The Fantasy World of Modern Charismatic Extremism

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Brantley Smith. Brantley is good to be back and to talk about IHOP and Stranger Things, and I don't know if you're a fan, I'm a big fan of the Stranger Things series, which I'm excited to come, it's about to come out right before we're recording this. So I'm getting excited for that, but I was thinking this morning about just some of the weird things that we believed

and how different it was, how different it is now to what it was while we were in it, and then comparing that to Stranger Things, and many things weren't really that much different than Stranger Things, you just had different faces as the enemies.

Yeah, I have enjoyed the show, I've watched a little bit, especially once I saw that they had a D&D element to it, because that was a no-go growing up, and so I love exploring things that I couldn't when I was a child.

So I got sucked in the Stranger Things, I'm not sure that I've watched all of season four. I've definitely watched through season three and season five's coming out, right? It's the last season. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

I've seen all of it, and I really liked the last one. There's an element, and I don't want to ruin it for you, but there's an element in it that was just fascinating to me, and I, like you, I was not allowed Dungeons and Dragons, or anything like this, this was demons, man, and we must be better than this.

And then I started to think through all of the deliverance ministries, and all of the different weird things that we believed, and honestly, if you take Dungeons and Dragons or Harry Potter or any of these fantasy things, and replace Harry Potter as one with a, in the name of Jesus Christ, you really have about the same thing.

We're going there. We're going there. Yeah, I, this has actually been a conversation for me for probably two years now. It started once me and my wife were sitting in church, and I got some family that are still Pentecostal pastors, and we'd gone to their church for some reason, and they were singing this song.

It's a popular song. It's called, I speak Jesus is what it is, and it's this, it's almost like incantation is what it is. So in the middle of the worship service, I elbowed my wife, and I was like, why does this feel like Wingardium Leviosa?

It's just, it's like we say the name, and magic things happen. I don't think that's ever how it was supposed to be. Yes, just so messed up. And I was thinking through all of the strange things we believe, this episode might be a little bit painful for me because I consider myself to be an intelligent person.

I have lived in a world where I had to work with my mind. I had to be on top of my game. And yet, during the time, I was learning how to do my work, my day job.

I'm believing in these things that don't make any sense. And I'm still wrestling with that. How do you put yourself into a position where you are intelligent? You know how to think and critically analyze things.

But you shut it all off when you go to church. How do you get into that place? And I've come to learn through various studies of psychology and cult psychology that it's often the more intelligent people that get sucked into it.

Because they work with their minds throughout the week. And then on Sunday, they go to church. And they're just so, their minds are exhausted. Be like if you're a carpenter and you're swinging a hammer, you know, seven days, five days out of the week.

And then on Sunday, your arms are really tired. So you just want to relax. What's the same way with our heads? So you just shut it off, you go to church, you're not expecting Harry Potterism to come out of the pulpit.

Dungeons and Dragons themes. But yet at the same time, when you leave, during the week, it is a world of angels and demons and dungeons and dragons as you're going throughout the work week.

I'll never forget just thinking about how unprotected we were when we were in the religion because everywhere you look, man, the demons out to get you. And unless you can claim, we would say we claimed the blood.

And that was like our inspectral paternum or whatever Harry Potter says. I claim the blood and the demons would flee, but you had to keep doing it. So there wasn't this veil of protection that the Bible describes.

You're literally coming to the doctrine of the cult leader and trying to say that he is the one who's protecting you if you follow all of it out to its logical conclusion. Yeah, it's interesting that we need that space in our lives to where we can turn off, like to where we can just be and be safe and belong.

And what we've seen happen is bad actors come step into those situations and exploit the situations. And you trust these people just based on their position and their power that they have, that they are teaching you well, that they are telling you the right things.

And it's not until those cognitive dissonances and stuff start happening and it's a powerful thing whenever cognitive dissonance happens. But Rex havoc on your body. I think we talked about that. We've talked about that before, and how that's impacted me before, but yeah, the hoops that we jumped through just to be able to belong and turn off our brains and the things that we buy into, even unlike it, because it translates not just in church culture, but in the broader landscape of society and stuff and politics and things.

You hear people say things and you're like, like, do you remember who was in power when that happened? Like, you're blaming your guy for doing the right thing, but he was the one who caused the bad thing to happen.

Like, do you not remember that? Like, those are things that we see happen all the time, and we have very selective memory with that stuff. And I think it's a comfort, survival kind of mechanism, because so much gets threatened whenever we start thinking, because then we do have to, like you're saying, then we have to question our own intelligence, and that's never a fun thing.

That's not to say that we were dumb necessarily, or that we're not intelligent, but then we have to admit that we were duped, and that that's just, it's hard, it's painful to admit that.

