When Music Becomes a Weapon: The Hidden Force Behind Charismatic Revival

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, Christian Thomason, host of Sanctum Artifact. Christian, it's good to be back and I'm very excited for today's episode. If you can't tell, I'm a musician and as we've talked and you can get into you are as well, but the topic of music fascinates me and I don't get to do it frequently enough because not many people are familiar with the concepts

of music as it relates to Christianity and Christian history, but there's a huge untapped wealth of information that anybody who's trying to research, nor or new Apostolic Reformation and understand how it did what it did psychologically, you really have to take it back to the music. That's the funny part. If you understand the history and progression of how the music has changed and music basically, in my opinion, it became a vehicle that helped enable all of this that we see. Yes, the doctrines were incorrect. Yes, they have heresies. Yes, they have all these other things, but without a vehicle to push it

forward, it would have been very difficult, I think, to have what we see today. Today, you and I can talk through the history of music, but like I say, I'm so excited to get into this. I can hardly wait. Yeah, me too, because music was a huge part of my life as well, and there's so much space to explore in it, emotionally, intellectually, and from a view of group dynamics, it's also very interesting if you look at music as a tool for group dynamics. Absolutely. A lot of people don't recognize the power of that tool. One of the things that I

used to do, I started out playing guitar and mandolin, and I'm self-taught whenever my family was actually against stringed instruments, which is part of the reason why I have all of this, because of your religious background, because of William Branham's controlling authoritarianism, which is a story we'll get into later, but he eventually, he actually convinced my grandfather, who had a ministry that included music.

My grandfather was an evangelist, he and his children would play music and sing songs and have small revivals throughout Kentucky. Well, Brannum apparently wanted to control his life and pretended like he had no connection to music and that anybody who plays a stringed instrument is of the devil. He convinced my grandfather of this. So my grandfather got rid of all of his stringed instruments, which essentially crippled his revival type ministry of the music that he played.

So that history, I grew up like this. My parents, my mother's side, whole family played music. So she was unfamiliar with this weirdness. My father's side, which I just explained was against it. Well, the first time my grandfather brought me my first guitar, he was told that I could not have it.

Take it back and he had driven from Georgia that time we lived in Kansas. So he driven halfway across the United States. To give me a guitar, wasn't able to give it to me. Later, for some reason, he was able to give me a mandolin. So my first real instrument that I had was a mandolin.

Interesting. And I remember when I first picked it up, I had never even seen a mandolin before. And I just kept, I was amazed by this thing. I kept moving my fingers and plucking the instrument and about three o'clock that night, four o'clock that night. I stayed up all night towing with it.

I was teaching myself to play and I played, I'll fly away, or some basic song. And the same thing happened later. I was eventually able to get a guitar. My grandfather also gave me this. And the same thing, that night I was playing it. I played by ear. When you hear the podcast and you hear the introduction music, you're listening to these instruments because I composed it.

I play it. I record all of the most of the music that is in the videos that I do. But where I was headed with this is because I have done this, there were times whenever we would have, especially before my wife and I get married, we would go to these events where everybody sit around talking and having good time. I'm not a person who really talks a lot, ironically.

I would sit in a corner and just play my guitar and you could set the mood of the entire room by doing it. And I would watch this and I would watch the people change. I could make, if it was getting too loud, I could change the tone of the voice of the room. Or if it got too soft, I could get them excited. And there's so much power in the music, which you and I can get into, but as a tool for these ministries that are wanting to build excitement and hype around their ministry, not many people recognize the power of this. And one of the reasons why I continue to

go back to focus on Wimber, Wimber is one person who did. John Wimber understood how you could take music and change people. So good or bad, it might have been good what he was thinking. We'll discuss that. But the power behind the tool is an apt area of research for many people who are looking into this movement.

In the beginning it was the group dynamics for me because I don't come from a religious family but from a musical family my mother could play the piano, the guitar and the flute. And we had a lot of music at our home so I grew up with like Bach Mozart but also Freddie Mercury was a big thing in our house and I liked to imitate all the voices.

I loved to sing in the first place and that kept me alive over many years because after my family got destroyed through the divorce of my parents all I had left was my passion for music, my passion for reading and writing.

