Bethel Shopping Network: The Marketing of Modern Revival

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at www.William-brandham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Adam Short, host of the grit in the wild podcast.

Adam, you keep sending me the craziest things. I'm sitting here, so picture this, I am sitting here in an auditorium filled with people last night. I'm watching my son who's experiencing something that I've never really, I did, I was able to go to public high school but not to the level and do the things that he's doing.

But he went, he left the home school environment because he wanted to join the choir. He joined a public high school which goes against all of the message community here in this area, which is kind of funny.

Okay. Goes to it and he's won all kinds of awards and anyway, I'm at their fall festival gospel celebration concert. And I'm getting these texts from you and I'm just, I'm fighting not to start laughing out loud.

I apologize. Everybody look at me, what is John laughing at over there? Doesn't he pay attention to his son? Anyway, that's going on and I was really tossed between which, which do I find more entertaining?

What you're sending me? But don't tell my son, I said this. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. Interrupted your entertainment over there. But yeah, I guess I did send a lot of stuff over.

It's some crazy stuff. You know, I had the conversation with Laura Lynn the other day and I made some statement like, I can't believe two grown adults are having this conversation and it's about religion.

We're talking, you and I are talking about Bethel Church, she was talking about literally some guy, some apostle who's sending butt pictures or some weirdness. And you know, the fact that we're talking about this and this is, it's a church that we're talking about.

Mary Kitting. I would rather be in the son's school choir singing and not have to think about all of this ridiculousness. But the sad part is there are people who are caught up in it and they see it as this movement by God.

By God, the apostle is sending butt pictures. Yeah, I saw a little blurp about that but didn't care to go into any detail on the butt pictures. That's when I decided to skip. But that is some research.

that I decided to avoid. Right. But hey, next time I'm interrupting your, your son's production, you just text me back and say, stop it, man, quit, quit sending me all this stuff. I just figured, if I could send it to anybody as John, right?

Cause John's gonna understand if he's gonna have something to say about it. Yeah, well, you noticed my comments, I've kind of saved them for today because I was trying, I was trying not to type like this.

In fact, it was a little bit difficult because I was filming some of it. I wanted, I wanted some video of my son singing. So have video camera up and literally I'm filming and I'm watching your text come in and I'm like, my gosh, everybody's recording.

Who is this guy? He's so rude. As it's recording, I'm swiping down. Oh, that's interesting. Oh, I can't believe this. Man, I'm certain my wife was next to me. I'm certain I could just feel her rolling her eyes and then in the back of her.

She's like, John, just quit for five minutes. Can you just give it a break? I'm sure. But anyway, we're back to talking about Bethel again and it's just crazy the things that are going on.

Yeah, it's interesting because I don't know if this is just my experience, you know, anecdotally or I'm curious if others have had this experience, but you know, I get pretty much all of the marketing emails from Bethel, so whether it's Bethel conferences, Bethel store, which, you know, they've got a whole store of books and merch and all kind of stuff down to necklaces and jewelry, plus the BSSM emails, which is Bethel School Supernatural Ministry, and really everything in between including the new dating app, which I plan to talk about today.

There's a Bethel dating app that's now available. But, you know, it seems like the marketing push has really ramped up recently and I don't think that's by accident. I don't think it's coincidental. I think that there are a lot of reasons for that that I hope that we can talk through today, but I've coined a new term, John.

And I don't know if anybody else has used this term, but it's what I thought of last night when I was basically what I did as I said, okay, I'm gonna look at all of the emails I've gotten from Bethel in the past month or two, right?

And I'm gonna click the links in the emails and I'm gonna see how much money I have to spend to buy all their products and be, you know, upgrade my spiritual life, right? That's what they call it in one of the marketing pitches.

And so it turns out that I have a list of six or seven products, services, subscriptions and events that are now available for the taking for the small low price of several hundred dollars.

And so, John, I think what we need to call this, I think, and I'm being snarky on purpose, but I think that I'm gonna start calling this the Bethel Shopping Network. Yeah, that's messed up.

A lot. I'm sitting here in the back of my mind I'm picturing those I we I spent a large large part of my life without a television we did have it off and on but I remember going to somebody's house during one of the periods we didn't have a television and they were watching QVC or something nonsense and I'm watching these two people stand up and try to sell this thing I can't remember what it was I wish I could but it was the most nonsensical thing that I've ever seen and I was sitting there thinking why is this television this doesn't

make any sense and they were pretending like it was the greatest thing ever because that's what they have to do to sell it well I'm picturing as as you're sending me all of this stuff and I'm thinking about that in the back of my mind now I'm picturing Bethel selling all of this stuff that much of it they realize is just Hocus Pocus and they're like the people of QVC standing oh this is the greatest thing ever God has sent generous to us and so all that's going on in the back of my mind as I'm watching my son who is singing on

the choir and again I apologize but yeah so you know I made a list so you know here so here's the list here's the list in case you're interested so the first thing that you can attend actually there are a couple things that are events that are conferences they have a leaders advance conference which they do that every year it's 220 $220 in-person or 149.99 in the online experience they have the open heavens conference which is also done every year in October 149.99 for the online experience and then if I want to go watch an old sermon or even a

recent sermon in one of the church services I need to sign up for a Bethel TV subscription which is 999 a month that's actually a pretty cheap subscription but you can go get it for free on YouTube but it will include ads so they want you to go purchase it on their their actual Bethel TV platform the new thing that I had not been that I had not been made aware of until yesterday was a new school that they've launched it's a one-day school called the School of Encounters and that's $65 the next sort of group you can be a part of is the

whole man project men's group which is $200 and then BSSM is probably the biggest ticket item I don't know what the tuition is now Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry back when I went it was like 3,500 I think it's probably closer to 5,000 now maybe more but they're offering a $200 discount if you sign up very soon I think by the end of the month the end of September and then but last but not least there is one thing that's free and I'm matching this a minute ago It is the be highlighted dating apps.

