Spiritualism Unmasked: How the Occult Infiltrated Modern Christianity

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it, is truly stranger than fiction. Today I'm getting into spiritualism. We have mentioned it many times on the podcast. If you study anything having to do with the new Apostolic Reformation, Charismatic Movement, Laterane, there's always somebody out there who says, this is spiritualism. And the irony is, if you were indoctrinated into the spiritualism belief, you think that it is actually righteous or holy

your Christian. And it is not Christian. This came from somewhere else, somewhere that is a much darker, darker side of history. And we have mentioned it on a lot on the podcast that I do with Stephen Montgomery. We talk about the converging apostasy, how all of these weird ideas came into the Charismatic Movement through Pentecostalism, through New Apostolic Reformation, all of these threads of Steve calls it the convergence of apostasy. All of this apostasy is coming into Christianity. The problem is over time, as people are indoctrinated with these beliefs of apostasy, they start to link the apostasy with Christianity.

And so if anybody questions it or critically examines it, they say, you're critically examining the Holy Spirit. And they have, in fact, confused the Holy Spirit with this apostasy. And in today's example, it'll be spiritualism. And it's probably good for those who are unaware of what spiritualism is, just to simply talk through the basics of what is spiritualism. Because again, so many people have been indoctrinated with these beliefs that they think that their Christian beliefs. I was indoctrinated. And I thought that whenever William Branham talked to the people on the other side, in other words, the souls that

had died and gone on, I thought that he was a prophet, Seer, and he could see into the, you know, the depths of whatever heaven or hell and talk to people. But that is one form of spiritualism. Spiritualism defined as simply a system or leaf or religious practice that's based on supposed communication with the spirits of the dead, especially through mediums.

In philosophy, the spiritualism existed as a doctrine that basically spirits exist distinct from matter and that the spirit is the only reality. So how does this differ from Christianity? I know that there are people who were indoctrinated with this belief set who believe that this communication with the dead is taking control of spirits.

This is something that is godly, this is something for the prophet or for the apostle, sometimes down to the rank and file member. But you have to understand that this was an evil practice.

This was not one of the good ones. And in the old covenant and Deuteronomy 18, 10 through 12, it says that if there's any among you that makeeth his son or daughter to pass through the fire, who uses divination, who is an observer of the times or an enchanter or a witch, a charmer, a consultor with familiar spirits or a wizard or necromancer, these are an abomination unto god.

There are passages throughout the old and new covenant that condemn practices that are occult. In the old covenant, there were punishments associated with those practices, usually a punishment onto death. Then in the New Testament, there are several passages where either Paul and his letters or some of the other books or gospels talk about the practices of the occult and categorize it as evil.

In Acts 16, Paul rebukes a fortune-telling spirit, the, I think it's Galatians, there's an instance where the sorcerer or the occult is listed among the sins of god's kingdom, the literature, occult literature in Acts was burned, they burned the magic books, this would have been occult literature.

All through the New Testament, you can go right down the line, almost every letter, not everyone, but almost everyone has some instance describing a practice that is used by either spiritualism or the occult, and it condemns it as a false spirit, as something that's evil.

It's usually a spirit that is cast out of a person when they do this, so when you see a modern New Apostolic Reformation prophet or apostle doing these practices, if the Apostle Paul were here today, he would walk right up to the platform and cast that evil spirit out of them in front of the people, and interestingly they're using the same, you know, divination, tactics, etc., to claim that they're casting out evil spirits, and yet they themselves apparently are doing the same thing that Paul was cleansing the ancient worshippers of Christ.

So this has turned into a mess. If you're on the outside and you're looking in... and you're familiar with spiritualism and you're familiar with the practices of the New Apostolic Reformation, Charismatic Movement, Pentecostals, the Laterane, all of this mess.

The first question you ask is, why are they doing this? Because this is clearly evil, this is clearly condemned and you can find, if you go look on YouTube or in some of this podcast platforms, you can find people who are actually going through scripture by scripture, example by example, condemning men and women who are in positions of leadership in the New Apostolic Reformation today.

And they're clearly identifying practices that are occultish and evil. But yet to the followers, again, they have no idea. They're under this teaching. They think this is this occult practice that we're doing as a godly practice.

