Gnosticism, Freemasonry, and Secret Knowledge: The Hidden Architecture Behind the NAR

Hello, 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 where history proves that truth or at least their version of it is truly stranger than fiction. Recently I did a podcast on free masonry and it's kind of funny if you know where I was heading with this and you understand the comments that I made about free masonry which a couple people who commented did. If you know where I'm headed with this and then understand the bigger picture, all of this makes much more sense and so if you're listening

to this podcast and you've not heard that episode I recommend you go back and maybe not the whole thing because part of it was also addressing a comment that was made in a previous podcast before that but at least the last half of it may be the last 20 minutes because I start talking about free masonry as it is being introduced into the laterane movement through William Branham and his mentors and in multiple directions both from a religious side from a fraternal order side. If you understand the concepts of a fraternal order and understand the destruction that can be caused by something like free masonry

which is in many ways it's not as insidious as some people have claimed which I'll get into that into a minute but if you understand the bigger picture why these things are so dangerous it would make you run screaming from several of these New Apostolic Reformation churches, some charismatic, some Pentecostal churches it is it's actually quite a big deal and there were a couple commenters who actually caught where I was heading with this and I want to give kudos out to those who did I actually went back and and I commented to their comment in the free masonry episode and I said you win the prize it's

because if you understand the bigger picture then you really understand why all of this exists today and so I'm going to be talking a bit about free masonry but this podcast isn't about that again you can go back and listen to the previous one but instead I'm going to be diving just a bit not fully but just a bit into narcissism and again kudos to the person or the peep There were a couple of them who caught where I was going to be heading with this because it is such a big deal So before I get into it

Let's talk just a bit about why I took the approach that I did As I mentioned in the podcast that I did on free masonry I'm I'm against free masonry I said that I think I counted seven or eight times throughout the podcast and it was funny because you could tell who was paying attention And who was there just literally to disrupt conversation because they said why is John advertising free masonry and when I clearly said I'm not a fan of free masonry at all But here's here's the problem I came out of a destructive cult and in a destructive cult mindset

Everything is black or white And for those of you that don't understand why that is and how that is I recommend you read Dr. Stephen Hasen's book combating cult mind control because it really breaks it down for you But it's black or white. It's either on or off true or false It must be wrong. It must be right the shades of gray that lie in between are usually discredited or discounted or simply ignored and To a person who has escaped that mindset well Unless you really fully deprogram and understand that it's not a black or white world we live in

You miss half of the world and some of it that you miss is actually quite dangerous So that's what I want to get into into this podcast I want to talk about the dangers of free masonry, but not because it's free masonry So when you're in that mindset and you escape a cult It's very simplistic to suddenly find an enemy target them and say The world has an enemy and it is free masonry. It's a satanic cult They use the word Lucifer, which I did explain that if you want to go back and hear the first half of it

But they use this word Lucifer. So therefore, but they must be worshiping Satan and Ignore all of the doc fully documented recording history as to why that word is used how what that word actually means How it progressed through time and why it why it turned into such a thing as it did It's very easy to find an enemy because in a black or white mindset if we left something that's bad and Christianity is something that's good. There must be an underlying theme that's causing all of it It must be black or white. It must be the free masons

My opinion after having studied that and studying the bigger picture and Studying all of these trails of history that we've been going through and we've not even skimmed the surface of those trails of history getting to the what Stephen Stephen Montgomery calls it the converging apostasy Getting into that converging of apostasy is really key to understand. Because Freemasonry, yes it's problematic, yes it did influence the church, yes it is a trail of apostasy, but it's not the big one. In fact, I don't know that there is a big one. If you want to look at a big one, just simply open the Bible and you can see that Satan

and his demons are the big one. And more to the point, read through the New Testament when it talks about how there would be, sent a great delusion to the church. My opinion is, if you understand the bigger picture, Freemasonry is just one thread that's coming in, but there's something that is being created by Freemasonry, by Nosticism, Nostec ideas, by many different converging themes of apostasy, that it creates something that looks like Christianity. It's using the word Jesus, it's using the word Christian. It has worship to Jesus, you know, and they're using the name Jesus

in the worship, but it has themes that came from very destructive sources. And again, Freemasonry can be one of those sources, but you have to dig just a bit deeper to understand why Freemasonry exists. And the person who rightfully decided that he knew where I was heading with it, and rightfully so, the person got it, he or she, I should say, Nosticism is a bigger threat in my opinion than Freemasonry, because without Nosticism, likely Freemasonry would not have existed. And so in this podcast, I want to break that down just a bit, but there's much more to this story as we go through