Well, I'm just going to say that I was dumb, man. So one of the things that we believed, and picture me as an adult, I'm 37 years old whenever I left this thing. So for 37 years, I believe this nonsense, but we believe that William Brannum had a magical sword.

Have we talked about this? I've never heard about that. About the halo, but I've never heard this. Oh, we had all kinds of stuff, man. So William Brannum had a magic sword. The story was, he went out on one of his great hunting excursions.

This was how, you know, when you're preaching the Elijah ministry, you have to take on the persona of Elijah. So you have to go out hunting. That's the way Elijah works, man. And John Floyd hunt so much.

Have you seen, he's got a whole hunting Instagram. Oh, yeah. That's it, man. You had to take on that persona. You had to be Elijah, right? So he goes out on these hunting trips.

And if you do the math on the cost of hunting and the cost of leaving everything for days on end, you know, it gets very, really expensive. Yes. I had a guy who was in Brannum's church, who his father left and his father planted a different church.

And apparently there was a big falling out. The only thing we knew was that Brannum condemned him and he was a center and, you know, all of the chastising that you get when you leave.

Elective nervous. Exactly. But from his side of the story, Brannum would go on these long hunting trips. And he, remember the years that Brannum was in his ministry here in Jeffersonville. It was during, you know, right after the Great Depression, there were several people who were extremely poor.

So he's going out on these big game haunts and he's there, even in the newspapers, they're talking about the big game he's getting. So he comes back with all these hunting trophies. He's going on the dime of the entire church.

Well, that's not... The way church is supposed to work, the church, you have four people in the church that you have to help, and he was negligent of all of the poor people in his church, so he could go on these hunting trips, apparently.

Well, fast-forward to the 1960s when he's got all kinds of money, he's got five to ten thousand dollar watches and all kinds of stuff. Well, he goes on these hunting trips and now it becomes a spiritual thing because of the Elijah thing.

He wants to say that I went and the Lord spoke to me on the back side of the desert. Well, one of the times he comes back and he says, and I was out there hunting and all of a sudden I heard this voice and he gets into this narrative that gets the people with the itching ears to listen and he says, and I reached out my hand and it was a physical sword.

It appeared out of nowhere and he said, a voice spoke to me and said, that's the king's sword. And he said, which king? And he said, no, not aching, I mean the king. And that's how the story goes.

So you're left wondering, well, what happened to the sword? It was a physical sword that he physically held. What happened to it? Why did God give him a sword? Why does God have a sword?

And I'm sitting there as a child, man. I grew up. I was one of the fortunate ones. I got to play Nintendo. So I was big into Legend of Zelda when I first heard this and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, he's got the magic sword, man.

I just got the magic sword yesterday when I was playing Legend of Zelda. So hope is in the fact that he like physically manifested to him. So I'm guessing by the king, it was Jesus' sword that he found.

I thought we were going to go like Garden of Eden flaming sword and he claimed he found the Garden of Eden for a second. That's where I thought this story was going. You know, he never really comes out and says, he just, he gives you the hint.

He says it's de-king and he never really goes in deep into that. But he has so many twisted versions of the Godhead that in some cases there is a God the Father and a God the Son and other cases, it's oneness and if you believe the other thing he believed, he condemned himself.

So it's hard to know what who de-king was in this instance, whether it was the Oneness Jesus or the Trinitarian God, but nevertheless, he claimed he had a magic sword. And nobody questions this.

Like we're adults and we don't question, did you really have a magic sword? In the fact that his trips are being financed by the church, I mean we see that all the time. Have you seen the religion business guy, have you seen that guy yet?

No. It's some kind of new documentary series that this guy has put out where he has gone around to these churches trying to investigate their financials and such and he talks a whole lot about how church 501c3s don't have to have any kind of transparency and he's like their ran like businesses like that's how these things are ran.

And so he exposes a lot of it. He talks about the LDS church and all the stuff that they have. I mean, they're like one of the largest data brokers like in the world, like the amount of data and stuff that they have.

But he was talking about where money actually goes and the amount of money that's moving into churches and that we so blindly give this stuff to these people without hardly any, like because we believe that God commands us to do it, we don't have any kind of expectation of transparency and return.

And whenever those things do happen, like people are met combatively, I've seen a couple of those situations over the past couple of years. There's a guy with the Radiant Network of Churches, which is Lee Cummings, they're kind of a IHOP offshoot in a sense.

They believe a lot of the same theology, except they've kind of dressed it up more in a mega church outfit than a pair of church organization. And I have some friends that work for Radiant Church and such.

But they've done some very, whenever demanded for financial transparency, they have refused and responded with legal action rather than choosing to be transparent. And that James daily, that guy, you could probably look him up on YouTube and see that he's made a whole lot of videos their way too long, but he's made a lot of videos where he talks about that whole situation.

