From Darby to the NAR: Rapture Theology’s Viral Spread Through Prophets and Pulpits

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 Bob Scott, former co-founder of the Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books. The latest is some say they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Pickle, the Kansas City prophets, and the international house of prayer. Well Bob we have a very for me very exciting episode today. This is one of the subjects that honestly if we

can fit this into one hour we'll be doing good because I have so many things to say about this subject. We're talking about the rapture and just to preface for those who don't know who I am, I am the grandson of the pastor at Branham's Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, who was a doomsday prophet who taught rapture theology and he was but one of many and that is no claim to fame just because I was part of this but I was part of a movement that developed the idea that along with restoration there would also be a rapture.

Usually this rapture comes before the tribulation and most of the sects, not all of them, but most of them. And the idea of the rapture, I was having this conversation, believe it or not Bob, just two days ago with another person we're talking about how the idea of a rapture, it's only about 200 years old, maybe a little bit, you know, 250 something like that, it's not that old. And if you look at the time span of human history and you find you can go back through all of the literature, I've actually read many of the ancient church fathers, nobody

really talks about this until about 200 years ago. And what's funny is when you listen to the people who really don't know the history, they're just parroting whatever everyone else is saying, they say all of the early church fathers has believed this and you can find it right in the Bible. And what they ask you to do when they say this is read this first but read in between these lines because you'll see raptures right there between the lines of text that is written. Well, to be honest with you, I'm sort of glad you're here, you know,

when I texted you about the subject, I wasn't sure you were going to reply because I thought maybe you'd take in the rapture elevator up already, you know, and the reason... I'm teasing about that is I don't know how many are aware, but there was supposed to be a rapture on the 23rd and 24th of September based on the most recent revelation from a self-proclaimed prophet out of South Africa who claimed that back in 2018 he had a revelation that September 23rd, 24th, 2025 the rapture had come and there's been a few photographs out there of whole groups of

people standing in various places around the world waiting to be taken up on the rapture elevator, but they were sorely disappointed. So on the one hand I'm sorry they were so disappointed and on the other hand I'm glad my friend John is still around so we could have this conversation.

Anyways one thing that fascinates me so um is that this is one of those what I don't know you would call it a theology it's one of those teachings that is actually shared by both sides of the Protestant equation but how they approach it is very different and what I mean by that is is on the charismatic Pentecostal side their rapture predictions and all that are based on their perception of their revelatory skills right they they have dreams they have visions God spoke to them and um of course they've all been wrong for the last couple hundred years

on the evangelical side which is the world that uh how I came into the kingdom of God during the 1970s you had the evangelicals who were exeguting it by their um unpacking the book of Daniel you know Thessalonians different scriptures um probably in my lifetime the guy that was probably the most prominent was how Lindsay's late great planet earth right um that was such a huge book during the 70s I believe it was and um what's interesting to me from the evangelical side is you had Dallas theological seminary you know I talk about how Lindsay you have Chuck Smith

John Haguey Charles Stanley Chuck Swindall John MacArthur I mean some of these guys were the stalwarts of the evangelical side and they were all very strong rapture components but they got their are based on unpacking the various scriptures.

What do they all have in common? They might come at this from two completely different perspectives but the one thing that they all have in common is they've all been wrong. Well, there's another thing they have in common.

I don't know if you've thought through this. Like I said, I could talk for weeks. Oh, I'm sure you could. That's why I thought we'd have this conversation because I knew you would have all kinds of interesting thoughts.

Yeah. So in the world that I grew up in, dispensationalism was a strong theme. And you had towers of doctrine built on top of dispensationalism, which makes it interesting because if you ever come to the realization that dispensationalism isn't quite biblical, every tower that's built upon it can't stand.

So I was in the midst of deprogramming, trying to understand what was right with our theology, what was wrong, and was watching these towers that were just shaking in my head, these towers of knowledge.

And it always, because of this foundation, so dispensationalism for those who don't know, men and some women have taken the seven churches of Asia Minor. These were physical locations. Paul sent his letters to seven churches, for example.

It is mentioned in the book of Revelation, but there was this notion that these churches were twofold. In one purpose, they were the physical locations, but were also to read anything to that church is actually written to a time period.

And there are different views on what these time periods were. But you really have to lay that foundation because every single thing that talks about the second coming of Christ in the Bible gives the reverse order of pre-tribulation rapture.

The tears are taken before the wheat, all of the parables, how will Christ coming be? It defies everything that is built upon the foundation of theology for pre-tribulation rapture. But what they did was because of these dispensations, you can read part of this and you can twist it and morph it and make it fit both things, the wrong thing and the right thing.

So I was coming to terms with all of this and I suddenly came on the history and knowledge of the Scofield Bible. Mm-hmm. If you understand the influence that that book had, politically, religiously, false doctrine, every single thing.

So Scofield Bible for those who don't know, it's widely used among Pentecostals. This is one of the most popular Bibles. It is almost unanimously used among fundamentalists. And to some extent, Dan, there are some modern people who are not even part of the charismatic movement who prefer the Scofield Bible because it has the Bible texts and in between it, it has the notes that Scofield wrote, while in prison, for big of me, for abandoning a wife and child while sleeping with a mistress, this guy was, he was a scoundrel, if you go look it up.