My mother came from Poisson Prussia so we were educated in reading and writing very early so I could already like a kid perfectly read when I got into basic school. I was never good at school after that because my parents divorced and I was erased by many different foster parents and children's homes until I arrived for a longer time at foster parents when I was around 12 or 13 but at that time I was already very independent in my thinking and we never bonded, we never connected in a deeper sense.

I started to explore a leftist friend circle and we started to do music and that's what I did over the next 10 to almost 15 years. I started to do punk music when we were like 14.

I think we made our first sessions in a little cellar in a so-called Jugendzentrum like Youth Centre and then we started to professionalize because everyone of us had already many years in experience in his instruments.

We had a very good bassist, his father was a musician to a very gifted musician with a bigger cover band in Germany already playing like Guns and Rosers, bands like that on bigger stages already.

That worked out quite very well, especially because I started to take drugs and was barely holding up at school and invested all my time, all my passion, all my concentration into music. And I always, if I later looked back, there is a, you can see a strain like a, like a red lining for all my music, all my lyrics.

There's always this, this imagination of a velton zealer, like a world soul. Everything is connected. Every human is striving, searching for meaning in life. This kind of thinking was a huge inherent part of my music.

I then started to study jazz music, just to get more professional. I was doing really well, surprisingly, but at the same time, I came to faith. I'm at guard at a certain point in my life and there was a huge cut in my life after that because for me it was clear that I could not no longer live with that.

Friends that circle of friends, the drugs, the lifestyle that was all inherent, an inherent part of being a jazz musician, a rock musician. And after that, I realized, and I think that is something we can talk about, that when I realized that I could make music for God, it was almost like that's the very first time in my life that music makes sense.

Before that music was, for me, the group I was with, those guys were my best friends. And I always had this dream of me and the guys on the road making music. I don't need everything else.

Of course it was just a dream, even more in illusion because after I stopped to take drugs, we had no element of connection. The most important element of connection was no longer there. So we had no friendship anymore.

One interesting thing to think about, but the main point I want to make is after I came to faith, I realized for the first time that the only time music makes sense in a bigger, in a bigger picture is when you make music for God or before God instead of making music for yourself.

For me, the making sense of music, this is a powerful thing. thing, because music for me is many things. Making sense for God, you can elevate people's faith by the music that you play. You can set the tone of the building by the music you play. You can get people into a spirit conducive for hearing by the music you play. An example of this, in the healing revivals, many of them, if you go listen to the old recordings, you're going to hear very ten candy audio where the speaker is screaming into the microphone.

But in the background behind them, you will hear this organ music. And what they do with this organ is, before the minister got into his stance of, you know, denouncing Satan, casting out devil spirits, whatever it was, they would get the audience into this atmosphere of submission.

And they did it through the playing of the organ, the pulsation of the music as it comes out of the organ. If you listen very closely, you can hear kind of a beat within that pulsation.

Interestingly, the organ even is able to do that because it has lower frequencies. Exactly. And if you study, I studied all kinds of things to ridiculous amounts of research. One of the things I studied was the psychology behind this music. Because what was happening in these meetings? The pulsation of that organ was almost at the same rhythm of the heart.

If the heart was beating faster, interestingly, because of the music and because of the power of the music, it would bring a calming effect for those that were anxious, because the beating of the heart would slow down to match that organ rhythm, that pulsation. And then if you listen to the cadence of the speaker, often they start at that same rhythm, whether strategically or not, I don't know, but they start at that same cadence. And then they'll bring you back into the state of anxiety in these types of meetings. I've watched and listened to the patterns of how this

happens. And even the speaker's voice, even though it's not music, whenever you relate it to the pulsation of the organ, this becomes a music. So the speaker speaking in that rhythmic tone that he's doing, that cadence, as he's getting faster and faster, when he starts out, it's like he becomes the voice to the music. So there's a power of what it brings is almost a power of suggestion.

The people as your heart slows down to match that rhythm, your critical thinking also goes down. It's basically your body enters into this place where it feels like it's almost going to sleep. And then you get the shell shock of the screaming preacher. So it's like a snapping you awake.