But we blindly give that money and we don't realize where it goes. I posted about this a couple of weeks ago on social media and was trying to have a conversation about where money goes.

And so I've worked in local churches. I've probably worked in, give or take a couple around 10 local churches over the past 20 years. And I don't think a single one of them gave more than 10 or 20% back to their local community.

And the rest of that money, where it ends up going is for, and this is a local church. This isn't mega church pastor stereotype who's buying jets and things like that. But the majority of that money that they're pulling together is going to serve the local congregation through programming.

Like that's a big chunk of it. It's programming the production pieces and facility, facility upkeep. And then the biggest chunk typically is the salaries that they pay, they pay these people. And I've been a recipient of that.

So like I'm kind of pointing the finger at myself with the broken system. But those are things that we don't question at all. So like somebody gives a thousand dollars to the church and they don't realize that 800 to that thousand dollars is going into these people's pocket.

Like they're not actually doing stuff for the community. And there's no level of accountability for the way the structures are built and stuff. So I would definitely say that that is a strange thing because whenever it comes to anything else with our money, Dave Ramsey usually has a lot to say about it.

I never hear him say anything about that. He wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole, man. In the brand of organization, the way they got around that was they just created so many multiple organizations that you never could track which one had the money and why.

I don't know if you and I've had this conversation or not, but the full gospel businessman was established literally as a business for the church, right? Not many people know this. It was founded by D. M. Shakarian, who is related to the Kardashian family.

There was a co-founder, who was a brand-amite, who lived not far from my house. For many, many years, the brand-ums have been maybe not in the top leadership, but in the upper tiers of the full gospel businessman.

There's one point in time. There's a guy named Gerald Walker. You can read this history on the website, which I won't go deep into it, but there was a point in time in which William Brannum's daughter, Sarah, was destitute.

They were just had no money for their children and while the brothers were breaking in millions and millions of dollars through the brand-am organization, she's begging for money and they won't give her a dime.

It turned into this big mess in the mass sage cult. What happened was she went to Gerald Walker, who was also an attorney. He was also, I think, the treasurer of the full gospel businessman.

He started investigating all of this and he was just like floored that this can even exist. You had organizations, upon organizations, you had ministers who had the non-profit status for the church, but they would also have all kinds of land businesses or construction businesses, which may do business with the church.

The money's like going in the circle, even the expenses are going in the circle. He's looking at all of these spinning circles and starts digging and he finds all kinds of things like one of the ministers had a sex dungeon and he was known in the local community as a homosexual community for his homosexual name.

I think he was either a cross-stress or he was just homosexual, but he had like this leather sex dungeon and all of this became exposed and he's like, I don't even know what to do with this.

He writes this big document going through detailing all of this, well then he starts investigating the full gospel businessman themselves and he's finding they're just paying for all kinds of things that they shouldn't and it made the newspapers, I think eventually they settled and just hushed it up, but it turned into this weird, weird, big mess and it's all about money.

So I'm of the opinion that a church should be taxed. You can't do any of this stuff they're doing, let them be taxed and let the government kind of dictate and control where they hide their money because then they won't hide it.

I mean, with the amount of money that goes into churches under the guise of like charitable

I think we could solve a lot of problems. That's with, we've come out of the government shutdown and one of the talking points of Christians like during all this was snap shut down and different things that I hear is that well the church should be the one taking care of these people.

And that's always my pushback with them. I'm like, it's not that I disagree with you like the means of how we accomplish this stuff. Like I'm flexible, like all my opinions. But in my experience, I've not seen the church do it.

And there was a TikTok creator and I can't remember her name off the top of my head now. But Julie Royce covered her in a couple of other people. She kind of made some big waves and she was calling churches.

She called like 40 some churches and kept a spreadsheet looking for a can of formula for her child that she said that she couldn't afford a can of formula. Her child had an eight overnight, the newborn baby.

She said it was like three month old, something like that. And the amount of people that their answer was, well, we give money to this organization. So you can go to them for help.

And it's like, man, you have a starving baby who needs food and you can't cough up 25 bucks to help somebody. Like when this is like you're the whole purpose of your existence. So I'm kind of on the same side with you.

I've never thought much about the taxation thing but we need something so that there's some kind of accountability because people hoarding wealth off the backs of middle class and poor individuals is just it's disgusting if I'm just being frank.

Absolutely. We, one of the churches we started attending after we left the cult was a mainstream church. And there was a lady in the church whose husband had done something horrific and went to prison.

And she was left as a, basically a single mom after he was in prison with, I believe it was four children. Her income was barely enough to even cover the rent then she had the groceries at other expenses on top of that.

So she really wasn't even able to survive. And the church wasn't going to give her a dime. Like they weren't helping at all. What they would do is like you said, go here, go there.