And this was a good way to make money as a scoundrel. He figured this out and he created, you know, seminaries and all kinds of things. Well, his scoundrel is on my side. What it did was, there are many people, even still today, who are too lazy to study the Bible for themselves.

Yeah. And he provided an easy way for study because here's the Bible text that you're not going to study. Here's my Cliff Notes version of the text that you're reading on these pages. And people trusted those Cliff Notes, well, what is he doing?

He's taking the dispensational ideas of Darbi, putting it in the text in between the passages of the Bible. And so people read his notes and they literally believe falsely that embedded in these chapters is dispensationalism because that's what he's talking about dispensationalism.

So this idea spread throughout, you know, United States and Canada and he's also bringing in various political themes. I've somewhere I did a study on the different revisions of the Schofield Bible as it aligned with the political themes and fundamental Christianity and it's funny what words get changed.

So what year do you know what year that Schofield Bible came out? I'd have to look it up. But where I was headed with this is John MacArthur was raised on a Schofield Bible.

And you find many of these people and I could be wrong, somebody might correct me that. But it seems as though I remember MacArthur was at maybe he's not still using it before he died, but I think he was raised on it if I remember correctly.

Anyway, whether he was or not many of the others who preach rapture theology, they have either some tie to the Schofield Bible or they have been influenced by some aspect of dispensationalism. Here I just looked it up.

So the first version came out in 1909 and then there was a revised version in 1917. So this is pre-World War I or right, you know, and the reason I only bring up the historical stuff is a lot of events and things that happen happen because of a bigger cultural dynamics in play.

Well, one of the things I call the rapture and a few other things, I have a little bobbism which is, instead of covenant theology, I call it convenient theology. And where I came up with this term is, is that I've noticed across, you know, because I'm such an avid church historian, I've noticed across the swath of the last couple thousand years of the church history, how many convenient theologies there are that confirm our prejudices, confirm our wants, right, confirm what our ego, you know, they're kind of reaffirming, you know, when the whole prosperity gospel, you know, I mean, it's like, yeah, everybody

wants to get rich, right? It's just, it's like there's all these theologies that are convenient and one of them that is always intrigued me has been this whole rapture thing. And here's, you know, and I'm just kind of laying my cards out on the table here. But as somebody who's gone through terrible tragedy in their life and having to lose friends, you know, I lost 16 friends and a single massacre, you wrestle with this stuff because there's this kind of desire that we Christians have for God to deliver us out of our problems, right?

And he wants us, he wants, we want him to deliver us out of our crises. And so the rapture, of course, is this convenient theology that rescues us during a time of tribulation, right?

Well, here's the problem, go back and look at, well, not only the last two thousand years, but look back at human history, how many times does God rescued us and deliver us out of tribulation? I mean, the whole of the early church, right, was running for their lives, you know, with massive persecution, massive amounts of martyrs, right? I mean, all of that for the longest time. God didn't deliver these people, right? It's, you know, he didn't save the millions of people, you know, through world wars, conflicts. He didn't rescue people from natural disasters. What he does, it seems to me, is gives us the grace to go through things,

but I seldom find him delivering us from things. And that's what kind of is a red flag to me about a lot of these convenient theologies is they seem to appeal to what we want, you know, what we hope for. Like, yeah, I want to get rich. Okay, yes, God wants you to get rich. In fact, look at all these scriptures, right? Wait a minute. I don't want to go through a hard time. Like, I don't want to die for my faith. Okay, well, don't worry about it. You're going to gets the first elevator out in the rapture.

God's gonna take, right? There's all these very convenient theologies we come up with. So, take me back a little bit because he mentioned the name Darby. And as far as I know, he's sort of the father of this whole rapture idea.

So who was John Nelson Darby? He was the founder, I believe, of the Plymouth Brethren.

Which was in Dublin, Ireland. So he's not an American guy, he's an Irish dude. And he's in Dublin. And obviously he gets into his thirties, right? Cause this whole thing starts emerging in the 1830s.

And it really took a foothold here in the U.S. It's kind of interesting because what I tend to do is kind of go back and look at, well, what was happening at that time in America?

Like why did this particular thing happen, right? I mean, you're talking about the 1830s, right? So you're after the Revolutionary War, you're kind of in that second generation now or third generation after the war.

Americans are moving west, right? I know some of this because my grandmother, my dad's mother comes from a revolutionary family. My grandmother's great, great uncle was Benjamin Ross. She signed the declaration. Her great grandfather was James Ruhrer who fought with John Brewer, who fought with Washington in New Jersey.

They were the Dutch, they were called Browers back then. They all came down the Ohio River. We're in this expansion mode, right? Jefferson had bought the middle of the country in the early 1800s, right?

So there's all this stuff. And the state, what's also happening, which is really interesting to me, cause again, I'm tying this into a bigger cultural thing. This is when the whole concept of manifest destiny starts becoming a big thing in the United States, right?