these histories. And I think, as I go through this through time, I think you'll catch where I'm headed with all of this, but it is not something that is easily explained in a small 15-minute video, it's not something that in one podcast can be fully explained. And two, the commenter who said something to the effect that there's a whole lot of words and not a lot of substance, we have to understand there is going to be a lot of different angles that you have to look at this. And I'm taking it very slowly to drop in just hints of truth that people can go through, you know, you

can do your own research and you can find, am I saying what's, what am I saying is it correct? Is it incorrect? I'll let you make that determination. But before we get into that, let's talk about Nosticism just a bit. And I want to be very cautious how I do this because I don't want to use the word Nosticism as a fog word. I don't want to use it as a word that people are reading into it this superficial idea. Nosticism is a real threat. And Nosticism isn't one- single thing. Like I've heard people's target

narcissism much like they target free masonry saying that that is it. That is the evil. That is narcissism is the enemy. And that's why we have all of these things. That is partially correct. But narcissism is a family of movements. It's it's a converging of apostasy before today's converging of apostasy. And if you understand how all of that works, which is, you know, I could go into different histories of all of the different flavors of narcissism. And I think you might catch how big of a problem this is. But instead, I prefer to point people to

some of the resources that are out there. For me, I went back to the original resource. The very, I think it was the first Christian apologist Irenaeus wrote against heresies. And what he was doing was writing much like Stephen Montgomery's converging apostasy. He was writing about how all of these different ancient heresies made their way into Christianity.

And he was tracing their sources much like I have done from the Gnostic groups that existed back to which ancient mythologies of pagan ideas that they originated from. It's called against heresies. It is a very difficult read because as you read parts of what Irenaeus is writing, you also have to go look in Wikipedia if it has it or different online sources to find what are the ancient mythologies that he's talking about because he's referencing them to a and his writings to a people that is aware of their existence. Many of them are long forgotten. So the book

is called The Series of Books is called Against Heresies. But narcissism is a family of movements that reframe salvation as liberation, freedom, escape, elitism, through revealed knowledge. In other words, if you have an if you have this revealed knowledge that only the Gnostic group has, then suddenly there's an awakening and that awakening is it's reserved for the spiritual elite. Often that idea, that that noces, that knowledge, it is often paired with a mythic retelling of creation or distrust of things that we see in the world. And they saw in the world in their time. And that

combination of those things, the spiritual elitism, the hidden secret knowledge that only the special group has, the mythic ideas, all of this combining to embody what they were, they considered Christian life. So much like we see today with the New Apostolic Reformation and some of the other groups I've talked about.

it was being presented as a Christian idea, but Irenaeus went through all of the trouble and all of the work to trace all of the roots of their ideas and their theology back to their pagan mythological sources. And it was quite destructive because people joined in those groups thinking it was Christian and they're using the word Christ, they're talking about Jesus, but you can see how deceptive that would be. And it is, it's a very good study. I strongly recommend that you go into it. So with that idea, the idea that you have a secret knowledge that is a special group

now with that theme, now think of free masonry. Free masonry, you have this knowledge that only the people at the top know, you have this special group. If you join, you can learn the secret knowledge.

There's many similarities between free masonry and narcissism. Why is this? Because this is an idea that is, it was very popular in the ancient world. It's very popular in the world today. So let's break it down a bit further. I mentioned salvation by secret knowledge. You are saved, your salvation relies on the fact that you received the revelation. That was a key element of narcissism. Elite classes of humans, some people can't receive the truth because they're not of our kind. I can't tell you how many times that I heard that language in the religion that I came

from, and I came from Brannemism, which was one of the foundational elements for what became the post-World War II healing revival, and many of the groups we see today were built on top of that idea. That was a very common idea in the Revivals, and it's not just Brannem. You can read through many of the other religious leaders that were participating in those Revivals, and they had some Kenneth Hagen called it the Rayma. They have the secret revelation. It is a divine knowledge that only the leadership can give to the people, and by having this knowledge, you become part of

the elite. The person who is revealing these mysteries, they're usually functionally the center of attention in the group. It's not just that Christ is the Redeemer, but in narcissism, there was the

deity, and there's different names that were used for that deity among the different groups, but there was the deity, and then there was the messenger who unlocked the realization of that deity, and I think one of the biggest elements, this one is very key to understanding why all of this exists. There was this idea that the scripture was encoded. It wasn't just simply that a person but read the scriptures and read for themselves, understand the meanings.

