Dominionism vs the Teachings of Jesus: A Critical Examination

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 and with me I have my co-host and friend, Brantley Smith. Brantley, I'm excited for today. I've been wanting to dive into this and in fact I was pushed to dive into this. The subject of dominionism. Recently and I think that podcast comes up before years I had the couple Barbara and Kevin Sisti talking about they apparently go on to visit Andrew Womux complex and they were getting all

kinds of dominionism fears from all of the nonsense and the political rhetoric that's happening. So I had that conversation with them and I knew you know some of the basics but I've been diving in deeper and even just I think it was yesterday. I haven't email in my box that I'm still preparing to answer. This guy is asking about dominionism. He said, I can't find any Bible scriptures that are really condemning it. So why do you say it's wrong? And the funny part of this is there are so many things in today's world that did not exist in the

ancient world and so the ancient world didn't write about the things that didn't exist. You don't find anything that says you shouldn't drive a pick-up truck with poor tread on the tires. You're not going to find a Bible verse that condemns that, right? Because that didn't exist in the ancient world and the question is asked in the wrong way. It shouldn't be why it doesn't the Bible condemn it. It should be if it's not in the Bible to condemn and it's extra biblical, why are you preaching it in your churches? Yeah, I'm excited to pick your brain on this a little bit too because I know that you have a little

bit more familiarity. I have KC. So we were actually told that we didn't believe in dominionism, although in practice and the way that the theology worked out, it was very dominionistic. Although we may have rejected the totalitarian takeovers. Yeah, we didn't have it because laterane, the version that we were stuck in, like we were stuck in the 1940s and 50s in the Brandham called, which is really weird if you think about it. But we predated all of the dominionism nonsense unless you went into some of the churches that kind of steered away from Brandham's original teaching.

and added their own stuff. You really didn't hear much of dominionism. However, the premise, you heard because it is literally, it's a cult premise. You have this cult identity mindset, where you are the elite, the spiritual elite, the overcomers, that there's different names, the believers, the, well, I can't think of all the different names that we call ourselves, but basically we were it. And if you weren't part of our group, you weren't it. And so we were better than you. And we would hear sermons talking about this, but they wouldn't just come out and say, we're better than that guy down the street who attends the other Christian churches.

Instead, what we would hear were sermons talking about how we were the chosen ones and the bride of Christ, the elect, I think, as a phrase that many cults use. But what it did was it created this mentality where even though we didn't have a dominionist theme, whenever we would get into a business transaction or we would just simply be on a, I don't know, call to support because our phone isn't working or something like this. The mentality flowed like we own you. You people need to take care of us. I had it. And even though I'm a people person and it goes against my,

you know, my being to be like this, you're kind of indoctrinated with it. So you can't get around it. Yeah, it's, it's, I mean, dominionism domination at its core is what it is. And it's so anti-everything else, I feel like that we see in scripture whenever it comes to lording over people and controlling people and the idea of how that idea came to be is a mystery to me. The first which you may know, I don't know as far as like what you know about origins of it. The stuff that I've heard is about Bill Bright's encounter and Lauren Cunningham's encounter. I guess it was

been around the 70s that it came into mainstream Christian thought, I guess, if you could argue that. But did you guys have like any of like the seven mountains type stuff like in brinemism?

That's where it gets interesting. We didn't per se. But we had all of the different themes. Like so our version of the entertainment, whereas your group wanted to take over the entertainment, our group wanted to just completely shun it. It's bad. It's the enemy. Yes, we would like to get people and we did. This is another story for another day, but there were ranking execs in the news media whenever I had my first interview with the news and they actually shut it down because I used the word cult with brinemism. So we had it. It was kind of underneath the hood behind the scenes.

But take a step back into history. In fact, this is really cool stuff. I've been talking with a few people about AI and they're things that it can do that are just so much faster than human.

I have trained it on my database. going through my pages to try to update some of them. Well, it is finding connections that I missed. One of the most significant connections that I found is that the supreme religious leader of the clan, the 1915 clan, I think it's called the Klud.

He came into Jeffersonville in 1921 and set up the Jeffersonville branch of the clan, which is significant if you know the clan history because Indiana clan rose to become the, they splintered off and rose to become the largest clan organization that ever existed.

Well, in Jeffersonville, it was an opposition to that because it was a different branch and it just happened to be the branch that Roy Davis, William Brannum's mentor, led. So there's the supposing factions, right?

Well, if you look at the key figures that are involved with that faction, they had ties to this organization that was short lived but it was called the Supreme Kingdom. And basically it was the notion that we as a, use the word pseudo, we as a pseudo Christian organization, the White Knights, et cetera.

We need to claim dominion over this people that have invaded our United States and are changing our moral system, bringing the Catholics in, bringing in the, all of the different things that the clan stood for.

