Restorationism to NAR: The Hidden Framework Behind Destructive Movements

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it, is truly stranger than fiction.

As many of you who follow the podcast are aware, there are different themes that I have been examining as I go through this revival history. To try to untangle why this history has become so problematic and how so many different destructive groups have been created because of it, and it's not necessarily the revival itself, although we have examined the question as to whether that concept is even biblical, it's that some of the themes are structured in such a way that it allows and enables destructive cult leaders to flourish.

And one of those themes is this idea or this concept of restorationism. There were different themes that came into restorationism as a movement, and even that concept by itself isn't that problematic. But so many groups adopted it in so many different various ways, and in some cases they're not even connected.

It's just that the mindset of a person who wants to create his own group and separate from the main body of Christians, the idea of restorationism is almost something that comes by natural causes.

In other words, they want to leave, they feel like there's some problem with the church, and therefore they want to be the ones to restore it. And most recently I received an email, or I think might have been a comment, asking about this group called the two by twos, and they go by different names, they go by the message, which is very familiar to multiple groups that we've examined.

They go by non-denominational, and some, I think it's Australia, the group is identified actually by non-denominational, and that's how they represent themselves. Different ways in which, in fact, the way is one of the names that they go by in this group, and there's a group in the United States called the way.

And the question is, is this related to brannemism, or the latter rain, or any of the different areas of my research, and it is. But I want to talk a little bit about what that is, what the two by two group is, and also.

how and why it's related because if you look historically, they are two completely separate groups with no real interactions, but they are connected and I want to talk about that because this is the very foundation that I am heading towards as I examine why so many different groups form as destructive cults from this restorationist idea.

So this is the perfect example to use the 2x2's. Now who are the 2x2's? The 2x2's is a religious sect that was founded by Scottish Evangelist William Irvine and it was making headlines throughout 2024 and parts of 2025 because in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking into historical child sexual abuse claims and not only in the United States but also in Australia.

And what they found was a global fundamentalist sect that did not really have an official name. The believers referred to itself as the truth or the way or non-believers called them the 2x2's because of their methodology but some in some cases they just simply called it the church with no name.

And like some of the other groups that we've examined, such as William Branham's message sect, believers often met in people's homes for the prayer sessions and meetings and the group's ministers moved between different cities where the followers were based.

So it was very hard to detect how many people were in it, who was in it, who was in it in a destructive way and who was a just normal rank and file member.

So in February of 2024, the United States and in the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched this probe into this group. They suddenly learned from former members that this was a quote, very persuasive type of religion and when asked how they would describe it, one former member said, they would use fear and manipulation, they manipulate people and the fear of the Lord to control people.

They will tell you that we are the only true way. And William Irvine, as the sect leader, shared many similarities to other group leaders and how their groups formed over something that really could be just labeled as a schism.

He was part of the faith organization or faith mission, I guess it's called in Scotland. And in 1895, he became the superintendent of that faith mission organization. But over time, he became very dissatisfied with the rules, the disciplines, the teachings, the growing organization and tolerance of other churches.

And he decided in July of 1897 that he was going to go his own way and start a revival. And that's really the theme that I want to... to focus on because he's part of a group, he decides he's no longer part, and therefore let's hold a revival, and let's get people who are opposed to that group.

That's usually how these things begin to form, and it doesn't mean that they always form in a destructive way. His intentions may have been good, but as you examine these groups, it is one of the patterns that you can clearly say all of the groups begin to share.

So he had this break with faith mission, and he started teaching what he called the alpha gospel. This basically was the idea that his version of the gospel was far better than the version of the gospel that he left in the faith mission.

To a large degree, he copied the faith missions, rules, methods, and traditions, but while adopting some of the framework of what he left, he believed that he had restored a better way of what he left.

He had restored God's only true way, I think is the exact quote. So that's why one of the names for this group is called the truth. He is restoring the truth. Restoration is the theme that I'm focusing in on.

So in the years after this, around 1900, he started to increase his following more of the so-called workers in the new mission, began to leave their former churches and join into his new organization.

So from early 1900s, he is building a new organization that is in effect in competition with what he left. And in 1904, a two-tiered system was created and established by the group. And that's why the group became known as the two by twos.

They would send people out in twos. You had the missionaries, they're called workers, and they were never allowed to keep a home or a job. They must be homeless and they must go between houses of the other tier, which were people who had homes and would have jobs to support these people in the upper tier.