That was very, very powerful in those tent meetings and those tent revivals. So they use music, because a tool, like I said, or like you said earlier, the music was the tool that would bring people to a place where they would call it almost like we're bringing us, we're bringing the audience to a state of holiness.

And through that holiness, then the spirit can enter the building. Well, yes, that may be. I'm not going to argue one way or the other, but also at the same time, the music is bringing them to a place of calm before the storm, before this preacher starts shouting at them.

It's not an isolated event that's only happening in our Christian world. It's happening everywhere where music has a place or music is the event. Music is the means by which we gather.

I loved, one part of my work in sports management was to give aerobic classes. I love aerobic classes. So that's just a situation where we want to engage with each other through music. Everyone feels that there's a group dynamic to it.

Everyone feels that there's a connection between the people in this room through the music. And that's fun, that's exciting. We want that. But I often, or let's take one other example, I love jazz music still from my very heart because I'm a very melancholic person.

But jazz music in that sense has a very certain setting to it. Jazz bars have a very certain setting to it. The lights, the colors, the drinks they serve. It's not like a Caribbean party or Carnival party.

It's jazz, it's a jazz bar. So it's more moody, it's more mellow, it's more melancholic, right? So people that want to soothe down, that want to maybe experience a very romantic evening with their partner would look for a jazz bar, would look for jazz music to feel this kind of vibe, to get connected with each other through this kind of vibe.

The almost bewildering thing for me is that in Christianity, in, yeah, let's bash the carouselmatics again. The carouselmatics are good. It's almost like these people think for themselves or claim for themselves that these kind of experiences, group dynamics through music are special to their congregation or special to Christianity, and that's not true.

Even my environment as a rock and jazz musician was very often more loving, more connected, and even more connected.

More social than many of the Christian places I experienced throughout my Christian journey over the last 10 years. There was a connection between those people, there was love between those people. Yes, it was not a love with Jesus in the center, but nevertheless, it was a connection.

There were people socializing, there were people serving each other in their own way. And it's bewildering to me that certain Christian groups think for themselves that this is something special that only Christianity has, and that's not true.

That's the point, I think, they don't realize music as a tool, and because they don't realize that music is a tool, they are more prone to be fooled by the people who use that tool against them.

But they will never think of that as a tool that is used against them, and that's very, very sad. You know, it's funny, some of them actually do know that it's a tool, and they use it to their advantage, but they don't ever preach about why the tool.

And I say this because of the history of the song, Only Believe, which was William Brannum's theme song in the Revival's, Only Believe. This was a song, the first time I learned it was sang by Elvis Presley, I was completely shocked.

And this is the King of Rock and Roll, the man who William Brannum condemns specifically, Elvis Presley is the devil. He would say things like this. Well, that song was written by a man named Paul Raider, who was, well, I think it was one of the directors, if I'm not mistaken, of the Christian and missionary alliance.

And the CMA would send out missionaries all around the world, and they wanted a way to influence the people of foreign nations. They were targeting, if I remember correctly, at that point, they were targeting nations within Africa.

And you talk about jazz music. The way that they did this was through the Only Believe song, because Raider wanted to take a jazz beat and put Christian lyrics to it. And he thought that this jazz beat, if he got into the nations of Africa, where they're used to these drums, et cetera, it would be more appealing to the natives.

You could even say that jazz is a very Afro-heavy music in its bass form. Absolutely. So he recognized using it as a tool. And the funny part about this is it came full circle.

In the religion that I was in, jazz music was outlawed, it was evil. You could only listen to 1950s, 60s style gospel music. And we could not listen to jazz. And then I learned that the main theme song was that- actually a jazz song, I was like, it's unbelievable.

And this circle continues because even in, I have friends who are, I don't know if you would call them, no, maybe you would call them charismatic, definitely, but I don't know if you would call them New Apostolic Reformation, but they will often talk about the music, how they will never, ever listen to, and they'll list whatever's the style, whether it's rock and roll or jazz, or different flavors, different genres of music, and they'll never listen to that, because you can even feel in the music, it makes you want to tap your foot like this, and you can even feel the devil's in this music.

