From Holiness to Confusion: The New Face of American Christianity

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, the host of Sanctum Artifact. Christian, it's good to be back and you have blown my mind. I did not know that this website and these surveys existed but you proposed the idea of talking about it on the podcast and I have to say this may be one of the more interesting things that I've actually had on the

podcast. There's a website anybody can go there it's called the state of theology.com and the well I'll just read what they advertise they say what do Americans in 2025 believe about God the Bible and salvation and I can't pronounce this name Lagonia Ministries I guess and Lifeway Research have partnered to find out so when I saw this I thought I don't know if I'm interested in this or not but when I started reading through the questions it's a little bit unbelievable. I knew that Christianity had changed even significantly in the last five or ten years but I had no idea to the extent of

how much it had changed. Things that I do not consider some of the doctrines that the charismatic movement have pushed as vital to Christianity and some of which are even questionable they I don't consider those as valid questions for worldview. I just go back to the basics and what I'm finding out by looking through these answers even just the basics of what is a Christian worldview.

There is a strong division between people who on one hand they believe it on on the other hand they disagree they strongly some of them strongly disagree and this is again this is a survey to actual people who believe that they are Christians so it's a good thing that good thing to go through and a good thing to understand that Christianity today is just not what it seems so thank you so much for sharing this with me and I'm excited to get into it. Yeah it's a survey that is they do it every year from from Ligonier that's the ministry that

RC Sproul founded and they do it every year and I like to look at those surveys other ones too because Yeah, they give us a bigger picture of what the state of Christianity is as a whole, especially for people that are not able to dig as deep as we do into the weeds, right?

And for our purpose, it's very interesting that we see the same issues that we usually connect to Carismania within a broader sense of Christianity. The basic questions are the same, the sentiments are the same, the superficial views of God are the same, and that's the angle point, that's the main point, I think, people have basically the wrong view of God. And from there on, they develop their own theology. Asi Sproul always said, everyone is a theologian, but they are bad ones. So sometimes your view of God is a matter of education and maturity. I said, it's a

lot, but it's true. And I think we will see that throughout the survey. And one thing I'll add to that is your view of God is often your parents view of God. There are many people who are Christian only because their parents are Christian and have never actually looked to see what it is they believe in why. But yeah, this survey that you've sent is quite a read when you read through the sentences and look to the answers. One of the biggest ones that I am just puzzled by, I guess it's even the first question on mine, I don't know how it is for you, but God is a perfect

being and cannot make a mistake. Yeah, more interestingly, I think it is that many people in the survey said, I have it right in front of me. Yes, God is perfect. It's about like 53%. Said, yeah, I strongly agree. If we take the somewhat agree into account as well, we are at nearly 70% of all participants would say, yes, God is a perfect being cannot make mistake. The mistakes, but if they were asked about is the Bible true and without error, the majority would say yes. So very interesting there. It is. Yeah. And you know, going through this. So one of the things that I've come to realize

by studying all of this history is that whenever you had Christian fundamentalism mixed in with Pentecostalism and formed various different varieties of views on Christianity, God, the Bible, one of the things that it did was it changed the nature of God to one that the people feared.

and one that the people began to understood and understand was not in control. In other words, if I can make a mistake that is something that God cannot control and help me through, I'm in danger of losing my eternal salvation.

That's largely how, when I grew up, that's largely the theology that was presented. And then whenever I left the Brannum religion and started trying out different churches, it was odd to me to find, after studying the Bible, that there are churches outside of these cults that also believe that God is just simply not in control.

And you know, you take a step back and you look at it and wonder, well, if you don't believe God is in control and you have this weak God, why are you in church in the first place?

Yeah, yeah. And that would be quite scary as well. If you think that through to the end, if God wasn't perfect, or wasn't, that's one of the questions, do you think God can change?

If God could change, he would be a tyrant. He would be a tyrant because he would change his opinions. He would change his morals. He would change his attributes just like we do. And therefore he is not perfect.

And yeah, that would be very scary. Then he would not be a holy God, but a tyrant, with more power than we have. Therefore we are slaves. And the other thing that I'm noticing from this, in fact, the one that you just mentioned, does God change?

