Did Pentecostalism Begin as a Doomsday Movement?

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it, is truly stranger than fiction. I recently had a conversation with Chenle Ross, and we were talking about Chuck Smith and his broad sweeping influence of the charismatic movement. Without Chuck Smith, you really don't have a charismatic movement. But specifically, we were talking about Chuck Smith's Doomsday prediction, which not many people who are followers of Chuck Smith

realize is actually a thing. Chuck Smith did predict Doomsday, and he issued the prediction, and then years later he went back and he said, no, it's wrong for anybody to do this, and I'm paraphrasing greatly. But I'm against people who predict Doomsday. And so it turns into this weird debate that's really circular reasoning. I've mentioned the Doomsday prediction that Chuck Smith had before, and had private conversations through email, I think some of them, even in the comment feeds. Whenever you say this, somebody who is a strong supporter of Chuck Smith will say no, Chuck Smith is against Doomsday, which is correct. But Chuck Smith was

also for predicting Doomsday. And it would be like saying, if I had said for years that this was a Coke can that I'm holding in my hand, which is actually a coffee cup, if I said for years, this is a Coke can. And then one day, years later, I say, well, that's a coffee cup. And I would never agree with somebody who said, this is a Coke can. You probably laugh at me. But what has happened in the Pentecostal movement is this system has been created for various reasons which we've talked about in the podcast before. I'll highlight those a bit in a

minute. But the system was created that enabled people to predict Doomsday. But worse, once they did it, it when it failed because inevitably it has failed time and again, when it fails, there's a redirection. And I'm one who can speak from experience about this. My family was in a Doomsday cold. And by all historian accounts, if you think about Branemism and Laterane and healing revival of this, they would not have labeled it as a Doomsday cold in the ways in which the news media does this.

And the problem is this, there are doomsday calls, and there are failed doomsday calls. And I want to tell you, I'm here to tell you that if you get your choice of which one that you get to be born in, choose the one that is a failed doomsday call.

You don't want to be in the other kind. Because what happens is both are exactly the same. Both have a doomsday focus. One of them fails because they had a doomsday prediction. It failed.

And then the focus on that doomsday prediction kind of shifted away and it morphed into something else. Then you have the other kind, which is a group who has a doomsday prediction. The prediction also failed.

But the group did not fail as a doomsday call in that they had a climactic event. So both are true doomsday calls. However, the news media will talk about the one who had the climactic event and they will ignore the one who did not.

For me, that is one of the biggest problems because by doing this, by separating those into two categories, it allows the doomsday calls to continue. So when I left this doomsday called Branemism, the followers of William, Mary, and Branem, I knew that I was something was off about my theology.

I knew that I was focused so heavily on in times that I was losing focus of the world around me. And as I started to integrate into new churches, I heard the gospel for the first time at 37 years old and started going through just re-evaluating everything that I believed.

I came to realize that we were in a doomsday call, but it had not yet been branded as one by the news media because there had not yet been a climactic event. William Branem died in 1965, so it's kind of hard to have one anyway.

But we did have the doomsday focus. And so I began to evaluate what this actually meant. What does it mean to be a doomsday called? And long story short, there are certain criteria which I'll put on the screen if you're watching this in a few seconds here.

But there are criteria that you can use to examine to determine is the group a doomsday called. And again, I'm separating the two. There are the failed doomsday calls, which I'm going to be talking about in this episode.

And then there are the doomsday calls with a climactic event, such as Jonestown. Jim Jones, who is also part of this movement, had a climactic event in Jonestown, in the Jonestown massacre. There's the shock a whole of forest massacre, which we've also talked about.

This is another group that was connected to all of this mess. They had their doomsday events and people were starving themselves to get into heaven. You can go right down the line. There are the ones that have the climactic events.

And those are the ones that the news media will gladly label to be a doomsday called. But I want to talk about the ones that are not yet branded by the me. Yeah, because that was my area of intent.

So as I was intentionally researching, what does it mean to be a doomsday call? I started doing searches, online reading books, and trying to determine, well, what are the criteria? And you can find these lists if you go look on the internet, but some of the criteria that are commonly used to determine and distinguish a doomsday call from a normal church, ignoring the climactic event, because that's something I set off to the side.

These are some common criteria that you can use. I've titled this slide early signs of a doomsday call because I wanted to find the criteria that would match both the failed doomsday call, and the doomsday call that would have been branded by the media as a doomsday call.

And the biggest one obviously is in-time fixation. I've mentioned in the podcast previous to this one, if you've been following, the laterane movement, the healing revival actually began with a series of doomsday predictions.