And they began to try to conquer what later became the Seven Mountains and the Seven Mountain Mandate. They were actually producing videos and films and putting them in churches and it's weird, weird history.

And all of that pre-existed what we came from but the leadership in it were directly involved with William Brannum, so there are some weird ties. But I have studied dominionism and probably will never finish because it's something that has threads that never in.

But the dominionist theory, it did exist long before Cunningham but it just wasn't officially named. Cunningham, like C. Peter Wagner, he just named something that was already in existence. And we'll call it the Seven Mountains, whatever it is.

But all of that pre-existed and it really goes back if you trace its roots, it goes back more towards British, Israelism and post-millennialism. That combination, basically it said that we are the true seed of Abraham, all of the prophecies and they use this phrase biblical prophecy.

All of the biblical prophecy for the ancient Jews was in two part, one to the Jews, part of it fulfilled in our lifetime today. And so all of the blessings to Israel described in that which included the conquering of nations, if you know the Old Testament.

All of those blessings apply to us today. We need to charge forward take, they didn't say take dominion, but essentially that's what it was. And then it became, it started to become formalized somewhat with the latter-rains version.

the five-fold ministry, where it took the five different offices described in what book is that, Ephesians, I think it is, and said, basically, this is a hierarchy. In other words, it took something that was a flat. There's Jesus and everybody else, and turned it into an authoritarian pyramid that those three tiers basically created dominionism.

Yeah. The interesting thing for me is that we see it not just in Christianity, but we see it evolve in Christianity. As you're talking about it, the thing comes to mind as crusades and the different things that happen to manifest destiny, like all that kind of stuff where we come in and conquer, and it has religious undertones to it. I can't help, as you were talking about the clan stuff. I can't help but think about the parallels we have today, whenever it comes to immigration and people in power and the rhetoric that is used, whether

that is consciously or not, it's strikingly similar. I don't know how you feel about this, but it's been interesting on the backside of leaving those thought systems, and looking at a lot of the stuff that we demonized is the same things that we ourselves are or we're doing. Specifically, the fear-mongering around Islamic extremism and sharia law, and I take a step back and I'm like, my gosh, this is dominionism. It's just got a different flavor in it. It's just got a different god, a little bit of a different system behind it. But at the end of the day, this is nothing new under the sun. Always humanity is trying

to be on top, and it's so much easier, I think, for humans to do that, to dominate rather than figure out how to get along together, like with diverse thoughts and opinions. That's become, I think, one of my biggest sticking points is I'm trying to rebuild what my faith looks like, is the arrogance that comes along with it and audacity to think that we have things figured out. I think I've said this many times before, but the idea that we know what's best for media, we know what's best for these things, we end up going out

and if we can't infiltrate, we end up creating our own. It's what we end up to. We end up coming up with the angel streaming services and all the different things. CCM is one of the biggest little industrial complexes in our country, like hearing the amount of money that goes through music in the Christian music industry is crazy, but that provides so much influence that people are unaware of. We could probably do, and we probably enjoy both being musicians. We could dissect all the theology and stuff of modern day worship music, and people don't realize.

how much it's shaping the world we live in, the songs that we sing on a Sunday morning, talk about the enemies that attack us and the world that is to be conquered and that we all have victory in Jesus.

And that ends up playing out in real life. It leads to delusional ways of thinking. That's the only nice way I know how to say it. You know, it changes so many things, victory in Jesus.

So one of the problems that I have with it is that if you take the mindset of dominionism and all that comes with it, it's not just that the word, you know, we will take dominion and it itself contains.

There's a lot of doctrines that's built on top of that. That's why it is a dominion theology. Well, if you study that theology out to its logical conclusion, there exists a biblical problem with it.

And yes, you can't find the biblical problem really fully detailed in the Bible because this is a new doctrine. This is one that they invented. But the problem for me is people do not, number one, they don't recognize the history and the similarities like you just said.

All of the problems that exist with this doctrine aren't new problems. They've existed not even just with Christianity and the crusades, but other religions and Christians would be abhorred if another group were to suddenly, if the Buddhist were to suddenly rise up and say, we're gonna take dominion over you, America.

Think of what that would look like, right? We'd be up in arms. But we think that we can do that to other people. And for me, the problem is people, rather than getting caught up in the doctrines, if they would just think of, how does the other side feel if we say this?

It changes a lot of your perception, but from a biblical standpoint, the biggest thing for me is it changes Christianity from what it is described in the Bible to something that really appeals to the itching ears.

People love to hear a good epic tale with a strong climax. And what this does is it takes the word, when Jesus said it is finished, there's a lot that goes, that's really packed into that it is finished.

There's a lot of meaning behind it that people simply don't know because they don't read the Bible, but it is finished, becomes, well, it will be finished, but I need you to come help me so that I can rise up to this big climax.

In other words, instead of Christ's rules now, which is what the Bible is saying, it becomes more that Christ doesn't rule now, but the church waits for his rule, and we need to forcibly enact certain things so that he can rule.