There are large numbers of people who have been manipulated to understand God differently based off of the loaded language of the sect and the misuse of passages of scripture in whatever sect it is.

One of the phrases that we heard over and over and over again, is that Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever, a large number of people don't understand the covenants. And so when they hear the phrase Jesus Christ the same yesterday and forever, they're thinking that it's the same matter of salvation.

It's the same plan of salvation. And in fact, I was reading an article just last night. They were talking about how the salvation for the Jews was much the same as the salvation for the early Christians because Jesus's nature could never change.

Otherwise, he's violating that passage. And they're not understanding the concept of how there wasn't old covenants and there was a reason for the law. And then Jesus came to save the people who had fallen under the sin, the curse of sin that was under that law.

And so by overloading these passages, what happens is people will answer these questions based off of their confusion. And that's what I'm seeing in a large number of these questions is just simply confusion.

If you look at... the Israelites before Canaan, before Joshua took them through the promised land.

It's as if the relationship between God and the Israelites is like God does something good for them and they start to make demands. They start to think they are entitled to a certain treatment.

Why is he not giving us? Why is he not freeing us from, etc., etc., and they

yeah, basically have a totally wrong view of him and in that regard, the law works as a mirror for us. Time and time again, you are overstepping or you are sinning to use a similar term, yeah.

And then that moment, you should recognize, okay, it's not that easy, maybe I shouldn't make demands, maybe I'm not as entitled to a better treatment, a special treatment by God as I think I deserve, right? And so in that regard, the law works as a mirror. But if you view the law as a means of as a tool of salvation, like solving a puzzle, doing the right steps, one, two, three, four, five, then it's not about faith anymore or trust as a better word, a more modern word.

Then it's about you, your works, and then it's about religion. Theology puts God in the center of thinking of our worldview and of our way we interact with our environment and with God himself.

Religion puts man in the center of his deeds, his works, and he works his salvation out. And the tools of his salvation become interchangeable. Sometimes it's the food you're allowed to eat or you eat the clothes you wear, the things you say, the things you think, the prayers you prayed, I think you get the point. And this confusion is all over the place. And the survey we have before us is just a perfect example for that because it's an expression of how people don't understand who God is, how people don't understand what the gospel is. And these two things are the most basic,

yeah, most basic, I like the terms to describe it better, but they're a most basic things to understand in your walk with God, who God is and why we need the gospel. And we need the gospel because of the difference between us and God.

God is holy. We are not. How can a holy, righteous God have a relationship with a non-perfect, sinful being? That's the question. And the bridge between that, this tension, these things that are not able to come together is the gospel.

Someone else, an external force, had to make us righteous in the eyes of God, before God, so that we are able to put it this way, that he is able to have a relationship with us without sinning, without losing his holiness, his holy nature.

You know, like I said earlier, there are many questions in here that are asked many different ways. But it's the same question. I have studied psychology quite a bit and I've taken several of these personality tests and I've even been required to by some of my clients.

And the personality tests are much the same. They will ask you the same exact thing, 10 or 15 different ways because the person answering may be biased by the wording of the question itself.

And you get a better view into what they believe and how they feel and their personality. Well, this test is doing the same thing. One of the things that I noticed, which relates to what we just talked about a bit.

And again, this is a survey given to Christian people. And I was just blown away whenever I saw the question, Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God. When you look at this, so this is Christianity, this is the Christian religion.

This is, Jesus is supposed to be God in the Christian religion. Otherwise, you know, it's not the same religion at all. But when you look at the answers, it's almost, you know, not quite, but very close to 50% on either side of that question.

And it all goes back to exactly what I said before. The ways that these movements have swayed the views of God has changed the DNA of Christianity. So much so that Jesus is not God.

I, in fact, I had this conversation. It's a little bit ironic that that question is here. I've had this conversation with three different podcast guests and there are many scenarios in which the latarane movement, the Pentecostal movement, charismatic, and now the New Apostolic Reformation, they have this doctrine that seemed to stick that Jesus was just human flesh.