So there's now a Bethel sponsor dating app. And I'm not against dating apps, right? Like nothing against dating apps, but there are plenty of dating apps out there and we don't need a dating app at a church.

And so you can sign up, you can go create an account, you can register, but be sure to read the terms and conditions. I'm always the guy that reads all that stuff. I'm gonna count it, so I tend to be anal like that.

And so if you look at the terms and conditions, you'll find that it's actually a free service, but they do allow advertising on the platform. And so my point is they're still creating revenue with the dating app, even though the users don't have to pay a fee, the advertisers pay a fee to the dating app.

And it all goes to Bethel Church as far as I can tell. So I'm just like backing up a little bit, looking at all of the marketing, all of the sales, all of the flurry of activity around Bethel Church right now.

And they've always sent emails out, but it's like lately, they are really pushing people to buy their events, buy their products. And I've heard through the grapevine that their BSSM enrollment is very, very low as you're compared to normal.

I think they have last I heard about 300 people enrolled for the first year program. And here in recent years, it's been more along the lines of like one or 2,000. So I don't know if the awareness is increasing

that's kind of resulting in an impact to Bethel's attendance. I don't know, I'm just kind of theorizing, but my main point is Bethel is really not too distinguishable from a for-profit enterprise. Like every path, it seems like in the Bethel ecosystem leads to purchasing something from them and money to them.

So the only thing that I've found by and large that's not monetized is actually going to a church service, walking in the door and going to church. But I have a theory that in the not too distant future, particularly once they finish the new campus, I think they probably will start charging admission tickets to go to church.

I don't know for sure. I just think all signs seem to point to monetizing everything to do at Bethel. So that's my Bethel shopping network pitch for the day, John. I have so much to say about this dating app, but I'm saving it for later.

I don't want to hit the climax right in the first 10 minutes. But everything that I'm going to say interestingly is going to come from the perspective not as my researcher. or my study of Bethel and the history behind it, but more from the standpoint of a businessman, which I think you will be entertaining to you as a fellow businessman, you'll understand what I'm saying.

But before we get there, there's a lot of groundwork that people have to understand of business. This is something that really fascinates me having started my own business. I was, gosh, I want to say that I was like, maybe in the year 1998 or something.

I began my IT business, but I have been hiring myself out doing all kinds of things since I was a kid. When I was 16, I started doing roofing, I've done plumbing, I've done literally everything from home maintenance and repair and building to auto mechanics, to computers, to VCR repair and more.

I love it. I've trained a serial entrepreneur, a serial entrepreneur. Well, if you do this, if you attempt to do business, you recognize business in other areas and you understand how things work. It's, for me, it's like, oh, we talked television shows last time.

I'm going to say heroes was one of the shows we watched. There was a villain in heroes. Heroes was this, the show about various super heroes that suddenly had superpowers. They didn't know why.

Well, one of the villains, his superhero was, he would take his finger and he would like get into their brain and figure out how their superpower worked and then consume it. He would like try to understand it, take it, and then he had the superpower.

Well, I like the show solely because of that villain because that's how I operate. I want to know how things work. And as a businessman, you kind of want to know this. Whenever you suddenly turn on critical thinking and you're in church, and I don't care which church it is, it could be Joe Smith's church and the hills with 10 people in it or Bethel with thousands, hundreds of thousands of people.

You understand the business mechanics of that church. You have to because the church can't keep its lights on unless it runs itself as a business. However, Joe Smith's mom and pop ministerial association does not require the same level of business to run and keep the lights on, et cetera.

All it requires, he's got a small building, he's got few lights that are on every Sunday, sometimes Wednesdays, and it's very inexpensive for him to run his church. So when he passes the tithe basket, usually a small portion goes to the church and he gets a little bit, and usually he's a farmer or something else.

That's my experience with these guys. Now take that into the city. You've got more people coming, you've got greater expenses, and it requires those expenses. People don't think about this. The toilet paper, you go through. There's a cost associated with that toilet paper, not just the electricity, the heating and air, the repairs of the units, no matter how you operate your church, it has to operate as a business. And some of the churches are very forthright, very open about their expenses. I was in a church every month, I think, they gave me a statement.