So you literally had an upper tier and a lower tier, which is another commonality between this group and many of the other groups. Because once those two tiers are established, then the central figure is the top of the pyramid.

And here's where we begin to see how similar all of these groups are. When you examine not only this group, but you can look at Branemism, Laterane, Word of Faith, once this is established, once you have the tier structure and you have a separation as a view, think of what comes next.

It's presumably 1905 that this doctrine was introduced, but the two by twos adopted a doctrine that was called the Living Witness Doctrine. And according to this, faith and salvation could come only through hearing the word preached through the lips of and seeing the gospel in the lives of the true ministry, or they called it the true living witness. So in this tiered structure, the people who were in the bottom tier had to look to the upper tier and listen to what they say as the true doctrine.

This, when you consider in Brannemism or Laterane, they call it the spoken word and word of faith, it's called the ram others, different names for it, you are literally looking to the minister on the platform as your living word. And that's exactly what this group had adopted. Now keep in mind, this doctrine allegedly was introduced in 1905 that would have been before the Azusa street revival. But think about this. In 1906, Irvine came to San Francisco and he was apparently there during the Great Earthquake of 1906. If you listen to what he wrote, it sounds as though he was

headed there to see the people speaking in tongues. And while he mentions that he apparently did not encounter any, he did encounter people from Zion City, Illinois, which connects him to the research we have done on John Alexander Dowey and his Zion City sect. He said, I go to the church on Sundays and hear the same old dope we had in Los Angeles, meaning he was in Los Angeles in that year. I don't think there are any of the tongue people here now, at least I have not heard of an old-door man from Zion City with a wife and two baby children, a Jew named Behail,

as an empty house if anybody wants to come there. And if they will pay him a tie of 10% of what they earn. It took him seven years to get from Zion City to here. He came out by the east. I don't know the details. He gave me his constitution written out, which was pretty much a copy of the Zion City affair near Chicago. He reasons entirely from Zion being the true people of God, but in a few minutes I talk with him and I disabused his mind a little. And here's where it gets interesting if you consider the theology that was being birthed in the laterane movement.

Just a few years prior to the First World War, he began to focus heavily on eschatology and he developed what was called the Omega message. And in this message, he began to preach that the Age of Grace, which occurred during his so-called Alpha Gospel, after that was proclaimed, it was suddenly coming to a close. In other words, his Gospel had come forth, now it was ending.

That is exactly something that I grew up with in Brannemism. I can remember my grandfather and other ministers saying that the Age of Grace is coming to a close. In other words, we're no longer in the New Testament Gospel. We have a New Gospel. And that is exactly what he was teaching in the two-by-two message. That, as you can imagine, led to this big schism, which happened around 1914, somewhere between 1914 and 1919.

18 because you had a large part of the sect that accepted his Alpha Gospel, but they would not accept his Omega Gospel. And they realized that this doesn't make sense. This doesn't really match my Bible.

So this is how this cult began to form. And all of these things that you hear that are so similar to what you're hearing out of the groups that you escaped. The reason why they're so similar is because it's not necessarily the doctrines that matter.

In fact, that's one of the reasons why on my website and research, I usually don't talk doctrines so much as I do history. These groups are very different. If I'm looking at the 2x2 group, there's almost no intersection between it and Pentecostal charismatic movements.

Whenever you look at the two different movements, they have really no intersection points other than I did mention the Zion City guy. But for the most part, these are two separate isolated groups, and yet they share the same doctrine.

Why? Because even though they have different doctrines underneath the hood, if you lift it up and you start to look at the motor that's sitting there, they have different doctrines, but they have the same machinery.

It's really the pattern that matters more than the name of the group or the label that they give themselves. Look at the authority, control, isolation, conformity, and fear. Whenever a group takes any of those elements, and they say we're going to give you a better version of the biblical doctrines, but we're going to funnel it through those things.

Authority, control, isolation, conformity, and fear. In other words, we're going to tell you that you can achieve healing, but they're going to combine that healing with authority and control. We're the ones who can offer you the healing.

It's a different version of healing than the Bible has. When the Bible talks about healing, yes, it talks about you can be healed, God provides healing, but they don't really tell you that you have to go to an authority for your healing.

