Bill Johnson: Identity Theology & the Cult Connection | Adam Short

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 Adam Short, host of the grit in the wild podcast. Adam, you and our silent researcher keep sending me these crazy things to talk about. Usually about Bethel but sometimes I hop and other guys and the thing that you sent me today, this letter. I'm looking at it. I read it before we before the podcast we started going through it and I was reading it

and it's odd to me because the language is more modernized but the themes that are embedded in that and I'll go through that a little bit. It was a little bit triggering for me because I remember sermons with those same themes and my first thought is I'm reading it. Oh that's he's talking about this and that and that's gospel based and then I'm like scratching my head no way to minute. That's that's not biblical. That's extra biblical. That's outside of biblical. But anyway the things that you're finding are just fascinating and I'm glad you glad you sent this to me so we can talk about it. Nice yeah I was racking my

brain and I just was coming up empty what in the world we're going to talk about today and I just thought okay let's go back to the latest Bethel emails and so I actually remember a couple weeks ago getting this email and I still get most of the email you know updates from Bethel TV and the sermons and this that and the other and I remember when it came out this is August 10th and I'm just going to read the subject line of the email it is our divine identity in Christ and the manifest wisdom of God and that really grabbed my attention the

first few words there are divine identity I remember when I saw that in my inbox I'm like wow like that is that is quite a loaded phrase there even for Bethel and I feel like the way that was positioned first of all is very much up front and centered out front and center and you know the immediately the bills going off in my head are you know the manifestants of God doctrine that we've talked about and that you've talked even more about on your podcast and you've written about but I wanted to go in and dive in a little bit deeper I've

watched bits and pieces of Bill John and sermon, which the email is in a reference to Bill Johnson's sermon that he did earlier in August. And here's the ironic part, John. If you go to look at the YouTube transcript and kind of listen to pieces of the sermon from Bill, specifically around, let's see, minute 28 to about minute 32 give or take.

He's actually preaching out of Romans 5 in the Bible. So, you know, on the one hand, I will give him credit for opening up the Bible and making an attempt to preach out of the Bible, Romans 5.

It seems to me that the anchor of his message, at least the part that I've listened to so far, is that he is referencing, he's referencing Romans 5, 17, which speaks about raining in life.

Okay, raining in life. And of course, yes, that isn't the Bible, but the questions that I'm having that are kind of going through my head are raining in life. Even though Bill specifically said this doesn't mean you're lording over people, you're not like ruling over them like kings, he gives a, you know, a very well, uh, rehearsed, I think explanation for how that's not ruling over people.

But this is one of the anchor tenets of dominionism and the seven mountains and how I've got so many thoughts, I'm trying to get through, like, untangle all this in my head. But the dominionism, um, here, on the one hand, Bill is saying that we are not supposed to rain over people, we're not supposed to lord over people.

But in practice and in day to day life, I find that the outworkings of dominionism actually are very much, in fact, lording over people and lording over systems. Primarily, it's like a systems based domination.

So it's really a lot of cognitive dissonance, honestly, because I'm listening to Bill preaching out of Romans five, but then I'm like, the voice of my head is like, wait, but practically speaking, this is actually not what's happening.

Um, people, people are being churned out of the Bethel machine and they're going out and they're, they're seeking to have dominion and domination over systems. But I want to bring up a bigger point.

I'm really curious, you know, you mentioned the trigger, uh, the trigger language that you, you know, you triggered you when you read it. Um, why did they name this email, our defined identity? Because that is quite a leap if you, if you, if you look at the main theme of the sermon, it's actually not really about that.

It doesn't look like that's the main point, but it's like, who ever wrote the marketing email? for Bethel, sort of enhance the appeal of the message

and add it to what Bill was saying. I don't know, I'm just theorizing right now. It's almost like they needed to add that language in there to grab people's attention that, hey, you know, divine identity, you're divine identity in Christ.

But I can't help but to think, what do they really mean by that? Don't they actually mean that we have little gods walking around? I mean, I know we've talked about this before, and how the whole, you know, this whole movement is predicated upon people walking around just basically Jesus, little Jesus is in.

I mean, Chris Balotin's kind of said it himself. Ye, or he's the big G-God and year little G-God's walking around. He actually said that out of his mouth. So anyway, that's a very convoluted mixture of thoughts going through my head, John.

What do you think? I have a big mixture of thoughts going through my head. When I see these things, it's like, I don't know how to explain it. It's like a million explosions go off in different directions.

And I have a hard time sometimes choosing which direction that I head down on the podcast. That's why it kind of, I don't know if you remember the old family circus cartoons that were in the newspapers, where Billy's going all round to the places and they've got the lines where all he's heading and it's going everywhere.

That's kind of what happens in my head when I read these things. And so that's why the podcast do like they do. But you're correct. The identity focus was specifically the most triggering part for me.

There were other parts. But if you understand what is being said with that identity language, Christian identity, we've talked through that history and I won't go too deep with it. Somebody did ask what it was.