Of course, it changes the entire premise. If the premise is, Jesus was only a teacher who showed us the way. Let's say it like this, yeah. Then you, Of course, need more than Jesus, right? We need Jesus plus. So righteous works, the right religion, the right clove, etc., etc. And that's where all the cults received their energy from in some kind of way. Exactly. The idea is that within these movements, and especially the manifested sons of God, Jesus was not God. He was a human, but he was the manifestation of God whenever God thought, and I thought became spoken, and the spoken was the word. In the beginning was the

word, the word was with God, the word was God. They try to say that that phrase was God thinking and speaking aloud, and the spirit going down and turning Jesus a human into a superhuman.

And so one of the doctrines that I grew up with was that Jesus was just human flesh. He was fully human when he died on the cross. And if you really stop and think about that, what if I die on the cross? Can I save the world? I'm just a human. It doesn't make sense. It changes the DNA of the Christian religion. But the point I'm trying to make of this is the same questions are being asked in different ways. Is God unchanging? Will you see a much different set of answers? People would agree that God is unchanging, but as Jesus God, there is a very strong division.

And it all comes back down to the changing of the nature of Christ by these movements. Yeah, maybe it's interesting if we look what I did when I read the survey or when I worked through the survey was I ascribed topics to certain questions and came up with like three main topics. The first one was questions about God's character and his holiness.

The second one was what I call the gospel issue when the question was related to the gospel, the nature of Christ or what he did for us. And the third topic I came up with was an issue of worldview. And from there, I tried to look for contradictions between the answers because it is exactly as you said. It's often the same question just with a little bit of different language. So it's very interesting that people then start to answer in a different way or less bold, I would say. And from there on, you start to see or realize discrepancies in the share,

excuse my bad English and in the share of participants in relation to the answers. Should we look? Maybe that's interesting. If we just look up the contradictions that I have found. For example, the first contradiction that I have found was between question one and question four.

So question one is, God is a perfect being, cannot make a mistake. Question four is God is unchanging. Very interesting, God is a perfect being. If we said it before, if we take the agreeing participants, we come to almost 70% would say, yes, God is a perfect being.

But if we come to God is unchanging, it suddenly changes. God is a perfect being. There's a bigger group that would disagree. They would say, no, God is not perfect. But a bigger part of that participants would say, he is unchanging.

So there's our first contradiction. If God is perfect, of course, he wouldn't change because right from the beginning, he is always the same. He is infinite, almighty, unchanging, always righteous, always loving, et cetera, et cetera.

But if he isn't perfect, of course, he would change. It's only a small part of the participants changing the opinion. But if their premise would be, God is perfect. In a true sense, they couldn't say he is changing, right?

Well, where that gets interesting, if you're in one of these movements and you're hearing the parts of the doctrine that are to excite you and make you want to join, if you're, especially the love bombing techniques, whenever they're appealing to new potential converts, the Jesus that they give you is a Jesus that's loving, welcoming, going to make you happy.

It's a very happy, warm feeling that you get. Once you get sucked in in the more destructive versions of it, the Jesus becomes an angry God of wrath. And so what people are taught to believe in some of these movements is that Jesus does change.

He changes on, based on whether you're a member or not. If you're not a member, it's a loving God. Yes, you want, why would I not want this Jesus? But then once you get in there, it's not the same Jesus that they advertised.

Yeah, they changed the playbook, right? To lure you in, to bind you.

Another interesting contradiction that I found is between 12, 14 and 15. Maybe start, I start by reading 15. Question was, everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God. And most of the participants see.

Seriously, like 20, yeah, almost 80% would say, yes, I agree. Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God. So I then go over to 14, which says, God counts a person as righteous, not because of one's works, but only because of one's faith in Jesus Christ.

Born innocent, but we still need a savior, which we have to put our faith into. And then there's 12, everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature. And that's the crux, I would say in German, because for them, sin is not a matter of nature, but a matter of deeds, 15, and there's a discrepancy, says everyone is born innocent.

So we have an innocent nature, which becomes dirty, like muddy water over time. So some people need more Jesus, other people need less Jesus. There's some people need lots of Holy Ghost, other people need less Holy Ghost.

It is interesting. And like I said, after I left the Branum religion, I started trying out different mainstream churches. And what was interesting is you see that wide variety among, even locally, even among the churches that have attended here.