In other words, God is not all powerful. We're the all powerful. We're the manifested sons of God. We're going to bring this to fulfillment. And then Christ will rule. So it shifts the Bible into basically, it becomes an epic, and the epic has this climax that involves us doing the work.

Yeah, and that's a lot how the Bethel theology, being an eye hopper, how Bethel theology was described to us was that we were going to make, they were going to make the world better and better and better until eventually it was the kingdom and Jesus would come and all he had to do was sit on the throne kind of thing.

It's interesting reflecting back on an eye hop KC experience because I think it was the first Christian movement that it was a part of that I heard government language used frequently, which I mean, you do have the, it was funny, I was praying during a worship service a couple of weeks ago and you know, we're entering, we're recording this in December, but so we were entering the Advent season and I quoted the government will rest on his shoulders and just my Freudian slip, I'm like, well, that's a odd idea.

That's in there from the, I'm like, nobody has any idea why I'm saying that. But those were the types of verses and stuff that were highlighted during my time in Kansas City and the way that that manifested in our culture is that we literally saw the prayer room and what we did as quote unquote intercessors as a governmental function, I guess is the best way to say it is that we believed that we were controlling the world sounds very manifest sons of God that we were controlling things with our prayers.

The, in some of them are very romantic, fancy, full kind of ideas but the phrases that we would use the only place that you really have reference for, it's the book of Daniel but we would talk about how I believe he moves at the sound of our voice, like that whenever we pray angels are dispatched and there's a spiritual cosmic element to it but we believe that we were ruling, co-ruling with Christ in the heavenly places as intercessors, that was, I don't know if you talked much about Cory Russell but that was like Cory Russell's main thing, he taught our class.

At first, your first semester and I hop you, you took a class called eternal glory of an intercessor and that class was primarily about how you were seated in Christ with heavenly places. At the right hand of the Father, right with Jesus, you're seated there and you are now ruling and reigning whatever that mean, it was such an abstract idea that they kind of made it mean whatever they wanted it to mean for the moment.

But that idea of governing through intercession was such a peculiar idea and I think is how dominionism kind of manifested itself without the seven mountains language, I guess, that I hop even though that seven mountains language was familiar and we had ministries for many of the seven mountains because that's what you do is you create a ministry for something so we had the You've had Bob on here, so I'm sure you've heard about Joseph company and different things like that that they had for marketplace ministers and we had our own media school that I hop you after a bit where we were training people because we had a little deal with God

TV and we had our, you know, I hop you, we were training thought leaders as what we thought and yeah, it's crazy how it seeps in different ways in all the different cultures. At the end of the day, it's all about us being on top like that's the, the end goal is us being on top except we feel self-righteous and say it's God on top. Yeah. The funny part is you have stole my climax. Oh no. No, I don't have the epic that I was going to have. You mentioned the cosmic beings. So I mentioned British's realism and how it came to be. Well, Christian identity plays

another significant role and if you follow the timeline, Michael Barkun's book Religion and the Racist Right, lays this out for you much better than I can do in a brief sentence but essentially British's realism came into the United States and it started to combine with racism and foreign Christian identity and became anti-Semitic racist all of the neo-Nazis were birthed from this.

That's how bad it gets. Well, combined with, combined with this was what Stephen Montgomery caused the converging apostasy. One of the problems like I've mentioned is people are unfamiliar with history and now take this to a world history and a religious history level. In ancient Greece, ancient Rome, they believed in these cosmic battles that were being fought. You had the gods, the demigods, you had Zeus up in the mountains and your intercessory offerings and all of the rituals that they did was to appeal to the gods so that they could fight this cosmic battle that

you can't see and that's religion 101. You can go much deeper than this if you want to study that out but that thought became embedded into Christian identity and they started teaching as a pseudo Christian movement that we had celestial bodies and we were spirit beings and there was this big battle stage playing out in the cosmos and we were just one small piece of this battle and so we as spiritual warriors need to fight the battles and it was much different than what you grew up with but it developed into this and so people started to over time as this is being integrated into the

movement people started to change the idea of what prayer meant you were praying often against something instead of praying for yourself to be better to be more humble to be more Christlike instead we're praying against something to try to change it through our prayer and so prayer essentially became this magic thing you can you can pray sorcery against somebody who is your enemy and make them fall into a ditch. I mean, that's a crude example, but that's the type of mentality that was being brought into this. Well, people get into this mentality and they get so worked up when it doesn't work and they're just

pouring their hearts and their souls into it, doesn't work. Well, people start to become militant and they take up arms and the Christian identity movement got very, very dangerous. And that's a little bit of what scares me about what you grew up in because it's like the cycle that is repeating, but in a much more targeted way. It's a more politically targeted, more rigid. I mean, you didn't find Christian identity people with 24-7 prayer groups to do this.

