When Prophecy Replaces Scripture: A Former Charismatic Pastor Speaks Out

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Timothy Wisnuski, former pastor in the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement. Timothy it's good to have you on and to let you talk about your experiences in the Pentecostal slash Charismatic Movement. We were talking a little bit before and you were throwing some names out that we're bringing back somewhat fond memories but also like my memories are both fond and concerning at the same time. So we can talk to

all of that but maybe if you could just begin by telling everybody a little bit about yourself. Well like you said, my name is Timothy and I am was in the Charismatic Movement for quite some time. I really grew up in it. I grew up going to Maranatha and at some things with God churches. I had no idea what was going on in there. You know it was a little kid. I just knew this is where our mother dragged us off to and kind of a wayward in my teens. I saw a lot of shenanigans

in the churches. I saw a lot of pastors using people to get carpets and other things and I was more like I wasn't a rebellious kid but I was in skateboarding and punk rock. I had a real passion for music. So you know I'm this this little kid. Don't do drugs and straight edge but I got blue hair you know and a lip ring and a nipple ring and and I didn't bow too well in my church. So I would get blamed for all the shenanigans that all these other kids were doing even though I had nothing to do with it. I was I never did

drugs, never drank, never I was a straight-laced kid just punk rock skateboarding. So I was like well screw this. I'm done with church. Screw these guys. I'm out of here and so I still believe in God but I'm gonna go do my own thing which hindsight probably wasn't a great idea but with all the stuff I was seeing in the church I got a really sour taste in my mouth about it. Years later my mom gets involved in a church with this guy named Patrick Cobain who was he was an evangelist from Ireland and his testimony is pretty incredible. Former drug

dealer all this stuff encounters God it's almost a road to you know Damascus kind of things but and I remember him because you go around and speak of these youth groups that I would go to with my friends.

Even though I wasn't actively going to the church, my parents went to, I would still head up youth groups. You know, you're chasing girls, you're, but it's also the only culture you know is a Christian. So, and this guy always seemed to make sense to me. I was like, wow, this guy actually sticks in the word. He hasn't just go on some rant about homosexuality or whatever it is and get angry. So, it really spoke to me and my mom said, hey, he started a church out here, why don't you come? So, I said, okay, you know, I'll bite, didn't have much going on and then

kicked out of my apartment and lost my job. I was just said, move back on my parents, when I'm 26, not what you're looking forward to. And they said, one condition, you come here, you gotta go to this church, okay. So, that's, that's the quick and short of it. And then I get, I have what I believe was a radical encounter with the Holy Spirit. And the way my pastor explained it, you know, was that God was a person and you ought to be able to encounter a person. And so, I was like, well, you know, we'll see. And I didn't cry or nothing, you know, but I felt this

overwhelming sense of, yeah, this is, I'm real. I'm realer than than what you've experienced before. So, okay, well, this must be what I've been missing. So, I bought it hookline and sinker, jumped into the whole thing, baptized in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, all that jazz.

You know, it's funny, you were mentioning having the hair and the piercings, etc. See, I never had any of this. I was never, I honestly, I lived the life exactly like they wanted me to. That's just how I am. I'm, I'm almost by the book kind of guy, but I do like to investigate and do things logically by the book. But there was one oddity about me that relates to your story in that I was in a religion that was taught that you had to look at the outward appearance. And by the outward appearance, you could tell if they're holy or not. And I didn't buy any of this. Even though I

was supposed to, I didn't buy it because I actually read my Bible and there are the passages where it says God does not look at the outward appearance. So I never did. And so I never looked that way at friends who did go down different pathways. And so I would watch exactly what you're saying.

They caught all the blame. And if I was a little bit mischievous, I would do things, you know, just to spark a laughter. But if I would do something, usually they're the ones that got blamed.

And it was only because of their appearance had nothing to do with their spirituality, or anything like that. It's just based off of how they looked. 100% lived that, lived it. I was the other guy. I was the, he's what's wrong. I hope he leaves.

But my parents gave pretty heavily to the church. So they're kind of like, oh, you know, we'll tolerate it for a bit. But so I I had this encounter with the Lord, it becomes very real to me.

And while I was part of the Pentecostal Charismatic Church, and I didn't have the same structure, like the cultist structure that you had with William Branham, I did notice later on that some of the doctrines, some of the names and stuff, like your podcast that put together to me, you know, sort of all the missing pieces of these traditions and the Charismatic movement, where they came from and how they got to where they were.

I knew some of them, but it's really changed my perspective because I think origin stories are so important. I mean, scripture for one, right? Right. So being able to put these things together later on down the road, the more and more I saw things, the more and more, I was like, hey, you know, this doesn't really float or fly with scripture.

There's not a lot of continuity here. And it's so your podcast has helped tremendously me to sort of thread those, follow the threads that make up that tapestry. You know, it's funny because you can read through the comment feeds and you can see people who get really angry if I go through the histories of some of these people.

And I'm just simply telling the history as it, as it was written, it has no really, I have no bearing over what they did. That's just simply what they did. And they mistakenly think that I'm trying to attack a movement or trying to attack a ministry.