Most of the destructive cults that were based on healing principles will tell you that you're going to the central figure or figures in the group, and through them you can achieve your healing, rather than go praying your home and God can heal you.

Holiness, whenever you funnel this through control and conformity, they're telling you that you should be holy, in other words, we are going to tell you how to be holy if you conform to our group.

You should be holy and you should conform to the way that we say holiness can be achieved. Prophecy, this is a crazy big one. It's widespread throughout the movement. We're going to offer you God's prophecy, but usually those prophecies are going to tell you things about the control and the authority of our group.

In other words, this is not God's prophecy to the entire church world. It's a prophecy only to our elect group or our elite group. They will always go to Restoration in these Restoration Assets and tell you that the church has been corrupt.

The church over time has become corrupt, it's apostate. We have a better way, we have a better church. And we as the authorities of these groups are coming to tell you through conformity what restoration means.

Restoration means essentially what I tell you the church should look like and you must conform to it otherwise you are apostate. And they will usually link this to fear if you don't do this, here are the consequences for not joining our Restoration Assets movement.

To keep people involved and to keep people believing this, there has to be an action otherwise that people feel uninvolved and eventually they just leave, so usually they will give you the mission. Here's the mission, we're part of it, many times the leadership is the one who executes the mission, but you contribute in various ways.

In this two by two group they had the upper tier which was performing the mission, the lower tier whose job was to support that mission. And through the fear concepts they will tell you that Christ is returning, but that looks entirely different whenever you have all of these elements that are required for Christ return and then combine that with fear.

You're going to do these things as we say or else here are the consequences, it's usually a Christ return and consequences. So again, two completely separate groups, very very little intersection points, two completely different core doctrines from which they were founded, but their overall doctrinal framework looks the same because they have the same machinery.

In fact as I continue, whenever you get into the core message which is what Irvine claimed to be bringing, when he started teaching that this age of grace was coming to a close, like many of the groups that I have mentioned, Branemism taught this as well, eventually what happens is because they have this apocalyptic view, they try to tie what comes after the gospel to the book of Revelation and Irvine like many of the Pentecostal leaders who have developed into destructive cults, started to claim that he was going to be one of the two witnesses of the book of Revelation and I can almost look on your faces if you're

listening, well my group did this too, my group did this too, Branem did this, you've got in IHOP KC, they were doing this, almost every group will try to tie their end of day's realities or fantasy realities, I guess you could say, to different parts of the book of Revelation and they all seem to do the same thing because once you get into this mindset that I'm the one, I'm the guy, I'm the messenger, I'm the one who is bringing you the message, well you have to put yourself into those roles in the Bible, Irvine was

people who did this. So if you look at the reasons why these restorationist groups are established, it's very easy to see why they all look so much the same. We have a schism because we disagree with the doctrine, we're going to create our own group, and because we've created our own group, we're going to restore the true way to the people. And this is how it initially develops, but over time what happens is it seems as though the restorationist leaders become more bitter against the rest of the world because most of Christianity will reject their

restorationist viewpoints. So eventually where it leads is this. They start to believe that Christianity has gone wrong, and the problem is something that they can solve. So they began to tear down the ordinary fundamentals of Christianity as it exists in mainstream groups. They'll say that you have turned to tradition. You have began to compromise with the enemy. You have began to form denominations. Because of this, you are adopting man's wisdom and not God's wisdom. But the problem is within the answer because while they're claiming man's wisdom as what the mainstream church has accepted, they claim that God's

wisdom comes through their mouth. So on the flip side, they begin to bring these terms that are almost universal. We're coming to bring restoration to the church. We are the ones who have the truth. We're the ones who have the way. We're the ones who have been divinely given God's message. And through this message, we're going to bring you back to the original faith. In other words, we are rejecting the idea that God has had His hand on all of the churches since the foundation of Christianity and that the church has not been led by God.

Instead, we are the ones to lead by God. And that turns into an ego complex because once you believe that your words are the message of God, how can you believe anything else that anybody else says as far as the traditional views?

