From Holy Spirit to Holy Experience: The Shift That Changed Everything

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, John Garvey, Dr. musician, Moore, and links to the charismatic movement for years. John, it's such an extraordinary introduction. I'm not sure how to introduce you into this, but last time we you on the podcast, I got so much good feedback and people wanting to learn more because we in the States, we look at this narthing, no apostolic reformation, and we see the mess that was created here, but not many people

realize that same mess was created in different ways in other places, and really has negatively impacted the Christianity in general in different places, but I had so many people that wanted to hear more, and fortunately you were willing to do so. Maybe if you could just remind everybody a little bit about yourself, and let's talk about the mess that was created. Well, I was a general medical practitioner for many years in the East of England, and I became a Christian when I was a teenager, and fairly early on at university came in contact for the

first time with the charismatic movement, and because I was doing Christian music, there was a very strong charismatic influence, and I got sort of partly roped in, and I didn't realize quite how close to many things I was, because I'm looking at the history since we did our last podcast. It appears that the thing that really pushed the charismatic movement into the mainstream was a festival of the Holy Spirit at Guilford Cathedral, which I was actually at back in 1971. That was a sort of weird thing in some ways. The most strange bit was the singing in the spirit, which was basically as a musician,

I was thinking, people are just singing a chord, so perhaps wasn't impressed with that. But the most impressive thing was a chap standing in front of me who looked like a pastry cook, and could not sing, but he was so enthusiastic, I thought that's where the Holy Spirit is today amongst this person's ass, as my abiding memory of that seminal event in the charismatic movement.

But after the last podcast, Some of the feedback comments were saying that I'd missed out various things and it was true partly because of time but mainly because I only saw certain things and in particular people said that there were other streams going into the early charismatic, not only the main line denominations, the Anglicans and so on, but back in the 60s from the breadth of a movement came Arthur Wallace, who was another sort of big mover and shaker and various other people, but I looked at that history with which I was not involved so much. The thing

that I've been seeing is that all of it still goes back to the same links that you have been describing for so long, very early in the history of the Founding Trust which was the kind of umbrella group that began putting these things together with Michael Harper and so on. A earned backster was advising and various other people like that. So there were people coming picking up Latter-Rain doctrines and that led actually to some divisions I'm told this is just research has shown this rather than anything I was involved in. I blissfully unaware of any of this, but there were divisions about restorationism, there were resentments

that these people from Anglican denominations and so on were seem to be taking the lead. So there was always that kind of division and I understand that that tended to kind of weaken the whole business until we began to get to what now I think it's called the third wave with John Wimba and the Toronto blessing and those things and that that has been what has caused damage I think. After the podcast a guy got in touch with me I found my number through Clifford Hill and I mentioned last time and he was a recovering charismatic but what we had a very good conversation

and shared a lot of the same experience but he was telling me that he had a daughter, has a daughter who is a worship leader, trained worship leader and just mentioned in passing that she'd been out and spent some time at Bethel Reading and that I think encapsulates the British problem that this quite quiet charismatic movement over here where we don't have too many Bill Johnson figures there's always that attraction over the Atlantic that's where the spirit's really moving and I think it's because the people are sort of disappointed that they're expecting lots and lots of miracles and didn't seem to be getting them and prophecies about this and that

and so you find people kind of people went over to the Toronto blessing. heard from more than two or three people who have been over to Bethel. This girl was unfortunately sort of disillusioned by the whole thing, went to Nashville and was even more disillusioned by the music, the Christian music scene there. So it's that kind of transatlantic connection that seems to make a big difference. I think it's where our British people get the fix. Or they think they're going to get the fix anyway. You know it's kind of funny because I get all kinds of feedback

and I don't really discount anything that's sent to me no matter who it is. I want to know more and I want to know everybody's own perspective as they look into this weird box. And it's funny because I have people who have escaped the movement who were in leadership positions who were in the know. And yet at the same time they weren't in the know. So their perspective, they may have things that they realized that maybe we got a few things wrong, but at the same time they got things wrong because they didn't fully understand it. And it comes down to this point. You

mentioned that this was the third wave. I have had people who were in the movement in leadership say this. This was the third wave of Pentecostalism not knowing that there was a whole wave that has been erased by history. The third wave, I don't know that you can really call it like this because there were multiple waves along the way. And later reigns, so many people just tried to disconnect that. They tried to say, well, no, that wasn't a real wave. We have the real thing, right?