There's about this thick and you'd open it up and you'd see exactly where all your money is going, and you would also see what was in excess, and they would often talk about what we're doing with the excess. In some cases, we're saving the excess because we're expecting next year, we're probably going to have to have a new HVAC system, so we're creating a fund for this, or we're sending missionaries or we're sponsoring, one church was sponsoring a child that was in a child correctional facility. Great thing to do, and they mentioned we're building this fund to help this child, we want to support

him and put him in college and give him a life that he would not otherwise have. All of this is good stuff. Now enter the realm of the cults where massive amounts of money are coming in, far exceeding what it costs to keep the building open, to keep the toilet paper in the bathroom stalls, massive amounts of money is coming in, and there is an entire marketing engine that is going behind it. In fact, I have knowledge through some people that are in some such organizations. They even have people dedicated to taking the funds that people have donated, moving it into the stock market, growing it, taking the excess

out of the stock market and putting that into other separate funds. Nobody is aware of all of this stuff going on behind the scenes. The Mormons do that at large, to the tickle. 2 billion dollars, by the way. Exactly. So when I see something like this, and I'm seeing a QVC of sorts, this Bethel, whatever it is, and I'm watching, this is just one aspect of the many faceted money making machine that is Bethel, and it's just one outlet from which they can get more revenue. They're selling things, obviously, at a much higher cost than the value of whatever it is that is being sold. So that money is coming in,

where is it all going? I'm certain that there are people at Bethel that could give you some sort of a financial report, but I don't think, as we've examined in some of our prior episodes, I don't think people would really accept what is given to them if they knew the actual cost behind some of the things. Yeah, all that's great. Sort of backdrop. A comparison of church has been operated as a business, and is it bad that a church has operated as a business? Well, I think there's a degree or a spectrum there, to your point. You're

right, like even the smallest church that has to... in people, it's gonna have expenses as well, but historically and traditionally, churches obtained their revenue through donations from the church members, right? That's why you have an offering during a church service and you pass the plate and you drop some money in the plate to help pay for that kind of stuff, the toilet tissue or the electric bill, the H-back, et cetera.

And by the way, by and large at those little bitty churches you're talking about like po-dunk, wherever, the pastor oftentimes, you mentioned he's usually a farmer, that's absolutely the case, like he's not getting paid, he or she is not getting paid a salary from the church a lot of times and that's what you call a bivocational pastor, meaning they are actually the pastor full time at the church, but they also have a full time job somewhere to support their family.

And so when you have a church like that, the expenses are gonna be much less and much more reasonable and I guess doable, you know, then for a huge organization like Bethel, which, you know, back when I was there, I think they had seven or eight hundred staff, I believe it was.

So I don't know how many they have now and staff at Bethel means you're paid. Now in some other organizations like Ahop, you could be staff and not be paid, but at Bethel, if you're staff, you're paid, you receive, you do receive a salary.

And I will say Bethel, in my experience, and I have had some visibility behind the scenes around salaries and stuff that they pay there to their credit, they do pay better than some, right?

Better than some organizations like Ahop, for example, pay a piddly little $500 stipend if you're lucky, if you're on staff at Ahop in Kansas City, whereas like your pastors at Bethel are getting a more, not necessarily a huge salary, but they're at least getting a salary.

But here's the thing though, is when you scale that up, right? You start talking about a staff of several hundred people or however many it is now, it could be a thousand, I'm not sure, it might be several hundred still.

But let's take $50,000 a year, for example. And if you've got a hundred staff, that's gonna be what, $5 million? A year just for paying your mid-level staff or your low-level staff. So I guess my point is, when you scale it up that much to the size of Bethel, you've got an astronomically large operation, fiscally speaking.

And, but here's the problem, it's what you raised as well, is the area of financial transparency. Does Bethel produce a financial report at each year for its members? And to my knowledge, they don't.

If they do, I would love to see it. As an accountant, I'd love to take a look at the income statement, the balance sheet. the cash flow statement, I'd love to see the donor report. I don't think that stuff is public or even made available to members or board members. It might be made available to board members, but I'm not sure. But normally, best practice is for a church or nonprofit organization, you do typically want to hire a third-party accounting firm to come in and do an extra, what's called an external audit and basically pass upon the financial statements of the organization

and the church. And to my knowledge, Bethel does not do that. And so many churches don't do that, and nor are they necessarily required to because of the tax law, which does not require them to file a 990 as a church. So anyway, I kind of got in the weeds there on more of the accounting side, but it's absolutely true that the question is, where is the money going?

Right? I mean, we know that a lot of the money is going to pay staff, but where's the rest of it? Because the most recent figures point to a plus or minus 80 million dollar

collective aggregate income. And that figures about two years old, two or three years old. So it could be pushing 100 million at this point in the Bethel ecosystem. So where is the excess going?

Are they investing it? Are they lining their pockets? Are they doing both? Are they doing something else? I don't know, but I do know that Bill and Chris drop some pretty dang slick sports cars around redding, and they've got some nice houses. Hey, I don't have a problem with the pastor having a nice house, but I do have a problem with pastors getting rich off of people who are not rich. You know, you look at the people that donate to these name at claim at churches. And I don't think Bethel is your conventional name at claim at church, although they have some

characteristics of that. But like, you have a lot of people who donate money or pay money, right? And some of these products that I went through, whether it be, you know, BSSN or some of the conferences or the books or the merch, people are paying for this stuff who are largely insolvent. They don't have the money. They're putting in on credit cards, and they're making these these guys rich. And so this is nothing new. I have, I mean, I've talked about this before, but so that's just a monetary side, John. I mean, now let's talk about the data, like this dating app.

