Secret History Behind Joel's Army and KCF

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 author of three books. The latest is some said they blundered breaking my decades of silence on Mike Pickle, the Kansas City prophets, and the international house of prayer. Bob is good to be back and you don't know this because you and I only connect you know every other week and

sometimes every third week. I've been digging deeply into the origins of the latarane movement and looking at the aftermath from many many different angles in my research. And there's one topic that I want to get into with you. I've actually been saving this one for you and it is surrounding the Joel's army theme, the manifestants of God. Whenever you are examining the new apostolic reformation from a modern sense, you look at this and you think this is a brand new thing. These guys are coming up with these ideas and they're purely evil men coming up with this theme to take control over the you know

dominion over the world, etc. But if you go back in history, things get a little bit. The water gets muddy. I'll just put it like that. And to share with you to catch you up, and I'll give you more details as we go, but there are a few things that I have discovered in the research, all of which tie together, which paint a broader picture of the foundation that was being laid that Mike Pickle, the Kansas City Fellowship, and others built upon. And I want to I want to give you some of that information on the foundation because I want to pick your

brain about some of the details of the Kansas City Fellowship. So there's two things I'll start with and I'll inject more as we go. But in the early years, William Brannum was a no name, pretend hillbilly from Jeffersonville, Indiana, which nobody's ever heard of. If not for Brannum, this is just a spot on the map that you don't even stop at. You stop at Louisville, and then you keep going, right? It's nowhere. So one of the things that has plagued my mind is to try to find how did he rise into such instant fame? What happened that made this no name hillbilly

turn into who he is? he was, and he was the foremost leader of the post-World War II healing revival. I knew that whenever I connected him to Roy Davis, who was the second and command of the clan, I knew that that was probably an outlet, but there's more to it than that, as I find out.

Through Davis's connections, there are multiple other spider webs of connections, long story short. On the west coast, and oddly, you can trace some of this lineage through the Onus Pentecostal groups and through the Four Square, which is Amy Simple McPherson's groups.

There was this coming together of the idea that they wanted to birth a new revival. They wanted a new thing, and suddenly there was this prophecy in a man named Harry Morse's Church about William Brannum, essentially claiming that Brannum was carrying the mantle of Smith-Wigglesworth, which is really odd.

It's not long after that. I want to say just weeks after that, boom, he's instantly famous. Brannum is claiming to raise the dead, which is fictitious, but he claimed it. All of this to write on the heels and the shirt tail of Smith-Wigglesworth, apparently.

You have that history. To augment this, there's another thing which I've not really talked about a lot yet. I intend to explore this deeper. There was a video produced by leaders of the Four Square sect called 20th Century Prophet.

Advertising William Brannum as the 20th Century Prophet. Interesting. Yeah. The church that this was, I don't know if it was funded by, definitely promoted by. There was a man by the name Paul Cop and his brother, Leroy Cop, and Leroy Cop was out of Calvary Temple, I think it was, on Lake Street.

Anyway, he holds this big revival. He's bringing in all of the Sharon Orphanage leaders, the heads. He's got George Houghton, Earn Houghton, Kurt Patrick, and from here would be birthed the explosion of what became the post-World War II healing revival.

It's also from this church that Roy Davis, who was Brannum's mentor, claimed to have connected William Brannum to Congressman William Upshaw, and this miracle of Upshaw rising to walk after decades of being a, the claim wasn't a wheelchair invalid.

So right from this epicenter comes this new thing that emerges. Well, embedded in that new things theology back in the late 1940s was this concept of Joel's army. So it's not a new thing, but I wanted to talk to you more about Joel's army as it related to not even IHOPKC, but go back and in your mind.

to the years of the Kansas City Fellowship. Let's talk through that a little bit. Well, back up for me for a second. Do you know what year? What year would you say was the coming out party for William Brown? Where he went from, you know, basically, obscurity to having this sort of national platform. Do you have a year or a time period?

I do. And it gets interesting because he lies about the year and the time period. The first, there were a couple of attempts at creating a ministry. One of them was in 1945. And that history is erased. If you go read any biography, it doesn't exist. But in my in my files, back in the room in the corner, I have an actual pamphlet from 1945 of his, I guess you call it the first one of the iterations of his healing ministry yet. He had multiple attempts at trying to create a stage persona and create a following. This was just one of them.

But then in 1947, he explodes in fame and all throughout the United States through Canada, likely on the heels of this Smith-Wigglesworth prophecy, this alleged Smith-Wigglesworth prophecy. He goes all over touring and he is suddenly overnight. He is instantly famous.