There were these charts in the voice of healing magazine, and you could see how they were counting out numbers to the end of time, and they were divided into categories. Well, that's a common issue among the revivalists because of different themes that were coming into the revival.

Restorationism, God's coming to restore the in-time church. The British Israelism, God has chosen us as the lost as the descendants of the lost in tribes of Israel. We are the chosen ones. You had the dispensationalism.

We're at the end of the age. When you combine all of this, you really create a system that has an in-time fixation. The other one, which is a big one, is date predictions. There are usually within a doomsday call, there are people who say we're nearing the end, and here's why, and for the people to come to them to seek all answers, which is what happens in these types of groups, they must have an answer so they say we know when it is, and if you follow us, we're the ones that will help you escape.

And that's actually one of the signs. The number three is they are an exclusive people. Only this group knows how to survive. These are the ones that will be saved, the ones that will be taken, the ones that will have the escape.

Also, you have to have revelation because how would you know about the escape? If you don't have an insight, a divine revelation, special revelation. So the leader claims that he or she has unique visions, calculations, secret interpretations.

Honestly, if you read the early voice of healing magazines, what you'll find it is, it is clearly a doomsday publication. Chosen remnant, that's another big one. Again, it all ties back to those patterns and those themes that are coming into the movement.

British Israelism, you are definitely the chosen remnant. What happens is, whenever you create that idea, you have to associate the end of days with the ancient systems. and patterns of Israel, and so you create things like Chuck Smith called the Moses model.

It's a person who is unquestionable and authority, and that's another one of the signs. You cannot question the leader because he or she knows how to escape. They have the special revelation. They have the date predictions, etc.

Information control. This follows the pattern of Dr. Stephen Hassen's bite model. And control is the eye and bite, but it seems to flow through these types of calls. They do not want you to know that there is information that you can get your hands on that will be critical of their predictions, and that's really why that exists.

Even if the group is loosely following the bite model pattern, which most of them follow it almost to the letter, if they're even loosely following it, they will at least control your information at minimum.

Costly commitment. I know so many people that would have such better lives if they had not joined the cult that we escaped, and the cult did not demand a lot of money. They did the 10% tithe like they do in most of the Pentecostal style groups.

However, there were people who would donate above and beyond this, and nobody was really saving for retirement because why would you? If Doomsday is at hand, you don't need your money to retire. Let's just spend it frivolously.

Let's give it all to the cult, whatever. Prophecy and revisions of prophecy, and that turns into a circle of reasoning. So in the slide, you can see the circle around the calendar. Well, what happens is a date prediction is issued, and without fail, the date prediction will fail if that's a play on words, I guess.

What happens is it creates a cycle, the Doomsday date fails, the group regroups, and then they choose the next one. So we were looking for this Doomsday. It didn't happen. Let's recalculate, and that's really the sad part about this.

You get stuck into the cycle that you just can never break out of. Once you do it the second time, once you refocus a Doomsday prediction the second time, what happens is now you have set a pattern and a precedent.

So when that one fails, well, let's just refocus again. So these are just nine of, you can find lists out there. There are several different lists of ways in which you can determine, is this a Doomsday cult?

When I left the Doomsday cult that we left, the Brannamite Doomsday cult, the message of the hour they call it, I started thinking through this because this is a significant problem when you compare it with the history of Pentecostalism.

And you cannot help but ask the question, was Pentecostalism a Doomsday cult? And I'm going to raise that question here, and I'm going to give... you all of the paths of reasoning that I went down, I'll let you come to your own conclusion.

But what I found was this, early Pentecostalism did not really match the way that it was presented in the circles that we were in, and we were an extremist group of Pentecostalism. So most Pentecostals today, those who are favorable of the Pentecostal movement, would say that Branemism went off into extremism, he went off into a cult.

Many of them will actually declare him a cult leader. Not all of them will declare him a Doomsday cult leader because some of the groups share many similarities. And how can you not? There are things like in-time fixation.

If you read the Bible, and you understand what the Bible is saying about the return of Jesus, you are to look for the return of Jesus every day. But it's the fixation part that is the issue.

It's a very fine line that you walk between in-time fixation and being in a Doomsday cult. I had a friend that would say that these people are so heavenly-minded that they're no earthly good, and you have another category of people that are so earthly-minded, that they're no heavenly good.

And this meant simply that you need to walk down the middle, you don't need to go to either extreme. And I think that's actually a good philosophy. And you can use that criteria by itself.

If they're fully focused on the end of the world, so much that they're letting their house go to ruin, they're not saving for retirement, they're not planning, they're just living in limbo. You can tell that they're in the mindset of a Doomsday group.