They were just doing it on weekends and sometimes on a weeknight. Now, take this to a new level where you're just training people to stay in that mindset. And number one, that's going to make people go crazy in the first place, but number two, when they go crazy, what happens? It's this unethical burden of responsibility that's put on people that they are responsible for the world at large. As you're talking about that, the idea that came and you're talking about me being brought up in that environment, I couldn't help but remember the rhetoric that was used around

the issue of abortion. And it was so sensationalized. I don't know if you remember, and I can't remember the guy's name, but there was the doctor who led a clinic and he was targeted and taken out, we'll say, for the algorithms. I remember that it was national headlines and stuff that this person had walked in his office and taken care of him. I remember there being a celebratory type atmosphere that it was seen as answers to our prayers that the battle was being waged. We weren't thinking about the real human who went in there, distraught, and made

the decision that he made. The very similar to what we saw, I think, with the assembly of God pastor in Minnesota recently this past year that's not talked a whole lot about in mainstream media, is it makes you think that you are on the mission from God. It's so dangerous because it's biblical language that you're the ambassador of Christ is what you are. But then it leads to un-Christ-like action because the weight in the burden that we had to deal with was constantly being put in front of us were the statistics of how many babies every year. It was million

millions and millions, and you know, we put our life tape on and went and stood in front of clinics. And I think that's why like the period of like 2020 and 2021 were like so instrumental for me is because I think that I saw the outworking of that theology play out in front of me. And I think I've talked about this before on here, but you know, whenever the stuff at the Capitol happened in 2021, like I had friends from my hop who were there on the grounds participating. You know, the guy with the big hat that he wore stands

up and says a very narrow prayer in the middle of that chamber. And it's scary to think what what humans will do when they think that God is on their side and that God approves of of their actions. Like that's that's how things like 9-11 happen. Like that's that's that's where this goes. And that's what bothers me. I think whenever people are they hear me talk and think that I'm crazy because I still interact with these folks all the time that are that are in the charismatic and the coastal circles that I was raised in is

like this is where it goes in and that they can't see it yet. And that's that's the hard part. It's like here on the other side. We see all the parallels. We see all the connections.

We see them demonizing the same things they're becoming. It's one of those moments that I wish prayer did, you know, make them change. I wish that I could I could say a prayer and it would change things. But it gets us so disconnected from our day to day lives.

I mean, even with that mythology, we know governments and in movements of use religion for their tools. But whenever we think it's all cosmic and it's all far out there, the things that are deciding the world we live in that are shaping the world we live in, that it's not in front of us and it's not our daily choices. It kind of becomes escape go to sorts. And I think we're hard pressed. I mean, when we look at Jesus and how he talks about the kingdom of God to think that it equates to anything like this. I mean, time and

time again, it's like we're citizens not in this world. We're looking at pilgrims looking for a home. The kingdom of God's within you. It's in your midst and the triumphal entry and them thinking that Jesus was going to go take over Jerusalem. And that's not what he did. That's not what the kingdom was about. And yet somehow we turn it into this political conquering is what it is. When I look at dominion theology and much like this guy who emailed me said, there's nothing in the Bible that explicitly cries out that this is an evil theology

and you must be against it. Because... Again, it didn't exist, but when I look at it, I look at it more like it is a, what's a good example, a gateway drug. If you look at drugs in general, there are gateway drugs which they themselves may not be that harmless or harmful, but they lead you into something that can just totally destroy and ruin lives.

And I look at this dominion theology much like this, this concept of the, we must do actions to take over a kingdom. While you're doing it and you're doing it in the spirit of Christianity, you're thinking, well, this is a good thing.

I'm showing and I'm displaying myself as a Christian, but they're feeding along with this gateway drug, they're feeding other drugs in with it. So you're getting the take control mentality, you're getting the kingdom theology mentality, you're getting all of these different concepts that are blended together and you're starting to form this dependency on it and it becomes like a drug.

And the real scary thing is it's not overtly spiritual. This concept is just, this is something that we must do. This is physically we must enact these things in another order to bring the kingdom.

And so it becomes more governmental and operational. And when you think of how that works, you start to see us versus them mentality now in the form of politics. There are those who stand for what I believe in, there are those who are against me.

We must stop those because those are the enemy and people take that mentality, we must stop them. And so you've taken it out of a spiritual realm into a operational, literally it's, they're calling it spiritual warfare, but people sometimes will go so far as to make it real warfare.

So it gets a little bit scary. And they start to bring in, as this is taking form, they're bringing in other concepts like the kingdom authority, advancing the kingdom. Well, if you think of in warfare, how do you advance?

It's a military style advance, you must fight. You must do something. You as a human must do something. It's no longer about God. And so it becomes, in my mind, as you're looking at it, much like a gateway drug, it becomes a gateway drug that leads you into something that isn't Christianity.