So at some point I should probably explain it. But in Christian identity, the way it works was very cult-like. It's us versus them. We have the identity. They who are not of us do not have the identity.

Even if they're another Christian, they don't. And if you understand what is being said by that verbiage, it creates that us versus them mentality. That alone to me is triggering because you form whether you do physically or not in your brain, you form this isolationist standpoint.

You start considering yourself to be superior to other Christians. Even though he's not outright saying it here in the letter, and I don't think I've ever heard him outright say it in the sermons, whenever you use this language, it leads people to that conclusion.

And then they themselves create isolationist patterns within their brains. And if you study psychology to any limited extent, you understand what that does in the heads, especially in the context of a cult. So the identity language for me was very terrible.

I'll just say it was terrible. When you combine that with the other identity, that I saw in this, that manifest wisdom of God, for example, if I understand how that's being used and somebody can correct me if I'm incorrect, there's a passage in, I think it's Ephesians that talks about the manifold wisdom of God.

It's not manifest, but it's manifold. However, we've talked before about Bill Johnson and Chris Valtans, reverence to William Brannum. I know that these guys, all of them, have studied some of the things Brannum said, and Brannum would talk about the coming manifestation of God, which led to the ye are little gods with a little G. That's something that was dominant in Brannumism.

Manifold Wisdom, so I'm going to put a shout out to all of a few of my different podcast series. Manifold Wisdom, number one, the series that I'm doing with Chino Ross, we're going through the cult of Hobart Freeman, which was a very destructive and deadly cult. That manifest manifold wisdom theology, that was one of his pillars, one of his main doctrinal foundations.

He was also out of the Brannumism religion, interestingly also trained by CF and I, at least attending some of the deliverance meetings. Bill Johnson obviously has the trails back to Brannumism, so he understands the manifested sons of God theology. Mike Pickle, the IHOPKC, all of these apostolic networks, they all have some shape form twisting of William Brannum's manifest sons of God theology. Combined that with what Steve and I are going through in the converging apostasy, the idea which emerged long ago, most roots that we find go back to Jane Leed, who was a Christian mystic, but they're trying to bring the idea that Sophia,

which was the pagan goddess of wisdom, was actually a divine thing that should be honored in Christian circles. So this idea of an esoteric knowledge dominated the movement. Brannumism continued that theme. You must have the divine wisdom. Me, William Brannum, I'm coming to you, the elect people who are in the identity to have this divine wisdom and God has given me the mysteries that have been sealed. Therefore, you are now the keepers of this divine wisdom. If you understand that language, that manifest wisdom of God, it's subtly saying that the information that has been hidden for

centuries is now being made manifest within our groups. None of that language you find, that verbage you don't find in this letter, but if you know the loaded language behind the training that Bill Johnson would have had from this movement, you understand how problematic that language is, and if you understand the gospel, you understand how contradictory it is to the gospel.

Oh my goodness, so yes, I did not even, it was like in my head subconsciously, I realized, manifold and manifest, not the same word. I didn't even pick up on that. That's how subtle it is until you mention, oh yeah, you're right, the Bible doesn't use the word manifest, it's manifold, and actually it's in Ephesians 3, 10,

where the manifold wisdom of God is mentioned, and then also first Corinthians 1, 24,

well, it doesn't use the word manifest, or sorry, manifold, manifest is not in there, you're right. It's not even in the Bible. And so what's the difference between manifest and manifold? So manifold is like multi, many are varied or diverse or multifaceted, many aspects, many components, that's manifold.

And I always think, when I hear the word manifold, I always think about the old cars, they had a manifold, and there were multiple like,

curvatures and layers to the manifold of the engine. But then if you look at the word manifest, what does that mean? I mean, that's a very popular word in our pop culture now, right?

I'm gonna manifest something in my life, right? I'm gonna somehow precipitate this into being just by thinking positively or declaring it into the, screaming it's into the void or whatever else. Do yoga, I mean, God only knows what you can do these days to manifest something in your life.

I'm gonna manifest millions of dollars in my life, for example, is probably what many people try to do, where I'm gonna manifest the perfect partner in my life. So that word manifest is very, very pertinent and it's very much used in the vernacular today.

So it's interesting how Bethel is using manifest. I mean, they've been using that word for many years, but to hear about how really that word has roots way back to Brannum and then prior, it really is loaded.

It's totally loaded and I think you're right. It's a fruit of a nostic belief system where a select group of people have the understanding, the knowledge and the spiritual elite understanding and then by extension of that, we've got to somehow uncover that and make that understandable to the people that are in the us category.

So yeah, I guess back to my original point, like Bill's preaching out of Romans five, but the... Marketing push that Bethel is using in this email to get people to go back to their YouTube channel or come to their Bethel.tv account and sign up for a subscription, which means money.