So it's kind of like we won this Revolutionary War, we won, the Brits came back in 1812, we have that little skirmish, we win again. And now everybody's going west cause we're gonna expand, right?

Where people are buying land, trains, the first local motives are being developed. So there's all this, you know, it's sort of what he called, you know, the Wild Wild West, as we know it from the...

Movies actually is a period after the Civil War, you know, into the early 1900s, right? It's a short little period. But in some ways, this was the precursor to the Wall, Wall, Wall, Wall.

Because everybody's going West, right? Cities like Cincinnati, which are funny now because nobody really thinks about Cincinnati, but Cincinnati at this particular time is huge, right? Because it's a major city on the Ohio River, which is how people are going West.

They're taking barges down the Ohio River versus, you know, some are taking wagon trains, but most are coming down the river. And Cincinnati's right on the river. So what also happens, who's also prevalent at that time, Charles Finney, right?

So it's like there's some interesting correlations going on right now, you know, at that same period of time. So suddenly Darby who's over in Dublin and the UK is kind of emerging. Now, you know who was at contemporary of Darby?

Charles Spurgeon. So Spurgeon and Darby sort of clashed a bit, right? Because Spurgeon was old school and Darby kind of scared him. So there's the rapture thing, but to your point about dispensation, one of the big, again, because we're flipping back to this whole thing about convenient theology, here was a huge problem for most preachers.

The God of the Old Testament, you know, the fire in Brimstone, God of the Old Testament, doesn't seem to match the God of the New Testament, who Jesus is saying when you see me, you see the Father, right?

It's like, what happened here? Like these are two different people. And so one of the driving forces behind dispensationalism is we have to explain why things changed, right? How did we go, you know, from this very strict legal sort of view of faith, you know, where if you say and you bring offerings, you bring money, you know, you do, you know, there's that kind of thing to the whole thing of grace and God's kindness and sacrificing on a cross, right?

So that's a lot of what was driving the dispensationalists well, we gotta explain this problem here because these two things aren't matching up very well. So something changed, right? Okay, that's a dispensation. Well, then there's these other dispensations, right?

So it was a way to explain some of the biblical confusion over the way God seemed to interact with humans. You know, it's funny because I was building up to, I was going to tell my thoughts on why it exists.

And I was going to walk through some of that history where you have walked through different paths of history to get to the same place almost. Yeah, so let's show you. story because I think it's important. Yeah, so like I said, I've studied this to no end.

Right. And I'm actually going to start before Darby. I'm going to start back in the old testament with fortune telling. Why fortune telling? And why would God condemn it? Uh-huh. Everybody who is human wants to know how things are going to work out. If you have a battle coming, you want to know who's going to win. If you have a famine, you want to know, are we going to eat again? I mean, yeah, that's right. No surprises. No surprises. We don't like surprises.

So fortune telling is basically the idea that somebody that you can go to and usually give money to or back then grains or whatever can give you the ideas of your future. And it may be right. It may be wrong. I don't know. There are people who say that the fortune tellers maybe got it right in the old testament. And that's why I was so attractive.

I think it's more because of the human problem. However, the end result is still the same. And there are there are good sci-fi movies that kind of hint at this a little bit. Knowing your future is not really that good of a thing. If you know your future, it sways the current decisions that you make. And so this is a really, really bad thing. And you can see why God would condemn it. Fast forward to Jesus' time. Jesus comes. The Jews are being just persecuted to no end by all of these different invasion forces, right? And they're looking for a

conqueror, a military conqueror to come and save them. They're not looking for a guy who's going to die on a cross. Yeah, that's true. They're wanting to know the outcome of their future. Jesus comes. He dies. He resurrects. Now take Paul. Paul is starting to, you know, the early church is starting to form. His idea of rapture theology is these who are alive and still remain when Christ return. That's a Bible verse. He was looking for Jesus to return while people were still alive, which is why there are some scholars who question the authenticity of Paul being the

author of passages like Timothy, where the entire church structure is being described. If you're looking for Jesus to come right then, you don't need to structure this vast structure that Timothy brings. So what happens is over time, now you enter Nosticism. And like I said, I've studied this to the discussion of probably 50 podcasts. What basically is physical devils, virtual's good.

Yes, but what Nosticism did, it brought from the ancient mystery cults, the divine noses or the divine mystery and embedded this into Christianity. And it swayed the course of Christianity. There were the mystery cult Christians just started to emerge. Well, what is this? This is really the same thing as fortune telling. We know the mystery.

know the outcome. That's literally how it comes to be. There are some scholars or some historians who debate this. If I remember correct, it was the Jesuits because at the same time the Jesuits had the futuristic ideas. And though there's no historical evidence that Darby copied them, he is being influenced in an era when this is becoming popular in a location where it was.