Everything that I've just mentioned has no part with Christianity. In fact, many of the things that I've just said, those themes defy Christianity, they're polar opposite. And look at, I mentioned earlier, Andrew Wilmak.

We'll look at this. I don't think many people would consider him in a rapace or anything like this, but he is taking that military, that militant style, advancement of the kingdom to whole new levels.

And so he's making all of the news. And I look at it and I see, well, he's doing the same thing as everybody else. He's just putting it into more action. So he's more focused on the action side, instead of the theological side.

But if you understand how this type of theology works, he's just one of many that will... eventually start springing up because this theology is creating a bedrock for many of these platforms to do the same.

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It's funny, you're talking about, it's making me think about the mobilization that happens like within the prayer movement, and recently, you've got to observe it happen again. I've been picking on IHOP Atlanta Gate City a whole lot lately, but the Pastor Billy Humphrey did a live stream the other day with one of their leaders who was a friend of mine from Kansas City.

And they had this big prophetic narrative about one of their big things in Atlanta is racial reconciliation and a ministry led by 99% white people. And they started talking about how God was calling them to the HBCU, the historically black colleges and universities.

And I just couldn't help but think like that's, they need that. Like that's their thing, like they feel like that they need to go into these places and teach people how to think, what to believe that they need them.

It's interesting because the thing that gets targeted now a couple of years ago, it was deconstruction. That was the thing that was getting targeted now. It's kind of shifted a little bit because I think they've realized what makes people deconstruct and now the phrase that's come around as toxic empathy is what it is.

And the ability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes somehow becomes toxic. But that's what happens in colonialism and domination and things don't exist if you're able to be empathetic with people. The idea that we can go into an Eastern country where they probably have religions that are older than Christianity and that we can go and we need to educate them about God and the divine.

And they have thousands of more years of history and practice and tradition. but we have all the right answers. And so we go in there and our job is to destroy everything that's not, it looks very, very Germany and we're gonna destroy everything that says anything against it.

And we're going to establish Christianity. We might save a couple things just to appease people. But that's been the Christian missions movement in a nutshell, is that we go into these other cultures and wreck their ideas and their ways of relating with God.

Even if it's in a Christianity that's not expressed in the ways that we want. I don't know how many people are actually familiar with the language and stuff that happens around Latin America in the narrow circles.

And so it doesn't take an expert to know that Latin America has been primarily Catholic for a long time, but you'll hear certain segments and streams of Pentecostalism and stuff talk about the greatest revival happening and all these converts and stuff that are coming into the kingdom of God for the first time.

And really all that's happening is they're converting from Catholicism to Pentecostalism is what's happening. And they act like that now they are saved. And you'll hear the terms, I'm sure you guys heard this in Brannemism all the time.

They would talk about churches and spirit-filled churches. And how there's this dichotomy between the two is if one's a real church and one's not.

Yeah, it's crazy. And I think it all goes back to the idea that I think people don't think long enough and hard enough. Like what in the world is spiritual authority? Like what is this authority?

Like if Jesus says all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me, like what is it? And like why do we think that it means that we can like subjugate people? I don't know how that happens.

Well, it becomes a little bit of sleight of hand, theological sleight of hand if that's a phrase, because like I mentioned, Jesus said it is finished. So what does this mean? It means Jesus, many things, if you're a theologian you can explain it probably better than me.

But number one, Jesus is fully in power. Jesus has paid the penalty of death and sin. Jesus has conquered Satan as defeated. Just think of those things. And I don't know if Satan's been defeated, don't have even a church lately.

Well, and so that's just it, right? They want to teach you that, well, and I'll say some of them actually do teach that Satan has been defeated. Some of them do not, which gets really interesting, but some of them actually teach that Satan has been defeated, but we're still seeing Satan because we haven't done something.

And although it's not that God didn't do it, we haven't done it. So therefore go do it people. Go do the political thing. And it's a little bit of a sleight of hand because you're trying to now take God who isn't in human space and time, trying to put him chronologically into our timeline.

Well, thousands of years ago he said it is finished. Well, why isn't... it. It's because we haven't done it. Go do it. And that's the mentality that you get. Well, that's the rally cry. If you go to political rally, that's exactly what the politicians do.

We need to do it. Get out there and do it. And you motivate people by taking action. So it becomes more of a political rally than a Christian sermon. But it is twisting the nature of God into something that God needs us. It's not that we're looking to Him. God needs us to fulfill our destiny. And that's, you know, again, it's just not Christianity. No, Mike used to always say this phrase. He said, I think it's probably got like reform routes a little bit, but he would always say that if God will do his part, if we do our part kind of thing, we got to do our part,

and then God will do his part. But a lot of our part was way bigger than what it should have been but the other thing I think that's unique to these circles that contributes to this

is the idea of like this divine mission or calling that we've all been, you know, commissioned on. There's so much language about calling. And if you go through any kind of like ordination clergy process, like you'll go through a period of time where they help you discern your calling. But for me, I mean, it makes me think of like Hercules, you know, like it just haven't some kind of like mission. Like we look at these parallels and that's what we have to do.