Yeah. What they're describing is the tool that is very valuable in the music. It makes your body wants to respond to the music. And the irony that I found is, if you study the music that they listen to, and study its composition, often you find that the very music that they denounce, and for many of the same reasons for this beat, they have the same thing, they just have different lyrics to the same music.

Yeah, it's the most heavy influence, or influential part of their own music, like it's pop music through and through, and it's not like even if you take a historic perspective, like music is, like in forever, part of every culture, of every gathering, in every culture, when people wanted to get connected to whatever religious symbol or imagination of God, or the world, or the spirit,

the trans that lies within music, the magic you could say that lies within music, is as old as the earth itself. So there's nothing special in Christian music, in that regard, and we talked about language in the past,

and there's language again, if you take modern Christian rock concerts, which they claim are revivals, it's just charismatic firework, but like every other rock concert on the earth, it's nothing special or unique to Christianity, not at all.

And the religious part is they don't reflect on themselves that what they call revival is nothing more than music, because what's the fruit? You go to the concert, you enjoy your friends, you enjoy your time, enjoy the music, and then you go back home.

It's not like these people that get up there in the spirit, go to a hospital afterwards, and everyone is getting healed. But that's what they're claiming is happening right there, when like 500 Christians are gathering for the big event, let's get on fire, right?

So... Now, that's problematic. It is problematic. And you know, you said something in the there, I want to address, you go to a rock concert and you see many of the same elements that you would see if you went to, say, a charismatic convention.

Yeah, yeah. And many of the people who attend the charismatic convention will often denounce the rock music, sometimes for the beat, but most often from the lyrics. And there comes this situation where you have to understand it as a musician.

Music, can you really say that the music is itself as evil? Because here's my theory and you can talk whether you believe this or not. But as a human being, if you believe that humans are created by God and that they have abilities that God has given them, there's an argument that all music comes from God.

Where the danger lies within this is that some music have, I'm using the word, I almost use the word evil, I don't want to do this. Some music have lyrics that when people listen to, sometimes they will go down the wrong pathway.

However, in my opinion, a person who is going down the wrong pathway, they have a tendency to go down the pathway anyway, or they would not be listening to the music. So there's this weird cycle that happens.

The example, and I've given this before on the podcast, one of the examples that really, really hit me whenever I was, one of the churches that I attended after leaving the cult, the ministers started talking about this song, Highway to Hell.

I'd never heard it, but I had heard the evil against it. I've heard many Christians say, this is evil song. I listened to it for the first time. This was probably in 2000, gosh, maybe 2014.

It was the first time I'd ever heard the song, Highway to Hell. And my first thought when hearing it, for me, it was like watching a movie. So I watch a movie about a, I like history movies, or genres that are doing dramas, so picture a drama movie where somebody is going down the wrong pathway and comes to this horrendous conclusion because the wrong pathway was chosen.

And the message of the movie is basically, don't go down this pathway. It's, the message may be good, the movie itself is portraying something bad that happens. Well, I listen to this song, and you have a band of people going down the wrong pathway.

And for me, it's not, it's not even a right or wrong, come join me in this pathway. It's more to the effect of, there's a group of people that are just really going down the wrong way, but the music itself, take the lyrics out and suddenly you realize that, it's amazing what they're doing with the guitars.

And I'm not advocating that everybody go, just suddenly love the song, Highway to Hell. But what I'm saying is, within that music, You have to understand that there was an inspiration. God, all inspiration comes from God.

However, in Charismania, there is a notion that inspiration, not all of it comes from God. You can be inspired by Satan, Satan is a creator, and they create the scenario where Satan is actually equal to God in that worldview.

And it becomes more like a Thor and Loki-type religion than it is even Christianity. For me, I no longer believe in that type of worldview. So when I see these things, and I see people condemning the music, I think back to just many of the songs that I have created, some of those songs had no lyrics.

What if somebody took one of the songs and put lyrics to it that they did not agree with? They would say, well, that's evil music. But yet at the same time, you don't know how the song was created.