So I'm sitting in this position. I'm paying ties to the church. I'm one of many people who knew the situation. And I, because I'd left the cult, my hyper-critical thinking was on. And I said, well, good Lord, man, if I'm paying my ties to this church and they're not giving it to the person in need, this is not right at all.

I'm just gonna give my ties to her. So we started giving the ties to her and so that she could support the children and so they could have a life. Basically, they didn't even have a life.

But it's like you said, they don't really, the churches have got so obsessed and focused on doctrine that they've lost just the basic principles of what you have to do when you own and run a church.

And it becomes more of a mission to... combat the demon. It's like the Harry Potter world, Dungeons and Dragons. It's more of a mission to combat the demons than it is to even help the people who are in need in your church.

No, I think that's part of the tactic, though, too, is that you get people's eyes off of the real problems that are in front of them. And that's one of my biggest critiques of the way that I was raised in the belief systems I had as a child and growing up and even through IHOP and even after that is everything was focused through this eternal lens of eternal destination. I was either going to burn forever or live forever with Jesus.

And that caused a weird value system to be put in place, like of how I weighed things in my mind. And I think that we do that with to keep eyes off of that stuff in a sense that all of a sudden there's this cosmic war being fought. I don't know if you guys were big on it and the random stuff, but we at IHOP, it was always the book of Daniel kind of stuff of like whenever you prayed and angels moved and all this kind of thing. And so principalities and powers that's talked about in scripture was all of a sudden demons and the demon hierarchy,

like it wasn't just level one demons. You had the principality of Kansas City who was coming after us, which is some kind of demon that Bob Jones probably told us the name of. And that's the way that that stuff happens. And what it does is you get so hyped up and jazzed about this and you start believing these stories. And all of a sudden you missing a meal doesn't seem as important as this great cosmic battle. And you're not thinking about how was my money helping fight this cosmic battle. And so there's not a there that's the one thing versus the

government. The church has a like a kind of military industrial complex with producing warriors, but there's no money needed. You know, it's insidious too, because one of the things that I did after I started to deprogram is I wanted to understand how religion worked. So I began studying all of the ancient mythology's and religions and how it differed in some ways from ancient Judaism, how it was similar in some ways than ancient Judaism. But one of the things that I had to come to terms with, we did have these cosmic battles. That was that was part of it. In fact, we I don't

know if it's the same for you. It may not be because this is more towards Christian identity, but we believe that we had a celestial body and that we our bodies would go up to meet this. And there's one point in time when the Christian identity leaders were saying that all of the UFO scares from the 40s and 50s were actually investigating angels coming down and eventually they would take us to our celestial bodies. So of the weird things we believe, there was a there's one point in time in which William Brannum says, when you see those UFO, those saucers out there, he

When you see those saucers out there coming down, just remember, one of these days they're going to come and they're going to pick you up and take you. And as a kid, I was fascinated with science fiction.

So Star Wars fan, I'm like, well, that's kind of cool, man. I want to go see it. But then as I'm studying the ancient mythologies, the world that they portrayed in the ancient world was basically you look at the stars and the sun and the moon and the planets.

And they were representatives of this celestial war that's happening. That's why they worship the stars and the suns and the moon planets, the zodiac. And so it was this big battle fighting out in the universe and they were worshiping it.

And then I stopped and thought, well, good Lord, man. We had the same exact thing, but what they had done was they had spiritualized the sun moon and stars into their spirit world that they created.

So whatever they create an envision from behind the pulpit, we were worshiping that and we weren't actually worshiping God. And when that hit me, I'm like, what is this? It's not Christianity. What is this mess?

Yeah, there's so much the thing that's coming to mind as you're talking about that is the hyper focus in worship stuff. These days with conquering enemies and defeating enemies, I was talking about a song yesterday with someone that they're going to do at church and it's got the, it's kind of got passed over language in it and it talks about the blood on the doorpost and this kind of thing.

But it's very like a hedge of protection, I don't know if that's a meme in your circles or not. But the little invisible force field that we pray that surrounds us and that there's some kind of magic thing that we're like painting the blood of Jesus with a paintbrush spiritually around us and then no bad can come and touch us at all.

Because we've drawn a boundary around us, we've drawn our hedge of protection and so we cannot be affected. But then whenever you get fired from a job, your child gets sick, like what happened to your hedge?

Like was there a hedge or was it all pretent to do it like that? We don't think passed that step and that's where cognitive dissonance comes and that's where we grow. Yeah, and it's so odd because we were in what was basically the foundation for what you were in.

With us, it was the healing and when somebody leaves, they say, well, why are you leaving? Do you not know that we have the divine healing? If you leave, you're doomed, basically. And nobody who leaves, they're all scared because this is a fear that we were indoctrinated with.