The real meaning of the scriptures was hidden from the masses because it was a meaning that only could be learned by the secret group. So in narcissism, you had the mystery, you had the leader, and through that combination of learning the mystery from the leader, then you could earn your salvation.

And there were different ways that you earned it. The material things, the material world and Gnostic view was downgraded. There were Gnostics who became so ascetic that they even forbade their members, in the worst cases, some of them forbade their members to have sex with each other because one of the group's mysteries was that sex was part of the original sin, and therefore it's evil.

And if we want to be perfect and escape this world, no more sex. Well, that group didn't last very long. It died out over time, and there's some strange and unusual groups. The authoritarianism in narcissism, it's always esoteric.

The authority comes from access through visions, through mysteries, basically through higher realms. You don't go to the Bible for your revelation, you don't read the Bible to learn about salvation, it has to come from this supernatural thing, whether it's a vision or whatever it is, sometimes the leader would just speak.

There, depending on the different groups, there's different ways that they did this, but it was always esoteric. And another key element, which will sound very familiar to people in today's world, there was what, where you had the real, there was a counterfeit of the real, and that counterfeit spirituality that felt higher, felt repentant, which was probably, in most cases, the body of Christians that were Christian, those were discredited because you had to have the mystery, and if you unlocked the mystery, you were ignoring the counterfeit that existed, the ones that all of the Christians flock to,

your special group had something better. So I could go on with that against heresies, kind of breaks that down much better than I just did, if you want to read it. But the key to understand is there are mysteries, there are a special group of people, it's not for the outsiders, and that is basically, in its essence, if you understand what Irenaeus was writing about, it is basically the commonality, the common theme, was between this nostic idea that you could merge all of these different pagan beliefs into Christianity, and there was a link between what was called a mystery call.

In the ancient world, there were these mystery cults, the cult of Dionysus, for example. They would have the rituals that you would perform. And if you performed the rituals, then you could summon the demon or the god, or another one was back as they would get into these ecstasy rituals where they were drinking wine, getting drunk, having all kinds of things that were bad, I'll just leave it there.

But through these mysteries, the Gnostic groups were basically participating in the same ideas that the pagan mystery groups did. And in Gnosticism, it was rebranded as Christianity. So again, Irenaeus traces it out, he will link you to all of the different pagan mythological groups and how that crept into Christianity.

One part that was really fascinating to me was watching through many of the different groups had a weird emphasis on numbers, because apparently in the ancient world and the pagan religions, with good reason, which I guess I'll go into that a bit, the sevens, the threes, the fives, the different numbers that had spiritual significance in Gnosticism, they were tied directly to the pagan belief systems because of the worship of the sun, moon, and stars.

You had the moon cycles, and you had the twelves was a big number, and that was because of the constellations. You had all of these numbers that were related to the tides when they would come in and out.

And Irenaeus walks you through that, he says, and this group followed this pagan religion, which had a emphasis on seven, whatever that religion was. And so therefore anytime they saw a seven, they said, well, this must be a spiritual thing, God is talking to us.

I grew up in the same kind of thing, man. We saw a seven, we saw a five, Brannum would often say that five means grace, and he would spell it out on his fingers, G-R-A-C-E, and it was a big spiritual number, so we were doing this kind of thing.

And the irony in all of this, in the laterane movement, and the post-World War II healing revivals, Brannum was heavily involved in spreading dispensationalism, but he appointed what he called messengers to the dispensations of time that was laid out chronologically by Clarence Larkin, who was very popular and dispensational thought.

And he assigned messengers to those time periods. And Irenaeus was one of his so-called messengers. It was very funny when I first came across Irenaeus' works and I started reading them, and he's condemning half of the things that I grew up believing.

So Irenaeus was a Christian apologist and you can- or more about narcissism through that. So why was this a threat to the early church and why would it be a threat to the church today?

I think that's really the key. If you want to understand the significance of what I'm talking about in this podcast, we really have to think through that because narcissism did not just simply deny Jesus, it retooled Jesus into a dispenser of hidden knowledge rather than the incarnate Lord who saved sinners through the cross, the resurrection, through the gospels.

Nosticism turned the Jesus story into a mythology and the mythology had to do with secret knowledge. And again, if you're in a Nosta group, those who were in the group knew the secrets, that's why they were the elite.

Those on the outside, the actual Christians did not. And so while talking to other Christians in the ancient world, you could talk to them and you were using the name Jesus, you're saying, yes, we believe Jesus.

Yes, he died on the cross, but what they weren't doing was they weren't really sharing what they considered to be the gospel truth, which was their secret knowledge to those who knew the gospel truth because to them the gospel truth was the power of that was diminished.