I went to one that was very Calvinist, and this church would say things like even the minister would point to his children, his own children, who were not even yet five years old, and say, these are the worst, lowliest sinners.

They were born to sin, they're born evil, and you know, he's condemning his own children from behind the pulpit. And it just didn't feel right to me, but I was learning at that time.

Now I look back on this, and it's not even the way that you treat a dog. If you want a dog to do better, you don't continually say, this is a bad dog. You say, good dog, and you reward the good, not focus on the bad, right?

And there are so many different people who are in Christianity, who are trained to believe that you focus on the negative and that the nature of sin is embedded such that every person wants to be the worst sinner ever.

And that's just not quite true. If you get to know people, even people who aren't Christian, there is a morality that happens among humans, humanity, that however you present it to the people, you can't say that this person who's never even heard the name Jesus Christ are doing all of these good deeds, but you have to separate the good deeds from what is Christianity. And I think that's where it gets a little bit complicated because some of the ministers are trying to say, trying to merge the two. They're trying to say that the nature of sin is also the same nature as the humanity, and it's not quite the same.

Many people tend to think that the gospel is not exclusive, but it is. If religion was all about your works, then you don't need Christ, you don't need Christianity, or even more Christianity is interchangeable. And we can talk later a bit more about it, because there's a question related to that. But I have a discrepancy that is even more blatant than the other ones. The other ones were somewhat nuanced, and you have to have a healthy theology already to make very certain distinctions there. But let's take a very blatant one.

Statement 17 is, the Bible is 100% accurate in all that it teaches. Interestingly,

49% of the participants would say, I agree, 49. The next question is, modern science disproves the Bible. And all of a sudden, we only have 36% of the participants agreeing on that statement. That's a direct contradiction. Almost 50% of the participants would say the Bible is 100% accurate in all that it teaches. And just one question later, from that nearly 50%, only 36% are left. So the Bible is 100% accurate, but modern science disproves the Bible.

Aha. Okay. So this question that about the accuracy of the Bible, it's the one that interests me the most. And I was actually saving it for the climax, because it is one of the things that I have studied to no end. Whenever I first left the cults, I started doing apologetics for a long period of time. And probably I think two years even. And I was working with other people.

You put the Bible to the test. Well, no, I was actually helping people who were putting the Bible to the test. I was, there were people who just had real questions. And I thought the best way for me to understand what the questions are was to work with the people who are trying to answer the questions for people that have them. And that way, I would, it was like a crashed corpse.

and learning the Bible because if you do this, you're forced to try to learn what is the answer to this and you try to give an honest answer. What's interesting is among the people that I was working with in this forum, you could clearly tell some of them were just pig-headed. If they didn't know an answer, they would condemn the person asking and that didn't sit right with me. I'm not that way.

I want to learn what is the truth. I don't want to be bullied into the truth. But there were other people who were very sincere. If they knew the answer, they would tell you or look it up and find it and if there just simply wasn't a good answer, they would say, well, I just don't know. There's not a real good answer to this question. But what I came to understand through doing this exercise is number one, this is something that every Christian should do. If you believe the Bible and you believe that everybody should be Christian and there's a large number of people who are

questioning your faith, you need to be able to answer these questions. And more to the point, if they are going to be eternally lost by your own belief set, why would you not try to go help them? So I'm shocked that every minister in the nation doesn't do this, but that's another thought for another day. But what I learned was many, and this is based on many of the questions and watching many of the answers. Many people are falsely taught what the Bible is.

And part of the reason why I found this so interesting, modern science disproves the Bible, for instance, that is like that is the equivalent of saying modern science disproves the library. Well, which book in the library does it disprove? The Bible is not just one book. The Bible is a canon of books. It is different books and there's different genres of books. Some of those genres include people who are saying to the best of their witness testimony what they saw. And they're saying it in a culture that is compared to ours somewhat primitive. So their answers are going to be

somewhat different than we would even understand. Their level of understanding isn't even to the same level as us. So asking the question itself is a little bit invalid, which is kind of funny when you consider that this test is intended to understand Christianity better. But I get where it is heading. It's trying to see how many people believe that the Bible is the ultimate accurate word of truth in such a way that they are fundamentalists. That's really when you get behind it, that's what this question is asking. Are you a fundamentalist or are you not? And as I'm studying

through some of the ways in which people have been falsely taught the Bible, they're falsely taught in such a way that if modern Science is to disagree with the person who's writing at the during the century in which they're writing it.