Fear of getting cancer was the big one. And nobody really stops and thanks, well, wait a minute. I know many people who were sick and many people who died in the group. There is no veil of protection, but you're told to believe that there is.

And so whenever you leave, you condemn those that leave and say that you've left the veil, you no longer have access to the healing that we have. And I look at my family, I had diabetes ran through the family, mental health issues ran.

to the family, chronic diseases, dehabilitating diseases, all kinds of different things. Even Lupus was one of the big ones. It seems to run rampant in these types of religions. And it's crippling. And the people lay their crippled thinking, I have done something wrong.

What have I done to deserve this? What sin have I done? What do I need to repent of so I can get over this? And many, I know I've got family members who went to their graves thinking that they did something wrong.

And how do you overcome this? So along with the disease, they also have the pressure that comes from the mental anguish of thinking it's their fault. Yeah, that's, and I know that I've shared this.

I'm not going to try to belabor it too much. And in previous times, whenever I got sick for those, those two years, that's what forced me to rethink things was because I had well-meaning individuals.

I had vertigo, all kinds of crazy stuff going on. So I was in hearing. I was hypersensitive to noise and light and all that kind of stuff. And I had well-meaning people come to me and be like, it's funny.

I had one group of people who were like, are you giving money to the church? Because if you're not giving money to the church, then like you're going to be cursed kind of thing is what it was because the windows of heaven aren't going to be open.

So you need to start tithing. Then you'll get better. I had people come to me and talk about sin in my life. Like what kind of sin are you in? Like is there something you need to repent of?

And what's funny is I was like, even though I had like all this suffering and stuff going on, I was clear-minded enough to like realize like something's not adding up here. Like I know myself, I know what's going on.

I'm like, I don't believe that God would do this to me like for some precarious reason. Like I just couldn't buy into that. And that's really what started making me rethink my frameworks for that stuff.

And I think those are the moments that transformation happens in our lives. One of my favorite now people to listen to theology is a Catholic guy, Richard Roer. And one of the things he says all the time is like the things that transform us the most that cause us to change the most is great love and great suffering.

And in that time in my life, it was great suffering. And so like I had to figure out, you know, I realized I like I chose to believe these things like in the past and I'm finding them not to be true.

And so like now it's like, what do I choose to believe now? But there's so much, you know, I think that's the authoritarian grip that we have to believe these certain things or else we can't be a part, it's easier to push us out than to have wide scale changes of thought.

And so you just kind of call the herd and hope you bring in new converts. And it's messy. It's messy. Have you ever wondered? considered 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, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top, and as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So of all the weird beliefs, I was thinking through this one recently because I've been, as you know, I'm deep into a study of Christian identity and trying to understand how that played out into the politics of today.

Christian identity for those who are unfamiliar, one of the fundamental, elementary doctrines of the movement, was that in the Garden of Eden, Eve made it with a serpent to produce two bloodlines, one good, one evil.

And of the weird things that I believe, I guess I can count that one of the biggest ones as well. But when you think of what that does, it rewrites the DNA of every passage in the Bible.

Instead of looking to God as the Almighty who can save anyone, well, now you've got two bloodlines. What happens to the evil bloodline? Does he save those? If not, if he does, then are they truly evil because they can be saved?

And if he can save them, and the people who are the good bloodline can be unsaved, well, what does the bloodlines even matter? What does any of that matter? Like logically, you can't make any of it make sense.

But you followed that all the way through to the flood, now God saw the evil wiped them all away. Well, now you're faced with the question, well, if you wiped all the evil away, why do we still have evil?

And so this was a problem for Christian identity. They started to say, well, one of the wives of ham brought it in, and he brought it sent into the world. So there's this curse of ham doctrine that came to be.

And so you're still left with the problem. Well, if it's bloodlines, well, what does the work on the cross even matter? Because how do you save the bad seed? Why do you even need to save the good seed if they're already good?

None of it makes any sense. But there's this one point in time, and I remember as a kid just amazed by this thought. And now that I'm looking back, it was one of the stupidest things that I believe.

William Brannum had this whole series of sermons where he would say, if I had just a vile of the literal blood of... Jesus Christ, oh how I would hold it, how I would love it, how I would adore it.

He would go off into these weird, like, worshiping the blood kind of thing and, you know, back then I thought this was a spiritual thing, I thought this was great and grandiose. But now I'm looking back, it's just disgusting.

It's not something that, I mean, it really belittles, if you're a Christian, it belittles the work on the cross because you're not looking at the risen Jesus, you're looking at the drops of blood that fell as he's hung there on the cross.