And the funny part is, I'm like you, I'm just more curious about the history because each one of these ministries I've learned, if you're not watching them closely, they're going to cover up everything that you don't want to know about them.

They only tell the good parts and there are some good parts. But if you only learn the good and you never learn the bad, you never learn from your mistakes. So I'm one of these people I like to dig in, I like to see, okay, who is this person?

What do they do good? What did they bring to the church this good? What did they bring to the church this bad? And some of them I've learned are just outright scoundrels and they're worshiped as gods generals.

If you have a scoundrel who's bringing something to the church, I really have to question everything that they brought. But then I watched these ministries come and they build on top of what was brought by the scoundrel.

Yeah, there's these, well, you know, like God's generals, right? I heard that phrase several times and when I'd later on got involved in that church, and lots of good things happened in that church.

I would not be serving the Lord today if it wasn't for the grace and the love I was shown in that body, wouldn't want anything to do with it. They really broke that mold that I'd seen before.

But these phrases, because of the background of my pastor, how he came to believe and all this stuff. The terms and phrases were there, and later on, when I went to IHOP, because I worship King, I worship leader, because I was, I played music and was musician for quite some time.

I kind of got stuck in the worship King, because I was the only bass player around. And so I, I was like, oh, I could play four or four music, no problem, you know, that's nothing.

That'd have been really good for me. But we went to IHOP, and they were, they were using the same language. So IHOP was weird to me at first. And so you don't know what IHOP is, the international house of prayer in Kansas City, which I believe is actually in Grandview.

And it, it was weird to me at first, very uncomfortable. But I just assumed it to be the presence of God. And I was the one who was something, you know, something was wrong with.

Could have been, could have been both, honestly. And but the more time I spent there, you know, just kind of hunkered down my car, I guess we're praying for a while. Again, I felt like God was moving to my heart, and all of a sudden this place was amazing. I started bringing other students there, you know, that we're in our student ministry. I was a student ministry leader. And a few people even interned there from our our little camp. We went to one thing events, you know, we went to the one thing in Kansas City,

the big youth event, and we went to the regionals around here.

And through that, my wife and I started our journey into the prophetic movement, where we started going to prophetic conferences and stuff, because that wasn't really facilitated in our church. We learned about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We learned about the five-fold ministry. We learned about, you know, all that jazz. But certain things weren't facilitated initially. And then later on, they came in a vogue more and we saw some serious issues.

Yeah, I was really surprised when I learned that the prophetic movement was a thing. And that IHOPKC was essentially Brannemism 2.0. Because how does that work? See, I was raised in the Brannem cult at the point after it had gone destructive. And so in that version of the cult, there is a central figure. He's the only prophet. All of the other prophets are fake. I was really surprised to go back in history and learned it from the beginning. They were setting up this framework where it was a prophetic movement. They were trying to set up the five-fold ministry, the prophets,

the apostles of teachers, pastors, et cetera, missionaries. Well, they're setting this up so that it's kind of an everybody-collaborate type mission. But what happened is the movement actually outgrew those trying to control the movement. And when it did, they turned into ministries, platforms, people, their ministries just basically got bigger than the movement. And then they became central figures. And they started denouncing all the other guys. So it's really weird to watch it kind of grow into what it did.

but then to watch some of the people who were definitely clearly brand-in-mite, like Paul Kane. Paul Kane comes to International House of Prayer in Kansas City, tries to recreate what brand-in was creating, but he didn't create the destructive side.

He tried to create it back from the latter-ane side. Bob Jones joins in and you know the history from there, but it spun off into this prophetic movement where people were going to conferences.

You too, it reminds them of Oprah, you can get a car, you too can get a car. Everybody gets a car. Everybody gets to be prophetic. Well, how does that work? Once those people outgrow the movement, it's really going to repeat itself again and again.

So as history goes, as history is being written now, there will be the podcaster 20 years from now that goes back and says, look, there was a third iteration of this. Yeah, the third iteration, the third, I mean, it was the thing that we heard a lot, you know, because you would have to tell these individuals like FF Bosworth or Smith Wigglesworth, who he was a real big one my pastor, you know, was really into.

And they would always say, yeah, but the later on in their lives, they fell into error. And that was a phrase that was like, it somehow absolved everything and was like, well, you know, it initially started with the Holy Spirit in this move of God, which maybe it did, who might it say?

And then it fell into error, but it's like, okay, well, then why are we continuing to preach whatever their error is? If we don't know when it happened, right? Why are we continuing to preach their doctrine when we clearly have scripture here?

Yeah, I never understood that. And that, by some grace, the church I was involved with who's called church in the word, and our pastor at least had managed us to be Bereans about what we were experiencing and what we were seeing.

And that helped me tremendously. And I would say probably my punk rock background, it was a little bit anti-establishment. So I didn't like being told I wanted to find out for myself. So I kind of had a little bit of a rebellious streak in that, but I don't think it was a bad thing when you start comparing and analyzing, you know, what's happening in the history of this movement.

Yeah, and I go back and forth. There are parts of me that think, you know, any movement can potentially be a movement by God. And say, God was behind the movement and God did some great thing, which if that happened, I haven't yet found it.