Did the person writing the song put words to it or was there another person who composed the music? It's so complicated to think through all of the many scenarios, but in the end, the result is the same.

If you go to a rock concert that's playing highway to hell, and all of the people are getting in that hype and that emotion, that emotional state, they will say they felt something. We felt something.

We felt this was great, this was the greatest concert ever. If you go to the same thing in a charismatic setting, because the words are different, but many of the music is often the same.

The words are different. They say, oh my gosh, we felt the move of God, because the words are different. And I no longer think like this. You have to think about the whole thing, not just the words.

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

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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You talk about cult leaders all day. These cult leaders use the same language as you and I right in this moment. It's not the language that they're spared. It's the person, it's their intention, it's the way they are using the language.

The same goes from music, but you... Cannot deny that certain types of music create certain types of feelings or emotions. I wouldn't distinct them by good and bad. That's almost too numb to dump.

Music and especially emotions are very complex. What is melancholy for everyone. I know people, I still love rock music. I know people that get depressed or anxious when they hear rock music are so loud.

It's so aggressive. I don't feel aggressive when I hear rock music. It makes me happy, happy, clappy. Same music, different outcomes. But I experienced something very interesting back in my days in Western Germany.

I'm from Western Germany originally. Western Germany has a huge Japanese population. You can route it back to World War II. These are very sophisticated, very well-educated people, but they don't believe in God. Most of them are very...

I think they wouldn't even describe themselves as atheists. It would be even more precise to... Their premise is that there is no God. Like they live... Like there is no God. They just live their lives.

They have a very rational, very functional way of thinking about things. But if they... If you give them rock music and pop music, they will consume it. And the next day they have already forgotten the music.

It's like irrelevant for them. But the Japanese people have a very special relation to the music from Bach. There's a huge fanbase for Bach or classical music in Japan. And Bach makes them experience some kind of godliness or holiness.

That's not what I am saying. That's what they are saying about the music from Bach. So these people don't have any concept about God or holiness. But they would swear if they listen to Bach, they experience a feeling of holiness, a feeling of godliness, a feeling of being connected to God.

Bach was a Christian musician. And on every sheet of his writings, there's always a top right or top left. Like Praise God, God the Almighty, God to be blessed. All of his music was written for God or before God.

And... Adders what his music transcendence in a way that is not rational, that is not emotional. How do you feel holy? How do you feel godly? But these people, these Japanese people experience a kind of God is present in this moment when they listen to this music in a very Christian sense.

And that's a good thing. But they won't experience the same feeling of holiness, godliness, and God is present when they listen to his song, his song is for them totally irrelevant and it's interchangeable between every other song you hear on the radio.

You know, that's interesting because that's a thought that I've not really put to word yet. People respond to music differently and what is healing for one person is devastating for another. You mentioned the rock music.

I know people that listen to their different forms of rock music and they listen to the ones that for me is just really depressing. But from the personality of the person who's listening to it, they are a person who is often depressed and you can't really attribute the music to their depression.

They had the depression before the music, so there's no correlation. But because they're in the state, this music speaks to them. And in fact, some of the music, if you listen to some of their artists, which I don't listen to it much because I'm not a fan of this music, but there are some music that fits their tone and then there's some that's slightly up more uplifting than what they have.

So in effect, they're listening to this very, for me, it's this very depressing music, but yet it has this element that lifts their mood. So they're actually getting help from this music and it's not a Christian music.

I'm not, you know, I'm not saying there's a Christian at all, however, there are flavors of Christian music that do kind of the same thing. You have different genres within Christian Christianity and different genres within Christian music.

You can listen to a bluegrass song, for example, where the banjo is going, the mandolin, all of these things. And people will start tapping their foot and you go to the Pentecostal Circles, they're dancing in the spirit.

And I know I have a friend who's a runner. Do you know what this phrase is, a runner? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So in Pentecostal Circles, some guy will get up and he'll just run around the building, circles and circles and circles.

Well, he's a runner and not all of it is inspired by music, but music can inspire this type of effect. So within the Pentecostal Circles, you'll find that there's a different flavor of music than they have even in the charismatic circles, because people respond to the music differently, and even different groups of people respond to the music differently.