It's the loaded phrasing in there that's actually not in the sermon itself. So it's like, I'm kind of reeling from that. I'm kind of like, does Bill know what they're doing? I mean, I'm sure he does, but does Bill know what his social media department is doing?

Like, they're taking a sermon that's supposed to be from Romans 5 and then they're adding all this crap to the top of it, trying to grab people's subscriptions. I don't know, it's just, yeah, I already know John, he knows.

You're gonna tell me he knows. Yeah, I might tell you that. Actually, I'm gonna tell you differently because I find it funny. I'm gonna give you a movie reference and for those who don't know, I grew up without a television.

So a large portion of my life, I did not watch television movies. And Adam here, I have to tell him the pop culture references, which is kind of funny, but I'll use the parallel this time of the Men in Black movie.

I don't know. Have you seen this movie, Men in Black? I've seen that one, John. Okay, there is, so we're both wearing black. Today we are the Men in Black, but there's one difference between me and you.

And if you know the movie, you know what it is. Yes, the difference is you have some white along your shoulders there. That's not the difference that's mentioned in the movie, but that's another joke for another day.

Okay. Anyway, in Men in Black, you had these, so you had the two main characters with the fancy guns and Will Smith had the, what did he call that thing? A little pea shooter that he had that could take out a city block.

It was kind of funny. But they're living in this environment where they alone can see all of these in their world, it's alien things in Bill Johnson's world, it's all of these so-called quote-unquote spiritual things.

And people look at them like this. They look at these guys, these apostles and prophets like they are the men in black. Tell us, tell us more about this alien world that you see.

Tell us about the little pea shooter in your hand that can take out a demon with your divine deliverance, mumbo jumbo, whatever it is. They look at these people like this. So in my opinion, and it is my opinion, Bill Johnson has his.

In my opinion, he knows all of the verbiage in the language. He had, I mean, these preachers have one job and that's to study the things that they say in their sermons and to prepare these letters, et cetera.

Although he may have some sort of a secretary that writes the letters who knows, but they have to know this stuff, but they present it in such a way that it's very much entertaining like the men in black movie.

The people are looking at these guys as though they can see and feel and hear something that they can't and tell us more about this. What is it? If you understand the concept of what that is, which ties directly back to what I said earlier, this.

is the idea of gnostic framing. This is a secret knowledge and esoteric knowledge that makes me superior to everyone else. And if you join our group, I can tell you more about this secret knowledge, and you too can know the secrets. And people join into this thing, thinking that they too will suddenly be able to, like, will smith see all the aliens that are living in the presence. The sad truth is it's a carrot on the stick because nobody ever sees it, only the divine leaders that they look up to see it. But just like gnosticism,

that's where it originated from. That's the way it is. In the ancient world, it was called a mystery cult. You had a mystery cult that had a divine mystery. And if you join into the cult, you too have the divine mystery. Everyone else around you does not. Yeah, that's interesting mystery cult. Yeah. I think that you're on to a lot of good points there. And then I'll just add this. The other phrase, I don't know if you noticed this in the email, was, or no, it was on the YouTube channel. The title of the sermon of this sermon that the email refers to the links to

in YouTube is, here's the title word-for-word quote, the dead can't sin, colon, Bill Johnson's sermon on spiritual maturity, space, Bethel Church. So here are two other themes that are attached here. The dead can't sin. And I mean, I know enough about the Bible to know where they think they got that. Being that, you know, relating back to identity in Christ, and you've died to your sin, right, in your identity in Christ. And you've been identified with him, and then you were raised with Christ. I mean, the Bible teaches that. But here's where I think Bethel and others go wrong

is they take that concept of the dead can't sin, right? Dead people don't sin. Of course, dead people tell no tales. As we know from Captain Jack Sparrow's another movie reference. Dead people don't tell stories. Dead people don't sin. But I think where they make a leap is they leap from dead people can't sin from the standpoint of your Christian identity, not Christian identity that you're talking about John. But I'm saying like the biblical Christian identity in Christ, right? They leap from that to to this belief system that Christians actually can live a sinless life,

which is I think another heresy and or at least at a minimum of false teaching, right? Because when you go to the book of 1 John, it says, if you say you have no sin, you have deceived yourself, and the truth is not in you, let us confess our sin so that to him who is faithful and just to cleanse us and forgive us from all unrighteousness, that's in 1 John. I remember that from Lutheran church growing up, we had to say that over and over and over again we had to, that was one of the, one of the things in the

hymn book or the service book and so it's baked in my head. But anyway, I don't know if this makes sense, but like the leap was made from a biblical concept to now Bethel teaching that I think they believe that people can live sinless life. And I think, John, is that a, is that another teaching that originates from branimism or even prior to branimism, that sinlessness concept.