So if you're on the outside looking in, you're wondering, how can they allow this? How can Christians who are in these movements allow the leadership to do it? And how can the leaders even claim to be Christian whenever they're practicing the occult?

And you have to understand that the twisting of these doctrines, its origins can be pointed back to the Laterane Movement, but it actually goes long before this, if you know the history, in the Laterane Movement, all of the practices that were condemned by the old covenant and in the letters of the New Testament, they are excused by the leadership in claiming that we are today, the Christians are the manifested sons of God, the Joel's army.

However you want to frame it, they try to make it such that the people themselves are now gods and as gods, they can take these spirits under their control, under their domain. It is a blending of the manifested sons of God, dominionism, all of the different types of heresies that have entered in, the converging apostasy as Stephen Montgomery calls it.

So they skirt around all of these passages that condemn it by claiming that they're God and therefore they are untouchable by these passages against what they're doing. So for those who are on the outside looking in wondering, well, what are these verses?

How can there be verses in the Bible that contradict all of the different passages that are condemning sorcery, occultism, mediums, spiritualism, all of these occult practices and in the old covenant, punishable by death and the new covenant just deemed to be on Christian and an evil spirit that needs to be cast out.

What are these verses? The first is Genesis 1, 26 through 28. It's part of the dominionism theme. The passage that says, let's make man in our own image. them have dominion over the fish of the sea, birds of the air. People who are in this movement take this a step further than the animal kingdom because of that last passage in that verse.

It says over every living thing. So they argue that this doesn't mean the animal kingdom. This includes human too because humans are living, not understanding that the passage is talking about the creation, the animal kingdom. And this dominion mandate gives people the authority over the creation, the culture. Spirits are also created, so therefore they believe they have dominion over the spiritual realm. Another verse that is heavily used is Ephesians 612, but we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers of darkness over the world, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. So while Ephesians is

describing this battle between good and evil and placing the Christian as a person who's outside of this battle, but affected by this battle because of the dominionism theme that we mentioned in the book of Genesis, they believe that they are the ones who are fighting the spiritual battle.

In other words, as the spiritual battle is taking place in the realms beyond, we are as Christians fighting it by our words or our actions, and therefore we are engaged directly in the battle instead of indirectly. There are numerous other passages that are used, and you can find books or podcasts describing that. I won't go into those details, but you have to understand the concept that they're taking passages like we are gods, and they're claiming that they are little gods. And with the manifested sons of God framework, they believe that as a manifestation of God, everything that is describing the power of God

in the New Testament or in the Old Testament is describing the things that Christians should be able to do in today's world. One of which, Matthew 28, it talks about in the Great Commission, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go for it and make disciples.

Well, this is widely understood by all Christians in Christianity as the Great Commission. This is what Jesus is saying to the disciples and to the people to make other disciples. In this weird twisting of doctrine and scripture, they believe that this authority, all authority in heaven is also given to these people as little gods, as manifestations of God.

How did they do this? We've talked about it in the last few podcasts in the manifested sons of God framework. Jesus was just simply a man who was manifested as God, and he was the great example for us as our manifestations for those people who were in this belief set. So any are dominion, the all authority.

logic essentially rewrites the DNA of Scripture to take every passage that is applying to the power of God and the will of God and placing it directly into the individual Christians. So therefore, anything that would be condemned as spiritualism or communicating with the dead, communicating with the spirits, well, there are passages where God does this.

So as gods, can we not do the things that God do, even if it is condemned by the other passages in the Bible? So for me, the interesting question of all of this is how did this develop into this weird merging of occultism and Christianity?

I know that a lot of people will go back to the latter-rain movement and say that it's easy to see William Brannum was bringing in some ideas that were very anti-biblical. However, if you go back to just the history of spiritualism itself, you'll find that there was this weird development that happened long before the latter-rain movement, long before even Pentecostalism.

I talk about it in the book, Millicent Christian Extremism, a critical examination of John Alexander Dauy. But spiritualism, the spiritualist craze, was very controversial. And one of the things that is used by all charlatans, everyone that I have examined, is that they will take an idea that is controversial, and they'll run with one side of it.

Because if you can enter into that controversy, people are talking about you. And if people are talking about you, you become more famous than you would if you didn't enter into the controversy. So controversy is power for these charlatan religious leaders.