So many bad fruits come out of this. But I'm not going to say that it didn't. The problem, like you said, is once it starts turning south and by south, I mean, very heretical, there has to be a point at which somebody stands up and says, no, we're not going to continue the heresy.

But what happened instead, you had, like I said, all of these ministries that were building on the foundation, they had outgrown it. They had become central figures. Well, they themselves were spreading the heresy.

So they're not going to stop their own ministries, right? And there were individuals who left it, but there wasn't an overwhelming majority that stopped and said, okay, all of this is heresy. Let's walk away from it. Without that component, it just, you know, it will continue on. And the problem is, like I said, as they're writing their histories, they're scrubbing everything this critical to their history. And so people who are examining it, they can't even determine how theoretical it is because it's all been whitewashed.

Yeah. It really has. I mean, my pastor didn't know much of this stuff. The thing that I saw that was most damaging that came out of the prophetic movement, especially in the early arts, like you're talking 2005 up to, you know, 2012, 2013, is you had, again, like you had people who were going around telling anyone, oh, you know, like there's these spiritual gifts. Everybody has them, you know, whichever one they have is, you know, up to the Holy Spirit up to God.

Of course, everybody wants to be a prophet or an apostle because that's the one that everybody looks up to in respect. I mean, it's convenient or they want a healing ministry. But the apostles had all of it and so did the prophets miraculously. So, you know, what you were saying about, you know, whether a movement started with God or not, I look at it like this, like God can be in any movement. He's got, you know, when we were, when we were going to these prophetic

conferences and stuff, we were ardently seeking the presence of God. Like my wife and and this is even before we were married, she actually, she came to know the Lord through one of these events. But we were, we were seeking God. We weren't seeking an event. We weren't seeking a word.

We weren't seeking a whatever. We just didn't know where to go. And this was, we thought this is a group of like-minded believers who believe the same thing and they were here to encounter what we believe to be the Holy Spirit. I never really changed a word, you know, trying to get a word from somebody or anything like that. I just wanted more Jesus. And I'm not trying to treat my own horn or anything like that. I didn't know any better. I didn't know any different and I didn't know any better. But I saw repeated patterns in the people that would, you know, you start,

you go to more than one of these, especially in a certain region, you start seeing the same people. And then you're like, hey, where do you go to church? Oh, we don't go to church. We have a home group.

And it's, it's, or we have our own house of prayer, you know, and it's led by an apostle named yada yada, all these guys were apostles or prophets or whatever. And I was like, oh, okay, you know, and we'd go and check it out. And it was usually people working themselves up into a frenzy and saying, oh, I'm having a vision of the third heaven. And right now, in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, I declare, and they would go off into some rant and somebody else would jump in, back them up. And then somebody would scream off in tongues and some

And usually the person who screamed in tongues would give the interpretation nobody else which It's not really scriptural It's like well, you know, his dad's schizophrenic or why didn't he just tell you this you know what to say in English And so I started seeing these little things and and my mom helped me out a little bit Not I'll get into that too a little bit later, but I'll I'll let you I'll let you chime in and what from that

Yeah, you probably saw me bubbling over I'm laughing I have people on the podcast that I can't say these things too because they were not really in it to the level that I was and so If I say it, it's offensive to them and with you I kind of feel I can't so I'm gonna open up a little bit I watched it too. I watched people We didn't have a lot of the prophetic movement because it was random and then everybody else But I did visit churches that had these miniature prophet guys that thought they were something

And they would get up and do exactly exactly like you're saying and I remember sitting there in the pew thinking these guys are full of it At the time I thought these guys are full of it And Honestly, I'm looking back at that moment in time and I'm trying to recall what was going through my head exactly Because I wish I wish that I had a camera going at that moment and I wish I had taken notes in a diary But Something to the effective I was wondering is this real is this of God Or is this insanity has this man really fully disconnected his brain from reality

That's the kind of thought that was going through my head Then fast forward. I'm leaving the movement. I'm starting to examine Not just Brannemism, but what came next and keep in mind in the very early years of this I left in January 2012 For the very first few months. I still thought Brannem was a prophet. I really did Had no idea that he had just lied about the whole thing So at that moment, I'm trying to think okay. I know that he talked about mental issues Was he really doing this was he really in the spirit and maybe it was a false spirit or was he just insane

So that that thought's going through my head now fast forward to behind all of this research now I realize he's just making it up as he goes But when he does he's attracting other people into the movement who are You quote unquote filled with the spirit and I'm not I'm using quotes because maybe they are maybe they're not I'm not going to say they're not but Whatever it is what their prophesying a doesn't come to pass so it's false prophecy B doesn't really match the Bible if you stop and follow and trace all of it out

So it's if it is prophecy it's coming from a different God See It sounds an awful lot like insanity like they've disconnected their brains from it So I'm going through all of this in my head and I'm trying to weed out which people were authentic which people were just insane And the thought that I keep coming back to there are psychological studies out there but When you get yourself up into this hype, you literally start to disassociate your brain from reality, and when you do this, the things that come out of your mouth aren't things

that you would naturally say, therefore, when you do it, and everybody's in this hype, they think you're talking in the Spirit. So you could have cases where maybe it is God, maybe God speaking, maybe there's a Spirit, but also you can have cases where people have just disassociated, and everything they say is just nonsense.