Fast forward to the time period you're talking about. All of the history that you just gave laid the groundwork for the, so here's the epicenter of when dispensationalism hit the United States. It was during the Civil War when brothers fighting against brother, this whole idea of manifest destiny, it more closely resembled the Wild West resembled like a mad Max movie. These people were going over here to die because there's no food, there's nothing there, there's scavengers, you know, whatever it is. And so they're seeing this weird shift in the United States that they want to know how is this going to be. Well Darby first starts visiting and holding lectures

during the Civil War. And this would have been very popular for people who want to know their future. They want to know how things are going to end. And if I'm not mistaken, it was at one of those lectures that Scofield first came in contact with Darbyism. But regardless, Darbyism kind of spread throughout the United States, this is very attractive to people who are watching their brothers and fathers and grandfathers die in a war. They want to know how is it going to end. And then the notion that we are now living in this turmoil and it closely resembles what Jesus would have

described whenever he was talking about the things that would calm the Great Tribulation, etc. Well, they start painting the picture that this is the Tribulation that is spoke of. So these dispensations may make sense, actually. Let's listen to this guy. And the funny part about Darbyism, I'm building up to that climax to say this, it was just one of many, many, many cases where something really, really bad happened in the world. And people thought, oh, this matches the book of Revelation. It's going to end soon, right? But his epicenter was the United States Civil War and that the rest of it is history. Interesting. Well, something that most people,

or many people, I should say, may not be aware of is there's a parallel theology that comes with the rapture and dispensationalism, which is the restoration of the nation of Israel, which is interesting because again, it's one of these things that's so widely accepted in our modern...

church culture and, you know, you're seeing it now with a lot of what's going on in the Middle East. But again, people may not be aware of this before 1830. Nobody thought that. Right? Not even the Jews by and large. Now, you know, there was always a remnant that remained in the Middle East. But after the Romans came in there in 70 AD and basically just destroyed the city, you know, the remaining Jewish population all migrated around the Mediterranean into Rome.

One of the reasons that Paul ended up wanting to get to Rome was the outside of Jerusalem, the largest epicenter of Jewish people was actually in Rome. And why was that? Because Jewish people were merchants, right? And they knew that's where you could establish a business, it's not any different than immigrants coming to New York, right? It's like, you know, that's the epicenter. That's the economic epicenter of the United States. So let's go there and get rich and, you know, make a business. But again, not even the Jewish people were thinking about returning to Israel. Like they'd long given it, given up and became completely then later

integrated into Europe. I mean, this is a way controversial. But I don't know if you know the name art cats, but art cats was, you know, a Jewish, a messiatic Jewish teacher in the 70s and 80s.

And art got himself in a ton of trouble because he was of the perspective that Hitler was a person that got allowed to happen as a way of forcing the Jewish people back to Israel. And of course, that he was, you know, he was a lightning rod for controversy because of that, you know, because of that worldview, you know, that that's that was God's way of doing that. So I remember all that very vividly during those years, there was a large, there's a large Jewish community here in Kansas City and a large messiatic Jewish thing. So art was in and out of Kansas City a lot. And I

remember a lot of debate about his worldview. But again, you know, the whole idea of the restoration of Israel, which of course ended up happening on May 14th in 1948, that actually happened. You know, the nation was restored. So that's, you know, that's kind of interesting as well. But that's again, that came out of that, that was a parallel kind of theology or worldview along with the rapture that we're both rooted in what we're talking about here, this dispensational worldview that God.

has different ways of dealing with humanity in different periods of time, like things change. So, are you a dispensationalist? I certainly am not. I've kind of come to the conclusion that it's a convenient way of trying to explain some things, but I don't think God's ever changed, you know.

I think humans and how they see God has changed, right? I think the change, I don't think God's ever changed, but I think humans and their understanding of God are their view of God.

I think humans may be dispensational. I don't know that God is. I heard a guy once, I was asking him how he viewed the rapture, pre-tribulation or not, and he said, I'm a pan millennialist, and I said, what's that? And he said, it'll all pan out in the end. And there's very few things that, doctrinally, that I will openly on the podcast say that I'm forer against, because I let people make their own decisions.

The only thing that I will is this, because I'm so headstrong that this is one of the most destructive theologies to have ever entered the church. I will openly say, no, I do not believe in dispensationalism, and the people who do, sadly, their children will suffer, because they will grow up with the same mindset that I had. Every single thing that is in the Bible that can be read and interpreted very clearly by just reading the text, gets completely flipped on its head if you enter in dispensationalism, because you bring in the idea that this was

written for a time ago, and it's written for us now, and I can make this thing say anything I want to say. That opens the door for scoundrels and cult leaders and who knows what all you mentioned israel. So there is some interesting things. Scofield, the first revision, if I remember correctly, began right during the start of World War I, and I think it was published in 1917, but I think he began revising it. And if you go through somewhere I did this study, I don't even know where my notes are on it, but if you go through and you read

the end of day scenario that he paints with his original notes, which is based on derby, then now learning that he has just watched the whole world start to war with each other, and he's listening to the politicians of who's the access, was it access analysis, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, and he's literally starting to paint with a wide sweeping brush. These nations are the ones that are described here in this book, and Israel comes into the picture. It's more clearly defined obviously after the nation of Israel is formed, but there's

a second revision in the 60s, I think, right after he saw all the civil rights stuff moving the the Christian identity stuff, and Israel is closely tied to this dispensation of theology. So, you can see how, as world-event, political world-event start to change the political landscape, those who are painting this fortune teller's picture that he's painting, well, the fortune has just changed.

