know I heard him once in a YouTube interview saying that he could take somebody because he's a psychologist psychologist

they could take somebody and through a few suggestions make them see a bright shining light uh and it was not a mystical guy he was not highly religious but he just knew the right mental manipulations to demonstrate how how easily and how possible it is to get folks to experience whatever you want them to and then that becomes the proof that the group they're in and the teachings of revelations are quote of God so like a lot of these groups the cleastay suffered a lot of persecution throughout the history this came pretty much from the government sometimes from

other religions other factions the orthodox church and this actually pushed them to migrate from Russia to Romania that's the part that I'd remembered saying something about that in a previous podcast and yep the influential Russian orthodox mystic begorey resputing was investigated in 1903 and in 1907 under the charges of spreading cleastay doctrine okay like that was a bad thing the government didn't like that uh he was never found guilty but the rumors about this linked to him and the sect continued and like I said earlier that's the history that I saw in a movie but I had I had heard the history before the movie so I knew it existed but it wasn't

until watching the movie that are begin to piece together the links between the types of religion that I left and the types of the religion that take over the governments and I started to recognize wait a minute they are one and the same if you can bring anybody's mind into this spiritual state where they're in such a state of euphoria that they don't question you you can you can do anything I mean you can conquer the world like this so I'm watching Rasputin do this in a movie which is you know parts of the movie weren't quite historically accurate and I knew some of that history

but the parts that's interesting the part that they went to the extremes with they were augmenting the power of this religion to such an extent that I think that they were trying to over exaggerate it, but even miss the mark as to the level of control that actually can be achieved through these things.

And I'm going, all that is in my head and I'm processing and realizing that we're in a dangerous place in the country today because we're seeing exactly that, but under the name of Christianity in the United States.

Yeah. A point well taken on that, that's very accurate. The thing I was thinking when you were saying that is I pretty much remember when my son was at the age of watching various Disney movies that I animated, there must have been something that I saw where it was about the influence of a rest mutant on Russian nobility, but he was, again, probably historically inaccurate to a large degree, but yeah, here's another one is that his name still comes up this way.

They say that in the same way that Steve Bannon influenced Trump in the same way that Dugan, Alexander Dugan influences Vladimir Putin, they called Dugan, I've heard him compared to the rest mutant of Vladimir Putin, which is not a good thing, yeah.

So now we get to something that is very interesting to cut my ear, and it makes me want to learn more, but I found out about these sons of freedom, the sons of freedom were an offshoot of the police.

So it's an offshoot of an offshoot, which I know you've said that many times, Trump. They splinter, they go into different groups and sometimes maintain a lot of the original stuff, but other times become really distinct.

So this is interesting with the financial support of the Russian Orthodox author Leo Tolstoy around 7,500 of the sons of freedom, fled persecution, moving to Canada between 1898 and 1903. So if you look into Tolstoy, of course, Warren Peace and many novels that he was famous for, he was interesting in that he was Orthodox in a sense, and I think he might have been excommunicated at one point because his views were so contrary to the Orthodox church.

So the sons of freedom rejected all forms of state interference, such as compulsory education and government schools, and the use of tax money for the military, oddly they would protest these policies to arson and public nudity.

how that helped their cause, I'm not really sure. Interestingly, during 1947 and 1948, the sons of Frieden performed many acts of arson and nudity in Saskatchewan. I know Saskatchewan is a big place, but it was the birthplace, so to speak, of the lateral agreement.

Then in 1953, 174 of their children were forcibly detained by the government. This led to more violent confrontations between the sons of Frieden and the Royal Canadian Mounty Police. And I can't help but see something about Dudley-Dewright in my head, when I even tell him I say that.

In total, the sons of Frieden committed 1, 112 separate acts of arson. This cost the government over $20 million in damages to public schools, and they seem to like to hit railway bridges. Now, here's the thought that they could be a bit controversial, but it really hits me strong.

Like Tom, like you said, we're in a dangerous spot. How do these extreme forms of protest relate to current day unlawful detentions and the denial of civil liberties? And that's really a hard question.