So there are so many different perspectives. But whenever you are in a movement that likes to cover up its history, you'd miss a lot of things because you take it for granted that somebody telling you something is being honest about what it is that they're talking about. However, they may not even have all the details. Another example, which I'll throw out, we're hopefully we're going to get into this soon. But I have had people say that youth with a mission, Y-WAM, is in no way, shape, or form connected to Brannemism. It's a totally isolated thing that there are no,

there are no theological connections, et cetera. And yet at the same time, I found documents where earned backster, who I think you mentioned, part of the shepherding movement, who was William Brannem's partner in the revivals and even campaign manager for a few years. He was going to Y-WAM bases and essentially teaching them how to do authoritarian control if you understand how his doctrine worked. So there are so many connections. And even the leadership who have escaped youth with a mission who've reached out to me, even they are fully unaware of that connection. So it gets

to be this weird thing where you have this box that everybody's looking into it in a single direction. And they have blinders on their side because they can only see what they've been told.

The connections are there and I think they're important. Again, you document, you're going right back to the beginning of Pentecostalism, you've got these shady characters, John Alexander Dauy and so on, and to me, I think as a Bible teacher, the theology is the most important thing, but there are other factors, sociological factors and personality factors that are underestimated, I'm sure.

But thinking of the theology, you've documented very well the dangers of, well, so many different things, the healings that you're persuaded have happened, even when they haven't. The prophecies that exploit people and all those sort of things, in fact, I was hearing just on Sunday about a trail of people from a fairly nearby Latavian type or NAR type church, who've fallen off not only that church and not only Christianity, but belief in God altogether, and it's so dangerous to see that happening, but it's not just those dangers, I think one of the things that has struck me is that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit,

which is so prominent, is actually a really weak doctrine of the Holy Spirit. If you look at some reading, there's a book which I read many years ago by probably the British, British, theologian, 650 pages on the Holy Spirit, and it hardly mentions charismatic gifts.

John Owen, to the listeners who aren't watching the video. Yeah, the Holy Spirit, the treatise on the Holy Spirit, 1678, the problem with John Owen is that not only is he writing 16th century English, but he's one of the most complicated writers, but that book is by Michael Horton, and that's a modern book, and again, the same thing.

You find that there's so much that the Holy Spirit does, and miracles are small print, and prophecies are small print, created the world, one of the things that Michael Horton points out, which I think is really important to the Christian, is that everything that God does, he does through all members of the Trinity.

So the idea of seeking more of the Holy Spirit, you're missing out on the fact that the Father initiates everything. He does it through Christ, and the Spirit is the person who brings it to completion.

So you find that even in the classic passage on spiritual gifts, Paul talks when he's talking about spiritual gifts, he talks about there is, there are many charismata, but one spirit. is not to say, and there are many kinds of service, but one Lord by which he means Jesus, and many kinds of work, but one God by which he means the Father, and he's really saying to the Corinthian to look, stop getting hung up on the Spirit and the gifts.

Think about God, think about salvation, and that, I think, is one of the big problems that has come, the lack of preaching of the gospel, the lack of realization of holiness, which is what the Holy Spirit does mostly.

Absolutely. I have a podcast, I think it's coming up before this one, but so many people have asked me just simply, what are my thoughts on the Azusa Street revival, and, you know, out of every history that I have read about it, and there's some good, some bad, some, the good bad and ugly, right?

And I've read both sides, I've read those in favor, I've read those against it. I don't find too many of these histories talking about how the gospel was preached at the revival. What you instead find are it was filled with miracles, they spoke in tongues, a new thing was birth, Pentecostalism, modern Pentecostalism was birth.

You don't really find that, and the gospel was suddenly spread, you don't find this. So the focus for me, what I've come to realize is that the movement in general put so much emphasis on the things that are supernatural, extraordinary signs, wonders, miracles, etc.

And the gospel just kind of takes back seat. That's the big thing. They want something that's exciting to the crowds, that's what it is. And I came across, I'm spoiling it if you have not seen this and you're watching this podcast, but I come across some very disturbing articles where there were elderly people who were physically ejected, who came and openly declared, I'm a sinner, I want to learn more.

And they were kicking sinners out of the building. So it wasn't even a gospel to save the sinners, it was literally come, let us show you how you can speak in tongues. And if you disagree with this, we will injure you and you will get out, you will leave our building and go to the hospitals.

And it wasn't just one person that I came across like this, there were quite a few. In fact, there were interesting stories that I didn't go to this in the podcast, but there were stabbings.

There were, I think I did mention the podcast, there were women who were leaving their husbands and bringing in new men off of the streets. This was not something that you would buy today's standards or any day standards.