So now you have to go change your notes on the text, which is another problem that I see with all of this. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

Well, something that's intrigued me again, this is me being the historical... I just... I love history. I don't know why it really... History, anthropology, archaeology, and sociology, all those allergies, you know, they really float my boat.

But something that I've noticed is that... And the reason I noticed this is because I come from a planting of a church in 1982 that was focused on praying for revival. That was the kind of one of the five major pillars of Kansas City Fellowship.

You know, we were praying for revival. And people... I actually had to do a message. This is interesting. I did had to do a message in 1983, which I called the glory and the glory.

And the reason was, this is that Mike, who was so dynamic and is preaching and was so focused on revival, but presented revival almost in a way that it was the cure all. Like when the Spirit of God comes, it's going to fix everything.

And so I watched our whole congregation at people doing what we're talking about here, basically, almost in fantasy about the future that, you know, it's like if we can pray hard enough, then the Holy Spirit is going to...

and everybody's going to change, and the world's going to get all better, and life's going to be a hunky-dory, right? And that was sort of the default setting, and I watched it, and I had these weird little moments where I'm by myself, and I would get what I call these little downloads, and one of the things that I got this little sense, like go back and read Acts.

So I go back and read the Acts of the Apostles, and I realize that every time there's a supernatural manifestation of the Holy Spirit through one of the Apostles, there's a corresponding backlash from either the religious community, the business community, or the political community, right?

In other words, the more Christianity gained influence with the masses, the more the three big power structures fought back. Well, guys got thrown in prison, guys got beat up, guys got murdered, like it wasn't this sort of when the Holy Spirit comes, and there's revival, and 3,000 people get saved, everything gets better, and actually you almost got worse, right?

It became more of a conflict, so I gave this message called the glory and the glory. Well, what ends up happening after this move of the Spirit, the last of the Apostles, John dies somewhere around 100 AD.

Well, what happens from 100 to like 380, for those 200 years? All these convenient theology start emerging, right? To your point, we had Nosticism, you had Montanaism, you had Pellegrism, Nestorianism, Monarchism, Emerianism, you know, there's all these isms, you know, all these various things started emerging.

Why do I bring this up? Let's now fast forward to the 1830s, right, during this time where Darby's getting his revelation. What was also happening here in the United States? Well, again, if you're a church historian, you know about the first great awakening, which was Jonathan Edwards, pre-revolutionary war, right?

The Puritan churches had grown cold, and Jonathan Edwards gives his sinners in the hands of an angry God message, and it launches something. Well, between 1790 and 1840, we call that period the second great awakening, right? There's a spiritual renewal, there's a spiritual revival happening in America.

So what's happening during that time? Well, suddenly now it's the manifest destiny, right? Suddenly now, we're the chosen nation, we're God's people, and we have this manifest destiny. were special. What's then, of course, the dark side of that, it allows us to then

basically enslave and demean other races because manifest destiny was predominantly a white European justification for their dominance in our culture, right? So you got that going on. Well, so we're in the middle of, again, of another move of God. So you have Darby over there, who then it makes its way over here. But what was also happening at this same time, and interestingly, this is all happening in one particular region of the United States, which is upstate New York, right? So at the very same time that Darby's dispensationalisms, rapture, restoration of Israel's stuff's going on, you have Charles Finney, an upstate in New York doing his revivals,

right? So he's going across ethical, you know, Syracuse, all these places up there. What's fascinating, just by the way, if that area after Finney got done was called the Burned Over District, and any preacher that tried to go in there for the next 50 years ran it into a wall. And the reason was is that Finney's whole M.O. was he beat everybody up, and he drove them to repentance, right? He was, you know, using Jonathan Edwards, almost sinners in the hands of an angry God. So he beat up everybody. So if everybody was so beat up at that particular point, but then at the same time,

you know, between 1820 and 1830, what else is happening in upstate New York? Well, there's this dude Joseph Smith, right? And Joseph Smith suddenly gets this revelation, right? So just like what happened in the early church, we suddenly have this spiritual awakening when we're getting all these really interesting guys who have revelation, right? They have a revelation. And Smith gets this supposedly has this interaction with Moroni. This looks, sounds like an Italian angel.

The Moroni sounds Italian to me, but he's Moroni gives him these golden tablets, and we end up having the birth of Mormonism, which also what happens, just like the rest of the nation goes west, what do the Mormons do? They had west, and all the way across the country, they're getting beat up, right? To the point where, you know, Smith gets killed, bring up young takes over. And then one of the most bizarre moments of American history, the US government goes, man, you know, we got to get these people out of here.

let's give them the one place nobody wants Utah. So they throw them into Utah, which now by the way, has the most national parks, and is the like the most beautiful place. But at that point in the 1830s, nobody wanted Utah, right?

It was like, that was like, you know, getting banished. You know what I mean? You're banishing you to Utah. So the Mormons ended up with this gorgeous trunk of land and established themselves, right?