John Alexander Dauy being just one of many who uses the same tactics. And in the late 1800s, Dauy published a tract that was called spiritualism unmasked. And in this tract, he claims that he is fighting a spiritualist.

There's a famous spiritualist in Australia. But what he's actually doing is he's appealing to a much broader audience. In fact, if you read the book, there's one section where he says, there are probably tens of thousands of infidels and spiritualists in this country who have allowed themselves for various reasons to appear under religious denominations, with which they have no real connection, whatever.

There are also many persons who openly profess Christianity but who are secretly spiritualists. I say it with care and with caution and deep regret, several of these traders can be found occupying Christian pulpits.

So what... He did was he branded all of the competition as a potential spiritualist. And this created great controversy because how can you tell if there is a spiritualist or not a spiritualist? And Dowie claims that he has the answer.

He is the one who can tell you this person is spiritualist or this person is not. This was very, very powerful for Dowie's ministry. In fact, this was part of what boosted him into the level of fame in Australia that enabled him to come into the United States and do what he did.

Dowie was the precursor to the post-World War II healing revival. His fame as a faith healer spread throughout the nation and he became so powerful in Chicago that his group of followers in Chicago overtook literally the government systems as the government tried to shut them down as people were dying in his faith healing compound.

He overcame this because there were so many of them. They had the power to sway political votes. And eventually the annexed a portion of land in Illinois that is now called Zion City, Illinois.

So this is probably the biggest con artist faith healer known to America. So big that an entire city was annexed and his compound became widely known throughout Pentecostalism as one of the precursors to modern Pentecostalism.

I've mentioned this in other podcasts, so I won't go too deeply with this. But when Dowie amassed a tremendous fortune in today's money, it's almost half a billion dollars that he made in just 10 years, once this happened, there were all kinds of people who wanted to do the same thing. And Chicago newspapers started talking about, as Dowie was starting to, his mental health faculties were starting to fail, people knew that his empire was going to topple.

And so newspapers wrote that Zion City is flooded with profits, one of which was Charles Fox Parham, the founder of modern Pentecostalism, the Apostolic faith. But through those connections, if you understand that history and understand that doctrine is built upon as it proceeds from one person to the next who's trying to amass a fortune, you begin to understand that not only are they using the controversy, not only do they not care if they're using themes of apostasy, they simply want to get more followers and more money.

So Dowie is, as he's fighting to gain a foothold in Australia, and he's published the spiritualism unmasked, he had already became somewhat famous as a so-called Christian mystic. would advertise himself into various locations, one of which was the opera house on King Street.

And I think it was Sydney. He would use titles like Christian spiritualism or how I became a medium. And to the outside audience who's looking at this newspaper, this is controversial because number one, spiritualism is not Christianity, it is the opposite.

And a medium is directly condemned by the Bible. So how can John Alexander Dowey claim that he's a Christian spiritualist, which doesn't exist, and how can he claim to be a medium when a medium is openly condemned by both the New Testament and the Old Testament?

Dowey was using that controversy. And because he did this, he has to build this as a doctrine so that people, as he's explaining how I can become a Christian spiritualist, how am I a medium and that defies all Christianity?

Well, he has to pick and choose different Bible verses to try to establish that he's a medium and that it's okay to be a medium in Christianity. Unfortunately, we don't have the sermon, we just know that he was advertising himself as a Christian spiritualist and a medium.

That theme continued long after Dowey's death. In our revival history series that I do with Charles and even some of the others that I have done, we trace that history from Dowey into Brannumism.

Docternally speaking, there are many things that Brannum taught that came directly from John Alexander Dowey and how did this happen? We have many different people, such as FF Bosworth, who were either leaders or deeply influenced by John Alexander Dowey, who were also mentoring William Brannum in the faith healing revival.

Bosworth toured with Brannum and until his death, he was helping Brannum to establish his doctrine, establish his faith healing ministry. He also had Gordon Lindsay, who is the founder for Christ for the nations, who toured in his early years with John G. Lake, Lake who was in the Dowey sect with FF Bosworth.

As Charles Vox Parham is trying to take over Zion City, he's trying to establish himself in Zion City as the next Elijah Prophet. He had created a subcult within the main cult that included FF Bosworth and John G. Lake.

So they were studying not just how to do what Dowey did, but how to create a movement that is following the leadership of somebody like another John Alexander Dowey. There are many other paths that you can follow to trace how the occultism, how the spiritualism made it into the movement.