And to clarify what you just said, nothing originated with branimism. He copied and pledged rise from some of the works of several others. Right. Crazy, crazy people. There are Jehovah's Witness doctrines in there and I know the, I know where the source where he got the JW stuff, he got Mormonism, all kinds of things. But there was this idea that, and it wasn't just branimism, this crept into latarine and it began to spread among even when the AG started to split over latarine, it even kind of crept into the AG. The idea that God has, God is coming to, they would

use this phrase, God is coming to perfect the bride. And they would, there are various Bible passages that they would loosely base it on. But the idea was that eventually you would come to a state where you as a human would have no sin, you would be perfect and flawless. That's the point at which you would get in branimism, you call it rapturing faith because he was teaching the rapture.

As the rapture theology kind of disseminated among the groups and then they started to adopt other views, it would change to the rapturing faith would bring on the kingdom. And then it began to transition into the kingdom theology to get to that point, you had to reach the perfect faith.

What's really scary about it is in the Christian identity circles, it was combined with Joel's army, once you got to the state of perfection that they would call it, that's whenever you would become a manifested son of God. And then Joel's army would form and the battle for Armageddon would begin. And you were taking that one side in the battle against the forces of evil. So it became a very militant and some groups actually took up arms because of this.

It's really scary stuff. But yeah, that is scary. If you understand the difference between that type of, that type of verbiage and theology, it actually ties back to the second most thing that was triggering for me. There was a phrase in there that said something to the effect of we had a previous speaker who was talking about the overwhelming, what did he call it, radical obedience.

I think it was the phrase you used. We had another speaker that was talking about radical obedience. Well, if you understand all of the loaded language that goes behind that, it is that perfection doctrine.

You must be fully obedient to me, you must bow down to me as your King Supreme Leader. Everything that I say, every rule that I give, every doctrine that I utter through my mouth, you must believe this in radical obedience to me as a proxy to God. So they're trying to frame it such that it's radical obedience to God, but then they tell you how that obedience occurs. All of that loaded language that goes behind that, that's the point at which I was reading to this email and I thought, I don't know if I can read any more of this, that's pretty bad. You've seen enough. I've seen enough. And it

all goes interesting. It all goes back to there is a there's a passage in the Bible and I'm drawing a blank on what book it is somebody out there probably knows, but the passage that's talking about food sacrifice to idols, I always go back there because if you understand what Paul is saying, it totally over undermines the entire movement itself. They are trying to teach you that you're living in a world where the idols are real, the demons are real, you might accidentally catch a demon every corner, there's a demon lurking and you must be radically, radically obedient to me,

the Supreme Leader, so I can protect you from these demons and I can tell you the mysteries of how to save yourself. And in the passage, talking about sacrificing to idol, I should say that differently, I think I said it incorrectly the first time, about eating food that was sacrifice to idols. He said, basically, you can eat the food as long as it doesn't offend somebody else who's with you, because an idol is nothing. Paul is literally saying that everybody who believes in an idol is believing of something fiction. An idol is nothing, it has no control over you,

but what they want to teach you in these movements is that yes, they do have control over you, and if you're not careful, if you're not totally radically obedient to the Supreme Leader and through the leader's proxy to God, then those idols can take power over you and steal your soul from you. Oh, man, it's good stuff you say there. It makes sense, because yeah, I think Paul's point there between, well, people that agree or have in their conscience, they're okay eating food, sacrifice to idols versus those that are not. It's kind of like the meat and vegetables,

similar kind of, I think, comparison to that, like each person has a different conscientious approach to those issues, but that's good. It's like, but ultimately, it's really these idols, these are false gods and they're not real. But yeah, back to the radical obedience. I'm still so used to this language, even though I've been out of it for 14 years, that I didn't even see that.

Even, I mean, I read that from Dan McCollum is the other speaker you were referencing that they put in the email.

That evening, Pastor Dan McCollum, through compelling stories and testimonies of radical obedience, unpacked the manifest wisdom of God is another sermon they linked in there.

And I appreciate you bringing that up because radical obedience is like in your mind subconsciously, you think, oh, they're talking about radical obedience to God. But like, if you boil it down, ultimately, there is so much of what you said of, you know, it's channeled, if you will, towards the leadership pyramid.

And yeah, it kind of primes a person's faith, if you want to call it that, to be directed towards that leader and then really set them up to even be more susceptible, vulnerable and impressionable, by what the leader says to do or believe.

And so it's good point, like I said, I didn't even, the two phrases I saw were the manifest wisdom of God and the divine identity. I just passed over the radical obedience because I'm so used to hearing that.

So it just shows how the language of these movements can literally for decades, it can just be so baked in your brain, it takes so long to get it washed out. 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 have seen some of these doctrines crept into the mainstream. Some of the mainstream churches that I've attended, they'll say phrases that were loaded language in the cult. And I know that they don't mean the same thing.

I know that. But if you follow the implications of what they're saying out to their logical conclusion, it will end up where the cult is. In other words, they're not there yet. They're not destructive.

But they're using the same theology, the same doctrines that came out of the movement. And eventually somebody who is a job who learns the doctrines and says, oh, if what you're saying is correct, this next thing, and they'll eventually take the group to the cult level, unless they're stopped.