Well, where's the Joel's army? So, do you have a time frame when the Joel's army sort of prophecy thing became a thing? Like, is it predate the lettering William Brandon world or is it something that emerged in the region? I'm asking this is, again, what was the soil? It's interesting to me because what did we just come out of at that time, right? We just finished World War Two.

America was in this sort of euphoric state where we had defeated the forces of evil, you know, Germany, Japan. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We were sort of the dominant force and it's interesting to me because we're in this very patriotic kind of frame of mine, post-World War Two, and then Joel's army shows up, right? And it's like, oh yeah, right? It fits the cultural moment. Yes, we're going to have a spiritual army now. That's going to conquer the world, right? So, not only are we going to have a political system, you know, democracy,

right? Because the battle with became good versus evil, evil was communism, good was democracy, you know, the American, we went to war, so we get into the Cold War, but at the same time, there's suddenly this thing about Joel's army. And the Christians now are going to rise up and conquer. And I'm thinking Okay, this makes sense to me now because the culture was sort of primed already for this, right?

It's just handing, it fits hand in glove, like people are, yeah, we're already there. We're just going to do the Christian version of this now. So as I understand the history and somebody listening may correct me if I'm wrong.

This is just what I've been able to piece together. Pentecostalism was looking at the prophecy of Joel because specifically the phrase, and I may get this wrong, I'd have to look it up for the exact verbiage, but something to the effect, in the last days, I'll pull my spirit up on all flesh and your sons and daughters will prophesy, see visions, et cetera.

That was a theme that was in Pentecostalism already. So they were already looking at Joel's prophecy, and they had been doing that since Azusa Street, right? But Pentecostalism was kind of dying out, and they needed something that would excite and reignite the fervor of Pentecostalism.

They were really looking for something, which is probably the prophecy about what was worth. That was probably some form of euphoria or excitement that they could create the hype over, right? But what happened was once Israel became a nation, I can't find a direct source for Joel's army prophecy.

It's as though we've talked about cross-pollination, right, where these different ideas just kind of morph into one idea. You can find what is it called, the Latter-Rains publication. The main publication was called the Latter-Rain Evangel.

And if I remember correctly, it was like 1949-ish. It's the earliest publication of Joel's army that's like an official documentation. But it pre-existed this in the movement. So all of these guys are talking about it, and they say, well, we're looking at the prophecy of Joel.

Israel is this thing, and one thing leads to another, it morphs into this Joel's army doctrine. Well, what was the, they said, Jimmy Hicks, or Tommy Hicks, or something in Argentina. There's some real famous Pentecostal kind of prophecy down there about an end-time revival that I've seen associated with that name.

So that's what I'm curious if that was involved, but that was around that time. What's interesting, though, because we've been talking about this in the context of NAR and some other things, but it's interesting how the spiritual dynamics dovetail with manifest destiny, patriotism, nationalism, right?

In other words, I would imagine the whole Joel's army thing probably got tied into a patriotic kind of dynamic, I mean, I think a lot of people probably associated the two. because America was God's chosen nation, right?

So there's God's chosen people, the Israelites, and there's God's chosen people, the church, and then there's this chosen army. The reason why this is all fascinating to me, so let me back up a little bit to your original question about KCF.

Just so people can contextualize this. In 1982, when Mike I launched KCF, I was 25 years old.

I raised Catholic, spent seven years of my life as an existentialist, and then got saved in an evangelical environment. I had only been exposed to the charismatic Pentecostal world for a couple years. When we launched the church, I had a spiritual experience about how the church was going to be a prophetic church.

But it was a complete, and I write about it in the book, it was a completely different focus than what ended up developing. And Bob Jones was the linchpin to the shift. I felt like God wanted us to be a prophetic church in the way we lived and interacted.

Like the propheticness wasn't about prophecies and words of knowledge and all that. It was about the church being a reflection of Jesus that us speaking in the way that we lived and loved and cared for the poor and all that kind of stuff.

When Bob showed up in March of 83, it caught both Mike and I completely off guard. Like we never experienced this before. We'd been to a couple full gospel things, and it was a little hokey for us, you know what I mean?

I felt it was more of a show, and there was some manipulation going on, so I never really had a good feel about it. And then this guy, Bob Jones comes in, who's unlike any other human being I have ever met in my life.

And I am now 26 years old and still completely ignorant. So Bob was the first person to introduce us to the concept of Joel's army, right? So I'm so naive. I think this is original with Bob.

Like this is Bob's thing. Like he's prophesying stuff that God showed him, right? I don't learn honestly until probably, let's three years, four years, and I think we're now in 86, 86, and somewhere in that time frame, I started getting some checks in my spirit about things.