But this is by far the most prominent, just simply because of John Alexander Dowey, as a person who has amassed this massive... fortune by teaching something that is taking spiritualism, which is purely evil, and twisting it just a little bit and trying to wedge it into Christianity.

There were many copycats who wanted to know how to do this, how did he amass this fortune, what he's teaching must be new and different and exciting to the itching years. So let's do it in our ministries, too.

So there were literally hundreds of people who became copycats trying to do this. Like I said, this is the most prominent path just simply because Bosworth was a leader in Dauy's Zion sect, and you have the trails of history through Gordon Lindsay, which also were significant.

So this is probably the most prominent path, but the thing to understand is this. While there were hundreds of ministers in this movement, thousands probably in this movement, you can go through the voice of healing magazine, and you can see all these lineups of these men and women who were involved in this type of ministry.

The thing to understand is not all of them continued in this blatant heresy and embraced spiritualism as openly as they did during the inception of the revival. Some of them later regretted it or denied it or rejected it, but during the height of the laterane revival, as Brannum was the foremost leader of the revival, there were several people, thousands of people, who were trying to see what this was.

How is this different from the Christianity that we see if we just go attend church? What is Brannum teaching that is new and different? And to the people who are trying to copy this type of leadership in their own ministries, they want to see how can I embrace what he's teaching and apply it to my ministry.

So there was a period of time, while even though many of them later rejected it, there was a period of time in which a majority embraced it. And that's why Brannum was recognized as the foremost leader of the movement.

So the thing to understand is what was it that they embraced? That's really, as I was looking through this history, and especially as I was going through my research in Dauy, I wanted to know what did Dauy teach that was different and why was it different?

How can I apply that to the laddering revival? Who were the key figures in the revival that would have embraced Dauyism? Once I identified all of those, I began to look doctrinally, doctrinally speaking, what of Dauy's spiritualism can I find in Brannum's teachings?

Because as the leader of the revival, this was the doctrine that many people were trying to embrace and to copy. Yes, many of them maybe have later rejected it. Some of them have denied their history, but they did for a period of time embrace it.

And that's where I wanted to find out more. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecost... So 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 Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

If you engage any follower of William Brannum today, or any ministry who has built their platform of theology upon Brannumism, many of the leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation who give undue reverence to Brannum.

If you engage them and you ask them, do you believe in spiritualism? Do you believe in the occult? Do you believe the occult can be mixed with Christianity? Do you believe in communication with the dead?

Do you believe a Christian can communicate with the dead? If you ask them directly any of the questions describing the practices of the occult, they will outright deny it. They will say, this is not part of our doctrine that is anti-Christian.

William Brannum, as quote unquote God's prophet, would have never taught this. The leaders who give him undue reverence, even those who believe he was a so-called God's general and he later went astray, they will say that even though he went astray, he would have never did anything like this because that's anti-Christian, that's anti-biblical.

And this bothered me once I understood what it was that I was dealing with. The further I began to dig into Dauy and learning that spiritualism was a big part of Dauy's ministry, learning that there were many other threads coming into early Pentecostalism of the occult influence.

Right down to, you can find this online or there are books that describe it. Even during the Azusa Street Revival, it was attracting different types of spiritualist groups and different occult groups because it was so close to the occult that it was enticing to the people who were familiar with the occult.

And so you'll find people who openly condemned the Azusa Street Revival simply because the occult was there, but they don't really understand or recognize the implications of why that is, why were the occult attracted.

And they can see that. they were attracted, but doctrinally speaking, a lot of people just don't recognize the difference. And I wanted to know more, I'm one of these people I want to learn how things work.

What if I, when I was a child, if I got a radio, I would take it apart to see what makes this radio work? That's, that's my mindset. So having that mindset, it, it's a gift and a curse when I discover something like this that is so offensively wrong to Christianity, yet embedded in Christianity.

How can this be? And how did the early revivalist embrace it? And one of the things that I began to understand is whenever they were taking practices of the occult and mix again into Christianity, what they did was a little bit insidious.

Because even back in the days of the early revivals, the people who were attending the revivals, many of them had read their vivals, and they would openly condemn spiritualism. They would realize that it's wrong.