Think of this as something where the gospel is being furthered. You would think of this as this is a weird attraction, it's oddly like a carnival. And their focus is, they're calling it Jesus, but they're making the gospel take back seat to this new thing that's coming.

Yeah. Well, I mentioned last time we spoke about the influence of John, Evan, and the, so Evan Williams, what was his name? Evan Roberts, that's what I was standing there. Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival was in contact with the people who were involved in the Azusa Street Revival a year later. Reading reports and accounts of the Welsh Revival, the Gospel was certainly preached. I think Evan Roberts loved the Gospel, but there were many times when the emphasis wasn't on that at all. There was lots of falling about, lots of singing, and the Gospel was just missed out

and local people sometimes complained about that, the local church people. And that's certainly, that goes back, I think, even to the great awakening. I've been reading, again, wading through another tomb, which was Jonathan Edwards' affections of the Holy Spirit.

No, affection, yes, I think that's what it was. Evan, he was, of course, the American wing of the great awakening, the great Revivalist, but he was very, very canny about the emotional excesses. And essentially, there's a long book and quite repetitive, but he was saying it's certainly the case. When somebody comes to Christ, all kinds of emotions can happen, very strong emotions, but equally strong emotions can happen for completely worldly or even demonic reasons.

And he was pretty convinced that many of the people in the great awakening who had had all these manifestations were never truly saved. And he was under no illusions about that. And I think the great awakening set a template for Revival. And of course, by the time you get to Charles Finney in America in the 19th century, the second great awakening and so on, you manufacture Revival by techniques. And always the aim is, well, there's no Revival.

There's these rules of Revival, first of all, you've got to have intense prayer meetings first. God can't work without these prayer meetings. And then you get the fact that it's only evident Revival. If the some kind of emotional thing changes from John Wesley through to the plenty costor movement, but by emphasizing that and looking forward to the great end times Revival of that nature, very often, Charismatics miss what's going on on their own doorstep.

There are people becoming to Christ for other reasons in Britain at the moment, largely from the working class, kind of under the radar, they're going to ordinary churches. And sometimes they've been spoken against by church leaders, basically for being working class, and patriotic.

I don't think we have much in the way of dominionism in Britain, but there is a kind of sense of the country being an amiss. and needing Christ to kind of get it back together again.

Yeah, it's kind of funny because just because of Sherlock Holmes and the thrill of the accent, people view the people from Great Britain as being just a little bit more intelligent. And when you say this, I'm thinking, well, they're more intelligent.

They're not going to go there. They're not going to believe this nonsense like we do in the states, which I'm a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, by the way. It's one of the things.

So when I read this and honestly, the reason I'm mentioning this and I'm kind of being a little bit open here, the reason I mentioned this is because when I heard that John Wimber went there and that it was adopted in a different way, my mind actually went there. I was thinking just the culture of how the British think about everything. There's critical analysis and everything that when you talk to somebody, you can tell that they are critically thinking about what's being said. How can you spread this nonsense into Great Britain and people even adopt it?

But then after I went that direction, I qualified that thought with, well, when you're in religion and especially this type of religion, it trains you over time to suppress your critical thinking while you're in the assembly. So now you've got both sides fighting with each other.

We also have a state education system. So I think critical thinking has kind of somewhat gone out the window. There's always an attraction for the supernatural. If you believe, I don't know if Britain's are more gullible, but you hear a story of something happening far off and you don't tend to think this guy's probably a Charlotteson. Many people don't. In fact, not in connection particularly with the charismatic movement, but I can remember being in churches where someone has preached the most arant nonsense that has no connection with the Bible text that they've been

giving. Afterwards, people have come and said, it wasn't too wonderful. It's the charisma in that general sense that still we're no more immune than anyone else. But I think more conservative, we're supposed to be buttoned up, which means I think there's a bit less willingness to throw ourselves overboard into emotional excess. But it hasn't saved us from the music of Bethel taking over from the the whole theology of everyone can do miracles. Everyone can hear from God, which has must have come through Wimba and through Bethel, because I don't think it was there more than 40 years ago in the history of Christianity. Even the monks in the second century,

they were the special people who did it. It wasn't everyone in the church. Yeah, absolutely. I've had the conversation with a couple of people now, but the average person just does not realize the power of music psychologically, what it can do to you, just simply playing different notes and different phrases on your guitar can make somebody, well, why my guitar gently weeps? I mean, you can make a guitar weep and people will just...