What else is happening at the same time in Upstate New York? You got Fini going on, right? You got Joseph Smith. Well, then you got this guy, William Miller. Do you know anything about William Miller?

Yeah, the Miller rights. Yes, the Miller rights, right? Which end up becoming what? Later, the seventh day at Venice. And what does Miller do? He predicts that in 19... Or sorry, in 1822, Miller predicts that Christ will return honor before 1843, right?

So it's interesting how all of these things are either dovetailing or they're in parallel, right? During the same time period of a second grade awakening. So in the middle of revival, in the middle of renewal, we're getting all these weird prophetic revelations, right? I just find that all really interesting.

And I think it's a natural warning for all of us to really be careful here, because there's, you know, and Jesus talked about the wheat and tariffs, right? It seems like that kind of principle that good and evil, truth and untruth, right?

Falsehoods all happen simultaneously in the same moment. There's a reason for that. Well, good, unpack it. So take the new apostolic reformation today. What is the power of the new apostolic reformation? It's all of these apostolic networks.

You can, it is basically a financial pyramid scheme if you think about how it works, but you as a minister or evangelist can go to another church and you can sell your books. You can hold these conventions.

People will go to the conventions. That network will spread it around and invite other people to your conventions. And it's multilevel marketing 101. It's basically what it is. But one of the problems it brings in the, so I grew up in the Brannum circles and in the Brannum circles we had the same thing but to a much smaller level.

They would have these preachers that would wander from church to church and you'd invite them. And he would come preach in your church on Sunday and then I would be attending after he had left and gone back home.

And we'd hear the sermon about all the things he got wrong. But yet he would still be invited back. The next time, which was odd. Interesting. And if you think about that, so what about the things that he got wrong that that minister didn't cat?

Well, the people assimilate that information, and now they're learning from the things that aren't correct, from the minister who's not even leading that church. Well, in the NAR, you have this cross-pollination that happens.

You almost can't trace the source of a doctrine because all of these doctrines, it's like Osmosis, man, they're forming among different groups at the same time, at the same exact, down to the same day sometimes.

These guys come up with the same ideas, and to somebody who doesn't understand how all this works, you're thinking, oh, they must have called each other and said, we're going to now introduce this new doctrine.

But it's not that. They have just through cross-pollination of ideas, they're starting to learn. Well, what's happening in the 1800s that didn't happen in the 1700s? The printing press was so widely more used around the globe.

These religious scoundrels found that you can make a lot of money in religion, and especially if you have something in print form, people would view the print form with maybe not the same reverence as the Bible, but if you said spiritual things in it, they would put it just almost categorically with the Bible and the reading materials.

Right. So they're reading your ideas, and this other guys' ideas, and these other guys' ideas, while at the same time, the leaders in all of these different movements are reading each other's ideas. So, much like the New Apostolic Reformation Day, back then, this cross-pollination of ideas was spreading, and so you mentioned the great awakening, second great awakening, wasn't so much dispensationalist, but they had picked and chosen what parts of Darby and Schofield's theology that they wanted to build on.

One of the ideas that really is structured upon dispensationalism and really only works with dispensationalism, is restorationism. The church has fallen to an apostate, condition, and Jesus is going to come back if we can restore the church to the proper state.

That's one of the ideas that developed this holiness. Yeah, holiness. I mean, there are different versions of holiness, but that particular version is one of the most destructive, fast-forward to Mike Bickel, the entire movement as it developed into the Joel's army.

That entire movement is built on this restoration of structure. Well, just so people don't misunderstand us, we're not saying that a lot of good things weren't happening. What we're trying to describe is that, be careful when you talk about revival, renewal, awakenings, and those kind of things, because there are two things happening at the same time.

That's our point. There's a lot of really wonderful good things happening, and a lot of people's lives are being transformed. But you have to be wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove, you have to be discerning, and you have to know what you believe, because there's all kinds of crazy things going on.

As a matter of fact, I actually forgot the fifth piece. We had Darby, right? We got Finney. We got Joseph Smith. We got William Miller in his rapture. You know what the fifth one was?

Spiritualism, which also happened where upstate New York. And some of you may be more familiar with Harry Houdini, right, that name is probably more known to people than spiritualism. But again, we're in this weird moment where, you know, God's moving and we're into this metaphysical, as you were talking about the fort telling, right?

And in this case, you're able to talk to your ancestors, right? And people are trying to get in Houdini comes in and he basically tries to unmask all these fraud, right?

But that was like a huge thing. And people don't realize that I'm going to, this is going to be controversial for some conservatives out there. But Nancy Reagan had spiritualists and fortune tellers in the White House, right?

She had, you know, this is so interesting. Part of the reason I'm aware of some of what goes on is because, as you well know, I learned it from Paul Keane. A lot of these guys from the letter ring kind of movement, some of these prophetic people had relationships with a lot of very high profile, either movie stars, business people, I remember Paul telling me about his meeting with EF Hutton who tried to buy him, you know what I mean?