Yeah. I think part of the issue, too, is when you're in a culture of this, and this is sort of monkey-seeing monkey, do you see somebody do it? Somebody that you respect, they've got a ministry, and maybe they've got some miracles under their belts, and it's like, wow, and you're like, oh, I can do this, too?

Oh, anybody can do this, and that's how it was taught. We weren't just taught that there was only one prophet. That's where your cold background, and my Christian mysticism, it got to the point where I started calling these people prophet liars because of what I saw versus what was actually taking place, and I'll tell you one of the things that really, we were kind of coming out of it, and God blessed my mom, because I remember, and this is not to say like pedonatural or things that appear to be supernatural didn't happen in these spaces.

I remember going to this, it was called the ministry of the school of the ministry of angels. That's what this prophecy conference was called, right? So you'd go there, and I don't know if you're meeting angels or what, but I remember at one point, watching a ball of light whip around this woman, you know, materialize not to know where, it whipped around her, and her garments, like it was like a gust of wind went around her, and she goes, and then it vanishes, and I was like, whoa, what's that?

And you know, then the preacher would get up, and he would say, the spirit name or the angel name, breakthrough revivals here, and he's going to say in this, he's there to say in this area, there's going to be a breakthrough revival, and some things happen there that I can't explain.

But you saw spiritual things take place all throughout scripture. I mean, I mean, a demon possessed boy was in the synagogue. So how do we discern what was of God, what wasn't, you know, and the scripture tells us, we base it on the fruit.

Well, nothing came out of that revival. Revival didn't break out through our area or our region. And I remember telling my pastor about this, because we were stoked, we were like, oh, dude, it's going to happen, you know, and next day was Sunday, my wife and I ran up, they were faster, you're never going to believe it.

The angel breakthrough revivals here, and it's his name, he must be like, You see, Tom, we just went on a rant and he was just looking at us like guys. And I remember Tom and my mom and my mom, God bless her.

She goes, oh, Timothy, she goes, that kind of thing has been happening so long. I remember this type of thing being in tent revivals that I used to go to when I was a little girl.

And the exact same thing was being said by the exact tape, same type of people. And I'd never heard that from my mother. And it was just like, yeah, honey, this happens because her father was a reverend.

Oh, my grandpa was reverend in churches. So he was sort of part of this community back then. But I'd never heard her say, I thought she was going to be ecstatic, you know, and she's kind of like, yeah, I've heard that before.

I have never talked about the lights. And you're getting me to open up in ways that I'm feeling uncomfortable, but yet comfortable at the same time. In the brand of movement, there was this thought about the lights.

And you can, the whole movement looks at Brandon's halo photograph, as though that's the, they call it the pillar of fire. But because of this, there are other attributes of light that the cult focuses on, which is a little bit weird if you think about it.

I remember clearly when I was in the cult, I was a director of IT, and I was showing a, I guess he was a lateral to me in position. I was showing him this photograph of this weird light over William Branham, not the halo, but a different one.

And he looked at it, and I didn't explain what it was. I just started talking about it. He said, oh, it looks like somebody's camera was broken. And I later found that in the brand of movement, there was a, one of the leaders, one of the two main leaders of the sack, the two main branches, if you will.

One of them fully admitted that there was a broken camera that they went around taking photographs. And he says, everybody's talking about this light, well, and he gives the name of the person that has it.

And he says, well, this guy had the camera. I knew, I watched him do it. And I asked him one time, take a photograph of the light of the house across the street and let's see if it has a supernatural light.

And he would never do it because he knew the camera was broken. So you had fakery, but at the same time, you had people who, and I have very close friends, who I trust, who I know did not lie to me.

You have people who were in meetings and they saw this thing that you're talking about. This weird light comes down. And so when I was in the movement and they would tell me these stories, I never saw it personally, but I know the people, I know they did not lie to me.

When I was in the movement and I thought about it, I thought, well, that must be God coming down that's showing the spirit. Exactly like we're indoctrinated. Now moving forward, I'm left with this conundrum.

What do I believe? Because in some aspects, I can tell that there was so much trickery that was happening in the movement that clearly there were things that, would be explained through the trickery.

I also know at the same time that there were, you know, whenever he would say he had an angel in the platform with him, well, if he did, this wasn't an angel of God, and everything being said was fully, not fully, but many things were either extra biblical, something's anti-biblical.

So you're not going to have an angel of God telling you something anti-biblical. If I look at it like that, I start to wonder, well, was that light something demonic? Was there a demon coming in to show, you know, show itself or what was this, right?

And there's a large number of the audience who they write me and they say this, you know, this is demonic, this is a thing. From a psychological standpoint, again, if you can separate yourself from reality, well, if you've disassociated, your brain can see things that aren't there.

That's just how it works, right? I have taken, I have high blood pressure among the other things that I have. I have taken the wrong medicine on accident one time with die blood pressure.

Medication can make you see all kinds of strange lights. I have seen this in my life. I know the how this works. So you can have medical condition, psychological condition, demonic or trickery. So you've got four paths to go down.

Which do you go? And this plagued me as I'm researching. I want to know which one was it? And what I've learned is you can't answer in one single aspect. I have found all four.