I just want to go back. When I was at school, we had a very humorous physics master, and somebody was looking at the music for while my guitar gently weeps, which had just come out, and he looked over his shoulder and he said, it's not the guitar that weeps, it's the folks that have to listen to it.

Well, you know, whenever I was playing in church, it was probably that way. They were crying for that. But no, the music really has an impact, and the work that Wimbur did, and people have given me both pros and cons. Wimbur was good, Wimbur was bad. For me, he's neither. He brought the idea that you can take worship to this next level, and then what happened is whether he intended for it to happen or not. You had many people who started abusing this, and I, you know, I hate to say it.

I hate to call out and sing a certain organization because it's widespread, but I was in the car. I was listening to somebody who was playing some music that I'm certain was Bethel Music, and I was just... I was so uncomfortable because the repetitions, all of the mechanics for manipulation were in that song, and I don't know even that the song author or composer had that intent, but it was there, and I'm sitting there thinking this doesn't exist in any of the other music that I listen to, country music, rock, whatever. It's only in here that they try to manipulate

you. In most cases, I should qualify. There are some, but in general, music doesn't do this, but in Christian music it does, and why is that? I mean, the recorded and commercial music, and the stuff that happens with the big bands and the mega churches, as I think I said last time, it is sort of different from the chat with this guitar and the keyboard player and a small church, but that means that the theology of the thing matters more and the aim of it, and I think the differences that came with that whole worship leader thing was the concept, which sounds good

at first hearing, that we are encountering God, and therefore whatever it takes in the music to encounter God is good, so you kind of have repetitive words. It's all addressed to God, and people raise their hands in the air and close their eyes, and it's all kind of that, and that's...

It took me a long time to realise, apart from my slight discomfort with that, that the theology was completely different, and that if you look at the scriptural theology, particularly in Ephesians, that we are singing together to build each other up in the faith, and that's why hymns have theological content, because you're sharing the faith.

bit of Keith Gettie. Keith Gettie is another British songwriter working in Nashville now, I think. But he was talking about the fact that in the past him, the D singing hymns is what brings young people their knowledge of doctrine.

And you were talking about amazing grace last time. You sing that and then you might not understand the words but it's a good tune and the words sound nice and you kind of learn them because you sing it often enough.

When you become a Christian in later life, you've got all those theological lessons and you think, oh, right, that's what it meant. And you can't do that if you're saying Jesus, I love you, Jesus, I love you.

Your goodness is running over, it's running over me. And that's my point exactly, you know, whether you believe in critical thinking or not, if you are engaged in a congregation where that type of manipulation is happening and you're not thinking about it, now you can inject the doctrines, whatever is in the music, you can inject it right in your heads.

But here's the key, after that has happened because worship music usually leads to a pouring out your hearts, opening your hearts to receive the message that's coming and then the speaker comes out if he reaffirms what you heard in that music, which is what is happening in this movements.

Once he reaffirms it, it is almost solidified in your head. Absolutely, and that is the power of music because as a power to stir emotions, the intellect, you know, the body and it ought to be better than it is.

But I gather that even the Christian music industry is in meltdown like most of society at the moment, which might turn out to be a good thing if people are thrown back on older stuff, writing their own stuff and local action would be a good thing, I think.

So let's talk a little bit about what happens with the revival culture after this has swept through the UK. In the United States, it did emerge quite differently. The revival culture swept through the United States and you had all of these various schisms in the movement and they started to splinter and each splinter group started to develop their own cults and these cults became very destructive.

And honestly, it keeps me busy on my website because I can track all of these movements. I've not really done that so much in the UK. I assume to some extent that exists, but it does not seem to be as prominent as it is in the United States.

Would you say that's true? Yeah, we've had our various movements but looking back to my own church history, which as I said last time, the history was back to 1646 and looking at the church book of the night.

19th century. We were a strict Baptist church or a reformed Baptist church, but you find us baptising the Methodists or baptising the local Bible Christians or another. That was a subgroup of Methodists who split off and then I've actually got reabsorbed back into the Methodist movement. And I think the revival thing here, it became, it never quite took on the showmanship thing. That was Phine, I think. But it did take on the second blessing thing. And that came through Wesley, I think. He was a great fan of the Moravians and Count Zinsendorf who had his own IHOP KC thing going for 100 years, you