That is really scary to me. I'm going to say something that's a little personal, but it is the way that I think. When I listened to part of the sermon that Bill Johnson was speaking, I can't remember where it was, but he starts talking about being carnal.

And anytime for any sermon in any church that I attend, the moment that they use that word carnal, that's when I either get up and walk out or I tune it out. Because almost every time, every single person that I have ever heard in every church that I have ever listened to a speaker, they take the cult view on the carnal mind.

And they try to tell you that I had one church that I was in, the preacher was actually calling out his children and said, they're little demons. God created them as horrific and I have to, I have to let God save them or otherwise they'll turn out evil, like they're inherently evil.

And they're doing this. This is a mainstream church. This is not a cult church. They're doing this in front of the entire congregation, so the children are being raised like this. Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh. I was a little angered, but he was using that word carnal just like the cults did. And what they're doing, interestingly the same church, that doctrine flowed through everything. So one of the Sunday school, or one of the men's studies that I went to, they were talking about how anger is a carnal-minded thing.

And if you get angry, you are sinning. And I'm sitting there, listening to this guy and I thought, no, maybe I didn't hear there, right? Then he goes off into this rant against anger.

And that's one of the devices used by the cults. If they can find anything that is part of your human DNA that you cannot control and then claim that the thing that you can't control is sin, then they themselves take the control over you because you start to feel inferior.

That's how it works. That's one of the tricks of the trade of cults. Well, anger is a human emotion. You're going to get angry. I don't care who you are. You're going to get angry.

Sorry. And I actually, in the group, I embarrassed myself and I said, but Paul said, in your anger, do not sin. And I got a good scolding afterwards. This is again in a mainstream church, but after the meat, don't do that, John.

Don't talk about what Paul said in my, whatever he said, I can't remember. But all this to say, there was that phrase which starts talking about carnal-minded is actually acting human and he's giving you the suggestion that humanity is inherently evil, which is one of the cult framework, basically it's the foundation that every...

thing is laid on, it all goes back again to Christian identity. Brannum's version of the original sin was not the Christian version of the original sin. It was this, well, in Brannum's view, it was basically sex between Eve and the serpent, but it was the idea that one of the bloodlines was inherently evil.

One of the bloodlines was actually the product of Satan, he said the serpent was Satan, mating with Eve to produce Cain. These people have a carnal mind to begin with, like the pastor said, his children, they are born this way, and therefore God has to change them.

Instead of, if you read Genesis, God says, and it is good when he crates everything. Instead of saying that what God created is good, these cults try to say what God created is bad, but we have the secret knowledge, and you have to be radically obedient in order to get that secret knowledge.

Yeah. Man, yeah, the carnal, first of all, carnal is an older English translation of the Greek word, Sarks, and I'm resting on my Greek. I took it in college, I have an equivalent of a minor in coin a Greek, but I've forgotten probably 98% of it, but I remember Sarks, and like in the King James version of the Bible, you had a lot of translations to carnal, right, because there's actually a Latin root to the word carnal related to meat, it's literally flesh.

Anyway, we don't use that word in our language in our English these days, like, I mean, when's the last time you were talking to somebody at the grocery store and you said, well, you're correcting really carnal.

I mean, we don't talk that way, but here's something I want to point out about this that's very ironic. To believe this, Jesus died and raised for the dead, but not to believe this is to voluntarily embrace the carnal Christian lifestyle, because I'm living from an inferior reality.

I don't know if I'm forgiven, I just don't feel forgiven. I find it ironic that here Bill is talking about the quote unquote carnal Christian lifestyle, but yet on his watch, under his leadership, he has actively protected sexual predators, i.e. Bob Hardley.

So don't get on your pedestal and your podium and your pulpit and preach down to very well-intentioned believers who trust you, don't preach to them about your carnal Christian lifestyle when you're protecting a sexual predator.

I'm sorry, that just does not track. It's unacceptable, it's irresponsible, and it's possibly criminal, and I am totally offended by that. I'll just say it up front, like that completely offends me, and let me also speak to and respond to what you said, John, about the anger piece.

Nowadays in the charismatic circles, it's offence. It's like the unpardonable sin is if you're offended, so you'll hear these leaders come out anytime there's public calls for accountability. You'll hear a couple things. You'll hear one, all of these people on social media that are bickering and slandering and gossiping, they're partnering with the accuser of the brethren and they're offended.

That is sort of a similar device that you're talking about with the anger piece, because it's entirely human for a person to watch injustice happen. For people to watch church leaders turn to blind eye to abuse victims and allow predators and perpetrators to roam freely in their congregations.

It isn't entirely human for a person to be angry, offended, upset, and to say something about that. That is 100% human, but the device they use, the method they use to try to quell that and squelch that is, well, you're offended and you're partnering with the accuser of the brethren.