Then people are going to say, well, modern science is flawed. 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 Branham Historical Research's website, William-Branham.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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There's definitely a bigger picture to it, as you said, maybe that's even a another worthy of another podcast. But let me say this. First, I think it's a systemic problem, a cultural problem. Because if there is a question, I can't answer.

That's not an ad hominem. That's not a personal thing for me. The better mindset is to take it as a challenge for you to learn and to grow. That's the habit of a learner, lifelong learner.

I would take that. And on the other side, you said, maybe the language of that time was the way it is, because the people were maybe somewhat more primitive than we are. And I would say, yeah, to a certainty read, that's true, because nowadays, in German, I really don't have the language for it.

But in Germany, German translation would call it you, every day you learn more and more about the gospel, the Bible, the history, the character of God, and so on and so on. And on top of that, so there's your interaction with God, you are reading the Bible, the Holy Ghost reveals something to you or calls you to God's Word.

But there are even tools and techniques that we have now, there's scientific methods that we have nowadays to prove that the Bible, is right that the historical account of the Bible is right. The historical account of the Gospels are right. For example, we have detectives making a living out of using their methods of a crime research to prove that the Gospels are right. And one other good example that I want to hand over to your audience is a method called or a principle called undesigned coincidence.

It was made known to a broader public by Lydia McGrou. It's not an old principle but she brought to a modern audience undesigned coincidence. And she's a specialist for that. She has a very interesting podcast. Maybe you can connect. She has written several books about this, undesigned coincidences. And yeah, just proof that the Gospels and the Bible as a whole, yeah, it's 100% and errant, truthful, and historical, correct. And for any who are unfamiliar with this, it's the idea that if you have a Bible canon and you have different authors writing at different time periods who have no idea of each other and especially have no idea what will be written

in the future, it seems unlikely that they would create subtle hints of cross references to the same ideas. And that's essentially what this means. The Bible is proving itself by the links contained within it across time. It's a theory. I've came across that theory. I'm not certain that I agree to the full extent, but what I do agree on is that whenever you're trying to understand the Bible and you're trying to understand it in the way that especially the Christian fundamentalism taught you that it is literally breathed by God. Every word was painted by God. I don't know if

you even have this weirdness in Germany, but it can't stand up to scrutiny when you do this, because if I'm writing a book, even if I'm under the inspiration of God, I'm writing from the perspective that I know even under the inspiration of God and the mistakes that I make will make it into my writing. However, whenever you compare some of the historical accounts, for example, there are instances even within the Bible texts itself where the historical accounts are different based on the author and to complicate it even more based on the history of the translation of the

text. There's... There's text variants, et cetera, which is another. It's a big topic larger than this podcast, but when you try to understand all of that complexity and fit it into a true or false, black or white, on or off, it's a very cultish mindset.

It things aren't as black or white as they try to make it out to be. Maybe we can jump to the next discrepancy that I found. People should be able to choose their gender regardless of their biological sex.

Just one question later, the Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn't apply to them. So if you're in the group of people that just answered, yes, I agree, the Bible's 100% accurate in all that it teaches, you shouldn't be in the group.

The Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn't apply today. So they have to ask, what is truth? Is there objective truth? Is God perfect? If you were in the group that said, yes, God is perfect.

How can his word not be perfect? There's a huge tension, a growing tension between your view of God and the discrepancies that start to arise when your world view and your social habitus stands in tension or even contradiction to God's word.

That's, yeah, your social habitus, your worldview will put your beliefs about God about Jesus to the test when it comes to these kind of questions. Then let's take a statement 30 into account as well.

It says, the Bible has the authority to tell us what we must do. So if you're in a group that says, people should be able to choose their gender or the Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn't apply today.