You had to have the secret knowledge and the gospel truth. That's how Nosticism worked. So basically it changed what faith meant. Faith instead of faith in Jesus Christ meant insight. You had insight knowledge to what this mystery was, whatever the different mystery was for each independent Nosta group.

And the idea of salvation by grace through faith, it was completely non-existent. It changed what salvation meant. And so instead what happened was much like the pagan religions, salvation became an ascent or an awakening.

You went up to a higher plane because you had the secret knowledge. It also changed what church meant. When Jesus said you are the church, well, the church does not mean the same thing if only the initiated circle of people, the elite ones who have the mysteries are the church.

No longer is the church, I hate to use the word because it is the actual word that fits, but no longer is the church Catholic or universal. If you understand what the word Catholic means, it just simply means the universal body of people, the body of the church.

No longer was it that, it was now this little tiny group that had this secret mystery. It was this group of people that had the Nosis, the knowledge. And so what happened was, as you can imagine, it created spiritual elitism.

It created paranoia. because you had this sort of contempt for the ordinary believers. We're the special ones. We have the knowledge. These people are lesser than us. They don't have the knowledge. They're just doing the rituals that Christ laid down and we have something better.

So what happened was it created a separation between basically severed the body of Christ, but those who were in it, it would be difficult to say they were actually Christian because what they believed was not Christianity.

They believed in instead, Nosticism. So why and how did Irenaeus expose it? Irenaeus, whenever he attacked Nosticism, he did not attack one specific group. And I think that's really key to understand what I was trying to say in the Freemasonry episode.

In today's world, if Irenaeus were writing his against heresies and he saw all of these new apostolic reformation leaders and how they were teaching the ancient mythologies without knowing it, rebranding Christianity into the mysteries.

And he saw the Freemasons, he saw all of the different fraternal orders, all of these different themes of apostasy that have entered into the church. He didn't isolate one group. In today's world, he didn't just isolate Freemasonry and say, Freemasonry is the Luciferian worship.

And from that, all threads of evil have originated. Instead, what he did was he attacked the underlying architecture that all of the different Nostic groups were built upon. And he did mention each individual group, probably a majority of them that existed in his day.

But instead, he talked about their similarities and where those roots came from. And there were four things that he really insisted if you understand against heresies. He insisted that Christianity is public, not secret.

It's for the entire body of Christians and you can read the Bible, you can learn the gospel, by faith, by grace or save through faith in Jesus Christ, not some secret that is for us and not other Christians.

And that's what Nosticism was. And in Eernyus days, that's what it is today, even though it's not really called Nosticism, and some of the terms that were used by the Nostics are no longer used.

He insisted also that Christianity was apostolic. It wasn't something that was newly invented. It wasn't something that the apostles of the Nostic groups were giving Rama to their groups or spoken word or however your group calls it in today's New Apostolic Reformation.

He was saying that it's not something that's new. Christianity is something that we go back to the apostles. We go back to the philosophy. foundation of Christianity, if you want to understand Christianity, you go back to the foundation of Christianity, not the foundations of the mystery cults.

And he began to trace all of the histories of the Gnostic groups, trace them all the way back to their mythological sources. And in doing so, what he exposed was not an individual group, but an underlying strategy of deception.

I think that's really the key to understand. It was pure deception that had entered into the church, not a Luciferian cult where they're worshiping Lucifer. It was a spirit of deception that had entered into the church.

He insisted that the Christian religion was incompatible with any anti-creation stories. And by that, I mean, in his book against Heresies, he starts talking about the different creation stories that were entered into these Gnostic groups as a quote-unquote divine mystery.

And those who understood that creation story and understood how it was different from the Bible and how all the other Christians who just knew the Bible's creation story, they didn't have the spiritual insight, the spiritual knowledge, they weren't the spiritual warriors that we are in our Gnostic group that understands this new creation story.

I'll never forget the shock. Whenever I began to study, Brannum had this, he took Clarence Larkin's dispensational truth and he took the timelines that Larkin had and he appointed different messengers. He would call them church age messengers in the dispensational timeline.

One of them he chose was Irenaeus. I'll never forget the shock when I read Irenaeus' against Heresies and found out that one of the so-called messengers actually condemned much of what Brannum taught, right down to the anti-creationism.

Brannum taught that much like one of the Gnostic groups, I can't remember which one. Maybe the Sethians, I think it was. Brannum taught that the original sin was sex between Eve and the serpent to produce two bloodlines and therefore it became a Yin and Yang type religion.