And no matter how many twistings of Bible verses that you threw at them, they would know that, no, you can't communicate with the dead, you can't do this, it's just not wrong. You can't be in contact with the spirits.

But yet, William Brannum as the leader of the revival, he would walk out onto the platform and say, now I take every spirit in here under my control, which is the essence of spiritualism.

And I began to wonder how is that possible? How did he do this and not have the entire audience just get up and run screaming? And what I learned was a little bit, for me, is a little bit sketchy.

I learned that there were phrases and words and phrases that were being used to manipulate people through programmed response to what is called loaded language. A word of phrase became loaded into the subculture of the cult following, and that word of phrase became intentionally changed and altered to accept doctrines that weren't Christian.

So when they accepted the doctrine and they used the loaded language, they could now use that phrase, that word of phrase and apply it to anything, the people when they heard the phrase, they would think, okay, this is a Christian phrase, even though you're talking about the occult, I'm going to accept the Christian phrase at face value.

One of the phrases that William Brannum used for this is taking up a parable, as weird as this sounds, and I look back and I laugh that I even believe this. But taking up a parable sounds Christian because Jesus spoke in parables, but taking up a parable, the phrase itself doesn't have any meaning at all.

You don't take up a parable. You might use a parable as a... illustration to explain a concept that you want people to learn, but you don't take up a parable. But that yet was one of the loaded language phrases in the early Laterane Revivals.

William Brannum taught the people to believe that taking up a parable was a Christian thing and then started using that phrase to embed the idea that people could become mediums or they could become spiritualists. And it was Christian because they're taking up a parable.

In 1953, he said this, look, a seer, his subconscious is not back there, neither is it here. It's right here you don't go to sleep, you just break from one into the other, one into the other until you let it all alone and it comes back at its own leisure. And I want to pause there because that is clearly rambling. And if you try to make sense of that entire sentence, you can't because it's rambling. And that's one of the ways in which a manipulator will manipulate his crowd into believing something that they should not believe. You first confuse the mind.

And that's exactly what he's doing here. That rambling up to that does not make sense. But then he goes on to say, it's like raising up and looking at a not whole to see something.

You're praying, you're taking up a parable. So he's confused the audience. Now he uses the phrase. And he says, you're taking up a parable, which is the words that God gave me to know and it just keeps repeating. Then you break through and you see the person as you're contacting them, you catch their spirit. So he's confused the audience. He's now using the phrase that is loaded language, taking up the parable. And he's claiming that as a minister who's taking up a parable, he can start contacting the spirits, which is essentially what a medium does. And he says,

you catch their spirit and then it goes to them and you see something happen. And you know, he goes on and he talks about how he has contacted the spirit of the individual and that's how he's able to wield his faith healing power or whatever it is. But the thing to understand here is the overloaded phrase, taking up a parable, which means nothing. But the audience, once they became programmed with this loaded language, now this means Christianity. And anytime he used it, he could take the audience who would normally reject it and they would be thinking of that phrase

and remembering consciously or subconsciously, they would connect parable to Jesus because Jesus spoke parables to the disciples and they would think, okay, that's a biblical phrase he's using the Bible. Let's ignore the fact that he's bringing in the occult, that he's basically, describing being a medium to the people.

The other thing that I want to point out in that example, he is using the phrase looking through a nothole. When you hear that phrase, you think, well, that doesn't make any sense, what is he talking about?

What he's actually trying to say, and he's saying it in Hilbilly, Kentucky, English, as was his stage persona, what he's trying to say is he's peering through a portal because if you look collectively, at all of the things that he says about taking up a parable, he is talking about peering into another dimension.

And he gives different examples of how he gets into that altered state of subconscious, but essentially what he's talking about is he is entering into a trans. And he's telling the people that if you enter into a trans, then you begin to see things that a person should not ordinarily see.

You can see things about the spirit of the person you're talking to. You can see things about dead spirits. You can see things about people that they don't even know about themselves because you're peering past the mortal human into their soul.

And what he's talking about when he's talking about entering into these transes, he is using the phrase take up a parable instead of enter into a trans. So as that language began to be programmed into his audience, all of his followers, again, they would have written screaming from the building if he says you need to enter into a trans so that you can see into another dimension so that you can talk to the spirits of the people who are in the spirit world.