There literally are all four. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William 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.

God's grace is so profound because in every one of these events where there was definitely some other spirit involved, whether it's just a person being deceived or there's something nefarious, some sort of intelligent evil at work, there was always one speaker who would, and it was usually one of the first or second ones, and they would bring some sort of reason to the event.

They would say, hey, look, don't go chasing this, don't go chasing that, get into the word. And they were you? the ones that nobody wanted to hear, everyone frowned, I guess, it was almost like God's grace, there was a warning there still, to be the Bereans, right? Get back, go back to the words, seek me, don't seek these events, and then it was usually go on, and there was this, you know, crazy charismatic party. But one of the things I saw that was really troubling was, I don't, have you ever heard about the gems, the gemstones? No, I haven't. Okay, so in the prophetic movement,

there was a big deal made over like Gold Dust happening during worship, so Gold Dust would appear on people, they found those events, by the way, at some of these locations. But for a while, there was these gems, like they just look like rubies or whatever, and people would say, oh, these appeared after a prophetic movement of God, or they manifested and were left on an altar, and so we carried them around, and they would build this whole story around these things, you know, people that look at these things, it reminded me of, you know, when, when

Gideon, he makes that effigy, right? And it ends up being this big problem, and God's like, I never asked, I don't want to tell you to do that, what do you do? Well, they had their own little effigies, and for the first time, we actually had prophetic converts at our church, and it was really why we did, it was because we were hard up for money, so we opened the doors to a ministry we semi-trusted, and brought in all these people, charged them, you know, to be part of the weekend, and what I saw there really kind of buried the hatchet with all this stuff

for me, and this guy was going on and on about these gems, right? And at this point, I'm a pastor, but I'm also the sound guy, the sound engineer, so I got to run sound for this whole event, and this guy's going on and on for days about this stuff, and then there's somebody else who's a prophet, and he's, he's profiliant over people, and then, um, towards the end of the night with the gems, and I went in my exam, and I said, can I touch that? And it honestly just felt like a piece of plastic, like like a like a plastic cut jam, and I go, hey, I go, have you ever had this

tested in a molecular level? Have you ever had a cut and tested in a molecular level? The guy grabs it out of my hand, and he holds it goes, no, I could never do that with one of God's gifts.

And he, and it like, it kind of took me back. I'm like, well, if this is really something that you want to show the world, why wouldn't you? Like, if this is from heaven enough from earth, and, uh, and he just kind of stopped talking to me after that. I'm like, this guy's super suspect, but the most damaging part about this is I remember distinctly, this kid was like an eight-year-old boy, and it was after this event, and people come from all over, right? They're not just our church members.

And this kid has found part of a broken hair band and it had little little plastic diamonds in it and he finds just one little diamond and he goes around to everybody goes look look what God brought me he brought me a gem because he knew was my birthday and he ran around the whole thing and I found the rest of the hair band under the seats because you know I'm cleaning up afterwards and I go up to the kid I go hey buddy I go look God loves you and happy birthday but that that's actually part of a plastic you know a little plastic thing and it's it's

not a gem from God and that kid refused to believe what he was being said cognitive dissidents there was so deep and this little boy and his and the fact that his parents were good with it and the fact that the guy who had come and brought his little gems was good with it and and all the occult literature in the lobby that was that that had Christian symbology on it but it was 100% occult literature because I had studied the occult and color graphs and all this stuff that that meant different giftings will always spare it that

really sent me into the direction about researching and determining how to speak to people about this finding the origins of where this stuff came from looking into more biblical academia and and Scott biblical scholarship on how to actually like interpret scripture what what was scripture who were the people God was writing to right I mean the scriptures for everybody but it was authored for a specific group of people at a specific time and they had cultural nuances that the Bible specifically references and idioms and stuff but we have no idea in our modern Western American exceptionalist ideology you know I mentioned

all of these ministries that cover up their past and their histories this has been going on for ages and I'll never forget the surprise I think I've mentioned this on the podcast but I'm studying Charles Fox Parham who is by many counts the father of modern Pentecostalism he's the what do they call him the he was the projector of the apostolic faith is his self-given title projector projector progenitor actually I found both in the newspapers progenitor projector and the projector was probably a derogatory statement by the newspapers but anyway in in the newspapers I come across this court trial where he is suing somebody who has

duptam into thinking that this little magic elixir could be dropped on to rocks ordinary rocks and turn them into gold from God and I looked at a few newspaper articles and I found you know he'd been fully dupt so he you know he in these articles he was not to blame and I talked to a historian who is he's very pro Charles Fox Parham and he's Yeah, he was dupe, you can clearly tell, and that's, it's accurate, that is true.

But the thought that's not mentioned is number one, this whole thing's been erased from history. You won't find that in any of the history books. Number two, this was a religious leader who had stock in a company selling elixirs that would turn ordinary rocks into gold.

So you have to know that whether it's documented or not, you know he was probably selling it in his church, and he was trying, as he was touring, he was giving us out, right?

Well he's involved in this, he's one of the, on the board of directors of this company that he got duped from, which sells a magical elixir that turned to ordinary gold into gold, or ordinary rocks into gold.