know, the prayer meeting. But I didn't find out to recently that Count Zinsendorf believed that conversion was a climatic event, you know, an emotional event, that involve justification, you know, salvation, that involved assurance and perfect sanctification. You became sinless and holy. Now, that's what Wesley wanted as a sort of failed missionary. And he had this experience when he was reading the preface to Luther's lectures on Romans. But he writes in his diary that he was very disappointed that he didn't have the sanctification, he didn't have the holiness. So he was really, really pleased that he knew he was a Christian

and he had the assurance, but he lacked holiness. And it's funny that he goes on to preach a doctrine of Christian perfection, which is a second blessing, presumably because he missed out on the second blessing himself. Now, that was rejected widely by the Christian movement, but it got morphed into the holiness movement where you still have a second blessing, but it was for what they then called entire sanctification, which was sort of perfect dedication to the Lord, even though you still had sin in your life. Same experience is supposed to be a different result.

And that went on to power for service. And that's where you get to the sort of world revival time when you've got, you know, in order to serve the Lord, you really need more than Holy Spirit's fire. And that, of course, paved the way for saying, oh, what about these spiritual gifts? So you then got the baptism of the Spirit for spiritual gifts. And when it came across to England in the 60s, because we had the theology to say, or many of them had the theology to say, no, it can't be baptism of the Spirit. That's when you're converted. So they reinterpreted this fullness of the Spirit.

And by the time we get now through to the NAR derived things, you don't have to have anything, you just have an experience of the Spirit. And it's not defined at all. It's just you can come close to God and encounter Him. And it's sometimes doubtful whether you even have to be a Christian to encounter that. We should, another very dangerous thing. But as I said last time, the experience seeking the theology.

But that's how the second blessing came through into revivalism. That's what is expected in revival. But I don't think it's what God wants to send us. He just wants to send us repentance and the gospel of faith in Jesus and forgiveness. 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. You know, it's really odd to me, because whenever I left the Brannum Movement, I read the Bible over and over. I've mentioned this several times just to wash all this nonsense out of my head. And then I started studying ancient mythologies because I wanted to know how it worked, studied Christian history because I wanted to know how that affected and impacted Christianity, Gnosticism, it's merging in, and then studied modern church history to some extent. I'm still, I'm still deeply in studying that.

What's interesting is, in the modern church histories, good and bad, I don't know that there is a label good and bad when you study these guys, just historical figures, some of which had good fruit, some of which had bad fruit, that's how I'll say it. Many of those men who had good fruit and bad fruit seem to come up with some sort of a formula of what you must do to be saved. And that's really problematic. In fact, well-respected, I'm not going to mention names because I'll make people mad, but well-respected Christian leaders of the past would say, we should do this and this

because the Bible says it and they give the verses, right? And what they're doing essential is they're creating a formula for salvation and people go off and they form a denomination on it. Then it becomes more like a concoction. You must do this, and over time it turns into now we are, we're this group of people because we follow this formula to be saved. And the Bible never says that there's a formula to be saved. So if it comes like a witch's brew of ideas And the modern charismatic movement kind of upended that, which that part might be good,

but they brought in so many other elements of spiritualism where now the movement doesn't really resemble Christianity as much as it does some of the other world religions. And if you don't study the other world religions, you don't realize how similar they actually are.

Well, I'm a big fan of the English Purisans and of course Jonathan Edwards was the heir to that. But they had developed this crisis approach to conversion. And you get these testimonies of years of kind of seeking Dombanian, for example, the Billions Progressman, spent years in sort of a conviction of sin without somehow tweaking the answer.

And then at some point there's the light breaks and they're saved. And then they go on, you know, to greater things. And one of the refreshing things in Jonathan Edwards book on Christian emotions, he says, actually, in real life, it's seldom like that at all.

And very often what happened, and this is perhaps another psychological thing, is that yes, the components of salvation are there. The realization of sin, the repentance, the faith, the beginning to kind of change your life around.

But he says they're often a completely different order and people can't really describe them. And what happens is when they start sharing their testimony with people, other people kind of steer them, and you come a few years down the line, they're giving the standard testimony about being years of conviction, and because they've been pushed into the formula.

And there were just as much Christians before, that all the essential things were there, but they didn't fit the formula. And that's the biblical pattern you find people deeply, big crisis, other people just seem to sort of say, oh, yeah, I believe.

And they're happy. Other people, we know, can't remember when they were converted, they were so young. You know, in the group that I came from, whenever you had a conversion experience, and that's a personal thing, that's between you and God, there were people who actually would question your conversion experience.

So for example, somebody came to the, we call it come to the faith. They came to the faith which meant they believed in our religion, they believed in our prophet, et cetera. But if their conversion experience was in a church that taught the Trinity, for example, they would question the whole experience, even though that experience was to that person.