But all the while, they're preaching about the carnal Christian lifestyle. They're the ones, if anybody's carnal, they're the ones that are carnal because they're allowing predators to roam and abuse women and children and men, but mainly women and children.

And so people like Bill can preach that all he wants, but the fact of the matter is it is a miscarriage of justice, it is negligence, it is recklessness, and he is not practicing what he preaches.

Even if what he preaches is false, which I think that most of it is, a lot of it is, he's not practicing what he even preaches. So those are my problems with that segment of the sermon.

So I have a much deeper problem than this. It always surprises me when these preachers do this. The entire audience has no idea what is actually being said. The preacher has to know, otherwise he wouldn't be saying it.

And even people who are critiquing him, they'll hone in on the things that are wrong and double standards like you just did, but they still totally miss it. Here is something that is said in this carnal statement that he's making, that if you know where it came from, it unravels the whole thing.

You begin to look, so I said, Brannum, Brannum. Branemism, it was Christian identity. Branem's working for the second in command of the guy who created the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915. White supremacy, evil, evil stuff, and it begins to mix with Christian identity, which is hatred of people with black skin from Jews to blacks, et cetera.

It all comes back down to the original sin. They have a different view on what is the original sin. So let's explain Christian identity. I've been asked to do this. Christian identity believed that there was a race that of people that predated Adam and they were mud people.

Just like the sci-fi movies, they literally believed in mud people. And they believed that Satan came down in the form of the serpent, injected his DNA into Eve to produce cane. And so you had two bloodlines, just like Thor and Loki.

You had the good guys and the bad guys. Cain was mating with the mud people and produced this, that's how the black skin emerged. And when the flood came, it wiped all this away.

They believed the reason for the flood is to wipe away this evil race. However, what they believed that through ham came this bloodline through maybe one of Ham's wives, et cetera. So this bloodline continues, this DNA continues.

And if you are of the good DNA, you are the one who God sends the leaders to give you the secret mysteries. If you're of the bad DNA towards the non, what's the word?

The non-radicalized, non-military version of Christian identity, they believed that those people could be saved but they could not be God's chosen. So you had two levels of Christian. You had the ones with the secret knowledge, the ones with the DNA that wasn't the good people, but God saves God's love, the world, et cetera.

So in the statement, we're Bill is talking about the carnaly-minded. Carnal believer is one who lives beneath what God intended, born again, going to heaven, but they live from their senses, from their opinions, from everything separate from what Jesus has done.

So it's like having a little Jesus flavor on your life, a seasoning of Jesus, but it's not the heart and soul of what you live for. The part where he's talking about, they live beneath what God intended.

Let that sink in what he's saying. They live beneath what God intended. If you understand Christian identity, that's the exact verbiage that would have been used in Christian identity, and just like Branemism, that did not take up the arms and go violently protest and shoot people, et cetera.

He says they live from their senses, their opinions, but they're separate from everything Jesus has done. He goes on. on not much later in this. He goes on to say that some believers have the DNA of Jesus Himself.

That is Christian identity 101. That is the essence of Christian identity. The good guys have Jesus DNA. The bad guys, yes, they might be saved, but they don't have what we have, brothers and sisters.

They don't have Jesus DNA. They're a subhuman race of people. That he's not coming out and saying subhuman race, but the word DNA, if you understand its implications, he in effect is saying that there is a subhuman race of people.

Dude, that's mind-blowing. I'm looking at the transcript. Exactly 10 minutes in, and you're right. Here it is. You have the DNA of Lord Jesus Himself, the resurrected one, in you.

You are qualified to live like Jesus. In absolute power and absolute humility. Well, there it is in black and white. And so that was something that I had not heard before about the DNA piece.

That's good to know that that's one of the indicators and sort of trigger words for Christian identity. That's crazy that it literally goes down to like a genetic. It's actually a genetic based, I guess, classification, right?

Because you're going back to, you mentioned the mud people and the way they mixed in and then on down the line. That makes so much sense to me, though. And I think, too, even broader than the genetic piece is like, this is back to the divinity, the deity of people, isn't it?

Because if what Bill is saying is true, then he actually is quite literally teaching that we are deity, isn't he? I mean, how can we have the DNA of the Lord Jesus Himself and not be deity?

I think that's a real important point that we all need to pause on and really think about really closely. And really think about what is Bill teaching here? I think in my past life, I would have heard that and thought, yeah, of course, he's not teaching that we're deity.

He's just teaching that we're born again, believers, the Holy Spirit lives in us, and we have the capability of walking in the same kind of power that Jesus did because the Holy Spirit lives in.

But it's like you said, that's a very superficial interpretation. Deeper down, you see the very direct theme of the deity of people.

That's pretty mind-blowing. Major red flag like flagged really big waving in our face. you're about numbers of things, not at least of which is deity of people. It is problematic. I don't, I don't very often talk about people who are still living, as you know from, it's William Brownham, historical research.