Good or bad, there's no black or white and it all had to do with sex. That was much like, I think it was the Sethians but you could correct me if you read against Heresies.

There was a Gnostic group that believed this and Irenaeus condemned it as Heresy long and into the ancient world. He also believed that there was one rule of faith and that rule of faith could be pointed back to the Bible through the apostolic teachings, not endless private myths.

The Gnostic groups each had their own individual mythologies, many of which were based off of the... chipmethologies, and it was spiritual revelation to each group that their new myth was part of the faith, and they basically tacked it onto what they call Christianity, much like we see in the New Apostolic Reformation today.

So much like me, if you read against heresies, and I found out it was condemning Brannemism, I'll guarantee you that almost every single New Apostolic Reformation group that I've encountered, 100% of them that I've studied, if you read and understand against heresies, it will condemn some of the foundational teachings of each New Apostolic Reformation group. Extend that backwards in time, the New Apostolic Reformation was built upon these Apostolic networks, the Apostolic networks, much of their network was a direct result of the work that William Brannem did with Gordon Lindsay, the founder of Christ for the Nations, and the full gospel businessmen.

So from that network, they are developing into the New Apostolic Reformation, and at its core, you have all of these Gnostic ideas that Brannem was spreading and injecting into the movement. Like I said, not everybody agreed with them, the idea that Eve made it with a serpent, it resulted in this big fight among hundreds of the ministers. You had those who cited with Brannem because they were racist, you had those who were against Brannem because they knew what the Bible said, they did not want to entertain this racist thought, and so they condemned Brannem's serpent seed doctrine. Ehernais would have been on the side that condemned them. Actually,

he was on the side that condemned them. So understanding that is key, but understanding that the reason why Ehernais attacked Gnosticism in the way that he did, he wanted to point out that it wasn't an individual group. Satan wasn't coming into the world to attack the world through some individual group that was attacking the government. Instead, it was coming into the church, it was coming into Christianity, it was rebranding Christianity from these pagan ideas.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannem Historical Research's website, William-Brannem.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 I've talked a bit about the history of narcissism and why Irenaeus would want to attack it and actually how he beat it. He did not attack an individual group. He didn't start yelling, this group is satanic, this group is Luciferian, they're invading our churches, they're invading our government systems, they have there are secret government agents that are

Luciferian because they're in this specific Gnostic group. Instead, he started attacking the underlying framework, the architecture of what narcissism consisted of and why it was such converging apostasy. He beat it by making Christianity, actually, and this is kind of a funny way to say it and think through it, but he beat it by making Christianity boring in the best way.

Public truth, shared confessions, a real Jesus Christ in the flesh, not a hidden mystery to the Gnostic groups who had all of these rituals and all of these secret mysteries, the divine gnosis. This was the most boring thing ever, but that's what he did. He attacked it by showing Christianity for what it was and showing the Gnostic evil pagan ideas and their roots for what they are. That's how he attacked it. Again, he did not go to an individual group. So where does that leave us? How does narcissism survive through time? How do we have what we have today? How is

the Freemason groups have similarities between narcissism? How does the NAR, people who are claiming to be Christian? How are they have all of these Gnostic ideas? We have to understand, narcissism is less of a club and it's more of a recurring temptation through time.

It's very powerful to tell somebody, I know a secret. I remember when I was a kid and we're all sitting around and one guy found out, one kid found out how to do something with, I don't know, a marble or whatever. Legos usually in my case and he would turn around and say, I know how to do this. I know the secret and they wouldn't want to tell you the secret. Carry it a step further. Every kid who's fascinated with magic and doing magic tricks to trick their parents, they don't want to tell their parents the secret, how they did it. It's powerful to have a secret. Well, narcissism is

much like this. It's not a club with the rituals that are summoning a demon. It's not so much that as it is a recurring temptation to... mix the truth with something that is false.

That is narcissism in its essence. Telling people you have a mystery when I have to believe that many of the people who were nostics knew that these mysteries weren't real. They knew they had robbed them, stolen them from some of the pagan mythologies.

So I have to believe that they knew that this was not a real Christian thing, but they were tricking people. They were rebranding it as Christianity and tricking people. And that's where it gets to be a bit insidious.

People want to have a higher plane of spirituality. Men have always strive to become like gods. That's why you have all of the books on gods. That's why you have the marvel, the DC comic books.

They want to become like gods. The children want to become Superman, right? Well, adults want this too. Adults want to have a mystery. Adults want to be like God. And if you have somebody who's boasting and telling them, I know a secret.