I mean, I'd had them before, but they were screaming at me now, right? It was like, you know, they were little nudges and then they went to like screaming at me. And so I was trying to figure out why I was so uncomfortable about a lot of things.

And of course, as we've discussed, David Harrell's book, all things are possible, was for me walking over the threshold as it were of ignorance to discovering what the Pentecostal world really was and where it had started, right?

So this is where I first kind of get my introduction and that's when I began to realize, oh my God, this stuff that Paul Cain now, who is, we've started to integrate with, this isn't original with these guys, they're just mimicking or repeating or aping something that's been there for 40 years.

And that was kind of like, oh, because they never explained that, right? The way it was always presented to us was that this was their revelation, right? In other words, they never qualified it, quantified it, contextualized it, nothing.

So I'm just always assuming it was them, like they had some sort of direct interaction with God and he told them this. So that was a little bit of a shock to me that, oh my goodness, this is just a rerun.

This is, right? We're rehashing something here. And that was for me, I think, from probably 86 to my final exit out of there in the fall of 89 was me struggling then with all of this.

And I think, you know, the thing I've appreciated about our friendship is it's really nice to have a conversation with somebody who this, who had a kind of a front row seat or at least a second row seat in some of this who has actual facts, data, information, like you're helping me kind of process even in our conversations what this was, right?

Cause I didn't know. I wasn't a pentacostal. So I had no idea where all this came from. But it had a huge impact and it affected everything we did. It became a part of our DNA, our cultural, spiritual DNA as a church, right?

Eventually Mike ended up wanting to start a school which he named Dominion, right? Because again, you know, it's all about, that was a combination of the pentacostal world and the Gary North and Rush Duney and...

All of those guys in their whole concept of dominionism, of Christians taking over and running the world. As we talked about previously, God helped us. That happens before Jesus comes back and he's actually running things.

If he comes back and sets up a millennial kingdom and rule and reign great, I'm all for that. But without him here, no thank you. I've seen enough. He cannot handle it. Us trying to run the world is a little bit like that first driving lesson.

You mentioned Tommy Hicks and that's another aspect. There are so many different angles to look at this manifest sons of God, Joel's army theme, that I've not even published a tenth of what is out there.

I'm talking about just the major ideas. You go into the spider webs and the rabbit holes and you could publish the rest of your life on it. Take this other piece of research that I've been working on.

I have published some of this, not all, but 1954 was a strange year. In 1954, the full gospel businessmen at the National Prayer Breakfast with Richard Nixon, vice president at that time, Nixon tells the men and women evangelists that communism has already came into America.

Essentially what he's saying, if you read between the lines, he's saying World War III is here. It's on our shores this time, but he says the battle is in our minds. The battle is not with weapons, it's in our minds.

He goes into examples of how this plays out. He gave charge to the evangelists that they needed to fight the battle. They needed to step up there, now the warriors. So the point I'm trying to drive at, because this ties into the Tommy Hicks thing, what happened was this.

You had people who are already kind of, the seeds were planted with this Joel's army theme. It had not really become militant. Dominionist idea was there, but it wasn't into the extremes that it became.

And then Nixon tells everybody, we're in a battle, you need to fight. You need to do whatever it takes to convince the masses. And whatever it takes is what scares me, because there were people, and we've seen examples of this, where they're actually using techniques of mind control and their congregations to try to change all of this.

They think they're fighting fire with fire, that type of thing. So Nixon gives this charge to the full gospel businessmen. Brandham starts working with a crazy figure. You can look him up. Baron William T. Freirey von Blumberg, who is a director in the Fellowship Foundation.

He becomes Brandham's campaign man. they go worldwide. They're taking this mission worldwide. Tommy Hicks, who is in... I thought it was Argentina, it was somewhere in... Yeah, it might be Argentina. Because I think it was tied in with the Perones or something. Yeah, exactly.

So he sees this vision of this giant figure laying across the continents and this is where really there are details that were added to Jules Army, one of which is they will become superhuman. Literally they believe they will become superhuman.

And that's part of his vision. Now it may have existed prior to him doing it, but he popularized that idea. And he would say, you know, the theme that came from his side was that these superhumans will do greater miracles than Jesus. They will defeat the spiritual opposition and the subdued and nations.

Those kind of themes were emanating from him. And it comes in the same exact year that all of this is taking place with the Fellowship Foundation, Nixon administration, all of this. Nixon would later use a Brannum sect and literally fight a weaponized World War III, a covert World War III.

You can look up Operation Condor and you can find that history. But in South America, they're actually using a Brannum compound to train the spy agencies, build weapons, etc. Well, I think if you again, let's contextualize this for people.