The traditional views have to be evil. So eventually over time, in such a way, their doctrines will become structured so that they will oppose the traditional church. Think of the similarities between the two-by-two's group and how they began and to just simply the laterane movement in general. Both groups came from an existing revivalist movement. So the revivalist movement was already established. Neither group really started from nothing. Irvine was a super attendant and an evangelist in his faith mission. Houghton, Percy Hontz, and associates that were part of the established Pentecostal Bible School, especially the Bethel Bible Institute, they formed their own separation in the Sharon

Orphanage. So both came with this dissatisfaction that the parent movement had adopted ways that they believed to be just spiritually inadequate. Irvine believed that the faith mission was not taking the New Testament principles forward, and he believed that his discipleship would achieve this. The Laterane movement, much like Irvine, they believed that Pentecostalism in general had lost or diminished its focus on the supernatural gifts, but more specifically the supernatural power that should have come with those gifts under the doctrine, so they believed they had a better way. And they set up a established a routine where the students were fasting and in prayer, trying to

find that better way. So both were claiming that they had a way to restore something that the church had lost, and in both cases they taught that they had the way to bring this restoration. In Laterane, God was restoring the gifts, the ministries, the prophecy, the apostles, all of the fivefold foundation, but in Irvine and his religion, he believed that the true Christianity was by establishing the home church pattern that the churches had and the missionaries that were sent out. So both focuses while slightly different believed that they had established a pattern for restorationism, and that pattern was

better than the prior restoration movement that they had had created a schism from. So both were driven by this idea essentially of new revelation. Irvine believed that he had the true meaning of Matthew 10, and he was bringing the Alpha Gospel. In other words, mine is the gospel number one. Well, in Laterane sects, they believed that the church had become apostate, and the gospel was more of a works, miracle driven gospel, and they were bringing the new gospel.

They did not call it the Alpha Gospel, but both groups essentially believed that they had a Alpha Gospel. And if you follow the group's histories over time, the groups, the pattern is such that they began focusing more heavily on end-of-days destruction, and that they had the answer to that end-of-days destruction. In other words, both groups were founded by leaders that believed that they had strong convictions, and that was the first step. But the problem is those convictions suddenly turned into a crisis. We have these convictions, and therefore we're in crisis mode. We must at all cost bring people out of the

original movement. So they basically are holding up these invisible signs that said, you have begun to compromise. You, the group that we were a part of, and have now left, you are filled with false teaching. We have the true teaching. And then they'll start to target the churches that are involved in the network that they had left with their movement. All of those churches are now corrupt. God is not leading them. God is not part of them.

God is instead part of our group. You are following man's traditions. We are following what God has established as the church traditions. And most explicitly, you have lost the full authority. We, or more specifically the new leader, has the ultimate authority.

And so they always offer the same solution. Number one, Christianity has gone wrong. We have the right. We have the answer. Number two, all of the denominations, except ours, has become compromised. God is not leading them.

We cannot trust God to lead them. We need instead a central figure who is not God, but eventually in some of the groups actually becomes a God to the people, we need our God or our leadership because God cannot lead the churches independently.

Number three, the original faith of the Bible has been lost. And we're the ones to tell you what it was. It, because it's not written down in the Bible according to this new structure.

You can't read the pages of the Bible and determine what was the original faith. You must come to us. We have the way. We have the truth. They don't have it because they only have the Bible.

Number four, the church no longer has authority. In other words, you must have an authoritarian structure. You need a man to lead you and these denominations, they're being led by the apostates. You can't trust their leadership.

Number five, the big one in every restorationist group, there must be something. We'll tell you what it is that must be restored. And through that restoration, we have the truth. We have the way.

We have the message. So as you can see, especially those of you who have escaped a similar type of restorationist mentality, many of these restorationist groups share the same principles. Their doctrines change, their strategies change, the actions that you must take may change.

They change so much that they appear to be completely separate groups of completely different isolationist viewpoints. But when you look at their core framework, they're really all the same. It's as though you took a cookie cutter stamp and started stamping.

Here is how you create a restorationist destructive cult. They all follow the same pattern. But the thing to be really concerned about is this. It takes two. And it's ironic that the group is called the two by two's because there's the leadership.

There's this tear up above you. And then there's the bottom tier, the rank and file members. In the, in Dr. Stephen Hasen's book, Combating Cult Mind Control, he shows you the pyramid of authoritarian control, how there's central figures.