I don't know if you planned on talking about talking about the data point of that. But like, think about the data points around the dating app specifically. I'm just curious what they're doing with this. But if you go into the terms and conditions, there's actually an Australian company that is behind this dating app.

It's called behighlighted.com in case you're wondering. And then the company listed that owns and operates this website as an Australian company called the marketing coach. Now, I don't know what the affiliation is of between the marketing coach and Bethel.

But I would venture to say that whoever owns this marketing coach is probably a Bethel VSSM alumni. It's probably their business. But what's happening to the data? When you put your information in this app as a dating app, what are they doing with it?

Are they data mining this? Are they using it to monetize? Are they selling your data to other companies? What are they actually doing with it? So these are just all the questions like they're kind of going around my head.

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So I have so much to say about this dang dating app. And I'm probably, I don't know that a podcast could actually contain all of the things that I have to say about this.

So I'll start with the easy stuff. This is called 101. In fact, this is Branemism. This is a play right out of the Branemism Playbook. Because what Branemism did, whenever everybody started rising up and understanding that there are some very critical things that you can say about this ministry, it's very highly unlikely that the marketing is going to be effective outside of the core group of the cult.

So all of their marketing strategy suddenly take a massive hit. Well, how do you grow the organization? You do by repopulization of literally you're asking people to breed other people who will become cult converts.

So the fact that Bethel has a dating app for itself, it's like it's straight out of the playbook. And if you add it to the timeline that's happening where Bethel is getting some very nasty scars in the public, I have opinion.

I just, I see this whole thing is it's not even a, it's not even an attempt to make money through that revenue. You're saying, this is literally a way to grow more Bethel convert simply by having people marry each other.

And it's a weird, weird mess. And like you said, there are other dating apps out there. There are even other Christian dating apps out there, probably far better. So that's the easy stuff. I'll let that go and let that simmer for a bit.

I am an IT guy. I have been an IT guy for years and years. I have been an IT architect for probably 30 years, 20 or 30 years. One of the companies that I was architecting, I had to develop an encryption and security algorithm and methodology for a company that did high level distribution and some of the clients, I can't give the names, obviously, but some of the clients, you'll have things in your, you probably have things in your office right now that came from this place.

That's how large this organization was. I have designed the security encryption routines. I know how they work is what I'm saying. There is yet to be developed an encryption routine that cannot be unencrypted.

And it has to be this way because think simply like a password. You type in a password. On the other end, somebody has to validate that password and there needs to be a way for them to unencrypt what is stored in the database compared to what you typed.

Do the two match. Yes, you can get in. No, you can't. You don't know the password. At its simplest form, that's how encryption works. So people who are not IT people think Excel spreadsheets.

If you're looking at an Excel spreadsheet of users, you've got first name, last name, email, password. And the password might be unreadable in the Excel sheet, but you've got this list. And in Bethel, somebody has this list.

There is a, there are IT people within this organization, whoever's running this thing, that knows every single person that's dating every other single person. Among a ministry that claims to have the prophetic, who can give people spiritual insight, who can give people.

There it is. There it is. Many ways to use this from, so thank data. Like I said, I'm going to talk to you, you're off. You'll have to stop me because I have so much to say.

When Pentecostalism was first being developed, the most powerful thing that happened, William Joseph Seymour, took a list of addresses and names because that is where the money is, the addresses and names. Interestingly, somebody stole the addresses and names and he lost this.

Pentecostalism, you had the voice of healing magazine, they even had a section where not only are you giving them your address and name and they're asking you to send your testimony of what's wrong with you, to these men who are claiming I can guess what's wrong with you.

on the platform. They are also asking you have somewhere I've got it. I'll try to find it for the video if I can find it in time. They had this pull-out section that you could mail to a friend or not to a friend, but you could mail them a friend's name address and what they're praying about. So the person who is fully unsuspecting that you're going into the area where this revival is happening goes up to stage and lo and behold, they know everything about me. How did they know? Well, picture this picture doesn't excel sheet.

Here's the data. Here's the name, the address, and here's what's wrong with them in this big, massive list that these people have. Back then, there was no excel. It was all, you know, hand paper, et cetera. Well, in today's world, technology makes it a little bit more sinister. Again, you've got names, people they're connecting with, now enter into all of their private conversations that happens within this app. We're talking about romantic relationships here. People are going to become very, very intimate in this app, and it's all going into a database. When you open up the app and you scroll through the chat history

to read everything that this person has sent you romantically, you're reading something that is stored in a place where somebody has access to look, and maybe multiple people have access to look. And again, it's in a ministry that claims that they're going to know the very secrets of your heart. We're going to know it all. Well, the problem with this is the big names who are in the dating apps have massive teams of people to fight off the hacks, the security attacks, to keep up with the security when the algorithms change on security. When Russia starts to introduce these bots that attack security, they have teams

of people who are dedicated to fighting the encryption battle that is happening. Bethel does not have a team that is fighting this. So as people are signing up and they become very intimate with other people, now you have everything that you have said is now at risk of being fully exposed. And I'm trying to picture a world where this is a good thing to do. There is no world in which this makes any sense whatsoever. The people are at risk and it appears to be all for the sole purpose of people who are converts to Bethel breeding

with other people who are converts to Bethel. Because if you breed with another Christian who is not a Bethel convert, you might be breeding with somebody who will finally say one day, you have to take your children out of this cult. It's kind of like the in-bred model, right? We all need to stay in-bred and in-culted. And there's a lot of stuff to talk through about this. I didn't think about the whole misuse of people's personal data and who has that information? Who's you?

using that information. And will it be used for prophetic purposes, like we've seen with some of the data mining profits and things like that. It's very, very interesting and important to consider.