So this thing's been going on forever, and the people get duped by it, you get sucked in, you start believing it, and it's, I'm a big fan of the old bananza show and raw hide in all of those Westerns.

There's always that snake well salesman would go through town, and he's selling the elixir that's going to make everybody feel good. By the time everybody realizes this guy just took us for all of our money, he's gone to the next town, right?

Well, that's what these guys were doing, and this is before you had, you know, Parham, if I remember, he was before the radio, and definitely before television, before they could be traced like they are today.

And what happened is the gimmicks that they could be traced for, they started to suppress those as soon as, as soon as information starts to spread quickly through newspaper, radio, et cetera, and travel, you know, is widespread.

So what they did instead is they tried to take things from the natural, like a, an elixir that would turn a rock into gold, instead they'll take it to the spiritual, we'll sell you the spiritual thing, and you can get the spiritual thing.

Come join me. You too can get the spiritual thing. And how you're going to prove that they didn't get it, right? So it's the same trick, it's the same gimmick, but it's rebranded differently.

There's a plausible deniability there, right? Because if it doesn't work, you just didn't have enough faith. That's a, I mean, it's a good model, I guess, a good, a good, a good working model if you want to make money.

But I have a mug, it's a coffee mug, and it says bad theology, hurts people. And it's, it's one of my favorite mugs, I think it's actually from one of the podcasts called a cultish.

And I think about that often, you know, I think about, okay, if I'm presenting the gospel with somebody, how am I doing it? What is the end goal, right? Because sometimes it's experiential, you're sharing about Jesus with people, and you do have these experiences, however anecdotal they may be, and sometimes there's a miraculous element involved.

But what is the end goal? What am I, am I drawn into the person of Jesus, or am I drawing them to an event, or am I drawing them to a thing, or am I making a doctrine out of miracles, right?

Am I making a doctrine out of healing? I'm making a doctrine out of prophecy that cannot be found in Scripture, cannot be sustained in any way, especially by any human means, and so that's what I'm continuously asking myself at this point, especially with all of the stuff that we've seen, and that's like a fraction of it, and we've seen miracles.

I watched a cripple man in India become uncripled before my eyes. His arms were bound up, his legs were bound up on one side. This goofy dude I knew would just said the worst, the lamest prayer in the world over them, and said, well, you know, I know what the Bible says, rise up and walk, and I watched his arm come down, I watched his leg loosened, and he followed us all around India after that, or at least all around that village.

And later on that evening, he goes up, and Indian people are very reserved. They're not prone to making a big, it's just part of their culture, not a big example of things. At least back then it wasn't, and he went up and he said, he goes, this morning I was a Muslim, but Jesus healed me, and now I'm a Christian, and he said that before his whole village, and they all knew that this guy had had a pretty terrible farming accident, and he'd been like that for about a year and a half to two years.

And when they saw him walking around in his own strength, he actually pushed his walk away, and these are the things you hear about, and some of these healing revivals and these ministries and stuff.

And I saw them on eyes, and somewhere there's a video of it, somebody was filming, but one of my favorite scholars said something one time that I'll never pray at eat, and he said that every experience has an expiration date.

And even when it comes to things like this, which I'm certain was of God and for the glory of God, that still doesn't keep that person up, or other people who saw it, like there were so many young people that were with us that saw that happen who were no longer serving the Lord.

They're no longer pursuing the God in any capacity. So why? It was all this other stuff that they saw, was all this other stuff they experienced, and the onus is on them too, to an extent, like they weren't in the Word, they weren't doing their own due diligence, and maybe it wasn't promoted, you know, to really study it in that way, it was more based on confirmation bias of what you want to see versus what you think you're seeing, and this is how we interpret scripture instead of the way it should be done.

In the movement that Brannum was creating, and this is long before it turned destructive and people started abandoning him, he was putting into position this idea that people could have the spoken Word, and in today's NAR Charismatic Movement, it's the new man of the fresh man of the fresh revelation, there's different ways that they frame it, right?

But if you understand what was being done there, Brannum clearly said that the Word for Moses day wouldn't work in Paul's day. which that part is kind of true, but he was framing it as though it were gospel because he did not understand the gospel and he didn't understand really that Moses couldn't have had the gospel.

Jesus had not come. There was no gospel, but he would frame it like this and he would say the word that Paul gave for his day doesn't work in our day. What does this mean?

It means that we need fresh man and we need the spoken word, new revelation. And when you hear this and you understand what the Bible says, what you're hearing is pure heresy. Pure plain and simple, it is heresy.

There's no way to say it any other way. But think of the numbers of people that were attending those conventions and the ministries that were involved with it, the ministries that grew and exploded into what we see today, these people agreed with it.

Whether they want to admit it or not, there was a point in time that they agreed with this. Some of them went in a good way and they finally abandoned the heresy. And I respect those, but there are others that built on it and built entire schools that were teaching people how to do this kind of thing, right?

You're basically teaching people how to do heresy when it comes right down to it. And once I discovered this, I was a little bit shocked because I, in the random cult, even though I was a cult member, I was a faithful cult member, I read the Bible continuously and I did not put anything else above it.