They would run screaming because this is spiritualism, but he is saying take up a parable and using that instead of entering into a trans. I know that I've mentioned this example before, but I've not really connected it to spiritualism or to mediums.

And for people who are unfamiliar with the history, it's probably good to pause and bring this up again. In the early 1900s, spiritualists were a, it was a craze to be involved in spiritualism.

There were numerous people who would contact mediums who would try to peer into the other side, talk to the dead and there were many dead. If you think of the World War I, all of the people that died in World War I, now fast forward to the end of World War II, you had all of these people who had suddenly lost massive amounts of loved ones and you had people who wanted to talk to them.

So mediums and fortune tellers and spiritualists, all of this turned into this weird spiritualist craze and the way that it would work, people would gather around, the medium would have everybody get into the spirit.

If, if Branum was describing what they were doing, he would say, And they would take up a parable. In other words, they would get into a trance and start to communicate with the spirit world.

Well, one of the tricks or gimmicks of the spirit world was these mediums would have objects that would float or change positions or move in the air, different objects that people could physically see because you can't see that they're actually communicating with the dead.

If you redirect their focus to something and object that they can see and have it do something that they don't expect, now they might believe that I'm actually communicating with the dead. So it was a little bit of a gimmick, but this idea of these moving objects was a way to prove that you were in contact with the spirit world.

William Brannum did the same thing and you can find this in his 1947 sermon. The first one that they allowed the public to hear faith is the substance. He talks about how if you have enough faith that he's given examples where you can move bracelets with your mind, basically, which is an interesting parlor trick because most children are aware that if you hold a string out, you can move it so slightly with your hand and that subtle movement will cause the pendulum of the bracelet to move further into the eye who's not focusing on the hand

but focusing on the bracelet. It looks like the bracelet is moving. It's a parlor trick, right? So he's doing these parlor tricks, but what he's really doing, if you understand it, he is doing what he has learned by example in that he is making objects move in the air to prove that he is practicing his spiritualism as a medium.

That is exactly how the mediums did it. I've mentioned this before as well, but William Brannum and Roy Davis used spiritualism and the spiritualism gimmick just like John Alexander Dowie did in the early years of their ministries.

And there's evidence that suggests that Brannum went to the spiritualist camp, camp Chesterfield in Indiana because he describes a piano that's floating in the air and it plays shave and a haircut two bits, tant, tant, tant, tant.

Well, that was one of the featured attractions at Camp Chesterfield. So he's visiting the spiritualist camp, he's learning that if you're in a spiritualist camp once the spirits start moving, it's enticing to the audience if you see a object that is doing something that it shouldn't be doing.

In the case of Camp Chesterfield, it was the piano in the case of Brannum, it's a swinging bracelet on a string. Same type of gimmick, same type of distraction. What it means is to the person who's coming to enter into the parable, as Brannum called it, or enter into the trance, now they start to see...

the objects move in the air will now they're in touch with the spirit world. So you're probably still wondering, well, how is that possible? How could people be so gullible that they would believe that a person who's sitting in their midst is speaking with the dead or speaking with the spirits?

And how could they believe that objects are moving in the air as a result of this? It's such a weird part of American history that I'm almost embarrassed as an American to say that this was a popular thing, but it was popular, and I'm even more embarrassed to think, well, they were kind of teaching this same thing in so-called Christianity, because it's not Christian, it is part of the American spiritualist culture, not part of the Christian revival, or should not have been part of the Christian revival, I should say.

So you're wondering, how did they do this? How could they manipulate people to believe this? And you have to understand how the mediums brought on a trance. It's not just simply that they said, hey, let's enter into a trance or we're got out a Ouija board or anything like this, you have to actually get down into the person's deep into their psyche and have them believe that they are actually entering into this thing, which means you have to get them into an altered mental state.

And you can read psychology books on how this works, this is not a science that I'm just making up, this is something that is actually a real science. If you can get the people to engage in some activity that causes their brain to disconnect from reality, they can get into a hyper mental state that is more suggestive.

In other words, you're creating an atmosphere in which the people are more open to suggestion. And then you start planting the suggestions in their head. One of the ways that you do this is chanting.

If you get a person to start chanting, they start to disconnect, they start to disassociate from reality, especially if they're chanting in a spiritual sense, they've got their eyes closed, they're meditating. There's different ways that you can, you know, enhance the chanting, enhance the taking on of entering into a parable or whatever, whatever, Brannum called it.