And that's really, really sad when you think about it because these people could be enjoying their lives. And yet they're forfeiting their life, thinking that at any minute it will end. On the other hand, if you are walking down the middle of the road, you don't think of life like this.

Instead, you think, well, it could happen, but I'm going to prepare so that if it doesn't happen, I'm prepared. I'm going to continue living my life. And I'll live a good, happy, healthy life.

I've mentioned Frank Sanford quite a bit in my research. And there's actually a reason why, because as I was going through this exercise, trying to determine it's Pentecostalism a Doomsday call, I started looking to say, well, who were the direct influencers of Pentecostalism?

And did they have a Doomsday focus? Frank Sanford is one of the first that I came across. And his group was one of the not failed, but the succeeded Doomsday calls. In that his group succeeded in creating their own scenario in which many people died.

And you can read some of that research and some of my publications are online. But Frank Sanford had a Doomsday call. And when I began studying Pentecostalism and I learned that Charles Fox Parham, who was by all accounts, the father of modern Pentecostalism, even...

William Joseph Seymour in the first newsletter, he said, Param is the father of this movement. When I found out that he went to visit Frank Sanford's commune and learn from Frank Sanford, I started thinking critically about this and realizing that this just isn't right.

Picture a world in baseball, where you have somebody who wants to play baseball and is kind of good at it and they're holding a bat and swinging and they're able to hit the ball, but their technique just isn't quite right.

They can't hit it as far as they want. And they hear some guy way across to the other side of the nation who holds his bat upside down and decides that's the guy that I want to go see, the guy who holds his baseball bat upside down.

Well, that's the same thing. If you compare baseball to Christianity, that is the same exact thing that happened here. Charles Fox Parham heard about this guy that had a strong Doomsday focus in so much that people were joining into his commune and giving their entire life savings and everything about it was anti-gospel and flipped upside down.

Parham says, that's the guy I want to go learn from. And then he goes to another John Alexander Dowey. Both of these guys had a Doomsday focus. Now Sanford's was more explicit. They had all the way down, a prediction, all the way down to the minute and they were supposed to go up to the house tops and they were supposed to be prepared because at this exact moment, I think it was 10, 20 and 30 seconds AM, if I remember correctly, September 1909, that was the end of the world and then it didn't happen.

That's one of the guys that Charles Fox Parham went to visit. Well, he also went to John Alexander Dowey and here's another guy who held his baseball bat upside down. People were coming by hundreds of people, coming into Zion City, Illinois and they would give their entire life savings to join into a healing home and be healed.

And they began in Chicago. Actually, we're almost ejected from Chicago but had grown so large as they called that they annexed Zion City, Illinois and people were signing up for 1,000 year leases because the idea was according to John Dowey, in 100 years, we will see the return of Christ and if you get 1,000 year lease, it's as long as you ever need.

And so he was selling people 1,000 year leases which is kind of crazy. So he's holding his baseball bat upside down and Charles Fox Parham, the father of modern Pentecostalism, says, I want to play baseball like these guys.

They hold their bats upside down and he goes to see them. Well, that's how I know that's absurd and I'm laughing, I'm mocking, I shouldn't be because it's the sad truth. There were people who did not understand the gospel or the reason that Jesus came.

So. much so that people were dying. In both accounts, people were dying. So as I began the process of evaluating was modern Pentecostalism, actually a Doomsday call. The other thing I had to look at was the doctrine. And I know that this is a historical podcast I try to avoid doctrine, but when you're thinking historically on a Christian religious group, especially those with a Doomsday focus, you have to some extent delve into the doctrine. And specifically, you have to look at the apocalyptic streams. So I have just listed on the screen here if you're watching the video version of this. I've listed six streams of influence. And yes,

some of them may not have been influencers that modern Pentecostals would consider significant. But remember that modern Pentecostalism from its inception was a blend of cross-pollination of ideas. It becomes questionable as to was there a core doctrine because the way that it spread where a Pentecostal evangelist would go into a different sect and try to convert that sect into Pentecostalism or go into a holiness sect and try to adopt them as Pentecostal. All of the streams of influence for each sect that they visited was coming into the modern Pentecostal movement. So you have people like William Miller who is the indirect Adventist background for

the group. He expected Christ's visible return and there would be a resurrection judgment and the purification of the earth. So he had a Doomsday date. Some of the other apocalyptic streams would not be considered Doomsday groups because they did not really have a Doomsday date. But they did have direct Doomsday focus and influence. Edward Irving, he did not have a date but he linked restored prophecy, healing tongues and the Apostles preparation for Christ's return.