So I'm looking at this, thinking this, you know, as a kid, this is wonderful. This is amazing. Now, as a deep programmed adult, what on earth were we thinking? Why did we believe such a nonsense like this?

Yeah, you give the blood, the blood turns into a character, almost how like some people turn the Bible into a fourth member of the Trinity, like the blood takes on like its own identity.

As you were talking about that, the picture that came to mind, I don't know if you ever saw the old BBC version of the Chronicles of Narnia that was like a multiple tapes and stuff.

And whenever they call it the white witch or the witch lady, and she comes out of her little tent and does the Turkish delights on the ground, she takes that little vile, opens it and drops the little drops and all of a sudden magically Turkish delights appear.

And I think that's like what we do with the blood of Jesus, like you talk about the blood vile, I'm like, yeah, we just like throw it everywhere and it fixes all of our problems because that's what Jesus did was he died so that we could mass produce it, bottle it, sell it, holy oil from the holy land, like that kind of vibe.

It's very weird. But we had the division thing too and I hop, I think cult leaders get smart over time and they start changing the language, right? So it's like a little bit more socially acceptable because Mike always had his yearly seven signs of a cult and would remind us all why we're not a cult, you know, that happened at least once a year in elitism was one of those things that we talk about.

But like whenever we looked at it practically, that passage in the gospels where it talks about, it'd be like the days of Noah, like one person be working in the field and one would be taken, one would be in the bed and or two would be in the bed, one would be taken, one would be left kind of thing.

And we looked at that as like the people who were taken were the good people and like the bad people were left behind and there's no hope for them kind of thing and that played into our eschatology and being chosen and they hear and you talk about it, like I wonder like how much of that trace is back to like an elect idea, like a reformed elect idea, even prepenicostalism.

Well, yeah. I mean, your mind goes a million directions, like so as a kid, my mind went exactly where he wanted it to. I was thinking things like, well, this is a magic potion.

If I cut my leg, if I scrape my leg, I can just drop it on it and instantly the skin will wrap back around it or if my leg is broken, this is like the greatest thing to take if you go to war.

You get shot, just drop a little drop of blood and instantly you're healed. It's a magic. and honestly that's it. There's so much magic that is woven into the doctrines. You don't really think about it when you're in it. You're being indoctrinated to belief magic. But after you leave, and if you start reading the Bible, like I did, I read it over and over, you can't make it compatible. That's the real problem here. You can't make what's taught compatible with the Bible.

And so then you're left with this question. Well, they call themselves Christian. They use the name Jesus Christ. None of what they say is compatible. And especially if you look at the foundation of it, the whole foundation wasn't compatible. So can you really say this is a Christian movement? Or is this just, you know, is this like a Buddhist commune that's got not Buddha, but they're saying the name Jesus instead of rubbing the belly? That's kind of what goes through your head when you think about it. Yeah, it's funny because like the biggest thing that was demonized, like in the circles

was witchcraft. Like that's like I grew up in like the post satanic panic, like in the 90s. And so everything was demonic. Everything was witchcraft. And then I don't know what happened like the day that like the blinders fell off. And I was like, how is it like they're telling us not to do these things, but then here in our service, like we're that's what we're doing. Like we bring people up to the front. And we start like it's a prayer, but sometimes it's a little bit more than a prayer word. I don't know how much this happened in your circles, but it was sometimes

you just scream words is what it was. So more was one that would get screamed a lot more Lord, more, more fire, fire, fire, fire. And it was like these repetitions kind of things that like one of these times we say it's going to hit the right thing and it's going to happen.

And Jesus had words about that about, you know, your prayers and using many words. And like it's how we how how we do this stuff. I don't know. It makes me wonder if like, well, I know I'm glad the Bible's been given to common people, but it makes you think like, how did this stuff persist so long? And yeah, I've been doing this series on youth with a mission with Jenny McGrath. The first one comes out this Friday while we're recording this this episode will come out long after the series has started. But we've been talking through some

of the psychological effects that are happening on the children in this movement. And she is not that familiar with the Joel's army concept. One of the podcasts I'd really like to dig deeper with you is the Joel's army theme because what they do to the children, it's like their platoons.

It's a platoon in the army if you understand what this is. So you had the IHOP KC platoon and Mike Pickle was the commanding officer and you have the youth with a mission. Well, I get to thinking about the premise that all of this was built on. So Brannum, basically what he did was he reintroduced the Moses model. Moses was the leader of the children.

Israel and he led the people and that's what the model was that he created. In fact, his early ministry, a lot of people don't realize this because he's known as the Elijah Prophet. That's what his worshippers believe. But before the Elijah ministry started, it was the Moses ministry. And he says, when he got his commission, he said, God or this angel told him that as Moses was given two signs, so are you given two signs? And they would go forward and gather his people. Well, then that developed into these, you know, the guy had mental health

issues. He may have actually believed this, but whether he believed or not, he claimed that he had this vision of seeing the other side. And his vision of the other side was much like different platoons and an army. And he saw this one platoon going by and all these people were praising God.