So as a tool, if you're wanting to get runners, there's literally a playlist that you can go through and you can get people to get their feet tapping and get into the spirit. And if you play something that's really, really slow, and for me, I use the word agonizing because I'm not a fan of the slow music, but really slow version of amazing grace, for example.

You're not going to find too many people get up and tap their feet in a slow version of amazing grace. So this is a tool to get you into what in a Pentecostal circle, they would say, it's getting them into the spirit.

But it's deeper than that if you understand music in your musician. It's not getting them into the spirit so much as people will respond to the music you play, and the lyrics, the chord progressions, the beat, the tempo, all of these things are combinations and variations to how you make people respond.

Yeah. I think the root again, we talked about it, is identification and justification. You want to identify free music with a certain lifestyle or a certain group of people, and you want to justify yourself through music.

And there's even some kind of morality about music, the right kind of music. This music is not aggressive, so it's holy. This music is not too happy, so it's holy. This music is not too electronic, I don't like it, so it's not holy.

So it's already, yeah, it's just the way you consume things in your personal life, but there's no objective standard by what you can measure if that music is in certain type of ways, holy or not.

Of course, if there's someone singing aggressively about Satan and stuff, yeah, of course, that's not holy, in a sense, that this person is abusing the elements, the language of music for bad things. You can make the same example for mathematics.

If we say we have three languages, through which God interacts with his creation, then it's language, then it's mathematics, then it's music, and to understand creation through mathematics is a wonderful thing, but mathematics will make you able to create a atomic bomb.

So it's the same language that brings you cars, that brings you hot water, that creates atomic bombs, so it's not the language. It's the person who uses it for certain things, or golds, or means.

Yeah, and there's a relationship to that. That's probably a bigger podcast than today, but one of the many studies that I did after leaving the cult was just simply the universe. And moving in so perfect harmony.

And if you think about the dynamics of music and the tones and the beats that happen, many of those beats, if you match the tones of the movements of the planets, et cetera, you can feel differently than when you don't match it.

So you can make somebody anxious, you can make somebody calm. It's literally a tool. It's a, it can be a tool or a weapon. I'll say it like that. But you said one thing in there that I want to highlight.

There is this programmed and indoctrinated notion within Pentecostalism and some charismatic circles. The idea that God told you that you didn't like something,

they will often say, the Spirit spoke to me and this is just not for me because God, God doesn't want me to do it. Yeah, there's the programmed idea that if you are uncomfortable with something or you simply are not used to it, you therefore must dislike it.

And usually people attribute that to God speaking. And what they're really feeling is an inward anxiety because they don't know if they should like it or not. And because the indoctrination does not allow them to go to the places that they're not certain whether they like or not, they'll hear a new music, even a gospel music style.

You can play modern music, modern contemporary music in a Pentecostal church and get kicked out for it. That's how weird this is. But yeah, you can play Pentecostal music in a modern charismatic church and they'll say, you know, that music was okay, but I just didn't feel the spirit in that music.

And what they're saying is they didn't feel the rhythm, they didn't feel the tool being abused. So there's a doctrinal component to the music that makes it all more complicated because which music am I allowed to listen to and enjoy?

Which music does the spirit of God tell me is evil? And it all goes down sometimes to even just the beat of the music if the beat makes their heart uncomfortable. And it all goes back to these rhythms and cycles.

They feel the anxiety, which is the tool of the music, they feel that that pressure, that stress that's building up in the music. And they'll say, well, that's an evil spirit coming at me.

And it's nothing at all like this. It's just literally the music and the harmony and the beat and the tones. There's a saying in Germany, what the Bauer nicht kennt, das frisste nicht. Like what the farmer doesn't know, he doesn't like.

Yes. So let's be more conscious about it. Of course, music has also a physiological component to it. Like how we feel and perceive and receive music in a very physiological sense, like bodily. And if our reaction as Christians and we pretend to be normally...

We pretend to be educated and sophisticated, but if our reaction as Christian to foreign things or strange things is to demonize them, that's basic instinct, low level human thinking or human logic, like tribalism.