I believe it was towards his death. He may not have been directly involved in creating that doctrine but because of Irving we have that doctrine. John Nelson Darby also indirect pre-millennial influence. He did not have a date but he systemized the imminent coming. So you had the Tribulation, Christ's public return and the millennium with Darby's influence. And obviously Darby had the dispensational ideas that really built the platform and framework for this. Charles Tase Russell, you have to think of him a little bit outside of the group. He was a contemporary but remember again there were apocalyptic streams coming into modern Pentecostalism with Branemism who without

question had an influence on modern Pentecostalism. We have identified some influence by Russell into his sermons. So you can say that he was a cross-pollinated influence but he expected the Gentile rule to end, and the world kingdoms would fall, God's kingdom would be established.

And that created the sect that exists today. Dwight Moody, Revivalist background, he's another one that had no date, but it was an imminent return. And this was a strong influence on evangelical Christianity. In other words, they were saying that it is imminent, we don't know the date, but we must be active in evangelizing so that we can create the scenario that will enable Christ's return.

If you follow what is taught all the out to its logical conclusion, it was an action that you must do in that spread the evangelical themes. Our a Tory, higher life background taught the spirit baptism.

This was definitely an influence on Pentecostalism, but he was teaching that the spirit baptism was power for this evangelism, so you could combine that with the Dwight Moody stream, and he expected Christ's return also without setting a date.

But as you can see, each one of these had a similar focus. Maybe they weren't destructive, maybe they were, some of them were definitely, but when you think of these streams, you've got this stream of apocalyptic influence that's coming into the Pentecostal movement, and it does have an effect.

I know that by now, many of you are asking the same question that I asked myself as I was going through this, well, how really does that differ from Christianity in general? Take people like Billy Graham.

Billy Graham teaches that Christ's return is imminent, and he doesn't set a date. Does that mean that he is a doomsday preacher? In my opinion, I would say no, although there are some other issues with Billy Graham that we've done, we've covered in our research, but Billy Graham did not set a date, he was not imminent.

He said that biblical signs suggested Christ's return could be near, but he is one of the people who warned against setting a date, and to my knowledge, he never actually set one. I would not consider him as doomsday focused from what I have heard of Billy Graham.

He was one of the ministers who preached that Christ could return, but we should live our lives as though we may live it until we die. Tim Lehey, he's another person who gets into the questionable scenario, but he popularized this rapture to millennium sequence, and for people who are unaware who he is, think left behind in the left behind series.

He's one of the people who definitely had an influence into modern charismatic movement with the imminent return doomsday focused themes, but I would not consider him really a doomsday preacher. He just popularized the framework for a rapture to millennium sequence, and he also rejected the day-and-hour calculations.

But think about the framework that these two men have developed, which could be easily incorporated into a group that is destructive. Christ's return is imminent, says Billy Graham. We're going to imminently have a rapture, and we will soon see the millennium, says Tim Lehigh.

How Lindsay. I would never call how Lindsay a Doomsday preacher, but think about the flames that he began to fan when he said, this is the generation. Beginning with Israel in 1948, we could witness the culmination of the intimes.

That was exactly what was taught in the Doomsday cult that I was in. We began with 1948. That's when the so-called angel visited the so-called preacher, the Doomsday leader, William Brannum, and we believe that that was the generation.

I grew up with my parents telling me, this is for our generation. We're the ones to see it. That's exactly what how Lindsay was teaching. But he is another person who did not have a Doomsday date, no exact day for this rapture, but he did set a time period.

So it actually puts him in the gray category. John Haguey, he's one in a long line of men and women who I would consider to be an indirect Doomsday preacher. And what does that mean?

It means that this is a person who is afraid to say, I'm going to tell you when the end is near, but instead I'm going to indirectly tell you when the end is near.

He started suggesting that the 2014 to 2015 blood moons signaled a world-changing event involving Israel. And yes, you can say, well, that's not a Doomsday prediction, but think about all of the other doctrines that he's teaching that involve Israel.

If you understand what the man is saying, he's saying that it is Doomsday, but he's not going to come out and tell you that between 2014 and 2015, we're going to see the end of days.

He indirectly says it so that he comes out unscathed. Jack Van Impey. As you can see, according to the chart, if you're watching the visuals, you can see that this is edging closer and closer and closer towards a Doomsday cult.

I would not say that he's a Doomsday cult leader, but think of the repeated projected windows in which the rapture, the end time sequence, is coming near. This is a man who's just literally crying, the end is nigh, the end is nigh, the end is nigh, but he's not standing out with a picket sign on the street corner saying, the end of the world is near and wearing these strange clothes, but he has popularized the idea that we should think of the world as coming to an end soon.

So as you can see, there is a fine line that you walk between what is Christianity and what is a Doomsday cult, very, very fine line. And in fact, if you are in the evangelical crowd or you are in the Pentecostal Charismatic crowd, you're thinking why didn't you hear anything wrong with what these guys are saying?