And he says, who are these people? These are Paul's people. Are they going to heaven? Well, we're resting on the message of Paul. And then he sees his people, brandems people, and he says, who are you? Those are your people. And they're resting on your message. And so each platoon had its own individual strategy. And he would say things like the message for Paul won't work today. We need our message today, just as the message for Moses wouldn't work for the message for Paul. He literally didn't understand the covenants or the gospel or any of it. All he

understood was this idea, this concept of platoons. And it all comes back to the militarized version of Christian identity that was being pushed. And literally, if you understand the union of Christian identity and white supremacy back during that era, it literally was platoons of different religions and ideologies. So in his vision of the perfect world and how it would end, there would be these different platoons, which is interesting because if you think about Mike Bickle, I hop KC, Youth with Emission, and any of these groups, in brandems version of reality or fantasy, I should say, it actually fits within the realm of what he was describing. He had his people,

Mike Bickle had his people. Each group has their own people. Yeah, I think the thing worth saying to you about the kind of the Moses thing is Moses is the one who went and spoke to God and took back to the people, what God said. And there's like no way of like verifying checking or any of that.

But that's what these guys do. It's interesting because we think about how language evolves over time with these groups. And the thing that it brought to mind that I'm wondering if there's correlation with that it's kind of trying to move from that militant language a little bit is we heard a lot of the streams is what it was called, that there was different streams for different purposes.

But what it did was it solidified us because we believed that what we were doing we were called to. And what this other group was doing they were called to and it was kind of like these protection of kingdoms who had different divine assignments.

I remember during those two different memories that came to mind was one was during the IHOP youth student awakening, which was kind of like a little quote unquote, revival awakening thing that we had in 2009 at IHOP.

And during that time, the R-NOTs from Toronto, the Toronto blessing came down to Kansas City. And then I believe Bill and Benny was still alive at that time, Bill and Benny Johnson came down.

And I remember them coming up on the stage and talking about the uniting of the three streams. And it was this big moment. And but we also had that moment.

And what I believe would have been like the, one of the early big anniversary milestones. So it was a 1999 was what's found. So maybe it was 2009 as well that we were doing an anniversary.

And Lauren Cunningham came to town. And there was a uniting of those streams. And there was a guy named Mark Anderson with Y-Wam. And we talked about how Y-Wam wanted to partner 24-7 prayer with 24-7 mission.

And we made commitments to 24-7 prayer and mission and that kind of thing. But we saw ourselves as the prayer people. That's what we did. We did prayer and we did music. And then Y-Wam people, they did the evangelizing.

IHOP had like an evangel, there was kind of two black sheep groups. And IHOP, there was an evangelism group. We had an evangelism director. And they were people who went out and evangelized and all that stuff.

And they were doing that all the time. Everybody was like, they never pray. They're never in the prayer room. They're always out talking to people. It's almost like the uniting of armies in the Lord of the Rings.

Christianity has literally became middle earth. That's definitely how it goes. And with all of our powers combined, we are. Captain Planet, throwback. And that's how we were like taught to see all these other groups and like the coexistence of like all these other, these ministries.

It wasn't that like we were unaware of morning star, unaware of Bethel and these different groups. And we were even aware of like belief differences because I remember people critiquing Bethel's theology because if you look at Bethel's theology for too long, you'll realize they're very like don't like negativity whenever it comes to God.

Everything's good and goodness all the time. And so we thought we were more mature because we believed there was a bad side to God. We believed the God that killed people. And they only believed the God that did good things and was loving.

And so we never thought too hard on how to reconcile that. I think the way that we reconciled in our minds is how they just don't know and we're right. Kind of thing like this like kind of hidden superiority.

But yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, just it really twists if you understand the gospel. and you understand the covenants. It really twists the covenants. And I've come to the conclusion after studying everything that he taught. And when I say everything, I mean, there are so many things that he would teach one direction and then teach the opposite. So you can't really piece it all together. But if you take the sum of all of them, I really don't think he ever, well, number one, I don't think you ever read the Bible. But if he did, I don't think he understood the covenants

at all. We were still under the old covenant. If you understand the complexities of what he taught, he would say things like, well, and this comes back to the Christian identity racism thing, he would say that if you were a white person and you married a black person, your children could not come back into the congregation of God and for, I don't know, how many ten generations or whatever, we believe this nonsense, right? Well, he's referring to the old covenant when he says things like that. And he would say things like the Bible forbids this that or the other. And he

would say that was back in the law of Moses. Jesus came and made the law greater. So how much greater is your punishment now if you do this? So literally, he believed that we're still under the old covenant.