And I mean, let's be honest, I think we all have kind of concluded that when it comes to the internet, there's nothing that's private anyway. So even if Bethel did have a big security team that was making sure they were on the cutting edge of security and keeping all the bad people out, it's like, we all know that it's all there, right?

Like it's all on the internet anyway. And if somebody really wanted to get your data, they're gonna get it. Like at the end of the day, nothing is private that's on the internet or on the computer.

It's all there. And somebody can dig it up and de-encrypt it, you know, if they really wanted to. And so I'm just looking at the terms and conditions though, like it's really interesting what you're agreeing to.

At least they give some very detailed information of what you're agreeing to by signing up with this dating app. But whoever this marketing coach is, that's who owns your data. So I don't know who marketing coach is, but it's a, there's somehow affiliated with Bethel because Bethel's linking to them.

But like you're consenting to a credit report, you're consenting to a background check, you're consenting to lots of different things here. So, and I think we routinely consent the stuff like this all the time on apps and we don't even read it.

But like, it's probably good that we read this if you're gonna sign up for this app because at least with a company like Google or Apple or Microsoft or one of the other, you know, big tech companies, you know, at least those kinds of companies have, I don't know if I would say a reputable track record as much as it was maybe public accountability and visibility.

But when it comes to a little bit of thing like Bethel, I mean, largely if you're not in the charismatic circles, you probably haven't heard of Bethel. So I guess my point is like what accountability is there to make sure that, you know, that your data is somehow respected but even still like, it's still there for the taking if somebody really wanted to hack their way into it.

From a technology standpoint, I would say very, very little is there in place. I mean, I'm looking through just through the technology side of what this is running on. It's running on a WordPress site.

And if you're an IT guy, I know enough to know that that's bad. Well, if you're an IT guy and you heard what I just said, you suddenly start laughing. because WordPress is the most hacked site out there.

If you're running on WordPress site, you are at risk. Whenever I began all of my stuff with Branemism, I tried to use all of the main CMS platforms that existed out there. And what happened was the cults were so familiar with how to attack and invade those.

They were getting in my database. I had, this is embarrassing to say, but I'll say it. I began with the naive notion that they would just be maybe against what I had to say, but maybe they would learn something too.

And I created this forum where people could read through and talk to each other and learn and grow. And I welcomed anybody who was in the cult to come into this thing. You can express your opinion.

What happened was suddenly people started sending me emails about things that I said that were just slightly off. And I'm like scratching my head, saying, I would never say something like that. Some of them were like, I was claiming that Branem had said something that he clearly didn't say.

I go look it up and sure enough, if you read my message, it was me saying something, here's a quote from William Branem. And embedded in that was one sentence that was fully invented.

It was not what he had said. And I go back and looked at the logs and somebody had actually got into the logs, had got into what I had typed and started adding things, not taking things away, not hiding things, but adding things to make me look like I was trying to be abusive and incorrect.

So I learned right then real quick, and this was within like the first few months, I can't use any of the major CMS platforms, forum platforms, et cetera. I've got to create something that is more technologically advanced than what they can attack.

And it, you know, through the course of several months, it costs several thousands of dollars to build this out. It wasn't on a WordPress site. I can tell you that. And there's no way, if I would like, I'm not in the dating scene.

I've been married, happily married for decades now. If I were to be in the dating scene, and I were to go to one of these sites, the very first thing I'm gonna do is look and see, what are they hosting this on?

Is my data safe? WordPress is not it. Yeah, and I'm not an IT person, and I do that.

Just because my line of work is accounting, and we deal a lot with e-commerce businesses, and we deal with WordPress. We know some of the issues that come up with WordPress, there's like plug-ins out the ears, and the plug-ins don't get updated, and they become vulnerable, and then you know how the story goes.

But funnier. The funnier part is, I'm not a grammar coach either, but you said it incorrectly, and what they have typed is even funnier. It's terms and condition. Right, I saw that too. Also, and maybe in Australia, they only say condition.

I don't know. Also. John, we talked about the dating app. How about I highlight something else that I came across, Bethel Wise. And it's not, this isn't really about the Bethel shopping network as much as it is a clip that actually we came across recently from one of the pastors their day, Richard Gordon.

And I'm going to quote him, there's actually a Facebook link or Facebook video excerpt. I think this might have been from a sermon he gave or I don't know if he was just speaking briefly or what, but I want you all to listen to this quote from him.

If the Lord really soared you into your mother's womb with a message, you're carrying something that needs to be shouted for human consciousness to come up to Christ consciousness. So anytime I hear the word consciousness, my flags, my bills, everything's going off.