But essentially you're doing this, you're trying to enter into that trance. Brannum taught people how to chant to enter into a trance. And as I'm laughing as I'm building up to this because it's funny to me and sad at the same time, I can't believe that I believed in a two times two equal four doctrine.

It's not the mathematical doctrine that you're thinking of. When William Brannum preached one of his most popular sermons, the stature of a perfect man, this is a sermon that is heavily quoted by people in the New Apostolic Reformation.

I won't give their names, but we have given examples of them who are actually taking Brannum's drawings from this and putting it on their projectors and showing it in the back of their churches in the New Apostolic Reformation, the stature of a perfect man.

Well, in this Brannum teaches people how to enter into a trance and he says, here's how I do it. I asked the Lord, what can I do today? What will you give me for your children?

And then I began chanting two times two equals four, two times two equals four and he keeps repeating it, keeps repeating it over and over again. And he is describing the elements of entering into a trance, yield yourself and after a while, you break away from yourself.

And that's the key to understand what he is describing is disassociation from reality and in a hypnotic trance, as you enter into this, there's a mild disassociation in the early stages, but as you get deeper into it, you are separated from reality, you're separated from time, you start to feel an out-of-body experience because you're in this trance.

So he's describing how to get into the trance, he's describing the separation from yourself while you're in the trance. And again, this is a spiritualist strategy, this is not a Christian strategy, Christians whenever they want to worship or be closer to God.

They don't bring themselves into a hypnotic trance, but yet that's what Brannum is describing. So if you've been following along in all of the studies that I'm doing on Joe's army, manifested sons of God, you start to piece this together, this looks really bad.

You have Brannum and others who are creating the so-called Joe's army, they're targeting young people and they're teaching them just like the serpent did Eve in the Garden of Eden. You too can be just like God.

That was the framework for the Joe's army manifested sons of God theology, just like the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Now they've taken it a step further, you can become like God and the occult, the things that are practiced outside of Christianity, which are anti-Christian.

Those are okay if you're like God's because you can wield the same power. You basically have the same power as the demons because as God, you have all power over all things. Therefore the power that the demons wield, we also have it.

It's in our arsenal as spiritual warriors. Then you take it a step further, they're creating spiritual warriors. How does that work? How can you train people to believe that they're fighting and engaged in the spiritual warfare?

And understanding the hypnotic trances, the hypnotic states, the disassociation from reality, will now enter into the bedrock for what became the new apostolic reformations spiritual warfare theology. In 1950s, especially 1953, I think was when it came to its climax, Brannum began teaching demonology as though it were a Christian thing.

And what he's essentially doing, he's laying all of the groundwork necessary to build upon to create the manifested sons of God's spiritual warfare doctrine, which is a doctrine that I don't care which New Apostolic Reformation Church are looking at, whether it's Bethel, International House of Prerion, Kansas City, they're all teaching the spiritual warfare.

And it's built upon the bedrock that Brannum laid, which is demonology. In Brannum's demonology, he is teaching people how to do this, how to conquer the demons, how to take power and control over the demons.

And he uses that same phrase, which means enter into a trance. He says in the sermon, 1953, demonology, religious realm, he says, I take up a parable, which we've established, he means entering into a trance.

I take up a parable to go meet a man's spirit. In other words, I'm a medium, I just went into a trance and now I can reach out and contact the spirit. So here's where it gets interesting.

He says, you see it right here on the platform. So he's telling the people that what they're seeing when they come to his revivals is he's practicing the work of a medium. He's entering into a trance and he's using loaded language for all of this.

So nobody is aware that that's what, that literally what he's doing is spiritualist and it is anti-Christian, it's from the spirits of evil, not the spirits of good. So in this demonology theology, if you really understand the concepts of it, it becomes like guerrilla warfare where you are engaging in strategies against the enemy that are using tactics like the enemy would use upon you.

In other words, I can, as a medium, I can go after the evil spirits, even though doing this is an evil practice because I'm just like God, I am a manifested son of God, I'm going to conquer the demons by their own strategies.

I'm going to reach out contact their spirit, you two can do this, you can enter into this trance, you can take up this parable, and you two can be a conqueror of demons. Well that is the groundwork that was laid that established the New Apostolic Reformation's spiritual warfare doctrines.