Communism is anti-god, right? In other words, it's a godless culture. And so the battle, right, at that time what you're talking about, the context is democracy versus communism. Democracy, which the American version is a Christian version, right? It's God in America.

Against this evil civilization that's godless communism. So it wasn't just a political, it wasn't defined as a political battle. Nixon was defining it as a spiritual battle, right? The goodness of America against the evil of the Soviets and the Chinese, right?

And so that's why he's recruiting the preachers, because he sees them as being the ones that are to help promote this battle, which of course Joel's army fits in so nicely. Oh, absolutely. Now we don't have tanks and B50 or the planes that, you know, those B, whatever, those, where those old drop in bombs, we now have a spiritual army that's American.

Absolutely. Yeah, so those themes, he's literally giving charge to the minister and empowering them, because every minister that was empowered, but Brannum is a clear example of this. You can look at Brannum's transcripts and he brags about Nixon.

and giving him this charge. And the things that he introduced after this, it's just, it's kind of insane. Many of the prophecies that he introduced after Nixon were surrounding the themes of Communism, and he claimed them decades prior to Nixon giving this charge.

But there's no reference of him ever saying these prophecies or visions before this. So this created a clear shift where the leaders in the religious movements, evangelical Christianity by and large, could now for the sake of a holy and the ends justify the means as we've been talking about, I can make up visions, I can make up spiritual things. I'm going to take dominion, spiritual dominion. So it doesn't matter how I get there, we're going to do guerrilla warfare in the minds of the people. That's literally what was being set up.

Yeah, and I mean, this is an observation. We'll see if it plays out. I think we're there again, only this time instead of democracy and Communism, it's Christianity versus Islam. You know what I mean? So this is going to be a religious war. It's not political system. I mean, it sort of is because in the Islamic culture, the religion dominates the politics, but this is brewing. You know what I mean? This New York, this whole mayor thing that's happening there is in many ways sort of a precursor of a larger battle that's going on. And I think you're going to see this same fervor, Joel's army, some version

of it, you know, fighting all of it, it's going to all going to keep hyping up again. You're going to see it or ramping up as the word I'm thinking. You're going to see this thing ramp up over the next four or five years. And it's going to be again, the battle to find between good and evil.

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So after all of this charge from Nixon and these ministers start claiming divine revelations and prophecies about... men lying across nations, et cetera. They went out to the nations, and now they tried to set up the scenario where they could claim dominion.

So they're spreading the movements, the Pentecostalism enters into the different nations. It gets weird when you think of the military situations that's happening if you look at Colonia Dignidad and some of that research.

But these men are establishing a worldwide footprint of Pentecostalism. What comes next ties also to the NAR. I think it is the year, I think it's just a few weeks after Nixon gives the speech.

The Voice of Healing magazine published this crusade, which was like, they're advertising a billion souls crusade. So if you think of today's billion soul harvest, this is nothing new. That's exactly what they were doing then.

And they're sending all of these men out to other men and women, out to these other nations, trying to do this billion soul harvest, which you know, and I know, if you're trying to forcibly convert a billion people, you're not doing much better than the Spanish Inquisition.

This doesn't really work with Christians. So that theme was established, and I'm curious, whenever it came all the way into IHOP KC, did the billion soul harvest themes were they there? No, it's something, just sidebar here.

It's interesting what you're talking about with Tommy Hicks and all that because, you know, I've got a long and deep relationship with the nation of Zimbabwe, and she walks on water there. And the reason is, it's 20 years ago, she prophesied about how Zimbabwe was going to change Africa.

In reality, Zimbabwe is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. It's also one of the most oppressive countries, you know, whatever. Now, that's not saying that God can't move because the generation that's super corrupt is on their last legs, they're all in their 80s, and they'll die off and we'll see what happens.

But I'm saying it's the same sort of concept again with these evangelists and preachers, which is they keep telling these nations what they want to hear or the people in these nations what they want to hear.

You know, we talked about, I think it was in one of our previous sessions about convenient theology. Well, we also have convenient prophecy, you know, one of the ways that you make money in the ministry is by telling people what they want to hear.

That's how you get invited back, right? So Cindy Jacobs, when she goes to Zimbabwe, they just, there's people there in the system that are very wealthy. And of course, she always gets lots of money, right?

Because she's telling them exactly what they want to hear. Even though these people can barely feed themselves.