But you're saying the Bible has the authority to tell us what we must do. I hope you see the contradiction. One of them that's really interesting to me and it could probably be used to sum up all of this.

There's a question, it says, religious belief is not about objective truth. And when you look at the answers, it's kind of unbelievable because there is a good even split on each side of this.

And it really comes down to the fact that whenever people are trained and manipulated into a belief set that cannot be proven and they're working with these men who are claiming to be apostles who are making these boisterous claims that many times don't come true, it devalues truth.

people aren't really concerned with truth as part of their worldview, and yet, at the same time, if you understand what the Bible is saying, that concept that we don't have to believe in truth, it's actually anti-Christian. Yeah, absolutely, because if you take the biblical account for what it is, then love and truth are the same. But if you think, if you then step outside of your door, go into the world and just subtly think, there is no objective truth. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, every opinion, every emotion can be true, then you are contradicting your own

faith, your own view of God. Exactly. And followed right on the heels of that, the question, the Bible is the highest authority for what I believe. Now again, this is a test given to Christians.

And it's not as even of a split, but there's almost an even split. So I have to ask if you're Christian and the Bible is not your highest authority, well, what is your highest authority?

I mean, everything we think about God and about ourselves is just the grounds of our deeds later on. Right? Our deeds are the expression of what we think about what we feel or about what we know about truth. So here's another very, very interesting and I think very consequential contradiction here. Statement 20, hell is a real place where certain people will be punished forever. Interestingly, 21, 37, so we have 48% of the participants agreed. Yes, hell is real.

People will be punished forever. Head over to 21. There will be a time when Jesus Christ returns to judge all the people who have lived strongly, nearly over 60% of the people would say, yes, that's true. Jesus Christ will return. And here's the, here's the kicker. We had over to 33. It's very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their savior. And all of a sudden, we drop from almost 60% to 30% in the part of strongly agree. And only 23% to somewhat agree. And that's interesting. The same people that said, yes,

hell is real. Yes, you will be punished for your sin. Are the same people maybe that say, no, it's not that important for me to encourage other people to trust in Christ. So are you not afraid?

for them or their lives? How can you not? If you know that's a reality, how isn't that your biggest motivation, when it's not love?

If it's not hell, what else can be a motivation to share the gospel with other people? You know of all the questions that are here, this is the one that bothers me the most.

Whenever you look at this and like you say, it's it's unbelievable how many people in Christianity disagree with this statement. Whenever I came to understand that we were in a religion that was offensive to other Christians, it bothered me. Once I began to understand this, but worse, after I started studying and examining the broader movement, I came to realize that there are many people within the Christian religion who have actually given Christianity a bad name and they have become offensive to the wider community.

And what you get within this is now you have members within this religion who are actually ashamed to tell other people are you know, try to invite them to come to church or try to invite them to believe in Jesus because they know how the outside sees them so they won't go outside. Then you have within the more destructive groups, you have people who are actually trained to believe that the outside world is already condemned.

You have no need to go and invite them to become Christian. Therefore, they're lost and we don't care that they're lost. And it's those destructive ones that are actually giving the broader movement the bad name.

To the extent I have had conversations with people who have escaped the New Apostolic Reformation or Charismatic Movement. And they tell me, John, I actually don't even tell people that I'm a Christian. I'm embarrassed to do it. Not that I'm not a Christian, but because the other people, whenever they hear this word, they're branding me immediately with flags of Trump or different things that have nothing to do with Christianity.

You know, they say, I'm embarrassed to say this. So one person told me, I just tell them I'm a follower of Jesus. And that's good enough. They don't have to know that I'm that I'm a believer of this.

But what it has done is again, it has skewed the religion and its membership to be embarrassed of what it is that they believe. And I don't think many of the leaders who are truly trying to be Christian leaders, not talking about the scoundrels who aren't Christian, who are just doing his money.

I think that they don't realize how bad the doctrines are that they're teaching. Yes, because that's the weight that they put on other people's souls. Or consciousness, right? Maybe it's helpful to share a perspective here.

A person that is in the first place ashamed or afraid to share the gospel or to say I am a Christian, is in a positive sense aware that other peoples have caricatures of what a Christian is in their mind.