And then there's this upper tier of people. He actually divides it, I think, in three tiers. And then there's all of the splinter groups that evolve off. of those three tears. But in the end, the two upper tears are quite different than the rank and file member tear. And this group has just explicitly said, we're going to have an upper tear. And their third tear really would be Irvine. If you put it in true form to Dr. Stephen Hassan's model, the very, very top tear, the guy who's coming with the message and giving you the message, he is that top of the pyramid. But he created a very, very explicit

two tears below him. And that's really the problem here when you look at the bottom tear. Because it takes two to tango. You have to have a leader who's at the top. You have to have this upper tear that's bringing people in. But on the flip side of that, you have to have people who are shutting down critical thinking and allowing themselves to join. And that's really where I want to focus next with this restorationist viewpoint. Because without those two tears and without people joining in, you could never actually form a destructive group. 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.

Those of you who are familiar with my story, I'm aware that I escaped a mind control called the cult following of William-Marian Brannum or Brannumism. And that was the root of most of the things that we're talking about today. If you pull Brannumism out of the historical lineage of New Apostolic Reformation, you don't get New Apostolic Reformation. He was one of the Linchpins, and there were a few. But I was stuck in the 1950s because we listened to these recordings from 1947 to 1965. And we thought that they were the word of God, the fresh manna for our day.

Whenever we went to my grandfather's church, which was the main Brannum Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, that's what the church did. Everybody went into the pews, they sat in the pews, and my grandfather would haul her to the guy in the back and say, play the tape, brother. And they would play a tape that was like two and a half hours long.

So we were continually brainwashing ourselves with these recordings from the 40s, 50s and 60s. Well, one of the problems that exists with Branemism is that it's really hard to determine how many of them that there are, how many groups there are. Because you do have some of the churches, like my grandfather's, but the vast majority of people worldwide are meeting in homes.

And so what will happen is in many cases for the tape only people, they will meet in somebody's home, they'll press play on the tape and everybody sits there in the living room and listens to this recording from 1950s and brainwashers their heads. I left this group and we started attending mainstream churches and my family got to experience new things, one of which was a new old thing to us.

We started attending this church that had what was many of the churches today called small groups or group homes where people will go to the church on Sunday and then after the service either Sunday night or a different night during the week. In small groups, they will meet in people's homes, which was new and interesting and yet all too familiar in some weird ways. I could not help but think about the times that we would sit in somebody else's home and listen to a recording from the 1940s, 50s and 60s. The granite was much different. Whenever we met in the small groups,

we were talking about the sermon that was preached that Sunday, not something from the 40s, 50s and 60s. However, it was eerily similar and I had to think through this and I had to overcome this because it was actually a little triggering for me to do this. I went deeply into the history of why that exists in the modern church, why it existed in my church and did it exist in Laterane. What I came to found out, there are some similarities that are good, there are some that are bad and there are some that are questionable. I will preface with this,

I'm actually in favor of it. I did like it. I really enjoyed it and we were fortunate in that most of the homes that we met in, the home leader and it would alternate between people, was usually somebody who knew what they were talking about and the Bible, they were mostly Bible centered. Sometimes they went back to the sermon but usually they were talking about what the Bible said about the sermon and so we got lucky. But what about the cases for people who don't get lucky? That's really one of the one of the disturbing things about this. When you're being

led by these small groups, you can be swayed in one direction or another just simply based on the doctrines of the people in that small group. Carry that out to Branemism. Yes, we listen to the recording but often when Whenever you had somebody who was a little preachy who was gonna press play on the tape.

Well, whenever they did, they might speak a few words before and you were leaning towards their doctrine and sometimes their doctrine was just wacky and for this reason, the headquarters of Brannemism had this slogan, they still have this slogan today, just press play and obey, which is like a good brainwashing slogan, just press play and obey what is gonna be programmed in your head.

You can actually search this online and find that they sell memorabilia about that slogan. But carry this back to the conversation about the two by two's. One of the reasons why people ask me is this similar or connected to Brannemism is because of the meeting in the homes.

And that history is a little bit, like I said, it's a little bit difficult to untangle. I won't do that fully in this episode, but it goes back to whenever you read in the New Testament, when the early church was forming, they did meet in the homes.

And here is where it ties to the Restorationist theme. There is this concept by Restorationist movements that the church has gone apostate or a stray and we need to go back to the original.

But the question is did they go too far? Because there were things that were happening in the early church that were situations that caused the structures. And one of those I've talked about before in this episode, there's the scriptures about do not forsake yourself the assembling together.

Well, if you didn't assemble together, you didn't hear the Bible. And for the early church, this was important because the vast majority of people could not read or write. And so those people who gathered together, they had together together, just to simply hear the Bible.