They're just preaching that the Jesus is coming soon, the end is near, but it's not quite that simple. As you can see, there's a scale and that last slide for those of you that are viewing, you got to witness that scale as it's at...

from healthy towards not very unhealthy. Doomsday focus, the end is near. What happens is when you teach it like this, even if your intentions are correct, even if you have good intentions and you're not trying to create a cult, you have people who really don't understand that theology enough to know that what you're trying to say is just simply Jesus is coming, but they take it a step further because they're in the congregation and they start to connect the dots when you're talking about apocalyptic themes, they start to connect political events to the apocalyptic themes,

or they start to connect things that are happening that just makes them uncomfortable. This is a very sad world we live in. I'm so glad that the end is near and then you stop living in the world that's around you.

I believe sincerely that each one of these people if they were to instead of framing it that way that they are framing it, the end might be near, would be a better way to say it, but simply teach it like this.

The end might be near, but you really need to do good in this life because your children may still be here and we don't know when it is coming, but let's make a better world for your children to live in.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.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.

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I was 37 years old before I left the Doomsday Colt following the William-Brandham, and I'll never forget thinking when I left, how did this happen to me? I'm a smart person. I had no idea what they did and how and why, but I looked at myself as the problem.

I should have known better than all of this. But then years later, I started to realize that it wasn't really me, and there were some other smart people in the group. There were doctors and attorneys, and like me, there were several IT people.

There were really intelligent people in it. So I started to look beyond that and try to understand what happened to us and why. And interestingly, it kind of fell into my lap by happenstance.

But I started to notice the system. I was looking, sadly, at just the religion itself, at the central figure, thinking that how did this country bumpkin, or this, I guess I should say this person who pretended to be a country bumpkin, how did he convince everybody to get this Doomsday mindset that we had?

And I came to realize that it wasn't him. It was the system. And it took a lot of moving parts to make this happen. So for those of us who were intelligent, who were in the group, we didn't really stand a chance because they used technology against this, although it was older technology.

They used strategy. They used psychology. There were so many different elements to it. And it got to the point where I began to realize that this problem predated what I was in. But then it accelerated quickly from the group that I was in because of the lateral range movement.

And just to give an example, and I'll throw it up here on the screen, this apocalyptic influence charismatic culture is the slide that I've called it. Branum was influential to what happened in the charismatic movement.

But in ways that many people don't think about. For example, whenever you think of William Branum and you're a historian, and you say he was a Doomsday prophet, you say 1977, because this was the date that he declared by revelation, by divine inspiration from God, he said, that the world would end and he could see nothing past.

When it failed, his following said, well, he predicted it. He did not actually prophesy this. And what they actually gave was a way that they could divert the focus of attention from the fact that this was a failed Doomsday prediction and try to create the element of confusion.

I guess that's the best way to put it. But when I started to examine that confusion, I realized that 1977 wasn't the first time that he did this. You can go all the way back.

He's got dates from 1948, 1954 through 56, 1962, 1975. Literally any moment that you can scare the people into thinking the world is going to end, give me your money, that's what Branum did.

And he was not the only one to do this. But the point I want to make is he died in 1965. He planted the seeds that carried expectations of Doomsday forward. And these multiple times that he predicted that the world would end, people just wanted to refocus.

Okay, that prediction failed. What is the next calculation? What's the next one after this? And the next one after this. And it wasn't until I discovered the Christian identity research that I've been doing.

It wasn't until I discovered that Gordon Lindsay was highly influential in the Christian identity world and Lindsay was using the same types of strategies. You can open up the early editions of Voice of Healing and you find Gordon Lindsay is predicting dates and running math and statistics and calculations and world history and trying to combine it into this theme that says the apocalypse is upon us.

Where it got scary is when those two people connected. Now you have two people doing it and they created a network of people who are doing it. Gordon Lindsay went on to found the Christ for the nation's institute and he trained people how to do this, maybe not in the same way.

His Doomsday prediction seems to have faded out in the 50s or 60s, but he carried the theme of influence that we should focus on the apocalypse forward. The reason I say this is if you look at the charismatic movement.

Because it went into the charismatic networks, you had themes that were being published in books and articles and charts, dispensationalism was making it its way into the culture and this turned into a cultural problem for the charismatic movement.

There was a period of time where leaders of the charismatic movement were not using date focus but were instead using apocalyptic focus and that focus made it way into the publication, the education, missionaries going out into the field.

These healing evangelists, Christ for the nation's institute, was not teaching people how to predict Doomsday dates, but they were teaching people how to focus on the intimes and to specifically focus so much intently on the intimes that you kind of started to lose focus of the reality.