I know how to make you like gods. I know how to make you a manifested son of God. That's why this gets so insidious. Nosticism is not a club. And in many ways, I mentioned several times that I am against free masonry.

But in many ways, I see the, one of the reasons why I use the little rascals is my movie example is because I see it as such a less problematic thing than it's underlying reason for existence, which is nosticism.

If you can teach people that you have a secret and teach them that you are the secret giver, that empowers you. So think of innosticism, in free masonry, I mean, you've got all of the different degrees.

And you get all the way up to the 33rd degree. Well, every person who's at the bottom and they see a smaller number, they want a higher number. And so they want more. They want to know the mysteries.

If I know the mysteries, I can climb up and become a 33rd degree mason. Well, that's how nosticism is. It's this idea that you are empowered by your secret, the secret that you know, not empowered by Christ.

And in free masonry, again, it's the divine architect, the one who's teaching you how to do the divine architectural things. You can only learn this if you climb up this ladder. Well, that's exactly what nosticism is.

But it wasn't a club. It was being touted as a religion. And that's where for me, free masonry sits off to the side for me because it doesn't really advertise itself as a religious thing.

Nosticism did. And yet at the same time, nosticism has entered into the church. In many ways, we've talked about that in our convergent. apostasy series that I do with Steve, it is actually more insidious.

So many of the people who Steve have mentioned who are spreading gnosisism in laterane, new episodic reformation, kerosmenia, those people are actually, in my opinion, they're worse of a threat than free masonry, because they're doing it, they're rebranding it in the name of Christian, much like the gnostics we're doing. And so what you get in many cases that we've gone through, I think Steve actually mentions it exactly like this, people believe that they have earned salvation through these divine mysteries without actually having repentance. And that fully explains why you have, you know, the leadership and the new apostolic reformation right now is suffering

because so many of them are following, falling to all kinds of different sins, financial sins, sexual sins, many of them are some of them are predators. This is a, this is a very bad thing. Well, think about how they raise to the top of their fraternal order Christianity. They rose all the way up to the top.

They're teaching people that they have the secret knowledge that can make their group special. And yet they're gaining spirituality without repentance. They are learning how to climb up this ladder. And there's no tie back to Jesus.

They've basically misrepresented what Christianity is to the people. And worse, so many people have come into these groups with a misrepresented version of Christianity, thinking it is because it's the gnostic idea. I have the mystery.

We're better than the other Christians who don't have the mystery. And me, you're all powerful leader can show you this mystery. So that temptation for mystery, it keeps resurfacing. Also, I think Bob Scott is the best one who talks through this. When he talks about the different cultural things and historical things that are happening, the temptation really comes whenever there's strong anxiety or a social collapse. World War II caused all kinds of ideas to come into Christianity because there was sudden and instant fear that there would be a World War III. During the World War, there was a fear that

there was going to be a complete destruction of the earth. That was a really heightened fear. They were actually fearing a social collapse. So, through each period of time and history, if you can find a time where there is a culture who is at fear, high anxiety, strong social collapse, there are leaders who can monetize this. And if you can tell people that you know the secret to escape this anxiety, to escape this fear, you can make a lot of money. And Brandon was doing exactly this right on the heels of World War II.

who there are newspaper advertisements that say he was holding revivals and it would take two or three hefty men to carry the boxes of money that he had collected from the revivals. That anxiety is very powerful and it can make people very rich.

But then what happens is, after this has occurred and the leaders have said, we know the secret mysteries, we can teach you how to get past this anxiety, that sparks a movement because the people join into it, now the group of people who are in it start to outgrow the initial size of whatever was the revival and they want more.

We know the mystery that you told us yesterday, what's the new mystery? What's the new revelation from God? So narcissism has manifested itself into the Christian movement much the same way people are coming to hear what is the mystery.

So how did we end up where we are today? How did these themes of narcissism enter into the church? I think the best way to state it is, like Steve Montgomery does, it is a converging apostasy.

One of the reasons why I am so strongly against Freemasonry is because there is no transparency. And so you don't know what the mystery is unless you climb through all of these levels and become 33rd degree, you don't know what the mystery is, but here's the funny part.

If you understand the architecture of how all of this works, those who rise up the ladder to become a 33rd degree Mason, I can assure you that they don't know the full extent of the mystery because there's always another mystery.

If you're in this Gnostic mindset, there's always the next revelation, there's always the next thing. And just look at the Gnostic groups that Irenaeus exposed. There was not one single group, there were multiple groups.