Otherwise, there would be no passing of Christianity from place to place. There wasn't enough people who could read. So you had to go to somebody who could read. Well, the same kind of thing, the same kind of concept occurs with the meeting in the homes.

Yes, they met in the homes. But there also were not a whole lot of churches for them to go to. There were not that many Christian temples and more to the point, there was heavy persecution by the ancient religions, especially during war times.

The way that the ancient world worked, you could pray to as many gods as you want. And Christianity wasn't persecuted just simply for worshiping Jesus. It was that they were the new religion. Some of the older established religions, if there were to be a war and the invading country were to just decimate the city that you were living in, people would start pointing fingers, okay, which one of you is serving the weaker god?

We just got beaten. And Christianity would have been named because simply it was one of the newer religions. These people here, they're not serving the religion that's established, they have this new thing. And so people were meeting in their homes just simply because of persecution.

And yet, the restorationist movement and even large parts of mainstream Christianity, they're going back to the original in many ways, without really thinking through why did the original exist in the first place. So, yes, you can say that the two by two's, created by William Irvine, does match branemism in that they did meet in their homes, but there's more to it than that.

So I've talked about some of the mechanics of why these groups look to be so similar. But now let's go a little bit deeper and talk just briefly through the superficial doctrines of why the two would look similar to somebody who's not examining the machinery or the engine that's running underneath, because they are very similar.

So I'll start with branemism and show you why they look so similar. But then we'll carry that out further to the new apostolic reformation, because again, many of these themes, many of these groups are sharing the same machinery, the same themes that are produced by that same machinery.

Restorationism, special revelation, and authorized messenger or ministry. You create an exclusive identity, and then there's this insider versus outsider boundary that gets established. So the two by two's, William Irvine and his group, they again started with this restoration theme.

But over time, they developed the truth or the way, and just simply by naming themselves this, you're creating this boundary between you and the groups who are not part of the truth or the way.

We have the truth, they must not. We have the way, they must have gone a different way. They're an error. And this leads to an authorized ministry, because the workers in the ministry are representing the true ministry.

We have the truth, they do not. Therefore, we are working in the truth, essentially. So that part we've established in the first part of this podcast, but now go into the living witness. This is really where you start to see the mechanics that can be shared between all of the different groups I'm discussing all the way up to your international house of prayer in Kansas City, Bethel, etc.

Once you establish the idea that we have this living witness, this true gospel, salvation is tied to this new gospel. It truly becomes a new gospel and different gospel than what's in the Bible, because this is our, as I said with our group, we call it the fresh manna for the day.

This is the fresh revelation, the fresh Bible for today. And it's closely tied to the ministry's preaching and the examples they give in it. That's why you have, so often you have the prophetic history, as how IHOP KC would call it.

doesn't we call it the life story. You had all of these things that literally was writing what would be called by the group a another book of acts. And this is the living witness.

And with this, you elevate a messenger or messengers and they create the end time message. So when you compare Irvine and his Omega message to Brannum and his Leo de Sien messenger message, both are teaching exactly the same thing just with different doctrines that are running on top of these mechanics.

Brannum claimed that he was coming to restore before Christ's return, much like many of the other groups, and that his spoken word or Brannum's version of the living witness was the authoritative interpretation of the Bible.

It became the framework for most message believers. And I would say the vast majority of them will take what Brannum said over the Bible, even if the Bible is in conflict. So that's just comparing Brannumism to the two by two's.

Let's go a little bit deeper. Brannum was one of two catalysts that started the laterane movement. And because of this, they shared so many similarities because it was the same doctrines. They had the restorationist claim and they believed that the church had become apostate, had lost their apostolic and prophetic ministries, and they needed to be restored for the end times, straight out of Brannum's playbook.

They also developed the exclusive identity. And often they would refer to themselves as the in-time people, the in-time message, the new wine, the apostolic reformation, et cetera, not a single centralized organization, but many different groups with many different names, all meaning basically the same thing.

We have the message, the others do not. And because they had the message or the laterane message or whatever they called their message, leaders in the movement got authorized in their ministries, just simply because they were part of the network that was preaching the quote unquote in-time message.