And we've covered that in the podcast that I'm doing with Pia Hugo and I. Once you lose touch with reality and you get her into the spiritual warfare realm, you start to see things like witches flying around Airbnb's that just simply aren't there.

I'm going to tell people they simply are not there. But it all starts with this that I'm talking about here. Once you have that focus and you start publishing education manuals, bringing students in, well, they think that this is real.

This must be real. We must focus on the intimes. So Christ for the nation's institute isn't a Doomsday cult. I'm not saying this at all, but they carried forward the legacy of Gordon Lindsay who also was carrying forward the legacy that he worked with Brannum and many of those themes he was carrying forward.

Brannum after Brannum died, Lindsay was publishing books will Elijah come again because the movement referred to William Brannum as the Elijah of this day. Well, that theme once Brannum was removed from that picture, the theme and focus and intent on the apocalypse.

The conclusion of the world is still kind of there. And the reason I say that is, go forward just a bit and look at the charismatic voices that are coming across the broadcasts and television books.

You've got David Wilkerson, 1973, The Vision. He's talking about the economic, social, environmental, and religious upheaval. And again, there is no exact return date in this book. But it's talking about the apocalypse. So people are focusing on the apocalypse.

In 1982, Pat Robertson told his CBN contributors that God has assigned to CBN in these last days a ministry of John the Baptist to prepare the way for Jesus' second coming. So 1982, everybody's thinking, this is it.

They're going to, at CBN, dedicate the ministry of the second John the Baptist. And this was, he was quoting a prophecy about him from another person. But it continued, in 1984, he continued to develop that theme.

And people were thinking, this is the end time. We are seeing the last days and CBN is going to have the main guy. What's really interesting about this is he had taken that almost directly at a Brannum's playbook.

Brannum told his followers that God had declared from the heavens that this is my beloved prophet, here, he, him, he's coming to, like John the Baptist, paved the way for the second coming. So although Pat Robertson, I don't think he said it was him himself, he was declaring that CBN is going to produce the guy.

And you continue forward, Chuck Smith. Chuck Smith, he wrote a book, I think it's called Future Survival. And in this, he anticipated that the rapture would happen before 1981. So you have these charismatic voices that are all declaring the end is coming right here right now.

But then it doesn't happen. And the problem is, they're just some of the voices. There are multiple voices doing the same thing. So people think that this is a normal thing. As I mentioned earlier, the baseball bat, you go to see the guy who's playing baseball with his bad upside down, well, now it has become part of the culture that everybody holds their bad upside down.

This must be normal to hold your bad upside down. And for me, I just took a step back and I looked at the system because this system was breeding this type of mentality. We must be certain about the end, but we must also have a leader who can tell us everything about the end.

We must have a leader who is in direct communication with God and they know the answers. And for me, that is the biggest problem. People say that I am out to get Chuck Smith whenever I mention his name, but if you think about what Chuck Smith is doing, it's no different than the others.

They're all doing... the same problem. They're trying to be more than they are. They're trying to be the answer to the people. And the problem is, when you're doing this, you have to make stuff up because you're not the answer to the people. And for me, that is problematic. Why would you even want to do this?

And I'm not just picking on the Pentecostal Charismatic Movement. This goes much broader. If you look in evangelical culture, look at how Lindsay, how Lindsay in the Great Planet Earth in 1970, he started connecting the same dots that were connected in the Pentecostal Charismatic Movement. He said the theme of 1948, as Israel's nation is being born, he said, now we're in the final generation. So while he did not have maybe a date prediction, like some of the others that we've been talking about, he put it into a unit of time, which is still the same type of problem. We're in this last day's

unit of time. And you just can't do this. Why would you come up with this type of answer? What happens when you're wrong? That's the thing that none of these guys think about. The problem is, whenever you combine all of the voices that are saying, this is it, this is the big one, this is the time that we are at the end. It starts to create a cultural pathway that evangelical society, Charismatic society, Pentecostal society, they can all feed off of each other. And as I've mentioned, there are multiple streams that lead to this problem, but it began, in my opinion, with dispensational

millennialism. Israel, the rapture, tribulation, the second coming, once you start down the pathway of creating these themes that we can connect the dots between our generation and Israel's generation. And we can then predict when the rapture's coming, the tribulation is coming, we can throw all these charts out there that look like we're intelligent people. There are people who think you are intelligent and think you're intelligently or divinely inspired when you create these charts and maps and graphs. I'll guarantee you that's why Gordon Lindsay put the charts in the voice of healing. Once you see a chart, you're thinking, okay, this person has really thought

this through, or he's been divinely inspired to think this through, they must be correct. And that's really the problem here. Let's just follow the pathway down from one single person in the 80s, who had his baseball bat upside down, Edgar Wise nod. If you follow this pathway from dispensational millennialism, go through how Lindsay, his mass marketing of his prophecy that we're in the final generation, people begin to build on this. Take it through Chuck Smith, Colin Deal, others.