And the problem is this, I'm not saying that Bill is a racist, I'm not saying that he's a member of Christian identity, anything like this, he may not even be aware that what he's saying comes from this Christian identity thing, but he has been trained in that system.

And because he's trained in that system, there are people in his audience who may be aware of what he's saying. I'm aware of what he's saying. I know exactly, when I hear these things, I know exactly what it is he's saying and where it came from.

There are people who are of ill intent, who believe this stuff, who really believe Christian identity, believe that all blacks and Jews are evil. And they'll hear that and they'll take it as a charge.

And if they're mentally unstable, they may take it to a violent charge. Somebody connected to Bethel, and I don't know if it's true or not, I'm just going to say that it's not, I don't know, but there was a man who, he was a surfer from California, his name was Matthew Taylor Coleman.

And he believed really into this DNA theory. He believed that his children were born, I guess through his wife of the serpent DNA, and this man killed his children. It turned into a big deal.

You can read about it in the news. The government linked this to QAnon, which if you understand Q and understand the implications of it, it is really just a very extremist version of Christian identity with a modern flair.

Somebody took the identity language and tried to modernize and create a QAnon, apparently. But if you understand the implications of a preacher using that language in his sermons, whether Matthew Coleman got this, whether he'd learned this in Bethel or not, we can clearly see that Bill is teaching this DNA theory.

And Brannum, the interesting part about all of this, Jim Jones, who we've talked about, who over 900 people committed mass suicide by drinking cyanide, lace coolate, and Jonestown Guyana. He, as evil as this man was, parted ways with William Brannum, when he learned that Brannum believed this DNA theory.

Brannum was a big deal. It's a big deal. Brannum was exposed in the 50s as being a Christian identity person. Something like Brannum says there were 300 ministers that challenged him, I don't know if that's true or not.

But I do know, according to Brannum's testimony, Jones's testimony, and some of the others, that in Chicago, there was a big event where Brannum was basically outed as a Christian identity leader. And a large number of people in the revival was parted ways with Brannum over it.

And many of them began to... prophesy Branham's death, the Jones included, when after Branham died, Jones apparently claimed credit for it. He said, I prophesied that because, and he doesn't go back and say what it was, but he talks about this event, Branham admitted that this event was over Christian identity.

He called it the serpent seed, but it's the same thing. It is the serpent's DNA theology, the same one that Bill Johnson is using here. If you understand that a minister who's saying these things, whether he intentionally is doing it or whether he's just doing it because he learned from others, this Christian identity thing, and then understand that there can be people in his congregations like this Matthew Coleman who might go act on it.

This is a horrific thing. If you follow that up to its logical conclusions, if we have Jesus DNA, that means that this other guy who doesn't attend this church, well, that guy doesn't have Jesus DNA.

He's one of the bad guys. We need to conquer the bad guys. We need to take him out. It's so, I don't even know where to put this in my head. It's so bad.

It's not bad. It's not the word. It's so evil. It's the worst kind of evil, right, for a man to unalive his own children, like because of a belief system that he adheres to that he thinks that his children have DNA of the devil.

I legitimately do not even know how to process that, but there's your real life example of how this teaching can result in literal harm, like the worst kind of harm possible. Yeah, maybe Bill doesn't know that he's regurgitating very evil belief systems that have been around, that Brandon misspoused, maybe he had given the benefit of the doubt, although I've given a lot of benefit of the doubt to Bill over the past over years, and I'm just about fresh out of the benefit of the doubt, especially after the details around what Jed has talked about publicly around, you know, his dad and Bill and what Bill said to

his dad around, you know, the Thailand thing and all that. It's like, I just, I just can't, I don't think there's any more benefit of the doubt left. It's like, Bill, either wake up and smell the coffee or just come out and tell us really what you think.

That would make it a lot easier for people that are still on the fence, but yeah, I mean, I think that we've probably identified at least four or five heresies in the sermon. Right there mixed in is Romans five, and that is how insidious this can be.

That is how that, I think it. It's one of the reasons why we're warned so frequently in the Bible. We're warned by Jesus. We're warned by Paul. We're warned by other epistles in the Bible to watch out for false teachers, watch out for wolves and sheep clothing because it's so easy to, it's so easy for us to be sucked in and be deceived by a, it's not even, it's not even like a, it's a false gospel mixed with the Bible, which really is still the false gospel, right?

If you mix anything, Paul said if you, if any angel preaches anything other than what we preached, then it's a nathema, literally like God's wrath. So I don't know, it's just another five heresies to add to the list for Bethel, even though I mean, it's nothing new.

I know you've been talking about this for a long time and I've kind of been talking about it for a while. But it's just every time I get an email from Bethel and it includes this loaded language stuff, it's just, it's just like, there it is, bam, up front in the center.

They're pushing it again. And many people are none of the wiser, which is all the more reason that we need to talk about it. Absolutely. And you know, if you understand the basics, not even the deep things of the Bible, like the deep mysteries they try to teach you, just the basics and understand that God created the whole heavens and the earth, God loved the world.