You know, you mentioned the public nudity. There's, I don't know if you're familiar with this group, but there is this music group called the Bear Naked Ladies. And I've seen Christian people just go berserk when they see the title, just because the title has that word in it, they go crazy.

However, if you're walking down the street and you're not of that fundamentalist mindset, and here's a sign that says Bear Naked Ladies, $5, come listen, it attracted all kinds of people, it was actually a brilliant marketing strategy if you think about what they did.

But take that to levels weirder in the Christianity. In Latter-Rain, there was this man by the name of Moses David Berg, which you're probably familiar with. He was attracting members to his cult through sex.

He would have sent these people out and they were called, what did they call them? The happy hookers for Jesus. They had flashes for Jesus. Yeah, flashy fishers, different names that they gave these ladies, but that's what they were doing.

They're prostituting themselves. And he was commissioned by God to be ordained as this minister of whatever it was that he claimed. By William Brannum, not many people recognize that, but Brannum is the one who started him and he got extradited or not extradited, but he almost got caught and he moved out of the country and he started producing these very, almost extradited magazines and comic books.

And in the comic books, it's weird because he's got all of this very, very... pornographic literature and material combined with praises of William Brannum and one of his cult escapees sent me this where I'm headed with all of this is also mixed in with that is Christian identity because the roots of this was all Christian identity and if you follow those roots out to their extremes you have the same thing you have the writing you have the damage of property you have all of this weirdness and it was being presented to the people as a religion as a

fundamentalist one of the other one of the other articles of research that I had up recently was the defenders of the Christian faith it was a fundamentalist organization institution founded for the fighting of evolution and the spread of Christian identity and there were men famous men like Charles Fuller of the Fuller Theological Seminary from which C. Peter Wagner was you know gained his fame he was a member of the defender so he's in all of this you can't say that Fuller and the Fuller Theological Seminary are extremists to the level of violence but they're in a movement that is and that movement is tied to religion so you have

levels of extreme and all of this extremism is branching off of the main sect of Christianity so these these extreme sects are very dangerous yeah the part about the racial components with Moses David Berg you call himself he actually I imagine you probably saw this but he would use and promote the protocols of the elders of design the learned elders of sign and obviously if you know about that that text he was using that to excite Jews he also had some comments about

blacks and the entire race that can only be called racist but the pamphlets you're talking about I actually I'd like to be able to unsee those but when I was helping the council people out of the children of God one of the bits of information we got a hold of the materials to understand the group and know okay this is what they've been accustomed to they were called mo letters and yeah they would say her curse for Jesus and they would say flirty fish so you go flirty fishing and this was apparently to use any means possible including sexuality and

sexual favors to get people into the group and they actually had something that runs really parallel to the manies you know the manages say heavenly deception so you can tell the world anything tell them yeah you're raising money for Christian rehab or for homeless children and it's fact is going straight to revenue in his organization. Well, the children of God had a similar idea and some people asked members of the group that I met. They said they used this phrase, they called the world, people in the world were systemites. So you could lie to him,

steal, do whatever you want. And you were not beholden to act by any Christian standards because they, the world, were obviously not of price. They were on the devil. Therefore, that means you can use the devil's tactics to get what was stolen from church, from his version of Christianity. So, yeah, terrible, terrible group. Another thing that came a little bit more current day, uh, business system in, in Russian Orthodox church, uh, was what they called I know chentism. And this was a Christian charismatic Christian charismatic group, uh, the split off from the Russian Orthodox church. They were active in both the Soviet Union and

in Romania in the early 20th century. They were followers of a guy named Luan Levizor, who took on the monastic name of, you know, you know, Chintay, aka the Heavenly Emperor. Okay, that's what basically translates to Levizor, claimed to have heard of voice tell him the time has come.