So suddenly, because they're stating that apostles, modern apostles and prophets would have ongoing revelation and influence on God's kingdom, they were getting their own credentials just simply by saying we have the credentials. And it was spreading because the groups believed that if you had one person who had credentials, he could lay his or her hands on another person and suddenly transfer through the power of their hands a ministry.

And so ministries were being developed with no credentials whatsoever other than the authorized person gives the unauthorized person authorization. Much like you see today, if you look at the videos of Bethel and some of the new apostles that come up and they laid their hands on them and say here's a new ministry, they were doing the same thing in Laterane.

And it all comes down to this one point which you can almost universally, I didn't- to fight with every destructive group. The group believed that they have the present day revelation. Laterane, New Apostolic Reformation Movements, they call it the present day revelation, typically.

In Brannemism, they call it the spoken word. And Kenneth Hagen's group, it was the reima. In two by two, it was the living witness doctrine. All of these share the same commonality in that we have a new thing, and we're going to give you the new thing, but we want you to accept this new thing as though it is equal to, or sometimes greater than, the written word that is in the Bible.

It is a present day revelation, which implies and suggests that the old revelation, the one that's in the Bible, it's for a different day. We have a new day, a new revelation. That's how Brannem would say it, and he explicitly said in the Laterane Movement, from which all of this developed, that Moses' message would not work in today, it would only work in Moses' time, Paul's message only worked in Paul's time, and then he would say, we have today the spoken word.

So he's categorically separating each of the movements, each of the milestones that's happening in the Bible history, and he's saying essentially that the New Testament was for the ancients, we have a new New Testament, and that's really what this Omega message was with Irvine, in-time message with Brannem, present day revelation, in-time mission with New Apostolic Reformation.

It's all about the message to the in-time, the only difference that is slightly more aggressive in the New Apostolic Reformation, notice how it changed. In Irvine's ministry, it was the Omega message, it was focused more on Irvine, and Brannem it was the in-time message, it was focused on what Brannem said, but in the New Apostolic Reformation, it has an activation component, it's the in-time mission, in other words, we have the in-time revelation, but you are part of the mission, you're part of this, and so it makes the bind even stronger, whenever you try to think about how mind control works

and how you become activated, this is literally an activation for the in-time mission. So as you can see, it is the same methods that each of these are using, they just give different names to it.

These destructive movements recruit, control people, and then what sad is they repeat, and there are many people who get stuck in one movement, they finally wake up and escape, and they get stuck in a different movement, because it is the same pattern, and they become very comfortable with that pattern.

And this is the sad truth, and if you're listening in one of the audio-only versions, I've got a slide up that shows sheep walking into this church with this big welcome sign, the light is inside of the church, and this is really what sad to me, it is true.

People are walking into these movements. thinking that they're getting truth, thinking that they're going to join into freedom. They're finally going to get answers. People who are suffering mentally, sometimes physically, they're looking for belonging and purpose, and they're told that the church will give it to them.

So they go in with open arms and without critical thinking. And what you find is, suddenly on the inside, after they have adopted the methods of this control mechanism, they begin to conform. So suddenly you have lost identities.

Families get to be broken. There are groups that will financially just rob people of their life savings. Financial exploitation has been happening through the history of these movements. If you've been following my podcast, you have seen some of the groups that are doing this.

And it leads towards all forms of abuse, at minimum spiritual abuse, but there are other forms of abuse that develop because you have a people who have suffered immensely by losing their own identities.

And so what happens from this is, people, even after escaping for a very long time, you have long-lasting trauma. And the groups that we've talked through, in this episode of Talk to Branemism, The 2x2s, but think of the other groups that have mentioned in this podcast, many of them sharing names that are so similar to what The 2x2s called themselves, such as The Way.

There are groups like the Christian Missionary Alliance that were teaching the same end of day's themes that we're seeing in the New Apostolic Reformation today. And most people who are in CMA today would say, we're not New Apostolic Reformation.

We have no connection to them, but yet if you look through these histories, there's a spider web of connections between Branemism and Christian Missionary Alliance. New Apostolic Reformation is basically a spider web of apostolic networks, many sharing the same histories, but most sharing the same mechanisms.

They recruit, they isolate, they indoctrinate, they control. And in the end, the sad truth is, many of them will begin to shun. So to summarize this podcast, The 2x2 groups, started by Irvine, has no real solid connection to Branemism, which is the question that caused this whole podcast.