We have to be able to step back and look at like where these patterns take place elsewhere to be able to see the whole picture. But that idea, that's what caused me to leave my family. That's what caused me to leave my father and mother and move. I think it was like 800 miles away from home, something like that, from Kansas to Kansas City, a 13 hour drive away at 17 years old.

And in that type of grooming for lack of a better word, I hate using that word, but I don't know a better word for it. That happens in indoctrination. That happens. That God has chosen you. And this is your purpose. This is your calling. The way that my brain worked back then is that I wasn't going to let anything stand in my way. If I was going to go without food, I was going to go without food.

If I was going to go without money and not be able to pay bills and stuff, then that's just the way that it was, but I was doing what God had asked of me. And I believed that God would take care of me. And I still believe that to a degree. I still believe that God would take care of me.

And I look back now and I'm like, man, like even in my recklessness, like God took care of me. And that's where it's hard for me to let go of faith completely. As I look back at that kind of thing, but I can't, we look at the big, I guess, this is the national conversation. We look at the kingdom strategy, the national kingdom strategy of domination, of what we're going to do, our vision, but it all gets It's mobilized much smaller, like that we all have our own little missions that we are called to.

And that's where personal prophetic stuff comes in and the environments that I grew up in that you would get these prophetic words you would cling on to. But that's what enabled these systems is that you believed you were on a divine mission that God had called you to do these things and then it ended up being very, very destructive and it's hard to reconcile whenever you cause harm, but you were doing it in the name of God.

Back in the old days there's this phrase, God helps those who help themselves and over time the church is transitioning to God helps those if you help yourselves and enable God to do it.

That's really what it becomes. And I've mentioned a few times that much of what we see today, like it or not, was built on concepts that Brannum planted in his ministries. Brannum was the foremost leader of the revival.

So you can't really discredit or discount what he said. But he would take Bible verses like faith as the substance from what is that Hebrews. And he would say that it was an actual substance and that when you spoke, you had power.

Basically it was Harry Potter's wand. When you speak it's like Harry Potter's wand without Harry Potter having to say the enchantment, you're saying the prayer, right? So prayer and faith became a force. And so it'd become much like Star Wars where they're using the force against the enemies.

But because the words were treated as power, people would, it was an action that you could do. You do this thing and then you feel empowered. Will people became to feel more and more empowered as time went on and eventually developed into word of faith, the, you know, the force, creative forces that they talk about in word of faith.

Essentially, it become so greater than what Brandham taught that instead of just praying for the politicians to pass policies that make us as Christians able to live our Christian lives, now we need to forcibly take control.

And the problem again, what happens is whenever that prayer as a force doesn't work, well now you have to do something. And that's where Seven Mountains mandate came in. He goes a step beyond the word of faith into, now we must actively do something.

We must take charge. And again, none of it really, some of it may be not that bad, but combined with all of the different concepts that is built upon, this is a very dangerous theology.

Yeah, it is. I know all good cult members are good conspiracy heads. So I think that people appreciate it. I think that you have to be able to look, that there's an illusion to it, all very wizard of Oz, man behind the curtain, thinking about our current climate and the things that we're seeing happening.

It's very odd like with the White House faith office and different things happening that we see a lot of these, our leaders stepping into these prominent places, like I'll pick on Sean Floyd. Like you see Sean Floyd leading worship in the White House and I know that Christians and even with certain other events that have happened lately and seeing these prominent worship leaders and things on these platforms and having national influence in a way.

You see the Brandon Lakes and the Philwikums and these different people and Christians look at that and go look what God has done and they believe that God is the one who has orchestrated these things.

And I think part of the challenge with the Christian worldview is we don't realize at times how much power certain people have and whenever you put certain people in power and in authority and these people have resources, they do what they want to do.

And so like I look at like a Sean Floyd and we look at who is in charge and who where they are getting their support from the evangelical base, it's a no brainer. Like if you want to keep support and you want to keep the illusion going that you are God's chosen vessel that you are the savior of the world, reincarnated.

If that's the message that you want to bring, then you do these things. You toss people alone and you put Sean Floyd in a room in the White House and bring a bunch of people together and you have a little worship service because that furthers what you're doing and that's whenever you get language like that we had whenever the IHOP crisis and stuff was all coming out with Mike's stuff was well the good outweighs the bad or like this is God, like you see all the good that's happening over here.

We don't care about what's happening in the current event right now, what's happening in Venezuela, we don't care about that, look what's happening right here, we're worshiping in the White House. And we have to realize that everything that happens isn't necessarily divine orchestration and that humans do have a lot of influence whenever it comes to the media and things like that.