Like these people don't realize that sometimes the people in these positions of power aren't there, how do you want to say it? They're just as hungry for something spiritual and very vulnerable to these spiritualists and these fortune tellers.

And Nancy would get all their little rich lady friends together, right? And I'll sit around and have their fortunes told, right? That's normal. Like people don't realize that that's kind of a thing in those circles and it's the same way today.

There's a lot of crazy, it's not well known publicly, but there's a lot of crazy spiritualism today that exists in these, the realm, you know, the elites will call them, right? That top 1%.

I'm convinced that you stole my notes and you're going through them piece by piece. I had conversations. I had a conversation with Paul Cain and when he described

what he was doing for the United States government, it was very much... much. Even at that point in time, I had not realized the depth of how far the fortune-telling win in the movement, but what he's describing is fortune-telling, even though so Nancy Reagan has the actual fortune-tellers, well, the president's presidencies that had Paul Cain was also doing fortune-telling, but from a religious fortune-telling standpoint, which is still evil, if you read the Bible. But it all comes back to the climax I was building to, the spiritualist movement in the United States is mostly the backing for the nonsense that

we see in the NAR today. And we have strong evidence that suggests, you can look it up on my website, Brannum describes being in a spiritualist camp. He is describing an event that he says he goes into the camps of the spiritualist, and he sees the piano levitating, and it starts playing the jingle, shaven, a haircut, two bids. If you know this is dent, dent, dent, dent, dent, dent. Like in Beverly Hillbillies. Well, that was one of the features that Indiana's most prestigious spiritualist camps. I think it's called Camp Chesterfield. So he's literally describing being at the most prestigious spiritualist camp

in the United States. His mentor and clan leader, Roy Davis, when he started his revival in Jeffersonville, the one that attracted Brannum to come to the movement. He was posing as a converted spiritualist who knew all the inner working. There's the spiritualist backbone to this. Fast forward to the NAR today. You've got the grave soaking. What is it? It's communication with the dead. It's this idea that these dead spirits can come help you in some way.

It's all spiritualism, 101. Well, the Africans, this FYI sidebar, that's their whole religion, right? The worship of ancestors. I mean, people may not be aware of this, unless you really get behind the scenes, many Christian Africans go to church to their Pentecostal or Catholic

church on Sunday morning. But if you go home, they have all the little trinkets and things that they got from the local spiritualist, which doctor or whatever you want to call them, and have been talking to great grandma. If you watch the movie, Black Panther, Black Panther

actually brought all that animism into the movie because what's his name in Chalor or whatever, the Black Panther guy, he ends up going back and talking to his ancestors, right? That's a common thing on that continent, right? There's this duality going on, but it's the same way.

I guarantee, almost everybody that's going to the spiritualists are also going to church on Sunday. Right, but what it really to me again, I always look at it from a human perspective, okay? What's going on underneath there?

And you see this desperation and humans to know, you know? And so I've asked myself often, why do I need to know, right? What's driving this, you know? And so this is me, I have this way of like peeling my own onion, you know what I mean?

I just keep going in my own soul because it's like, is this driven by fear? In other words, is fear what's really going on here, the fear of the unknown? Because the unknown, there's a lot of fear, right?

People want to feel secure. They want to feel like they know, like they understand what's coming. They can be ready for it. And when you don't know, you feel what, vulnerable. So the reason I bring this up is we have an innate weakness for this stuff.

In other words, people, one of the ways that con men operate, is con men are probably the best psychologists and sociologists out there because they understand the human soul so well and all of its vulnerabilities.

They pray on the very weaknesses that we all have. Now, they don't tell you that, right? They don't tell you that, but they're so good at reading the room and reading humans, right? And so they pray on your fears.

And so I saw this, you know, not only throughout history, but then as I became introduced to the charismatic Pentecostal world for the first time in the late 70s, early 80s. And I saw this hunger in people, this desperation for propheticness, you know, to be told, right?

You know, to have knowledge of the future. Now, on the one hand, I was touched by how, you know, it's like if somebody got a word from God, it was so affirming, right? It's like, oh, God sees me.

So on the one hand, my compassion, my empathy for humanity was like, oh, this is so sweet. Gosh, this person got to hang onto this. Like, this is going to get him through rough times, right?

So there's half of me that's over here going, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is, this is so good for people just to get a word of encouragement, right? And then there's this other side where I'm watching where on the, on these national, you know, regional, national, international world where people are being, you know, the future is being predicted.

And it's actually ends up having devastating consequences because none of it ever happens. And there's this profound disillusionment that sets it. So again, it's wheat and tears, it's highs and lows, it's these paradoxical dynamics happening in the same moment.

And so, you know, I was tore up about all this stuff because I want to know. I mean, I'd like to know the future too. I'm not above that, right? You know, it's like Paul used to tell me all the time about, you know, I mean, the reason E. F. Hutton wanted so badly for him to be a part of his organization is because he want to make money, right?

So some guys are driven by greed, right? Other guys are driven by pride. They want to be seen as the guy that knows, right? So there's a lot of motivation that goes on behind the scenes.