Okay, so yeah, everything I don't know is like from the demon. And even from a historic perspective, like people in the past that were not from Jewish tribes, how did they explain thunder and lightning?

Oh, it must be from a demon, right? So what these people are doing is kind of the same. They don't understand a certain element about a music they don't know. So it's not from God, it's not from the spirit.

These exalted language they are using to describe basic things of life. You know, one of the funny things that I go to in the Bible, when I hear something that's like this,

the cults have trained people and it goes beyond the cults, even in some Pentecostal charismatic circles. If you don't like something or you question whether you might not like something, it must be evil.

And there's no middle ground. You use the word demonize. Sometimes it's not even to the level of demonization. It's just they'll shut it off mentally, they'll completely shut it off. The Lord is speaking to me, I'm uncomfortable with this music.

I therefore must not like it. Yeah, yeah. But if you look at the way, I'm gonna use this example for all of the people who hated me for saying the thing about highway to hell, because I know there are people out there that did.

Yeah. Look at the Apostle Paul. When he's in, I think it's Athens, he goes up and there's the altar to the God with no name. Paul didn't say, no, that's evil. No, I feel uncomfortable.

No, the Spirit is telling me, don't talk about the God with no name. No, these people are worshipping a false God. He says, yes, I too serve the God with no name. He finds a middle ground and he finds ways to engage with the people.

And yet in these circles, even through, even right down to the music, they have been trained and manipulated that you cannot find that common ground. Because when you're uncomfortable, it must be the Spirit telling you and giving you this feeling of uncomfortableness.

Had Paul had that same indoctrinated program, think of how different that verse would read. I love how you connect this to his speech at the Arial Park. I love it. It's one of my favorite pieces of the entire Bible.

Because if you ever want to take a master class in how to reach people and how to bring across the gospel, then please read the Acts 14, is it right? So what is he doing?

a strange God and he connects it to the creator of the earth. All people are from one blood. So what he is doing is a masterclass of preaching there. So yeah, exactly like you said, if he was like, most of the Christians are, that's bad for me. I don't like it. The pagans, the bad deities there, this would never happen. There's so much that you can learn by just reading the Bible. That's one of the things that I have found. Not only does it remove this idea that when I feel uncomfortable that it must be a demon or it must be God telling me, don't move forward,

what it does, it's freeing. It enables you to move forward, but in ways that connect with other people. And when you find that common ground, you find that people aren't as bad as you were trained to believe in many of these movements. People are actually from the heart. The first time I went to a rock concert and I won't tell you the band because I will get hate mail. But it's kind of funny because I wanted to go outside of my element and I was purposefully making myself go outside of my element and doing things that I was uncomfortable with so that I could learn from that experience.

In many ways, I relate it back to if you were a normal, non-cult person and you were a teenager, you're going to go try to experience things because that's how you learn. I never got to do this.

So I would do things like this and I went to this rock concert anyway. And I'm out of my element, I'm listening to something that I thought that I would not like at all. And I suddenly realized that the people that are there beside me in this concert are really, really good people.

And I would have never dreamed or connected this while I was in the movement just simply because of the band that they listened to. And when you take it to that level and I go back to this Paul with the Unknown God, for me it was like the people next to me were worshipping the Unknown God and because they had that alter in their mind, I completely shut them off as they are the forbidden, they're a boundary I can't cross, I can't reach, I can't penetrate, I can't engage them.

And that's how this indoctrination works. I can't engage with the people who I am uncomfortable around. Music however, and part of the reason I wanted to do this podcast, music if you get past that barrier, music can bring everybody together, which makes it an even more powerful tool than the way that the charismatic used that tool. Yeah, because music is a connection for everyone, everyone can connect through music or mostly. And like I said, you have to make a connection to the people. And that's which basically means you have to meet them where they are, not where you are.

And Paul is doing this as well, in Jerusalem, they would start the gospel with, from the beginning, you are the sense of Abraham, and then they would tell the story of Israel, and so on, and so on, and so on. But at the Aureo Park, he's talking to Hellenistic, no, not even Hellenistic, but to what's the right word for it, pagans, to total pagans.