So yeah. Nothing's changed has it it's the same. I mean one of the things I mean I'm laughing here because I'm an older than you but I never understood the concept of grumpy old men when I was younger Right, and now I think I kind of understand what a grumpy old man is a grumpy old man is a guy who's lived long enough to see the same Crap sorry for the swear word over and over and over repeating itself While people get caught up into it and get abused right it makes you grumpy It's like I get irritated now. It's it's like I see things

Happening out there in the ministry world and I get grumpy and I'm always going God you got to help me here Because I really got a bad attitude right now because I know there's really good things out there But the thing that seems to get depressed the seeing thing that was all over the internet is all the bad stuff And the good stuff where I have I have all kinds of people that I have wonderful stories of being healed and helped in the church world But you don't hear that stuff. You just hear all these horrible stories about all these leaders

That basically you know tickle people's ears. Yeah Absolutely, and it's augmented the grumpy old man syndrome. I have it and I'm I don't know how much older you are than me Probably not I'm going to be 69 in January. Okay. You're a little bit older But those of us who enjoy history and actually study and learn history We have it all the more because we see it repeating again again and again and the grumpy old man syndrome They hit me first was I was watching So this Joe's army theme. I've seen multiple people claim divine revelation on this. I say oh I had this vision and Joe's army all of yada yada yada

And to the audience listening who hasn't studied history they're like oh wow this is a new thing. Oh my gosh I've never heard of this. This is the greatest

But if you study the timeline so as I mentioned 1947 healing revival is birthed you have I guess you could call this the proto Joe's army. This is before it really takes shape and form Then the excitement of the revival comes 1948 lettering revival ideas start to come together and this cross-pollination of ideas is really What births it it again? I think it's 1949 is the first time in print But there's another backbone to this the feast of tabernacles You almost can't mention Joe's army without this book from war knock Who was if I remember correctly earned backsters the head of the one of the heads of the shepherding movement and brandems

Partner in the revival backster had a secretary George war knock who Heard all this doctrine put it into a book many people falsely claim that he came up with his idea, no, this came long before him.

He just basically bundled it up and publicized it. So in that, there were themes of dominion. I can't remember the exact verbage, but it's something to the effect. The church will rule and reign, and he's using Bible quotes to do it.

So you have this slight twist of dominionism. When that gets published, now you have this fertile ground where people in the movement are reading it and they're thinking, oh, well, what other dominionist ideas can I bring to the table?

And the cross-pollination happens, Nixon happens, and then Tommy Hicks prophecy all of this weird stuff. Now go up into the 1960s. When the shepherding movement took form, now you have Baxter, who's tied to all of this, and the idea that God is restoring control in a specifically or authoritarian control because of the shepherding movement, there were weird themes of government being established.

And I don't know that they came out right and said it. I'm still digging through all the shepherding publications, but the idea of government enters into this Joe's army thing. If you were to go back into the 1940s, these people aren't thinking government because my kingdom is not of this world.

But now when you're thinking dominion, control, this cross-pollination of ideas, that turns into, now we're going to go after the governments. So whenever you mention all of the nations that are excited about this, if those same nations knew that this would eventually turn into, we want to go after your government, I don't think that they would have anything to do with it.

Hey, question for you that just popped into my mind in this conversation. In Kansas City, the Joe's army was specifically framed in the context of young people, right? It wasn't everyone. It was this army of young people.

Is that consistent or was that unique to Kansas City? So that was actually the next word that was going to come out of my mouth. OK, we're tracking then. Well, think of the history.

So you had the Pentecostal movement, the Laterane movement, the Shepherding movement. Then you have the Jesus people. So that's where I'm going with this, because when the late 60s, early 70s, Chuck Smith, Costa Mesa, one of this fit that kind of world, I mean, their perception of what was going to happen.

It was that it. Well, think of what's happening here. So I've been trying to unpack this, and I'm fighting an uphill battle, because history has not been written correctly. And I get a lot of people who attack, and they say, no, that never happened.

Chuck Smith was not part of this. So you had the Jesus people. movement. He was Paul Kane's business manager. So he was a part of it. And he was very involved in the early days of the latter rain thing. So absolutely. And he was in the four square church, which is all part of this. There's so much. So much. He's tied to this.

Yeah. Absolutely. But think think of that. So you've got literally brand-ums campaign manager who's working with the shepherding movement. A person who's big into latter rain working with Paul Kane and the Jesus people movement. These two started to work together. And we have evidence of this. And John Wimber is the one whenever when the shepherding movement was imploding because they had been exposed as authoritarianism. John Wimber starts fighting with other big names to fight for unity bring bring all this together, right? So there was this cross pollination of ideas that is happening. Youth people on one side authoritarian control on the other. Let's bring

them together. Now does that mean Smith was an authoritarian not necessarily. But this cross pollination of ideas, it's like a, you know, it's a Hinds 57 type religion. You get whatever is being fed from from the other sides. And youth culture, as you said, I was actually going to ask you how deep that went. Youth culture became a theme. And you start to see like youth with a mission emerges. Right. Even that is not new. Campus crusade for Christ. Campus crusade for Christ. But see even that is not new. You already had it with Billy Graham's group, some other various groups.