Jesus came to amplify the punishments of the old covenant. And he alone had the answer to how you can evade this punishment. The thing that like our infactuation with violence in the church is like, that's where it comes from is that we do like we look at these old testament things and we don't see the evolution of society. Like eventually we reach a point of society where we realize killing each other isn't the best way forward. But we think that God still does that.

Guess is where it goes. We had ministers in the message who would preach sermons and say things like God sometimes just likes a good killing. It's speaking of killing. I don't know if how much you're keeping up with the current iHop stuff. But this past week a video got passed around from the Father Heart Church, which is an organization. Have you guys talked about the Father Heart Church at all on your podcast?

No, not at all. There's a guy named James Crawford who has, I guess, made it his soul mission to exonerate Mike Bickle and combat all the lies and he's kind of got this, it's an online church and they have a homeless minutes. I'm going to get nerdy for a second. It's incorporated in North Carolina is where it started. They have a physical property in Texas where it's like this homeless camp where they have to attend a chapel every day to be able to live there. All this kind of stuff definitely given cult vibes. But this guy's had an online church community that

meets through zoom since like I think before the pandemic like it's been going for a while. It had never heard of this guy before James Crawford and but him and Lisa Bickle have kind of teamed up during all this and Lisa's been going to his church.

and they stream live their little zoom meeting churches. In this past week, he talked about a dream or a vision or something that he had and that I'm trying to figure out a way to say this that we don't get censored, but that they took a rope and made a loop out of it and gave it to Julie Royes is what they did.

Said that he had a vision of that with Julie Royes and he kind of ended with saying, so we know if something happens to Julie Royes, we know it's from God. And it's like, that's where that theology leads and that's what people don't get.

Like we talk about extremism and Christians love to talk about extremists and other religions and talk about the violence of other religions. And that's the scariest thing of this militant language and whenever we saw things that we've seen happen in our country over the past couple of years and we've seen Christians at the forefront of it, trying to doing things in the name of God and you got leaders, pastors saying things like that talking about the demise of someone and then saying if that demise does happen, the off chance, then you start thinking, is there a mafia or something going on

or something's going to happen? But if that happens, then we all know it was God's will. Like that's a scary place to be. That's a scary place. It is and that just, it further affirms the people who are on the outside, the ones who aren't Christian who are looking in at all of this mess saying, I want no part of this.

And what they don't realize is this really isn't Christianity they're looking at. It is this idea of these platoons and this army and this weird mess. That's no idea the difference between the two.

And the sad part of it is, now you're branded. I've had this conversation recently. I'm almost hesitant when I'm encountering new people. You don't even mention your Christian because if you do all of the thoughts of this goes through their head.

And so they've immediately branded you as this violent person who's angry at the world and angry at them. And especially if they're agnostic or atheist, you hate their guts. Before you even know them, you hate their guts.

That's how they have been trained to believe. And they're getting this by experience, by watching all of these people say this weird mess. So in the end, I guess that's probably the greatest weirdness that we believe that we could be as awful to other people as we were and still call ourselves Christian.

I think that's the biggest weirdness. Yeah, that somehow we lose the love your enemy stuff. Like I don't know how that got lost in translation at all. I got to do, I guess it's kind of a last fun story for me.

This past week I got to go to an LDS church for the first time, which I had never had. And I just did it just because it was fun and it was something new to do.

I love, I think you can probably relate to this. I love seeing how people's belief systems shape how they live. So I love asking these people's questions. How does like, what do you believe about this?

What do you believe? about that, but they were having a Thanksgiving dinner and I got a last minute invite from one of my neighbors who have been developed a relationship for a while, picking his brain about, he was a late convert to the Latter-day Saints and so being able to go there and sit down with those people and talk with them and even see some of the dissonances that I encountered just naturally of talking to immigrants that were in the church and so I start talking to them about the current events happening with immigrants and such.

You see how uncomfortable they get because of where their lines and their loyalties fall and it's such an interesting experience, but we love being insular we do and whenever outside stuff comes we usually yell danger, but I was actually a good experience. They were very welcoming as always whenever I interact with LDS people and the food was some of the best food I've actually ever had and I wasn't expecting that. It's like whenever I go to the Amish communities my wife was, this is another story for another day, but her family was not Amish, but they were in an Amish community and worked with the Amish. My wife at 16 years old taught

in an Amish school. So there's a lot of weird history there that's bigger than this podcast, but whenever I go there the food is amazing some of the best food I've ever eaten and sadly to end on this note you have made me hungry. Oh, it's getting gravy or something now. I gotta go get some biscuits and gravy. Thank you so much for doing this. Absolutely, it's been fun.

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-Branum.org. 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 Orbital.