So, of course, he doesn't start with the history of Israel, there's no connection for them, between themselves and Israel. So he starts with, ah, I see, you are seeking for God, I saw the elements in your cities, wonderful, let's talk about it, and they don't even, he doesn't even make it about religion, talking about people and what they love and like, and what their consumes are, but he's, ah, he's not talking religion, he's talking the gospel, straight, but in a way, those people can understand. It ties very closely to another passage.

Paul is, I think it's a letter from Paul, and he's saying, basically, don't let any man limit your freedoms by telling you that you can't eat food that sacrifice to idols and all of these things. In these circles, they've, they've basically trained you not to partake. So me going to the concert, that's me engaging in something that was, is offensive to many of these people that are trained like this. Paul is basically saying the opposite thing, he's saying, you can engage, you're free to do this, but he always qualifies it if you read through his letters, you're free to do

the thing, but basically, in essence, if you summarize it, you're free to do it, be a Christian while you do it. So they don't get consumed by it. Don't get consumed by it, right? And I look at that, you know, I, I have no inclination to go eat food sacrifice to idols, because that is an ancient world, and it doesn't really apply so much today. How often do you come across food that is being sacrifice to idols? But if you apply that, it's very apical to exactly what we're talking about here. There are things that you can do that Paul would be, Paul would say comparably to what he's

saying with the food sacrifice to idols, you can partake in this music, be a Christian while you do it, you can go to this movie, you can do these things, be a Christian while you do it, don't let it consume you, you're basically free in Christ as the essence of what he's saying. And sometimes I feel like because the music has been weaponized against the people in these movements, the weapon itself, the leaders realize how powerful it is, they also realize the power of music if they're not in the charismatic circles. So part of me wonders whenever all of this was being orchestrated,

Some of the leaders didn't say, hey, look what we can do with this music in this group. I learned it because I went to this concert of who knows what. And I felt that same excitement.

We can have that same excitement in this church, but we must teach them never go find the source of that excitement outside of this church. I strongly feel that along the way some of these guys had to have done this.

I think so too. If I remember correctly, that's exactly how the PSA principles influenced many of the charismatic circles. But they would never talk about their sources. Like positive thinking is not a Christian concept.

But these guys, these charismatic cult leaders, read about it, implemented it into Christianity, but they would never discuss their sources out of jealousy or fear. I think first, even more, the fear to be not seen as the genius, as the creator, as the inspired person that brings this message from God.

Because as soon as you see from the perspective of the congregation, if they can learn about it in the world, like in the next library around the corner, then it's nothing special anymore. Absolutely.

And part of the reason for me thinking that way, this is a funny story. But in my past, whenever I was involved with all these ministries, I went to a Spanish-speaking community and went to their church.

And they sang the song that it stuck with me for probably 20 years. I was a small child when I heard it, but the song had such a rhythm and such a beat. And it went something like this, let the Holy Ghost message shine as light on you.

And this song, if you listen to the entire song, it's a very, very powerful song. And whenever I left the cult, and I listened to Credence Clearwater Revival for the first song, CCR, it's the Midnight Special.

So I'm listening to a song that is literally the music for Midnight Special, and they changed the words, put it into the Spanish-speaking communities. And the Spanish-speaking communities, they ate it up, this is our favorite song.

I remember a guy saying, this is our favorite song, oh boy, our favorite song. And that's the power of the music. They did not realize that many of those same people condemned anybody who's listening to rock and roll.

They were condemned, CCR. But they're singing the same music, the same, getting the same excitement, the same, they would call the spirits moving, it's the same thing. Had they gone to a CCR concert?

and felt the excitement in the CCR concert, they would experience the same thing.

We have a covers from Michael Jackson here in Germany, but people don't listen to Michael Jackson anymore, so no one knows. It's basically a Michael Jackson song.

So much good music. Well, I could talk about this forever. I think maybe we'll cut it off here, because there's a lot of people who maybe aren't as excited about music as we are, but thank you so much for doing this. For me, this has been incredible fun.

Yes, I could talk for hours about it this way. Maybe we do a fun off of something, yeah. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-Brandom.org and Sanktom Artifact YouTube channel. 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.