Now I've left this movement, I'm going beyond this, and I'm seeing very similar things across various other groups, they put so much emphasis on how you were converted, rather than if you were converted, because they're injecting all of those doctrines into the method so that the doctrines themselves, and I'm trying...

trying to form a thought here, the doctrines themselves actually become in my opinion sort of an idol to the movement. If you weren't converted under their set of doctrines, it wasn't a true conversion. Yeah, what you're converted to is what you're baptized into, and in our church, and I think most orthodox type churches, you'll be making some kind of critical, credible profession of faith. That is, do you believe in trust in the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you repent of your sins? Do you renounce evil? And I might have missed something out there, but with those simple questions, well, if you believe those things into the water, you go,

and the rest is up to God, how genuine that is, and most churches will have some kind of testimony. We had a very enlightened thing in our church in the 19th century, because it was fairly strict church, and when I was looking back through the books, they were talking about people standing up baptism and giving their testimony, and I was thinking, yeah, that's kind of quite difficult. And to my surprise in this in the church book, they said, a lot of people find that really, really difficult. So we're not going to do that anymore. What we're going to do is to

say, one of the elders round, listen to them in their own words, and they all present it on behalf of the person in case they're tongue-tight. I was thinking, well, yeah, as long as you know what the person has committed themselves to, and that they are committed, that's what you need to know, isn't it? It's baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so you hope that the people will believe that. It's repentance from sin, it's to new life.

Yeah, it's the simple stuff. So let's talk about the prophetic movement a little bit. In the United States, as I mentioned, you had all of these cults that developed from this movement, each one going off different directions. Why is this? Because each movement claimed that they had either a prophet or an apostle who had, and they used different names for this in Brannemism, it was called the spoken word, but basically the revealed word of your day, in other words, this is the Bible for our day, and it's coming through a human. How much, and to what extent did that spread into

the UK? Did they accept it or did they not? Well, I call before the third wave, when you began to get, well, no, I think the whole charismatic movement, there was the concept of prophecy, and what didn't seem to be, you know, you're speaking fourth God's word, and no one seemed to twig that if God says the opposite, that you're probably not hitting one of you at least, it's not hearing from God. So there was quite a unity. It wasn't kind of like the division after division after division and fight each other. But one example I remember was that I mentioned David

Watson, who was one of the early people, invited John Wimble along. and Anglican, and he experimented with female leadership in the kind of communal living thing that they set up and got opposition for the idea of in the Anglican Church having female leaders in those days, but he was convinced that the spirit was telling him that female leaders were what God wanted.

But Michael Harper, who we also mentioned, eventually left the Anglican Church and joined the Orthodox Church because the Church of England brought to women leaders. So the Holy Spirit was telling him that he had to get out because there were women, and the Holy Spirit was telling David, and you're thinking, right, there's something wrong with the doctrine there.

You're not hearing. And so it's become, again, the words from God have become to a penny in the kind of charismatic and in Britain. It's just not thought of the fact that nothing's ever tested, the fact that nothing ever comes true, it's what I call vanilla prophecy very often.

The ones that actually say something don't come true, and the ones that say, God loves you, my children, yeah, we knew that. It's in the Bible, so why do I need somebody telling me that?

Yeah, it reminds me of the carnival and the whole movement, it's kind of like a carnival. At the carnival, there's that lion moving where you shoot the gun and the thing drops. Well, if you miss it, you just shoot the next one or you shoot the next one.

The prophecy works, right? If you miss it, let's just go for the next one. And people, they forget that the first one failed because it's rapid fire prophecy, basically. Well, as I was hearing somebody say the other day, an ex-bethel person, I think.

One of the things that gave him pause for thought was that the commandment says they should not take the name of the Lord in vain. And every time you make a false prophecy, you're actually taking your sinning.

And as he said, I can't understand, he said, how Bethel want me to train me by making a mistake, which basically I've got a train to be a prophet by sinning. Which doesn't work.

But it's only, it's a failure to realize that the prophet knows he's speaking from God. I'm thinking of the biblical prophets and anyone else has a real prophet out there. It doesn't have doubt that what they're saying is from God.

You don't get, I feel the Lord telling me. Because if you feel it and don't know it, it's not from God. It's like we were doing Bible study today on Peter healing, the raising the woman from the dead.

Yes, Tabitha, a rise. And it was in the context that people had been talking about. praying for healing and Peter didn't pray for healing. It takes a certain amount of courage to kind of go up to someone, a dead person and say, rise. And that's what he said. And they did.