So the question I'm sure all of you are asking, this phrase taking up a parable, which literally means entering into a trance and communicating with the spirits while in that trance, how did that become loaded language in the movement?

Where in the Bible did this come from? What did they do to convince followers? was that entering into a trance was a Christian thing. That phrase is only found in one single place in the Bible, and that is from the book of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk 2.6 says, shall not all of these things take up a taunt against him, with scoffing and riddles for him, and say, woe unto him, who heaps up what was not his own, and for how long.

Just reading the ESV, if you read the KJV, shall not these things take up a parable against him. So, in today's language, if you understand what this means, this is taunting. This is not even close to a spiritual thing.

This is literally something that you do against your enemy, not something that you would do for a Christian. The phrase itself, that word that is used for that translation, the parable or the taunt, it comes from strong, concordance number 4, 4, 2, 6.

This, again, it just simply means taunting. It doesn't mean entering into a trance. It doesn't mean communication with the dead, communication with spirits. It's more like in today's language, we would say, it's using satire to taunt your enemy, something against somebody, it's not something for somebody.

The word is only found in two places. The other place that it is found is in Proverbs 1-6. Proverbs 1-6 does not use the phrase taking up a parable. It reads, to understand a Proverb and the interpretation, the words of the wise, and their dark sayings.

So, if you understand what this means, this has nothing to do with what Brannum is trying to say that it does. What he's instead doing is he's doing kind of a slight of hand.

We're going to take this phrase that is mysterious, that comes from Habakkuk, and we're going to say that this is how you enter into a trance, you communicate with the spirits, you can communicate with the dead, you can contact other spirits.

What he's simply doing is he's distracting the people, and he's using loaded language to suggest that they can enter into this trance, and still be Christian. So hopefully, to those who are on the outside looking in, wondering, how can people believe this nonsense that we see in the New Apostolic Reformation?

How can they not plainly see that this is spiritualism? This is the occult, that it is condemned by the Bible? How can you listen to any of this? How can you not understand what the Bible says?

If you're on the outside looking in, you have to understand that it isn't that simple. It is multiple things at play. You have the occult, which has came into Christianity through Brannum, through others, using techniques.

They were mined techniques to allow people to believe things that they really should not have believed. a parable entering into a trance, whatever you call it, that's not what Christians do, but that is how they were manipulated to believe.

So then when people enter into those trances, when they so-called enter into the parable, they enter into the trance thinking that this is a Christian behavior, not one that came from the occult. Carry that forward into the New Apostolic Reformation.

You have all of the spiritual warfare. You have people who are getting out of their current reality to believe that they're engaging in real battles with real demons, and that these demons are territorial demons that are plaguing nations, and they will climb mountains and shout at demons, believing that they are actually engaged in this warfare.

What they're describing is they are out of their reality. They have now entered into this hypnotic state where they're passed, being in reality, and now they're into an alternate reality. The sad part of all of this is that alternate reality is one that is created by the leader of the movement.

So whatever picture they want to paint, whatever reality they wish to convey to the people, they are in full power to do so. As you have seen with other nations and history, this becomes very problematic.

You think of the power that is now given to the Apostolic authority or the prophetic authority. If they have the power to engage people in such a way that they disconnect it from reality, and they start to enter into alternate states of reality, believing those states of reality, in a militant fashion, they believe that they're engaging in real war, real battles.

Now you have literally created what Hitler did in Nazi Germany. There's no other way to say it other than this. This is the most dangerous theology that can possibly exist. And again, it's nothing new to the New Apostolic Reformation.

You can trace its history all the way back. I have simply traced it through Brannemism, but that is just one pathway that this has came into the movement. There are various other pathways that come into it.

Steve, Montgomery and I, we talk about this in the converging apostasy. But if you want to learn more, you can read his book, The Converging Apostasy. But this is not a Christian doctrine. By no means this is not.

We are engaged in a real battle. We're in a battle from the initiated, from the leaders of these prophetic movement, these apostolic governance committees that are gathering together, joining people together, engaging in this type of environment, where they are disconnecting from reality.

That for me, that is the real battle. Much more I could say on this. I'll stop there. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story, you can subscribe to our channel.

Check us out on the web. Thank you very much. You can find us at www.William-Pranum.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 Automall.

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