It's like, wait a minute, are you a Hindu? Are you a Buddhist? What are you exactly? And so I'm just totally turned off by that. I don't think that's Christianity. I don't think that's mainstream biblical Christianity to talk about human consciousness coming up to Christ consciousness, what in the new age is that?

Yeah, well, and so there's so much wrong with this, but a funny side story. So you understand what a prophet is. A prophet is a human that does nothing, but God uses the mouth of this human to speak to other humans so that the other humans can understand what God wants to say in human language.

That is a prophet. It's not somebody who summons a prophecy or goes to a school of the prophets and becomes a prophet. It is literally a person who God uses for only reasons that God understands to speak through a human.

Well, in Brannemism, Lateran, et cetera, there's this idea that a prophet is born a prophet and that Brannem claim he came into the world speaking vision, speaking prophecies and having visions of age. I want to say it was like 15 months or something ridiculous.

So picture God who suddenly decides, okay, I'm going to take this little toddler who nobody's going to believe. Nobody's going to understand. Everybody's going to think, why are you speaking words? And I'm going to speak to the world so that the church may be better informed because of this toddler who spoke.

Obviously this didn't happen. Well, now combine Steve Montgomery and I have talked about this quite a bit on our converging apostasy. Now combine the ideas that are coming into the church through new age ideologies, which includes these things that we're talking about it.

It includes the summoning themes that they have, the consciousness themes at the end. They have the enlightenment, the divine wisdom, all of these things, the mysteries, all of these that we're talking about that aren't quite Christian, people are like, what is this?

But if you say those things and use the word Jesus with it, there's a large number of people who are so unsuspecting and so naive and quite frankly, so unfamiliar with their Bibles that they'll hear the new age thing with the word Jesus and go, oh, that's Christianity.

It must be because they use the word Jesus with it. But that's not how this works, that's not how Christianity works. In fact, if you read through the Apostle Paul's letters, he's writing to communities that believe these kind of things.

And he ran into a lot of issues in the church because many of those ideologies that were of the pagan world were entering into the church and he's like, no, no, no, no, that's not how Christianity works.

And clearing up the messes by sending the letters, we need an Apostle Paul today to send all these letters to Bethel and say, no, man, you don't summon people. You don't channel spirits through grave soaking.

You don't do all of these things. I condemned temples that are doing this kind of thing back in my day. And here in here in this world, 2025, I can't believe that you're still doing this after I wrote those letters 2,000 years ago.

Absolutely. Yeah, we do need a letter or two or 10 to Bethel and lots of other places. We probably all need a letter from Paul, truthfully, to get us back on track. But yeah, it's like, there's new age and then there's new age.

And this was like new age on steroids, like I was listening to what he said. And I'm like, I don't even know what you said right now, like this is gobbledygook. And so much of the stuff is gobbledygook.

I think that sometimes the people speaking don't even understand what they're talking about. It's so esoteric and mysterious and mystical. And I think, you know, it might make you feel good and sound good and all that.

But like, how do you come up from human consciousness up to Christ consciousness? That's so weird. That is very weird, very weird and dangerous. And I hope that he got a talking to you.

I don't think he did, but I'm hoping that somebody pulled him aside and said, Hey, man, you might not want to use that word next time. I remember when I was first doing the thing that I'm doing, I was talking about the different feelings that I had as I was coming out of the cult and I was starting to understand Christianity.

Unlike many people who are my age, I like to read and I like words that are in books. And I like English and I like the power of the words in the books. And I was using some word, some term and...

I said I had become enlightened too, which is a normal thing to say in every circle of the world. If you understand what the word means, enlightened is the best way to explain this whole sum of feelings that I had.

But because enlightenment is used in the pagan way, people, oh, John's got this new age thing that's going on, and even though I'm not in a new age concept or anything even close to it, the irony of this is, come full circle, I'm starting to find all of the new age influences by the people that were sending me the hate mail, which is really ironic if you think about it.

People are just afraid of the terms because they associate the terms that they hear with the bad guys, but don't understand the meanings behind those terms. So as I was using it in the true form, the good way, they're actually using enlightenment in these other ways that are actually the pagan form.

But because the ministers are using the name Jesus with it, it suddenly becomes a Christian enlightenment, my brother. Yeah, that makes sense. And it also reminds me to another Bethel teaching, which is, and I think I've talked about this before.

It's this concept of every time there's, I don't know how to say this, let me see if I can reframe that. For example, you have a spiritual concept that might be found in the Bible, and Bethel's kind of take on the dark side is, well, the only reason they're, the only way that you can, not the only way, but one of the ways you can confirm that the genuine exists as if there's a counterfeit.

So what they say is they'll say, well, the dark side hijacked prophecy or the dark side hijacked consciousness or the dark side hijacked, you know, astro projection or whatever it is. And so because there's the hijacking version and the counterfeit version of this, there must be a real authentic version.

And so it could be that Bethel actually believes now that there is a Christ consciousness, but I can tell you that that is a concept that came from metaphysical new age thought, new thought, full stop.

My granddad was in it. I spent hours and hours and hours talking to him about this stuff. And it's, this is not a, this is not a biblical concept. I know I can't think of one place in the Bible that consciousness even appears or even in the Greek in the New Testament.