And you have to believe that through time as these groups are developing, there had to be splinters of an original group. In other words, one guy says, I have the mystery, I have found out that yes, we're worshiping Jesus, but we need to also worship, I don't know.

So Herculee's God, and all of you can become strong, and that's our secret mystery. Well, people learned this mystery and got bored with it. And what happens, some other guy comes out of this and says, yes, we've learned how to become strong, but none of us really became like Herculee's.

I think we also need to have, and I don't know who he brings in Diana or some other God, or Dime God, etc. Then that splinter is often to a different mystery called. So whenever you think of how this is merging into the church, it's not just one single stream, and there are themes of it that come from in many various different ways, many of which are mystery cults.

So one of the streams, yes, is Freemasonry. So if you are taking the idea that maybe all of the history that I explained in the last episode, maybe it is incorrect. I'm not gonna say that I'm 100% right.

I just know the studies that I have looked at, maybe it is correct, maybe they're worshiping Lucifer. Well, that's one stream, that's not the only stream, that's just one stream into the church. And in Freemasonry, it is, I'm not arguing that it is a satanic cult, but it is a cult of sorts, it is a cult structure, and they have a secret divine order.

So in my opinion, what you can have with this is you can have somebody who has mistakenly joined this cult and they believe that this divine architect is making them a better person. Well, say they rise to the ranks of their church and they become a minister, and they're actually teaching Christian doctrine.

But while teaching the Christian doctrine, they're teaching things that they learned in their secret Masonic order. And so they're introducing mysteries into the church. That is one way in which you could say yes, it is Luciferian, but I strongly and sincerely doubt that this is, that this is where Satan chose to put his bed, because we see it in other streams.

I've mentioned Christian identity. I think I mentioned it in the last episode. This is where the elite seed instinct comes. So from Freemasonry, maybe you're bringing in the mystery ideas, Christian identity. Now you have the elitism.

We're elite because we identify with the race that has developed from the lost hand tribes of Israel. That was one of the themes of apostasy that entered into the church. Gordon Lindsay, who was the founder of Christ for the Nations, Brannum's campaign manager.

He was the keynote speaker in multiple Christian identity groups. So think of like Irenaeus, you've got all of these different groups. Freemasonry is one group. You have the divine mystery coming in. Christian identity, you have the elite seed.

We'll now take it a step further. William Brannum brings in from the clan side. William Brannum's mentor, as I mentioned, which Roy Davis, the second and command of the 1915 clan, who rose up to become the imperial wizard.

Well, now he's bringing in this militant type of religion and Laterane introduced the Joel's army notion, the idea that there was this elite army coming. So Freemasonry gives you the divine mysteries. Christian identity brings you the elitism.

Well, now we're bringing in the in time company of. the higher class of believer, manifested sons of God. That's something that came in strongly through Brannum, but it was actually a converging of ideas from cross-pollinated doctrines from multiple people.

It eventually developed into the manifested sons of God. Well, now you've got the Gnostic idea of this higher class of believers compared to the other Christians, which are the lower class. And the Pentecostal Charismatic Groups.

So Pentecostalism as a whole is not Gnostic, but there is this Gnostic drift that can happen when the experiences outrun outweigh the scriptures. And there are Pentecostal groups, Charismatic groups that this is the case.

Your experience is outweigh the scriptures and so therefore, revelation becomes the priority, much like the Gnostic groups. I have this revelation. Let's listen about this revelation. It's more important than the gospel than the Bible.

So spiritual status is ranked by these manifestations or these revelations. And what happens is there's this belief within Pentecostal Charismatic Groups that if you have that experience, if you have that revelation, if you have that spoken word, you can become activated.

And so activation becomes the new replacement for repentance and belief in Jesus Christ. You must be activated. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the very first iteration of Pentecostalism, it splintered because you had people who believed that they had to be activated by speaking in tongues or they weren't Christian, much like the Gnostic groups.

You had to be activated. And if you were, you were the elite Christians compared to the other Christians who were not yet activated. So the final thing, after you understand that these different themes of apostasy have came in, some through Freemasonry, some through Christian identity, some through the holiness movements, et cetera, it is all converged and has created an ecosystem.

And that ecosystem breeds different various groups with different levels of Gnostic ideas. Some of them are benign. Some of them are actually quite destructive. But there's this ecosystem that exists where you have different groups and you can't really pick out an individual group and say that this group is evil.

Well, if you read against heresy and understand what Heronais is saying, it is that ecosystem that is the problem. You had these groups that were bringing in ideas. Some of them were quite destructive, like the ones who can't have sex and their group died out.