But see what you didn't have with Billy Graham's group was the themes of dominion of authoritarian control. All of these things that are emerging that wasn't packed into the youth culture. But now it's exploding. So was the Jesus. This is where I'm trying to figure out here. I'm trying to connect the dots here. Did the latter rain guys see the Jesus people movement as the potential fulfillment of Joel's army? Think back to the latter rain revival when when its inception was happening. Brandama sweeping through Canada. All of this this hype. Who were the people who were

the main focus at that time? It was the youth in the Sharon orphanage. And there's a reason for this that not many people have thought about. In Joel, the chapter of Joel that Pentecostalism focused on, Joel too, your young young men, your sons and daughters will prophesy see visions. It's the son's daughters. And their phrase is if you keep reading that passage, it talks about they'll run up the walls, they'll climb into the houses like a thief. They're talking about a very agile, young people. So they're they're focusing on what is a young army. Whenever the latter rain movement

kind of died out, they wanted, they number one, like you said, the vultures saw the potential for money and it was dying out. We want to do this again. So you had on one side, you had vultures.

On the other side, you had people that really believe the theology where the young people now, old. And so what happened is Wagner in the 2000s, he started bringing in the idea that we need to change the culture. It has changed and morphed into today its nationalism, but you go through the 90s and 2000s, it turns into, we need to change the culture. The battle of the minds is now a battle of the culture. This charge from Nixon has actually shifted with the government changes and the political landscape. But it all comes back to this. They wanted a

youth culture. They wanted a group of people who would see visions and prophesy. They wanted to establish this thing that was Joel's army and it wasn't adults. So the people who are in today's world, New Apostolic Reformation, who don't even understand the theology, they're looking at the elderly, they're looking at people who are, you know, God's general figures. This is Joel's army, he's the general, but that's not the original that all of this was built on. It was the youth.

So I'm soon starting, I don't know if it comes out before this or after, but there is a lady who escaped a Y-Wam who's going to be talking about the mental battles that she fought in that culture.

I wanted to talk to you about the youth before I got too deep with her because there's so much more to explore. So the other reason I'm asking is as a historian and sociologist, it's very clear to me. We are there again, meaning that if you study what's going on and I guess turning point USA would sort of be a good example of what I'm talking about is is that history, as I've said before, moves like a drunk man coming out of a bar at 2am, it zigzags as every generation reacts to the one in front of it. So the grant, you know, we're my generation, it's my grandkids, right? That

generation now, the Gen Z, are turning out to be incredibly conservative. They are, we know this, again, if you're in the consulting world and the business world, I was there when the millennials hit the workforce, right? And the poor World War II generation who were all the CEOs were completely and utterly confused because they'd never seen this sort of mentality that these millennials had when they went into the workforce, right? This sense of entitlement, you know, wanting to come in at six figure salaries and, you know, CEO or C level things and you're like, wait a minute,

you just got a college, right? So I was there with all my consulting buddies trying to deal with this. Well, their children now are having a reaction to them and so there's this hunger now for traditional merit.

a hunger now for traditional values. There's this move, right? Now, all these religious leaders would like to take credit for that, and I am laughing because it's like this has nothing to do with any religious leader.

This is just humans, human dynamics, and the way gods built it into our DNA, we're having a reaction. Now, where's that gonna go? And who's gonna take advantage of it? Well, Charlie Kirk was way ahead of the curve.

Like, he saw this coming 10 years ago, right? So he jumped on this, and of course, it just exploded on him. Where it's gonna go in the future, well, I'm pretty sure humans are involved, so it's gonna get screwed up.

That's my prediction. It doesn't take a profit. It just takes somebody that's a little older and a little bit more experienced and know that humans are involved. So therefore, we have this lust for status and stuff.

Money and egos are gonna end up fragmenting a lot of it, and it'll end up being a lot of different groups, as everybody tries to be Charlie, right, and go. But despite all of this brokenness in the humans, God ends up using it in his own way.

It's all, we're there again. That's why this Joel's army thing is actually kind of relevant because there's a lot of people right now, even though they're not saying it because it's a very more evangelical than in his Pentecostal, it's the same mentality again.