All of that is declared openly in the Bible. And then you compare it to what these guys are saying. And they have one job that is to study the Bible, to preach it, and to teach others the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They're not doing the one job. They're teaching the mysteries instead and they've lost focus of the original concepts that the Bible tries to lay out. And simple things like this, like this DNA thing.

If you read, there's a passage, and I can't remember what book, but Paul says somewhere that he's made of one blood, all nations of men's, dwell on the face of the earth. If you understand the difference between that and he's made two DNAs, one good and one bad, you understand that Bill Johnson either hasn't read that book and understand what that book is saying, or he's outwardly teaching against it.

It's one or the other. He's either not read it, or he's outwardly teaching against it. But more than that, take it all the way back to the roots of brannemism, William Brannem and Gordon Lindsay started teaching right before Brannem died, how to become a deliverance minister, and everybody was eaten it up because these deliverance ministers were making a lot of money, a heck of a lot of money.

And so this actually is what evolved into Christ for the nation's institute. They were forming an organization, they were trying to create an actual denomination out of it. Brannem died, and I think Lindsay just took it and ran with it, but they were creating the concept that what Paul said about the idols not having power over you, about the idols, he says something to the fact, if you understand the verbage and the language, it means the idols are nothing at all, they're nothing.

But what they're doing in the deliverance ministries is they're trying to say no, these idols actually have a demon associated with it and we have the power to conquer that demon because we have the mystery and I'm going to teach you in the seminar that you're going to pay for, how to get this mystery, then you can go through touring all of these apostolic networks and you can be a famous deliverance minister and they'll give you all of their tithes and earnings so that they can pay you to become a deliverance minister, it's a job,

it's a business, all of this is really is a fantasy entertainment system that is structured like a business to make money and in the end I have to believe that the guys either have never read the passages that undermine the entire thing that they're doing or they just simply don't believe it and they teach against it so I'm glad you shared all of this with me, I had no idea that Bill said any of this and I'm doing the series on the podcast with Lorelyn Tyler Thompson and we're about to get into the event where Jim Jones and all these ministers

came against William Brannum for the for the next one we're doing and we're talking through it, I'm trying to find somebody that I can use for bringing it relevant to today and lo and behold, you give me Bill Johnson of Bethel. Well cool, I'm glad it's helpful and yeah and I didn't realize like until I dug into the transcript I didn't realize that he had said some of these things like I said it's easy to I'm so used to hearing Bill's voices easy to hear things that Bill said even now like even though I've been out over for a long time it's it's kind of like with Bob Jones.

I listen to Bob Jones and it just Bob Jones is so lives in my head from so being exposed to him so much and so Bill's like that too he's been in my head for a long time so I listen to him I just my brain just kind of like oh yeah yeah Bill Johnson's teaching this but then see it in black and white and a transcript is definitely different like that's good I feel like that's helpful in identifying empirically and explicitly what he is teaching so I'm glad that that was helpful for you. I wanted to mention one of the things back to the money and how you said this

is a business and I know I've talked about this before just because that is a hot button for me around being that I work in finance and seeing how these guys are professional grifters and they have managed to amass multiple hundreds of millions of dollars collectively across these networks and I have it on good authority that Bill himself talked about some of the dollar amounts in a private meeting of basically how to structure he was helping somebody understand how to structure his ministry by attendant preaching right? And how to achieve certain multiple six figures of income per event. And so that is a fact.

Somebody who I know told me that it was in the meeting with Bill and some other people. And it's appalling. Like it is absolutely appalling. It is a travesty. And people that watch Bill need to know that he makes a lot of money on what he does. And they have sports cars. They have really nice houses. And I'm not against people having nice houses and nice cars. But if you're a preacher of the gospel and you're selling ministry, it's wrong. It's flat out wrong. You shouldn't do it. And on top of that, that doesn't even touch any of the improprieties around financial dealings such as

Provin and Neuromit, which is illegal. If you have a nonprofit or a church, none of the money, none of the income is supposed to benefit a private individual. It is supposed to exist for the furtherance of the charitable purpose. In this case, religious. So for, you know, and it's so commonplace now in the hypercarsomatic churches that we just, yeah, I think people just say, well, that's just how preachers are. They have planes and Maserati's and Aston Martin sports cars.

But it's wrong. It's totally wrong. And really, I think they should all just give their money to the poor. So they probably won't. I was almost condemned whenever you said sports car because I do have an old sports car that I think you're with. But definitely not a Maserati or anything like this. I've got my dad and I grew up rebuilding Corvettes. And I've got one of the last ones that we worked on together. So, but in dollar value, it's peanuts compared to what you're describing.

Anyway, thank you for doing this. Yeah, of course, always a pleasure, John. Thanks for having me. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Brandom.org and the grit and the wild podcast from more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation and many, many of the things that we've talked about today, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Both available on Amazon, Indle and Audible.