Like there's no wonder they want control is because then they can make things appear and seem the way that they want them to appear and it shapes reality that there is a song from a guy that I've really been enjoying lately.

His name is Manrovia and I think he's from Uganda and he lives in Appalachia and he plays mainly right song and ukulele and he wrote these little lullaby type songs and he has his line he's like can you see the man on the screen.

and that there's a puppet pulling the strings, and he references, you know, I might loosen people on this and I'm sorry. You don't have to agree with me on anything that I say. But in reference to the stuff in Israel, and he's like, he says, calling it a war and not a genocide, man, that's a different kind of greed. And it's just that the pictures of that, that, that, that paints and, and that's what happens. Like, there are big powers at play that in the thing we have to realize too is that we might not be able to change that. Like, our prayers might not be able to change that.

When you have big forces in power, like, how do you persevere? Like, I think that's where faith becomes impactful is how do you learn to be happy and content in a world where you don't have control, where you are oppressed, where your opinion is not the popular one. Like, that's, that's, that's the stuff that faith is supposed to form in you. That kind of character, but we've turned it into something totally different. Sorry, that's my sermon at for the day. You get one week.

Well, I'm going to turn it into a further sermon at, and I'm, I'm no preach. I'm not going to go as far as that, but that's really the heart of the problem. What you just described is the heart of the problem. The dominionist mentality that has been created is such that if you pro-Israel, it becomes a political issue. You must support, at all costs, you must support Israel. What does this mean in human terms? It means I support Israel, and I'm against all of Israel as enemies, no matter what. Well, from a political standpoint, that makes sense. You support Israel, you are against the

enemies. From a Christian standpoint, the examples that Jesus gave would be such that he would be with the oppressed, the common people, not the political regimes, but he would be with the people who are suffering, and he would help the suffering. In fact, there are biblical stories where he's going to the ancient equivalent of the Palestinians. So from a biblical standpoint, the examples that Jesus gave are inferior to the politics that the apostles are pushing.

People are more familiar with the apostles rhetoric than they are actually the examples that Jesus gave and the examples that Jesus gave become inferior to anything that the apostle can possibly say and take that even, take that thought a step further. So Jesus outwardly rejected political dominion in the Bible. Very clear passages, anybody can read it. He rejected it. So his example is to reject this, but because his examples are inferior to the NAR apostles today, people reject what Jesus did, what Jesus said. Paul's example of authority, apples to ho- authority as they call it today. His example was to lead from prison. In other words,

become a martyr, believe in what you say so much so that you are leading from prison. How many would do this? The moment they're in prison, they're going to fight to get out and they're going to, some of them might even convince their followers to take up arms to get me out of here, right? And the things they're going to prison for today, people say, well, you've got the, you've got the same thing. Look, they're trying to attack Mike Bickle and put him in prison.

Well, the things that they're going to prison for are so horrific that you can't ever equate that to the Apostle Paul. You can't say that the Apostle Paul would be doing these thing. Gateway Church. You can't say that the Apostle Paul would be doing what they, we're going to get Robert Morris' epistle. 11 words, correctional. Yeah, I mean, it's unbelievable. But it's because the dominion theology, if you even call it a theology, I don't. It's an ideology. The dominion ideology is such that you reject the examples that Jesus and the Apostles gave. If you reject them

because we now have an agenda, we must take control. We, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we must be the ones to enact this. That is exactly what they're pushing. Yeah. Yeah. It's the reason that Paul's in prison is for being a Christian. Like, that's, that's for being a good Christian, for actually doing the things that, that should be done. And it's funny. One of the things that I, that I saw recently, this is a little bit of a tangent that I've been looking into church fathers here and there. But Augustine, whenever he looked at

theft, he didn't believe that it was thievery if you were stilling from a rich person. Because he's like, if you had need and they had access and you were in need of it, then it was morally okay, which is just like conversations that we can't even have in the West at all.

But yeah, the, the, I don't know how people turn themselves into knots, John over it. I really don't like, and that's why it's so hard for me to disconnect from like where my faith is at currently.

And so like my conversation's always end up coming back to like who Jesus is and what I'm seeing in scripture now and things like that because it's still an important part of my life and it's still stuff that shaped me. But even everything Jesus did, like it, when we look in scripture, like the exaltation that happens of Jesus is, is not done by Jesus himself, but is done by the father. And in, in all the references that we see to it, that he's been given the name above every other name that every knee would bow and tongue confess like that exaltation doesn't have

him from Jesus himself. And that's, you know, he says, I came to serve like our politicians are not public servants, that's not what they are. I can't even worry, you know, how we've turned it so on its head, you know, I don't know.

And I think it's probably been, I think we'll look back 30 years from now. We'll feel a little less crazy and we'll find out there was some kind of sigh-off or something involved. But, you know, who knows?