He knew, unlike the the Bethel people who just have this thing, if I believe enough, it'll happen. You know, or even just, Lord, we really do want this, but we'll pray for it. And that's is a good thing to pray for the sick. Not so sure. It's such a good thing to pray for the dead because only three people in the New Testament healed, raised the dead. And that was Jesus and Peter and Paul. And they were all basing it on Elijah. I don't know if you caught it or not, but recently, Charles and I, we were given a right before the Bethel stuff came out. We were given a transcript

of a conversation between Paul King and Chuck Smith where you can tell clearly there's bullying going on. Paul King had some information apparently. He was trying to use that. Well, after this happened, then all of the Bethel stuff come out. And in the United States, there's this big uproar in the charismatic community because now they're starting to see these people aren't really what they told us that they were. But we don't know yet what they are because look at this mess that exists.

How much of that fallout do you think has spread into the UK? Yeah, I'm wondering myself because I say there is an interest on the in Bethel, particularly Hillsong because I'm not sure you see that we people sing Hillsong songs and don't realize that the movement went down the pan a year or two ago. And it's quite possible that what's been happening at Bethel recently might have just not been known to many people. But I think the danger is, or the problem is that it's a failure to realize the connections and the roots of the things, this is again something that you've been very

strong on, that if you think, oh, there's some bad pennies, there are these people gosh afford. Well, it's the genuine ones we want. And then it's only when you start saying, well, where exactly are the genuine ones? If we're going over to Bethel, British people, or Toronto, in the yard, because that's where it's happening and you find that that's a fake. And if you hear about the Reinhardt bonkers in Africa and you've realized that those are exaggerated as well, you have to ask yourself, you know, where is the real thing? And maybe the theology is the

problem. It's not a new, it's not an old theology. Although, have you read about the mountainists at all in your historical things? I've read some, but I want to go a little bit deeper.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at the sources for them, I did this and I did a blog the other day, just reading the Usabius and people like that. For those who don't know, Montenores was the first charismatic in about 15657 AD. A new convert who, according to the sources, wanted to be boss. And so he started having these prophecies.

But the fascinating thing to me was that everything about that movement was like the message you had. The criticism, everyone else, you're not for not believing. You know, the whole church is condemned because it doesn't accept them. You've got false prophecy.

You've got a setting up of a new Jerusalem in this Timpot little village. You've got all the things the money grabbing, the kind of shady business activities on the side. And you could have you could be reading about, you know, William Branem or someone like that.

And it was the difference was that when that happened, all the churches locally in that area of Turkey got together and said, what is this? And they said, this is rubbish. And they expelled them.

Okay. What happens to us is that we change our evangelical doctrines to suit the charlatans, which strikes me slightly weird. We have a good heritage of doctrine. I think we should stick to it.

Yeah, back in the day, if you were doing something that was affecting a lot of people negatively, they would have put a quick stop to it. And today you just, you get away with it. Not only do you get away with it in the United States, you get away with it, and you don't have to pay tax on it.

Yeah. Well, we don't have the same excess. We export it. There's the odd saying that if America sneezes, Britain catches the cold, or America catches the cold, Britain sneezes, you know, a bit later. And that's still true, despite the fallout between your president and our prime minister. There's a tendency to think that America is doing it on a good scale because, and it's right, rather than thinking, well, they're just like us.

And, you know, that's got me interested because last, last time we had a conversation, we talked about how the merger of Christian nationalism and all of these movements created this mess here, and I was asking you did it come into the UK. You mentioned the president. I'm actually interested and curious to know there comes a point whenever people start to see through things.

And we're starting to see it in the United States. People are starting to realize, oh, wait a minute, this thing that we have now in our political system, they're telling us that it was a merger of God and politics. But now we're starting to realize that that's a mess. And we can't

almost use the name that begins with an E that I can't use. Now that we're seeing some of the really dirty laundry of these guys, there's no way I can say God, and involve with this, and Americans are starting to wake up.

I'm wondering how that is affecting what you're seeing in UK, because we see that it's a mess, and yet some of that movement came over here into the UK. I think there's a difference.

Now, what happened in America in terms of political change was a genuine dissatisfaction with corruption. Now, whether you know, whether this corruption came to replace it is another matter. But I think there's always been an uneasy interaction in America between the state and the religion.

Despite the fact you haven't got a state religion, we have the Angles in Church, which is in a mess at the moment. But the government is very much more secular, or has been. Now, I think what's been happening is that we've had a huge problem with secularization.