I don't think there's an equivalent of that used in the New Testament that would encompass the meaning that, that I think they mean by that. So you know, I don't have a really good definition for what new ages mean by consciousness, but maybe you do join, but it's, it's almost...

This idea that your existence is beyond your spirit, soul, and body to where you take up space in ways that we can't quantify. And so there's also this concept of collective consciousness that I think is floated across new age, new thought.

And it's almost like that kind of, I don't know, meaning that seems to be, that he seems to be referring to here. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but when you use the word consciousness, that's a pretty blatant new age to me.

Like I said before, it goes back to the usage of the word. So my example enlightened, I think if I remember correctly, the reason that I had used it, and this was years and years ago, the cult has actually attacked and brought down all those videos.

So I think if I remember correctly, the reason that I was using it is that a video prior, I was going through the book of Hebrews and I was explaining how, in the book of Hebrews, it clearly talks about how we have a new high priest.

We don't need these high priests of the old temples, right? And I was trying to compare that to the modern world where the apostles and prophets are the new high priests. And there's a phrase that's used, I think it's in Hebrews, it says something to the effect those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift.

If you understand the meaning of that word, it's literally saying people who became aware of, and it's more, it's not a consciousness like you're describing. It's literally people who came in contact with the truth.

And that was the, if I remember correctly, and again, I don't have it to go back and look up. But if I remember correctly, and I know that I used it in that context, it was coming in contact with the truth, I became enlightened.

Now if you take the pagan or new age version of enlightenment, it's something entirely different. It's something that's summoned. It's something that is the spiritual energy that flows through you, et cetera. It's this consciousness, consciousness itself.

I don't think the word is in the Bible, but the phrase, like consciousness is in the Bible. There are places where you talk about your conscience. There are places where it talks about your mind, your heart, your understanding, the knowledge.

If you take the non-spiritual meaning behind that word, which doesn't match what you're saying that he said, the non-spiritual version of this word, like my use of enlightenment, is more to the effect of the consciousness you become aware and you become, it becomes part of your belief system.

It's like a tangible idea that you become aware of. Similar to my enlightenment, this conscious forms. If you use it in the term of a consciousness, you're literally... back to the idea that things can be summoned, very much like the grave soaking.

I can go to a grave. I can summon the spirit of William Brannum by soaking his grave and feeling the power. That is an entirely pagan, actually not even pagan, it goes beyond to ancient cults of evil.

We're doing this kind of thing, right? It's a very demonic thing that they're doing. And if you apply the meaning behind what is saying, it is an anti-biblical meaning. The word itself, I don't have a problem with, but it's how that word is used that turns to be problematic.

That makes sense. That helped me kind of understand what you're coming from there. And I think, too, just in our modern vernacular, even from a medical standpoint, right? If somebody blacks out, it's said that they lost consciousness.

Which, so that helps you understand like, okay, what do we mean by that? Just in regular language, regular English, you lost your consciousness, meaning that, like you'll wake up from that, you won't remember what happened when you blacked out.

Like you were not aware to your point. Like you were, your awareness was not there. And so you came back and you regained consciousness after you recovered from your blackout. So that makes sense to me what you're saying.

Yeah, I did look to see if consciousness is in the Bible. Of course, the Bible wasn't written in English, so no English words were actually in the Bible as it happens. Newsflash, none of our words were in the Bible, y'all.

It was all in Hebrew and Greek, but what, you know, words that would have been used or English word consciousness that would translate consciousness, the actual underlying words in Greek and Hebrew did not appear in the Bible.

It's, it's thinly so. So yeah, it's kind of weird and scary and eerie that there's potential link there between the whole consciousness concept and like, great, so I can't even think of that either.

But like, you're talking about the summoning of these things, you know, and it's interesting because, you know,

having been fully immersed in Bethel for many years, like I still can feel like when you say the word summon, John, you talk about trigger words and stuff, when you say that, even though they don't use the word summon, they don't, Bethel doesn't say the word summon, they do stuff that feels like summoning, like we're gonna bring heaven to earth, we're gonna, we're basically, and this is the thing now is like, not to get off on a rabbit trail, but the fire on the altar, like keeping the altar, this whole thing that we're like supposed to be the sacrifice

on the altar and all this crap. And, but I think Jesus was actually the sacrifice that saved us, I don't think that we put ourselves on the altar to save ourselves, but there's this concept of like, almost a con...

I'm doing a creating, a pulling, there's very much of an action involved in our part, according to Bethel, that back to your point, oh my gosh, it exhausts me to think about. I feel like I'm on a hamster wheel right now.

And it is like, and you've said this before, these are your words, John, it's a man-made religion. It is, it really is a man-made religion. But what's really scary, though, is if they're tapping into the dark stuff, right?

Like, going back to like, you know, the pagan ties and like the evil cults and whatnot of antiquity, like that's the stuff that really freaks me out. And what are they tapping into here when they're so,

they're so intent on us producing this output of supernatural. So, that was a mouthful. Yes, it was. For me, I can sum it up very simply, I think. This used to be the, what's it called, the line that goes under your signature, the slogan or a motto or whatever.

Tag line? Tag line, I used to have this tag line in every email that went out, even in my, when I was in IT world, I even had it in my IT emails.