I didn't know I was supposed to. In fact, it wasn't until after I left that I learned that I was supposed to, because why would you do this, man? It doesn't make any sense.

And after I learned that we were supposed to put Brandon's words above the Bible, I was just completely shocked. And that's whenever I started, you know, the blog, the broadcast, all of this information.

And then to learn that there were other people doing it still today, not using his name, but using his methods, I was like, I can't believe this is happening. What has the world come to?

That you will claim your Christian, but you're going to put your words above the Bible, that by definition, that is not Christian. Yeah, it's a self-refeating prophecy. Mm-hmm. We, I saw that so much in the movement and the destruction that I saw come with that, and even with certain things like, even just the prophetic utterances, right?

And I remember this one guy specifically, his name was Steve, and he came to our church and stayed because of a word of knowledge that was spoken over him. He was actually so upset about it, he thought somebody had given our pastor sort of the insight scoop on his life to kind of mess with him.

And that had not happened at all. This really was sort of a God talking to this guy through our pastor, but what that did,

and maybe it was God talking to him, maybe it was something else, but also, And instead of, I'm jumping on the Jesus wagon, and I want to know everything I can about scripture, he went from being sort of a junkie in the world to like this supernatural junkie, where he suddenly started to seek out these supernatural events like the one that had just happened and spoke into his life.

And I saw him a few years later, and he was the shoveled, looked crazy, saw him, it was a couple of years later, it wasn't one of the years. So I'm gonna profit a conference.

I was still, you're still going to those every now and then, but I was sort of on my way out of that movement. And I was in the bathroom at a urinal at this event, and out of nowhere, this guy shows up.

He's like, hey man, and I'm like, well, you know, I'm both in the bathroom, and he's right here at the urinal, he's like, he's like, hey, God told me to give you this, he goes, digs in his pocket, he hands in his sheet of paper, and I go, oh, thanks man, and I read, has nothing to do with anything, and I go, this is for me, huh?

And mind you, I'm still at the urinal. And he's like, yeah, yeah, God said that's for you. And he had a whole pocket full of these pieces of paper that he had written on, and he's homeless.

I said, well, where are you living now? Where are you working? Oh, I'm in Florida, I don't have a job. God provides for me. And I go, well, I go, where are you getting the word of God from?

And he goes, I don't need that anymore. God has given me his word. I am God's word, and that broke my heart so much because I know the first quote unquote encounter you had was at my church.

And there was no like real follow up. There was no guidance as to, hey, you know, you're getting into some weird stuff. I know my role I played in that. I probably took him to his first prophetic conference and then to see him years later with his life in shambles.

And Lord knows what he's doing or what he's saying to people, you know, screaming to people that, oh, God told me, you're gonna have six babies, you're gonna be super rich, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that.

You know, when this woman he's talking to just had like the worst two miscarriages of her life, he has no idea what he's saying. And so that really bothered me. That really, well, I repented.

I actually had to go home and say, Lord, I'm sorry for my role in this. I'm sorry for participating in this thing. I didn't know what I was doing. Please forgive me and started to really move on from there.

But I've seen that so many times and it's far more damaging than I've ever seen it be a blessing to anyone. Absolutely. And the damage that this movement has done, it's, you can't really count how many people have been hurt by this.

And I know firsthand because I've worked with many people, people who are damaged by the movement who left Christianity altogether. And I know that a lot of people hate me for saying this, but I don't blame them.

When you're in this kind of movement and you've been burned by this thing that they're calling God, number one, it's not God. is not the God of the Bible anyway. When they leave, I don't blame them at all.

And I try to open up the platform where people can share their stories, I don't care who you are or what you've done, what you believe, what you don't, because I too was burned.

I know exactly what it means to deconstruct the false God, and then try to rebuild everything. I have 37 years of rebuilding to do, and I'm taking my time with it. It may take me the next 37 years, because I was built up to believe this false thing.

And I'm thankful people like you were able to get out of this, because the more people that get out and speak out against it, the more change can happen. I 100% agree, and the more people like you, right?

I mean, like I said before, like your podcast, your videos, especially on Dauy, because I'd always heard about Dauy, I'd always heard about the Azusa Street, but they all ended in madness, but I didn't know the depths of Dauyism.

I didn't know like the debauchery and the murders, and all that blew my mind. And I was like, how can people, how can people tout this guy at all? Like how can people use him as a foundation or a reason for what they say they believe, as far as the prophetic or healing revivals, or this particular dispensation that we're in,

or the dominion we have as new atoms or whatever phrase they use.

So, but your podcast, I think it's paramount. I think there's a few other people really doing it. I think Julie Royce, she's taken a lot of heat, but she's doing the work of God, protecting young ladies and people that have been abused by the church, your podcast is huge.

And what I appreciate most about yours is, you have other people who come in, some of them don't believe anymore. Some of them are, they have a background in psychology. They have a background in neurology, and then you've got guys who were directly involved in some of the origin story of IHOP and that whole movement.

I mean, it's paramount, it's important. And I just pray that the people that are still steeped in this cognitive dissonance, which again, is part of the culture, but I know God and I know Holy Spirit is just bigger, he's bigger than all this stuff, and he's moving in this in ways that we can't imagine, all the time, regardless of what we're seeing and regardless of how much it hurts to see, because you and I, we have such a small sphere of influence, but the Holy Spirit is limited, so.