Three days later, he said he saw the mother of God. In order to hurry up, he preached that the Antichrist would soon appear in Russia. Our Christians today being told to hurry up at the expense of sound doctrine. And with that, I would say absolutely. We see that fear is probably the strongest tie that binds people to the call. There's this fear of urgency. There's this fear that the Antichrist is coming. I grew up with this fear. The Antichrist had set up its kingdom in various places, depending on which, which sermon you listen to. There's a little bit of conflict

there. But in the end, they were coming to invade the United States, which ultimately was the Christian identity doctrine. They were saying that they're coming into the United States. They would soon set up our kingdom here. So we were taught to be afraid of this happening and that fear binds people. And there's always that hint of urgency. If you can add a hint of urgency to whatever is your platform, people will, they're like, oh my gosh, I must hurry, I must make the decision, I must stay. And that's what binds it all together. Okay, so more about Levizor and his followers

is this. They believe that he was the Holy Spirit and human form. And based on that belief, they claim that he could do many miracles. Evisor will allegedly ascend to heaven every evening as one of the miracles he would perform.

Like William Brandon in many other false prophets, Levisor set a date for the end of the world. This is a problem when somebody does that because it's hard to backtrack it, you know, as many groups have found out.

He stated that the world would end on April 12, 1913. This led him to ban all marriages into praise, free love, as a gift for the New Jerusalem. In 1914, according to his followers, Levisor was captured and subjected to the most horrifying porches. For forty days, he was changed, crowned, and with thorns on his head, and made to sit naked on broken glass. That's in their account.

Levisor's followers were subjected to Stalin's great purge, which was basically from 1936 to 1938. This great purge included anarchists and nuns who were executed for so-called committing crimes against the state. So, as we know, in history, Lenin Stalin, Mao, Lot of folks Hitler, were claimed that people were committing crimes against the state, and therefore locking them up through where the key or go ahead and execute them.

Then, in 1947, 10 anarchist leaders were sent to Joseph Stalin's corrective labor camps, aka the gulag system, which is essentially like Hitler's concentration camps. But they gave them a euphemistic name, maybe like they've got bad karma if you're talking new age. Yeah, we're just going to send you to a corrective labor camp. No, this is not punishment.

I won't take great care of you. So, anyway, that's what happened to the leaders of that group. And the only interesting comment that I have for that, which is it's a little bit out there, but not many people are aware of this. William Brannum worked closely with a congressman William D. Upshaw, who was the head of the prohibition movement. Upshaw was also a leader in the clan and defended the clan in Washington. Well, Upshaw joined into the Laterane movement, and he was a strong promoter of Brannum's ministries. Right across the river in Louisville, Kentucky, there's a history museum, and they, for a while, they had this big section of William D. Upshaw

and how William Brannum had healed him right in this museum in Louisville. Well, I can't remember what year it was sometime in the 50s. They, the Laterane guys sent this letter to Joseph Stalin.

William Brannum's signature was on it. He talks about it on recording how they were trying to, I guess, convert Stalin during his last days of his ministry, or at last days of his empire.

Where it gets really odd is there's a period of time in which everybody in the United States is so strongly against Russia and communism, and they think that it is the anti-Christ that's spreading throughout the movement.

Brannum himself did the same thing, but in the moments when they're trying to convert him, Brannum condemns anybody who says that Stalin is the anti-Christ. He says those two spirits will be so close they'll deceive the very elect if possible.

It's not Stalin. And then later he changes his tune because apparently Stalin never converted to Latter-Rain. Yeah, it's a crazy world. Now, I can tell you John, just whatever your schedule looks good for it.

This, as always, happens, unlocked the door to a lot of other stuff. And it's probably something, if you'd like to do it in the future, there's pretty much a part two to the Russian mysticism.

And just a lot of fascinating folks in... Absolutely. Some of them have some actual real ties to folks in the Latter-Rain, or folks that influence Latter-Rain say like John Portage. There's a big connection between him and some of the Russian mystics, though.

Well, thank you so much for doing this, Steve. I enjoyed it, John. 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 www.William-brannum.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 the converging apostasy, you can read the book The Converging Apostasy.

And also, a quick outline on hands-on eschatology, a matter of timing and agency.

For more information, visit www.William-brannum.org and visit www.William-brannum.org.

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