But what it does, though, is there's, I just, I just, it's important that we understand we're all vulnerable to this. There's a vulnerability here. And it's not unique to our generation. It's not, this has been going on for thousands of years, right?

You know, I grew up in this weird, branemism, spiritualism, nasty world. And one of the things, I picked up a lot of things. Some of it good, some of it bad. One of the things I picked up is I actually can predict your future, Bob.

And I'm going to grow old. And I'm going to grow old. You beat me to it. You're going to grow old. So exactly, you know, you're so profound, John. So there's one, I know we're run out of time.

And like I said, I feel like I'm... And we can read this at the surface. I just thought, given the fact that this just happened and like everybody's still here with this would be a great topic for us.

How did we get here at this point? You know, there's one other movement, though, that you haven't mentioned that was central to all of this. Like this is the framework, this was the train track of which the whole thing rode.

And that is the camp meeting, camp revival, which was a big deal. Because so think of CARES Maddox. It was rural. It was rural. Think of CARES Maddox. That were uneducated, right? Right, right.

Think of CARES Maddox and think of the Jesus people that CARES Mania was built upon. Yeah, that's right. You had people coming together. Everybody's getting in the spirit. They're all talking. Some of them had almost no Bible knowledge whatsoever while others did.

And the histories, if you read them, they focused on the ones who had the good Bible knowledge. They don't tell you the plagues that was coming into this thing. But you had that cross-pollination of ideas is what I'm driving at.

That really was the framework that it allowed and enabled all of this to spread. So here's my warning to people. So I got a couple things here we can close this up. If it's too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

That's an old kind of saying, but it's true. Absolutely. If you're hearing what you want to hear, I can tell you already you are vulnerable, like highly vulnerable. Like if I was a con guy and I could read, I would look at you and go, that's my mark.

right there. And I watched it. You know, at my age now, you know, I'm going to be 69 here in a little bit. I've been in this world for over, you know, about 50 years. So I've seen it all. I mean, and I see this over and over again where it's like, we have a church culture in America where we go to hear what we want here.

We don't go and hear what we need to hear. So that makes us really vulnerable. The other thing I want to close with is, well, what how do we live that? Right? It's like, see, I think one of the things that makes this whole, I'm going to call it lust for secret knowledge, right? The nosticism, the nose, the secret knowledge.

The thing that I find disconcerting about how powerful that is in our souls that need is that we lose touch with the simplicity of the teachings of Jesus. Because the truth of it is that Christianity is really very simple.

And what seems to have happened is, is men with egos who need to be seen as intelligent or have secret knowledge or whatever have kind of made it way more complicated and let it's like, well, if you're, you have to be smart like me to really understand.

Or you have to have a prophetic spirit to really see what I'm seeing, right? There's this elitism that's been brought in to the church world. Because when you get back to the teachings of Jesus, right, what do you see?

You see deal with your self-centeredness, deal with your ego, love your neighbors and lay your life down for others, right? I think of the fact that people think, well, that's the New Testament. We'll go back and listen to Hosea, right?

Who was really interesting. Hosea 6.6, right? One of my favorite Old Testament verses. I want your loyalty, not your sacrifices. I want you to know me. Don't give me burn offerings. In other words, it's that same sort of thing again.

You know, it's like, you know, we have this whole institution, you know, the, you know, the Jewish faith that's got all, you know, that's built throughout sacrifices. God's got, I don't want your name sacrifices. I want your heart. Go take care of the poor. You know, love your wife. Love your kids. Love your neighbor. It's really simple.

And somehow, I think what's happened is that almost, I know it's going to sound weird, but it's almost like if there was a strategy of the Kingdom of Darkness to disempower the church. It's to get us distracted on all this other stuff, right? And get us away from the simplicity and the real power of laying your life down for others.

others and loving others. I think that's where the real power is. I would agree. And there's one thing that I'll add along with this. If you're wanting to avoid this scenario,

if you can find them, find some psychology books on the mind of a con artist, but if not, you can find biographies of these people. If you learn how they think, which I have, and then go sit into some of the Christian churches, which I have, you sit there and you can pick up on the strategies that they're using and how it aligns with the con artist. And the moment I pick up on that, I completely shut off what the guy is saying, and we go find a different church. I've been to actually quite a few different churches at this point.

There are some of the... Well, the secret knowledge, right? We all want to feel like we got the inside scoop. I mean, that's such a vulnerability. And they pry on that. I'm the guy with the secret knowledge, you know, come hang with me. And you can be special too. You know, I mean, it's just we're so vulnerable to that stuff. And so that's where we got, we got to guard our hearts to make sure that we still get sucked into all that. And our fears and our egos are really what's driving this and not the spirit of God. Yeah. People ask me, what church should you go to after?

You've left one of these things. And I, again, I never give the denomination because I don't want people to choose mine. But I will say don't go to one that has the con artist and behind the pulpit. You don't want this. Yeah. The guy telling you what you want to hear. That's the first place that I would just red flag. Okay. Absolutely. Well, like I said, I could go for two hours. We'll stop now. 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. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. And for more about Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read some say they blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.

You