What advice would you give to people who are still in this kind of movement? Because we have a large part of the audience that they're watching with interest because they too are in... something similar, what advice would you give them?

I would say when you get out, I would say, you know, Paul, Paul admonishes, Paul gives this testimony, he's talking to church leaders and he gives this testimony of Jesus Christ. And the people that are listening, he admonishes them and he advocates their actions and he says, these Bereans, they didn't just buy it immediately, they went, they searched the scriptures to find that if what I was saying was true.

So I admonishes first and foremost, go back to the Word of God, but the hard part is not going through it with the lens that you've been given. So if you're still looking at scripture through this confirmation bias of a prophetic lens, it's going to be hard for you to see things outside of that or, or, you know, sort of this sort of a brand of might lens, right?

Because we were taught to look at scripture a certain way based on the movement we were in, but there's really, really good resources out there from biblical scholars and biblical scholars. They believe in things, some of them believe in miracles, some of them don't.

Some of them aren't even Christians, they're just biblical scholars. So there's good resources, you know, I'm a big proponent of Dr. Michael Heiser's work, the late great Dr. Michael Heiser who wrote the book on the Unseen Realm, but he had a podcast called the Naked Bible Podcast.

And the older ones with him, he goes through scripture, he goes through the ideas that maybe like, you know, he'll tackle speaking in tongues or he'll tackle the old, the Levitical Law, right? Because the way it's touted in a lot of these churches, especially charismatic churches, is way different than the way it was written.

And he'll go through and he'll give you all the skeptical arguments. He'll give you what scholarship says, what it doesn't say. And then he'll come to a conclusion out and say, well, here's, you know, based on the biblical he-synthness of all these things, here's what, here's what it looks like.

Here's what we can, here's what we can definitively say and what we can't. The Bible project, Dr. Tim Mackey, I think he's very good. He's got John Collins, another guy named John Collins, who's with him, and John Collins is a layman.

And he just asked really good questions. I used to be really annoyed at it because I just wanted to hear the good Dr. Talk. It opens up a dialogue as to why, why are, or where these things come from, these, you know, these certain terms and scripture, where was, where was Jesus when he said this thing?

And why does it matter? So there's good resources out there. I would say pursue it, but you've got to be willing to do the work. You've, you've got to be willing to, to do the work, understand that, that you don't have to get revelation from every little thing you read from scripture.

You know, this is this is this is a process that takes time. I'm still on the journey. I I almost walked away at numerous times from my from Jesus, especially after the prophetic movement and the charismatic Charismania that I was involved in. And again, there's lots of good things. Some amazing things. So I know I saw definitive miracles. I know I had a definitive encounter.

I still do. But my baseline has to be the word of God and it has to be people that that that can back it up like their knowledge base, not just hearsay, not just some angel show it up and did this.

People that have put in the work and for me, I have to go into academic studies for that. So and if you look at Paul, if you look at a lot of these, these guys were well versed individuals. They knew the word they knew several different languages.

For Paul, the right would he wrote the the the mask that he wrote and talked about the apostle Paul. It was incredibly expensive. Valum paper was not cheap at that time or Valum, rather it was in paper.

So for him to put that much time in effort in it, you better believe it wasn't just really nearly and we've got tens of thousands of documents to back that stuff up. We have very little to back up FF Bosworth and all these other guys and Dowie and whatever. So you're finding it though you're doing a great job digging digging up the dirt on archive.org, but which is phenomenal.

So I don't know if I helped it out. That's that's that's the best advice I can give. And it's okay if you're set. It's okay if you're hurt. It's okay. I think it's okay to walk away.

I think it's okay to walk away. I had to determine myself. I had to do do a thing where I I determined myself to stop blaming God for the things men did. And it was hard because I I wanted to be able to blame him. And and it felt good, you know, I don't resent these people.

I don't resent these, like I said, I wouldn't be serving Lord today if it wasn't for some of these people. But my mission now and my wife's mission is how can we help people that are hurt by the church that are hurt by movements like this?

How do we love people who are unchurched and still show them Jesus even though they have no Christian needs? Right. So that's where we're at. And that's what I would I would I would really look into and you can hit me up. I'll give you my my email address.

If people want to hit me up afterwards, I'll give them all the resources that my wife and I have found over the years. And I'd be happy to talk with anybody, you know, whatever I can offer, you know, I'm the academic. I don't have a seminary. I was ordained, you know, a pedagogical church.

None of us have seminary degrees. But I'll tell you what I'm ardent about pursuing God and and and and being able to back it back up what I believe now. Well, that's very good.

And if you want to contact Timothy, you can reach out to me on the website, www.Williamdashbrandom.org on the contact page, and then I will forward it to Timothy. So, thank you so much for doing this.

I appreciate it, man. I appreciate your brother, God bless you, and for all people out there, man. You know, pursue the Lord, and look into this stuff. Don't take his word for it, look into it.

You got nothing to lose. Well, you got some things to lose, but it's probably a good thing. Absolutely. If you've enjoyed a show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.Williamdashbrandom.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

www.Williamdashbrandom.org