I mentioned the things that flow downhill from randomism for uphill through time. If you want to look at it that way, there is actually there's something that flows in the same way that not many people talk about and probably should be addressed while I'm addressing it.

So we weren't in the Dominion mindset. We were just in all of the elemental, fundamental teachings that enabled the Dominion's mindset. One of them was so closely associated with what became word of faith.

It was, instead of speaking to the, you know, to the politician, it was more to the effect speak to the illness. If you have the power over your illness, speak to it and you can speak and confess that it will go away, positive confession, all of that is the fundamental basis for what became word of faith.

Well, there's a problem that is associated with that. When you're in a congregation and somebody has a very, very obvious illness, everybody is aware and they're doing exactly what the ministry is saying. They're speaking, they're praying, they're engaging the spiritual warfare against the enemy that has plagued their body in the form of cancer or whatever it is.

And they continue to be sick. Well, eventually what happens over time because you can't backstep from this. You can't say, well, I'm sorry, in this case, it's powerless, your words are less powerful than everybody else's words.

You instead say, what are you doing wrong? What have you done? Why there must be sin in your life? What have you done? And they start to spiritualize blame. And it can happen on either side, it can happen to the person receiving prayer or the person praying, like either person can have sin and that's why it's not happening.

Absolutely. It's a big problem because if you apply this concept to the dominion of steam and it is the same thing, you can see people doing it, well, what happens when the politician doesn't get an office?

What happens when the legislation doesn't get passed? What have you done people? It's your fault. You didn't do this. You didn't pray. And engage the spiritual warfare battles hard enough or it was rigged or it was rigged.

There's so many people become, instead of becoming a martyr for the kingdom, you become a self-mater for the religion. And it's just the whole, it's just imbalance and it's upside down. It's one of lose big messages that I'm remembering as we're talking about it because it really does tie into like the idea of like spiritual authority and like speaking to things like you're saying, Lew would always like to talk about the verse where it was Peter and on this rock, I'll build my church kind of thing and he would talk about the Ecclesia.

I don't even know if that's the right way you say it, but that's how they say it. it was Ecclid. Yeah. Um, I'm not a Greek air made ebrew scholar at all, but referred to it as as a governing body is the way that Luke talk about it. Now whether that's what it means or not, I have no clue. Um, but he would talk about that and then he would talk about, uh, all authority been given to you, whatever you bind on earth, you bind in heaven, whatever you loose on earth, you loose in heaven. Um, and there was this idea, I mean, that like,

it's funny that I never, the only thing I knew about manifest sons of God, like before leaving IHOP was just that it was in a denial statement of things that we don't affirm was manifest sons of God. And, uh, but that's, it turned us into super heroes like in our own mind.

Like that's what it was. Like we thought that we literally had this power to like, to influence the cosmos. That's what it was like, I mean, it was Joshua in the sun. It was

well, that's how we were going to end abortion was by binding it is what we were going to do. And we were going to loose life, whatever that means. Um, but yeah, it's, it's such a,

it's, it's, it's crazy. Like I went to some charismatic worship gatherings back near the beginning of the year. I think it was kind of exposure therapy for me a little bit. I wanted to step back into those environments and just see what it was like. And it was, it was interesting because some of it I still appreciated and enjoyed, um, of like the charismatic experience. Like it was very communal. It was very like year in those like spontaneous prophetic worship environments. Like everybody's bringing something to the table. And in that part of it, I can appreciate, I can appreciate that it's not the one man on the platform giving everybody

direction, but it was a shared experience. Um, but the thing that I realized in the middle of that, I told my wife, I was like, man, like it just seems like so many of these people are just disconnected from reality. Like that's just what it was. Like they're so, I was like, they're happy.

And I was like, that's the hard part. I was like, is, is they are mentally not well because they think these things exist that aren't like we can't like, I mean, religion and existence of God, like we can't prove, but just, just these ideas, these spiritual battles that are happening, these powers that they think they have, um, is so disconnected from, from grounded reality.

Um, but they're happy. And that was, that was the hard part of like our conversation is like, we see this happening and they're happy. And it's like, do we ruin this? Like, like, what is our responsibility in some of this? Like if they're not causing harm, like, what do you, what do you do?

I don't know, but, um, but it does. It causes a, I think the biblical term for it is a strong delusion. Shiny, happy people. You know, you mentioned the, the word that I'm not even going to attempt to say, this is a calm, theme. They like to use these big words that people can't fathom to understand in their simple minds because it gives them the authority, right? And in the end, it's, I look at it like I can't say any of the big words, but I can say supercalifragilistic expialidosis, which is ironically about the same thing when you really think about it.

Thank you. Thank you for speaking in tongues. I'm speaking in tongues. The two concepts are much the same, and it is a fantasy. Thank you so much for doing this. Absolutely. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org. For more about the dark side of the NAR, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.