That was a very destructive group. You had others that were somewhat benign and they were just bringing in pagan ideas and calling it a mystery. creating that spiritual hierarchy where it's in us versus them religion, they were just one element of the Gnostic system. So what Brannum and Lindsay and what the Full Gospel Businessman, all of these different groups that were collaborating to create this network, what they were creating was basically an ecosystem much like Euroneus was condemning in against Heresys, where each individual group contributed to the network. And so as a group develops, it has these new ideas, these new

ramas, these new spoken words, these new fresh mana, fresh revelation, there's different ways that they explain it. A person comes into that group, they learn it, and then they get bored with that secret. So then they move on and they create their splinter group, and then that one develops into another group into the network, much like the Nostics who developed into other groups of their networks. It grows, it splinters, it divides, it grows, it splinters, and it divides.

The reason for this is because the Gospel itself to these people are boring, it's the itching ears passage of Scripture. They have itching ears and they want more, they want the mystery. Well, the mystery is never satisfying. And that was really the problem with Nosticism. Once you climbed up the ladder and you learned the secret mystery, well, that's it. Really? That's a mystery.

Oh, I found out. Let's go create another group. That one is boring. Well, that's how it worked in Nosticism, much like Freemasonry. You climb up the ladder, and what does it gain you? You know, there are people who I've read some of the books where people have came out of Freemasonry and said, this is a cult, it's destructive, I rose up, I became, I think one of them I read was a 33rd degree, and here's what they believe, and I don't like it. I don't like it at all. So I've read some of those books. Well, what they've done is they've climbed the ladder and they realize that that mystery

is not satisfying. And in Freemasonry, it's very easy to come out because you can see, well, they don't even call themselves Christian. They worship the divine architect. But think of the same thing that happens in a R group. You climb up through the ladder of High Hop KC. You learn how you can create your own army. You learn how you can learn the mysteries of the harp and bowl or whatever is the doctrine. You learn how through these mysteries you can become a spiritual warrior, and how your status and rank as a spiritual warrior is up here. Well, the church down the street

that believes just the boring gospel is down at the bottom. You have essentially created the essence of, you know, agnosticism, but it's more difficult to come out because it is gnosticism that is branded as Christianity. Whereas Freemasonry, it is not branded as Christian. It's branded as religious, it is just a system that has a mystery. In the New Apostolic Reformation, you actually have this ecosystem that's calling itself Christian that is presenting the Gnostic ideas. So that is why it is so dangerous in my opinion. So hopefully I've done this justice.

There's so many more things that you could go into. Honestly, it becomes a history class. It becomes like a modern version of what Irenaeus was doing to try to even untangle all of this mess. But the point I wanted to make in this particular episode is that while it sounds good to make free masonry the scapegoat, the red herring that is out there that, you know, yes, you could call it Luciferian worship, but is that the real problem for me? I don't believe so.

It sounds good because it's a good way to ignore the bigger problem that exists. And people who are everywhere from, you know, there are Catholic groups that denounce free masonry. There are Christian groups. There are New Apostolic Reformation groups. There's many different groups that do because if you can distract the people from the bigger problem and give them an enemy, the people will take that enemy. And I think honestly, as I begin studying it, that's really where I ended up. Yes, there are bad things. Yes, I'm against free masonry.

But the bigger problem has actually become the church itself. There are so many threads of narcissism that have entered into the church. And it's interdined disguised as a Christian faith, as a Christian religion. Worse, if you have escaped one of these groups and somebody has trained your eye and trained your attention to this conspiracy theory type mindset, where you're looking to see Luciferian things in a specific group. Well, it's very, very unhealthy.

From a mental standpoint, your mental health will suffer if you take that too far. So I'm strongly against that idea. I don't believe if you've been affected by a cult, I don't believe you should get into that conspiracy theory mindset. Instead, get a good therapist because they will tell you exactly what I just told you. Don't do that. That's unhealthy. And instead, look at the bigger picture because if you understand the architecture of what has been injected into modern Christian religion, you'll see that it's actually quite a bigger enemy that you're facing.

And how do you beat it? Much like Irenaeus did. What did Irenaeus do? He pointed people to the boring, simple gospel. And he said, this is the way of salvation. Not these mystery cults because those are evil. So if there's any, anything that I could do to sum up this episode, I would just say Read AirNase's book, take his philosophy, don't go out there looking for conspiracy theories.

Instead, just look at the simple thing that's right in front of your face. So if you've enjoyed the 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 Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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