We have an increasing problem with Islamization, and there are three largest cities from a country that was almost exclusively white when I was born with some people from various places across the world. Our three largest cities are majority non-white.

And that is a huge demographic change, which is causing all sorts of problems. You might have heard of the RAPE gang's situation, which is still being obscured by the E situation at the moment.

The press don't want to cover it. Even though there's an inquiry going on at the moment. The British people are saying, or many people are saying, there's something very wrong with our country. It's got to be put right.

And that's been the seed of revival, I think, because many people have said, actually, we used to be a Christian country, and it wasn't like it this thin. So on the one hand, there's cultural Christianity.

People have been saying, well, I don't believe in this stuff, but I believe in the ethics. Well, I think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's going to happen. But there are many people, even leading spokesmen, who are saying, actually, I've been foolish all my life.

I should have not rejected Christ. So you've got this grassroots movement of people who are saying, I am really genuinely interested in Christianity and in Christ, or I believe, and be, how can we shave our country?

And I think it's a nationalism in the sense it's called Christian nationalism by many people. But it's Christianity with patriotism. One of the things that made me nuance my views on this was one of the five rounds.

Have you heard of a five round called Tommy Robinson in Britain? That he's notorious. The press, he started to speak out about the grooming gangs. many years ago, and the establishment didn't want that being known. And so they basically put the law onto him, who law fair. So he and the press thing saying he was far right that he was a criminal and all the rest of it. So he was very well demonized, but he's been had a rally of over a million people in London last year. And there were many Christians there. There were Christian flags, people handing out tracks, and people singing

Christian songs and speaking as Christians, you know, churchmen from the stage. And I was thinking, hey, this is actually a very interesting phenomenon, you know? And there was one bunch of people from New Zealand who, from what they were saying and from the whole demeanor thing, you thought, this is an AR. And they were talking about basically closing down all the mosques and closing down all the Buddhist temples and kicking out the Jews. And you're thinking, right, this isn't, this is dominism. No, this is not good.

And I was thinking, all right, you know, perhaps I've wronged for a proof of this movement. But then afterwards, the organizer, which was Tommy Robinson, said, yeah, I didn't approve that. I didn't want them to say that. You know, they came across from New Zealand, can we speak? We said, yes, we'll be more careful in future. So disowning the dominion is an idea. And what seems to be happening in the sort of Christian, what you might call Christian nationalist thing, you haven't got that. What you seem to be getting in the prophetic movement in America of, you know, Trump's going to win in 2020. Even if he didn't, it's

not really primarily a charismatic movement as far as I can tell. It's just people saying, we want the, the Bible, Christian Christianity from the Bible. So it could be a healthy thing. But of course, it could easily be dragged off course and by nationalism or by, or just by something else. Well, that's the exact reason that I asked that because what I'm seeing here in the United States, it's also the same kind of thing.

People are just so disgusted. And eventually people will start waking up. They are in numbers right now. Well, this usually, if you study history, this usually ends in some sort of a revival, which starts a new beginning. So it's like the cycle, right? Well, with a revival comes the wolves. So you get the good people who are wanting to do the right thing. You have the wolves that come in. And I was just, I was simply curious to know was the same thing I'm seeing in the, in the United States happening in the UK. And it sounds like

it is. I think it is a good thing because now there is one difference between what we've seen in historical versions of this. And now in today's world, we have instant access to information. And people are by and large because of what just happened. Now they're engaging in more critical thinking than I've seen even in the past revivals. People are critically thinking if a wolf comes in, there's a lot of people can say, get back out. We don't want your mess here.

Yeah, yeah. And if we've got a fault in this country, I think first of all, there seems to be in the church overall, as opposed to kind of small pockets of people really speaking up for the things I've been talking about. There's still buying in to the stories that people are told by the people with power. And so I'm slightly concerned that someone saying,

I don't like the way this country is going and I want to become a Christian. They turn up at a church and find that the church isn't really interested in politics because they're they're a pietist and they're saying, oh, well, we just do religion here. And that's in some ways a good thing. But I think we've been given a vote by the various people down the ocean. Founders of my church fought a civil war for religious freedom. And I'm aware of that.

I'm thinking, okay, how do we translate that spirit and pick up on the faults, you know, avoid the faults that they had for our own age. So if I were younger, I might do more politics. Well, I'm glad that neither one of us have to get into politics. I can't imagine.

This has been crazy interesting. Thank you so much for doing this. No, thank you for having me. Well, if you enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. From 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.