We're raising up an army of young people that's going to transform America, right? And it's all based on a Judeo-Christian biblical worldview. So we're there again, just not using all the little terminologies. Now, I'm sure there's people in the movement that do use it because it's a pretty inclusive group and there are Pentecostals there, but you don't hear the terms thrown around like we did in the 80s when we had Jerry Falwell, you know, Pat Robertson, the moral majority, and we're gonna take the presidency, right?

That way it was like out there. Like we didn't hide it back then, but it was all driven by this underlying Joel's army,

you know, we're gonna take over the culture thing. So again, for people that are out there that are seeing all, there's nothing new under the sun. No, right? This goes all the way back of how we got a Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, way back in the, you know, like, you know, 25, 1500 years ago, right?

This keeps repeating itself again because it's what people want to hear. And we keep repeating it, repeating it, and it all really sounds good on the front end, and it always ends up fragmenting on the back.

again, because humans get involved and screw it up. Absolutely. The reason I bring it up is because Bob Jones had been basically a loose cannon in Kansas City. He had, you know, he had come out of that, you know, having this, you know, got struck by lightning, having had some mental issues, you know, had been put into a psychiatric hospital.

And then suddenly now there's all these kind of wild and crazy things going through his brain, right? Which is actually, if you study people struck by lightning, this is actually not unusual. This happens a lot.

He got rewired, you know, he got, you know, instead of 220 through 110, he got about 10,000, I mean, he seriously got jolted and it rewired him and he was trying to figure it out.

So I have a little bit of compassion because it's like it wasn't like he asked for this, you know what I mean, it happened to him. So he's running around Kansas City and, and of course, he doesn't last very long because he's just not a relational guy.

He does not know how to sit down and have a conversation like we're having. He's constantly got to be telling you what God told him, what God showed him, whatever it right. He's never one of you.

He's, he's always other, right? He's always in this other place. So for somebody that doesn't have a good for that, you just look at him and go, he's a crazy old man, like he's a nutcase, right?

The problem with us was, is there were some things that he said and things that happened that kind of got our attention and it's like, okay, but his whole thing was, I've been looking for this group of young people, Joel's army.

That's why I'm asking about the young people thing because he qualified it as Joel's army is young people and there's a whole church of young people. And so he saw us as, this is my place, like these are the people that look, well, I didn't know until talking to other people in Kansas City that he had tried this and other places.

It's just that the pastors of those churches didn't have the dynamism, the charisma and the strength of personality like Mike did, you know, Mike's very, very talented individual with a strong personality that can gather people.

So Bob and, you know, Mike were, you know, they were a duel. And again, if you go back and you look at biblical history, right, it's all his prophets and kings. There's this, that's a whole conversation we could have some time about the relationships between the prophets.

and the kings. There's always been a relationship between the church and government, always. And when it was the monarchy, it was the monarchs needed the blessing of the religious leaders, right, to reaffirm that they were God's choice, right? And so the political leaders had invested interest in making sure that the church leaders were taken care of.

And so what I call through history, it's this my little way of defining, but I call it the unholy alliance. That unholy alliance has been going on for a long time. You just reiterated it a few minutes ago with Nixon and religious leaders, right?

And I was laughing, or inside I was laughing, as you were talking, it's like, oh my God, if I even heard this a thousand times, right, and seen it over and over again, it's the same kind of thing. And you're seeing it again now, right?

And it's in the current White House, it's the same way, it's like bringing together the religious leaders. You have it on the right, and people on the left have it too, right, with the black churches in America.

I mean, all of these guys that are involved, well, the left is sort of split right now between those that are just anti-God, right? And then this whole base of people that come from, you know, the church world, which are, you know, the Hispanics are very Catholic.

You know, the black community is very pentacostal, so those are very tied in to that side of the equation. So this whole battle, again, for me, I sort of sit in the stands with my popcorn and watch the game.

I would agree. But, you know, part of the reason I wanted to do this, and you went there. I wanted to make sure that you went there and not me, because I did not want to sway the conversation.

I stepped in it then. You have stepped in it. So I've talked about how I hop KC after the Kansas City Fellowship, what it developed into is basically Brannemism 2.0. It really was.

And if you understand what they were trying to achieve in Kansas City, yet Bob Jones, whose full of Brannemism understands Brannemism, understands Joe's Army, yet Paul Cain, who is literally Brannem's protege, the young men were going to suddenly rise up and dream dreams, and all of the miracles that's involved with the between the line statements in that passage of Joe.

They were trying to recreate this, and I understand that ideology, and I have sympathy for everyone involved. I actually have sympathy for not only the youth, but for the leadership involved with this. Some of the leadership involved, from my own experience, there were youth who grew up to be leaders.