It was Ephesians 2, 8 through 9. For grace, you're saved through faith, not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, less than you man should boast. The problem with all of this movement, and I'm talking about not just the new apostolic reformation, if you trace it through its lineage, all the way back, trace it past Brannemism, trace it into the revival culture, trace it into all of these things.

Think about the version of the gospel that they're preaching. It's not a gospel that the salvation is given as a gift. It's usually something that you have to do to earn it, and it's this hype you have to bring yourself in to achieve it, and it's not a gift of God.

And think of the way that it's presented. It's presented in such a platform that allows, and not just allows, but it causes men and women to boast. They become greater than other human beings.

It is a framework to allow boasting. I mean, yes, it is, right? 100%. But if you understand the very first part of that, it's by grace you're saved through faith. It means simply that if you have faith in Jesus Christ, there's nothing you can do to get rid of it.

There's nothing you can do to achieve it. This is a gift that is freely given to you. And I look back at the days in the cult when I use this tagline, and I'm embarrassed because I had this set of rules that was given to me that said literally, quite literally, if you...

Don't follow these rules. I'm gonna take this gift away from you. You don't get it. And it says, it says it's not of yourself. So there's nothing you can do. Yes. There's nothing you can summon.

There's nothing you can. All of the things that they're doing in this new age type religion that they're calling Christianity, this one passage of these two single verses undermines the entire movement and it's in its whole entirety, just these two passages.

And so good, that is the essence of the gospel. It is a gift that we could not actually save ourselves. And I love that verse. I remember studying that verse in college. And so, and yeah, it's good.

It's good to distill this down and call it what it is, which is it is a new age religion. It is. And to your point, like the whole we boast or they boast,

I'm not gonna include we in that because I'm not a part of that movement anymore. But it's interesting because before we started recording, I was looking at a recent sermon on Bethel TV.

And they started out with the online pastors come on the live feed and they do like an introduction. And he had, the main guy had, I forgot his name, had another pastor on there with him.

And he said, oh yeah, you're the leader of the young adults tribe such and such. And he said, you and I rose the ranks together. We rose up in the ranks together to where we are today.

And that might not seem like a big deal to some people, but if you stop and think about that for a minute, this gives you insight into what these organizations are. They are hierarchical organizations.

They are pyramidical, pyramidal, pyramidical. I don't know, they have a pyramid. And everybody knows whether they admitted or not that you are in a certain position and wrong and totem pole position on that ladder.

And these guys said the quiet part out loud. They're like, hey, we rose in the ranks together. Now we're the Bethel online, whoop to do millions of people see us on the YouTube feed every week.

And to them, like they've arrived, they've reached the pinnacle of Christianity. And because they are famous, they are known and they do the stuff and they're supernaturally natural one of the other, but I'm not sure.

And, but like that, if that is the salvation you're looking for, congratulations, you earned it. You earned it yourself because of what you did. You jumped through the hoops of the man-ray religion and you got up to middle management of Bethel Church, congratulations, that is your salvation.

And interestingly, there is a Masonic picture. I don't know if you've seen this, but it talks about the nature of a Masonic man rising through these to achieve the 33 or whatever it is.

is William Brannum was spreading the stature of a perfect man in his revival, which eerily matched the Masonic pyramid. It was a pyramid, and I think Chris Reed had this on, if I remember correctly, had it on the projector in one of his sermons. Oh, I seem to remember that, yeah.

Yeah, it's what it is. It is literally a way to achieve a hierarchy, like you're describing, and Christianity, true Christianity, there was Jesus, and then there was everyone else. There wasn't, yes, Ephesians does talk about apostles, prophets, all of these things, but we're people in this movement have gotten it wrong. It's not a fivefold ministry he's talking about. There are people who are designed and better suited to do different works, but there's Jesus, and there's everybody else. And honestly, if I'm in this in a certain way, I'll end it on that note. If you're in a religion where there isn't that hierarchy,

you might not be in Christianity. Yeah, that's a big power pause right there, just to think about whether it's called Christianity or something else or whatever, yeah. Like, look at the essence of what it is, Jesus and everybody else. And interestingly, and ironically, I'll point this out, despite the fact that Bethel and others are very hierarchical and pyramidal, I don't know whether it's pyramidal or pyramidical, somebody can tell me, but the, even though, let me see if I can get this thought out, even though the organization is structured like that, the ironic thing is, John,

check this out. I just thought of this as you were saying that about Jesus and everybody else, but actually, what they teach is Jesus is equal to everybody else. You can, you're not only can you do everything Jesus did, but you are essentially, you have his DNA, like we talked about last time. So isn't that so ironic? I've not thought about that before. You got the pyramid, right? And so everybody has their place and you got the guy at the top and the few people at the top. But then you also have this line where we are put

at almost equal is Jesus, if not equal to him. So yeah, so I'll add to your end point, John, if you're in an organization or a religion or church or whatever, and you're being told that you were equal with Jesus, you're probably not in Christianity either.

Absolutely. Well, there's so much more I could say about all of this, especially. I'm still like, I'm limiting myself. I'm not going to talk anymore about this dating app, but there's so many more things wrong with this people. There's just so many things, but thank you so much for doing this.

Absolutely. Always a pleasure. 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 in the wild podcast. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.