Chuck Smith came from the Laterane movement. The Laterane movement had the same type of focus on Israel from 1948. He already had that act x expectation. When this book comes out, I don't know if he read it or not, but if he did, it's compatible with what he's saying because it's part of the cultural system. We have a cultural system to predict Doomsday. Once you set that expectation, and then you have multiple voices who may not even be directly influenced. There's no proven direct influence of any of these people that I'm talking about. But you can see how the pathway goes. Edgar

Wise and not, he started saying that in 1988, this is when the end is going to come. So he came in a breeding ground of end day in-day prophecy from the 80s and says 1988 is it. Well, once this happens, it goes into publication and distribution and he starts to sell more than 3.2 million copies, distributed all throughout the Christian world. And then later, in wider circulation, Christian bookstores pick it up. Churches begin to discuss it. Religious networks begin to broadcast it.

This becomes a widespread problem. And again, you can't point it to any single individual. This is a problem that they all should take ownership of because it's flowing through their voices. They're all voices in the same type of culture. Lester Somerall, he's a separate Pentecostal stream. He's in an apocalyptic stream, but he's voicing many of the same themes. And if you go to my Jim Jones research, you'll find his name is right there in the culmination of what would eventually lead to Jim Jones joining into the laterane movement. Jones is another person who obviously had a doomsday prediction. And he's one who had a climactic doomsday with his

Jones down massacre. So this is a systematic problem. It's not that I'm pointing out any individual, but this is a huge, huge problem. Here's where it gets just a little scary. One thing I noticed about these doomsday predictions, when a person predicts a doomsday date, the movement actually grows just a little bit bigger. What happens is the person predicts doomsday and there will be people who disagree with it and it'll cause a schism and you'll see a splinter group break off of the main trunk. Well, that splinter group will grow and develop, but because it is part of the same

system, they repeat the same patterns. And as those patterns repeat, either with a person who broke off initially or with some of their descendants, what you end up with is eventually an apocalyptic focus. And when that apocalyptic focus continues to develop, it eventually will breed somebody new who predicts another doomsday date. In other words, you will have a new doomsday cult.

So Pentecostalism, as we've mentioned in the previous podcasts and partially in this one, it evolved because of doomsday predictions, but then at the Azusa Street road, Vival, there were many prophecies about the imminent doomsday.

You can read through that in the newspapers, there's documents and books about this. So when the Laterane movement developed, it developed off of the main trunk of Pentecostalism and it caused such a schism that the Assemblies of God denounced the whole Laterane movement.

So then birthed the post-World War II healing revival, Gordon Lindsay, William Branum, the voice of healing, well that developed into Laterane Restorationism. 1948, this is it, restored apostles and prophets, laying on of hands, in time, harvest.

All of these themes are culminating into an apocalypse that is about to happen. And then, because of that, and largely because of voice of healing, suddenly you had these transmission networks. You had independent charismatic ministries who were either receiving the publication, or the literature, or the books, or just simply went to one of the Revivalists and heard one of the Revivalists.

They started to transmit, and it started to evolve into this network of people who had apocalyptic focus. What's really interesting is when C. Peter Wagner branded it the New Apostolic Reformation, that's the part that he left out.

He said, we have these themes already, and he said, this isn't something new, it's not something I have created, it's just something that I'm noticing, but he failed to notice the most significant element of it, and that is the Doomsday focus or the apocalyptic focus.

They were focused on the end time, the end time was imminent, and that was actually what was being transmitted through all of these networks. So Wagner branded it the New Apostolic Reformation, he started networking with contemporary apostles and prophets who had the same ideology.

In other words, they all had this focus on the coming apocalypse. Were they Doomsday cults, were they Doomsday prophets, not necessarily, but they're part of the system that breeds this type of thing because it does have the Doomsday focus.

So because of all of that, you begin to see all these NAR-associated themes coming into the movement, many of which were replicated across all of the networks that had evolved from a Doomsday themed cult.

Make no mistake, Branemism was at the core of this, and Branemism was a Doomsday focused cult. Gordon Lindsay was platforming him, he was taking him to voice of healing conventions, that would eventually develop into Christ for the nations, they were networking large groups of people, many of which were evangelists and ministers who would carry back those Doomsday themes that Branem was presenting to their churches.