So the first step to overcome that is to recognize I am not that caricature. Here in Germany, many people think of Christians like a wild mix of Catholic, Illuminati stuff and Dan Brown novels.

Dan Brown was the worst thing ever happened to modern Christianity because he is a widely popular, maybe you know the Illuminati movies with, yeah. So that's the sentiment, the picture, the caricature that most people outside of Christianity have when they think about Christians or they think about a Jehovah's Witnesses strange people at my door, yeah, when they think about Christians.

So make yourself be aware that you are not that caricature and you have an opportunity to overcome that caricature to tell this person what a true Christian is, what Christianity is really about. It doesn't mean you have to condemn or start the conversations by I hate Catholics, I am not a Jehovah's Witnesses like starting from a negative standpoint.

But you can say what's your view of Christianity and then they will start to share their caricature of Christianity of course they don't know what a Christian is so it's always a caricature or distorted view of what Christianity is and then you can start to pick that caricature apart with love with truth and very important for that is take your time.

Do it in a patient loving way that's the most important thing about it because first there needs to be a real interest into the other people's soul, their life, their experiences, make it about them not about you and then you can start to overcome those caricatures, those distorted views of Christianity.

In Germany it's Catholic, Illuminati, in Dan Brown and in America it might be just the mother of you might be a Christian is always a Trumpa, pro Trumpa. You know I mentioned earlier that it was a subset of the group that gave the broader Christianity a bad name. There's one question which is the last one that I go into but one question that really sums that up. Yeah. The Holy Spirit can tell me to do something that is forbidden in the Bible.

The fact that anybody who is Christian answered yes to this, it shows that there's just something wrong here. There are actually Christians being trained to believe that God can tell you to do something that is forbidden in the Bible. And look at what we have. We have people who are grave soaking, which is forbidden in the Bible. When you've got these people who are learning that all of the things that are not just trivial sins, but egregious sins, some of them worth being stoned in the Old Testament that ministers are doing it now in the name of Christianity. It creates

such a confusion that people will actually believe that God will tell you something to do that is forbidden in the Bible. But think of the dangers of this. Murder is forbidden in the Bible.

Well, what if what if the person goes to that level? And sadly, I think that there may have been some that have in the historic past when you look at what has happened within these movements.

The fact that there's a single Christian that answers yes to this tells me that this is a problem. There are things wrong here. Yes. And the problem, I think, the root of the problem is the the clash of the worldly worldview and the biblical worldview. It basically comes down to is your worldview, biblical, true or not. Outside of that, there is no objective truth. And it doesn't matter if you're left or right, if you're a socialist or a capitalist, those are all minor things, forms of organization, political questions, but these are not questions of truth,

not truth claims. So make sure your worldview is based on what Scripture says, what the world is. Start in Genesis. Here's a question about marriage, of course. Do you think marriages between a man and a woman? Yes or no? If you start to expand the word of language, open it up to, let's say, gay marriages or something, then the word marriage already can't be applied.

They change the meaning of a truly Christian word marriage. That's a relationship between a man and a woman. If two men have a relationship, that's not a marriage anymore. They can claim that word and say it's a marriage, but then they define the word in a way that's not intended by the Bible.

That's not biblical. So a Christian doesn't have to be left or right, Democrat or Republican, right or right or left. a socialist or a capitalist that's irrelevant, a Christian has to have a biblical worldview, start by that, and from there, that's the first premise you have to have.

That's the first question you have to have. Really start in Genesis. Many questions, many discrepancies that I saw in this survey are really just the outcome of a wrong view of the Genesis account.

What is, who is God? What is the word? What is creation? What is man? What is a man and a woman? What is marriage? Basic questions that are all answered in the Genesis account already.

Well, this has been crazy, interesting, and fun. If anybody is interested, you can go to see this survey for yourself at thestateoftheology.com. But it's eye-opening to how vastly different Christianity has became. I'm looking at these questions, thinking just not even 15 years ago, the answers would not be so significantly skewed in one direction or the other.

Things have changed in Christianity and you can clearly tell it. So thank you so much for doing this. Thank you, too. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Branum.org and sanctum artifact. From 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.