But if you look at the framework, they both do share very, very similar frameworks. And if you are in one of the New Apostolic Reformation churches, you have escaped this, or you're in it determining if you're going to escape, you probably heard everything in this podcast thinking, oh my gosh, they're describing our group.

It's because they're using the same pattern. It is the same pattern. And so people ask me, well, how do you know? How do you know if the pattern is destructive? They're saying things that are right out of the Bible.

But again, sometimes you can share something that is biblical while putting your own... emphasis on something that is not biblical. And that's really where this gets to be really scary because people will submit their entire fortune, their life savings, their well-being, their identities.

They will submit them to these groups. And it is the same pattern, different name, same playbook. How do you know you start to look for the group's message? Do they have a special message?

Are they simply teaching the message that Jesus gave in the Bible, the ones that the Apostles spread? Or do they try to tell you that the Apostle is the one who actually had the message?

And Jesus was just the one who came and initiated this whole thing. And Branemism, Branem would often talk about the message that Paul gave. I don't really remember one time him talking about the message that Jesus came to give.

So it is a different playbook. The other thing to look for, do they believe there are chosen people and those chosen people need to be led by a human leader? Usually, that's the framework by just simple definition of a cult.

You have a cult following of a human leader. Are they bringing additional revelation to that special message, or are they adding revelation to the Bible? In other words, are they turning this into a new and different message?

Does that message include isolation and control? Has it created this us versus them mentality where, yes, you may encounter another Christian, but they're not our kind of Christian. We're a different kind of Christian than they are, because they follow Christ, and we follow our leader and Christ, or our leader instead of Christ, one of the two.

Does that following of the leader cause fear and deception? Are they saying things that just simply aren't true, or things that you can't really even verify that are true about themselves to make you believe that they are the human leader, the chosen people, the chosen ones?

Are they exploiting you as essentially the question? Can you look at the fruits of the ministry and see that there is spiritual abuse? Many people only look for physical abuse or sexual abuse, but what about the spiritual abuse?

Do you see people who are broken down? Do you see broken lives? That's really the question, because you can look at many of these ministries, and you can say that I go to this church, and this church is teaching me from the Bible, yes, there are problems, but every church has problems.

That's the number one thing that people say in the comments. If you haven't noticed this, every church has these things, but have they established a way to fix these things? It's not that you want to be in a broken church and then stay broken forever, but one of the problems with these destructive groups is once it gets to that level of destruction, it usually doesn't change, it only gets worse.

So you want to be in a church that is actually trying to get better, not one that is going to remain statically worse for the rest of you. life and actually may worsen as you continue.

So it doesn't matter the group name, it doesn't matter the doctrines in my opinion. Look at this pattern and this framework. If they're sharing everything that I have said to you today and you're in a group that is teaching things that turn you against other Christians and make you to believe that God is not in control of the church today, you need this leader because He can fix it.

You're probably in a cult. You're probably in a cult that will or is, will be or is now a destructive group. So hopefully I've said something that can help someone. I know that the people who were asking this question is Irvine and the two by two is connected to Brannum.

Is this the message? I'll admit, when I first looked at it, I thought, oh my gosh, the FBI is investigating an offshoot of Brannumism. Will they investigate the whole thing? Because the first thought that went through my head, but as I took a step back, I came full stop because I realized that it isn't really that the groups are connected.

Even if they were, that's not the bigger story here. If you focus on these two groups, you're essentially focusing on limited numbers of people who are hurt by the same framework. If you look at the underlying foundation of this itself, you begin to help more and more people because there are so many groups sharing the same foundation.

And that foundation is wrong, just simply put it's wrong. You should never ever be in a situation where your group says, we're the true Christians and those Christians down the street, God's not helping them.

Because you're essentially in doing that, you have in essence created a new God who is powerless to control the overall trajectory of the church. And for me, that's a problem. That's a huge problem.

So hopefully I've said something that can help people to engage critical thinking, whether you're in a church that has a minister behind the pulpit, or you're in one of these home groups and you've got somebody who is leading the home group and they're just a little bit off and something feels just not right deep inside.

You can turn on the critical thinking because usually all of these situations, whether it's the group, the mega church, the destructive cult, the home group. If you turn on your critical thinking hat and you start to say, I don't agree with this, you can just simply come full stop and say, I'm walking out, I'm done, I'm sorry that you people are stuck in this cult.

So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponize Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.