Were they all Doomsday cults, not necessarily, but those apocalyptic themes that flowed from the Doomsday cult? was actually flowing into the churches. So again, when Peter Wagner, he's noticing all of this network, but because he himself is part of this system that has the apocalyptic focus, he doesn't recognize the dangers of that network. That's really the problem here. There's danger in the water, but people were continuing to swim. So think of how all of that begin to evolve and begin to transform itself into what we see today. All these non-associated themes, the fresh revelation, apostolic government, the territorial spiritual warfare, all of these things

begin to combine with all of the apocalyptic focus from the previous decades of people. And suddenly you have an imminent catastrophe. We must have an apostolic government. We must have these spiritual warriors to fight the spiritual warfare because it is imminent. We must have a way of escape. And it is accelerating. The data is drawing nearer and nearer and nearer. So what you're actually seeing when you look at the new apostolic reformation, you're seeing the stages of development of a doomsday called when it gets to the point where it is in crisis mode.

And that crisis mode is the scariest part. When people start to fear the end is coming, the end is near. The end is closing in on us. That's the point where it gets into very critical states.

People start to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do and say things they wouldn't ordinarily say because catastrophe is imminent. We see the world is closing in on us. What do we do? We must have a way of escape. And if you go back through time and you look at the different types of doomsday cults, I mentioned earlier, you had the failed doomsday cult. That's the one that if you have to pick one you want to be in that or the successful doomsday cult, that's the one that has the climactic event. Those who were successful in creating their own climactic event did so because

they felt like the world was closing in on them. The end of time was closing in on them and they had to have an immediate way of escape. How else do you escape? But through things that are just so problematic, I won't even mention on this podcast, it is some scary stuff. It really, really is some scary stuff. With that type of mentality, suddenly you have to have what we see in the new apostolic reformation today. You must have activation. The end is coming. Oh my gosh, what do we do?

We must have a way of escape. We must suddenly activate. How do you do this? In what way do you do this? That's one of the things that really sets the new apostolic reformation apart from some of the other doomsday focus groups in the past. We have imminent catastrophe. The world is closing in on us. But think of the...

themes that flow through nor today. We must have spiritual warfare because the world is closing in on us. The end of time is approaching. We must claim dominion because the end of time is coming. We must do something. We must be activated. We must prepare for the kingdom because the end of time is nive. We must be activated. When you combine all of those elements, what you have is the recipe for disaster because people take things to extremes that they never would if they did not feel cornered.

That really is the problem here. There are people who simply feel cornered because they have this system in their programmed in their indoctrinated minds and in their indoctrinated minds, they have to have a way of escape. Some people will go to the extent, well, what about the leader?

Suddenly, this leader is following to sexual sin or immorality, whatever it is. Oh no, I'm on prepared. The world is coming to an end. What do I do? Where do I go? I must activate even further and you have a new breed of people who emerge from this. What happens is that mentality, that system flowing through all of these stages of history that I've talked about leads people into a level of insanity and that's what we're dealing with. That's why you see things like charisma magazine focusing on star gods and the coming alien invasion. People think, well, that's wild, that's new,

that's crazy. But if you go back into Gordon Lindsay's years and the Laterane years, they were publishing things about the UFOs in much the same way. It's a level of insanity. They're focused on trying to understand how the world is coming to an end so that they can accurately predict it to people and keep the people where they have a means to escape and they themselves don't even know that they're wrapped up in this apocalyptic mindset. It is a level of insanity. So, hopefully this clears up why some of the insanity exists in the minds of the people. I went through

all of this. These were many, many stages of research for me. I went through all of this just simply trying to unravel what was in my head so I didn't feel like I was programmed with insanity.

Because I will assure you once you're in this apocalyptic mindset for any period of time, you're going to start to feel crazy and you're going to say and you're going to do crazy things because you're you feel like the world is closing in on you. You have no help. You have no answer.

For me, I took my family out of that. I transplanted it into a church that we we had never heard the gospel once. Not one single time for 37 years. I was in the Brannum religion, but we did hear this Doomsday focus continually. Once we got away from the Doomsday focus and once we just simply heard the gospel and its simplicity, much of that unravel for me. I started to I started to look at the world much differently. It was instead of a message of, oh my gosh, the world is about to end. Jesus is about to come. Am I ready? That type of fear,

tactic that they throw at you, it instead become, how do I make the world a better place? How do I love my neighbor better than I did today? How do I make this a place that my kids will grow up and have nice, healthy lives? Your focus changes and that mentality that you were indoctrinated with can change, but you got to pull yourself out of that. So hopefully I've said something that can pull somebody out of that. If you've enjoyed the show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org. For more about the dark

side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.