So some of the leaders may have even been exposed to this as a child. I have compassion for it. I really do feel sorry for them. Well, one of the most horrific... stories for me as someone who's done a lot of counseling. The ministry, guys, was hearing Augustine a call a story. And for those who don't know, Augustine was the guy who prophesied to Mike in St. Louis that God was going to put him on another path. I had never met Augustine. And so I was taking Mike's rendition of the story from his perspective. So you can

imagine in 1983 when Augustine shows up at church and there's a five foot two effeminate human being who is so broken that my head is just spinning. And I'm going this is that. You know, I had in my head, right, based on Mike's rendition of the story, he created this image of just really, you know, prophetic voice like Elijah, you know what I mean? Somebody that was really, and I got this effeminate little mousey guy who by the way was a spit in the mental bloody frisbee for those who don't know Lonnie. Anyways, long story short, as I tend to do,

you cannot drive 10, 10 trucks over one ton bridges, meaning you're never going to get people to tell you their story until they trust you. So it took me a couple years to get Augustine to trust me. And finally, one day, he told me his story, which was he was a very dynamic little kid who could get up and preach, which is a big thing, as you know, in the Pentecostal world, child evangelist. There's all movie, Marjo put out back in the 70s about his story. Long story short, like so many of these other guys, the Pentecostal world was filled with business managers. And that's

what they call themselves, business managers. Chuck Smith was a business manager for Paul Kane. Well, these two guys went to Augustine's parents and said, hey, this kid's gifted, we can take him on the road. He's anointed, right? And convinced his parents to turn him over to them, which they proceeded then over the next few years to sexually abuse him the whole time. So they're going from church to church, making money, teaching him how to manipulate people with his gift while they're raping him. Now, that's really gross. But I just want people to understand that there's a sewer.

Yeah. There are so many dark secrets I know out there. There's such brokenness and What makes me nervous just to be frank with everyone is Joel's army scares me because it's the most vulnerable group Other than little children and children's church, right?

The group that's so vulnerable that they always go after is that 18 to 30-year-old group The Joel's army so it's like this weird spiritual prophetic space that all of these people that are wannabes kind of flood into because it's an easy group to control and manipulate and so I you know I get red flags about Joel's army to be quite honest with you and it's only based on you know 40 plus years of living in this world and seeing what happens and So I you know you know whether you know You know a group of young people end up somehow becoming Joel's army, you know history the future will tell all that I'm just saying

It's just again convenient theology That people want to hear that in the long run has been used to manipulate people and you're Friend with I have a lot of experience with the Y-Wam world So your friends gonna or your lady that's gonna come on to tell stories because it's all about manipulation and control, right and people Sacrificing everything they had the reason just FYI when I've spent the last You know a couple years after the book came out During a ton of counseling and there's a lot of really angry people out there and the reason is is they gave their best years in their mind to

mind Dickel They gave you know anywhere from a decade some of them 20 years they sacrificed careers They sacrificed Relationships they suck all kinds and Y-Wam was the same way And there's a lot of people that hit 40 and go what did I just do and They spend the 40 to 50 trying to reclaim their lives and Go back to college and try it right, but oh, you know in some ways they're just too late and That happened with Keith Greene's Outfit, you know down in Lindale, Texas It happened with a lot of the you know Jesus people thing and again the other thing that drove that was the eminent return of Jesus

Right so Joel's army it was the thing that drove me not so it was not only young people Joel's army. It was all Eminent Right? Every year Bob Jones got up and this was the year. The revival was going to break out and Joel's army was going to emerge.

So that was 1983 and we're in 2025. And it never, it's never happened. Not even close. And that's the same culture I grew up in. It's any day now, it's any minute now. You are getting ready to see the fulfillment of this thing that never ever comes.

So it's a carrot, the spiritual carrot, right? Yeah, exactly. It's always right there. And you never quite get there. And so I just feel bad. You know, I know there's a lot of people that listen to the podcast that have come out of these kind of situations. And my heart really goes out to you because it's.

It's, it's, that's a hard reality. Check the face. And you know, there's just years, you know, it's sort of funny because Joel's army turned out to be a locusts. Yeah. That ate the best. There's some of the best years of your life, right? It's this absolutely paradox there, right?

I never understand that once I was able to read the Bible for myself and understand, wait a minute, the locusts aren't the good guys in their story. So there's been a lot of locusts that have eaten, eaten away some of the prime years of people's lives that were driven there by religious leaders.

Yeah, it is. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay. Well, you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.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.

Thank you so much. Thank you. You