Stadium Christianity: When Revival Becomes a Rally

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Brantley Smith, former member of IHOPKC. Brantley, it's good to be back and to talk about rally cries. Another name for it, the name that is used as branding is Stadium Christianity. I was reading through Louis Ingalls bio, he's got it on his website, and there's so many flags that are tripped in my mind whenever I read that, but

the biggest one is he is supporting what is called Stadium Christianity. And I don't think we've talked about this before. So I was wanting you to talk through it with me, but essentially, if you look through the history of how all of this began, you had the healing revivals, the revivalists suddenly started having tents, they were going to the rural areas, and then it became a battle for the tents. Who's got the biggest tent? I think AA Allen, if I remember correctly, won that battle, but there were those who said, we're going to get a bigger one than him. And

then suddenly, the invention or the widespread use of air conditioning, people just really didn't want to go to tents anymore. And I find it really, really odd that it's kind of traversed into a weird realm where now it has gone back to the outdoor venues, and we want stadium Christianity. And I was thinking of just how different that is from normal Christianity.

So welcome back. I wanted to talk through this with you. We're back for another time. I'm trying to jot down ideas here because you just connected so many dots for me, like we talked about staying Christian before we hit record today. You mentioned a rally cry. Another little influence that I had in my life that recently, there was the shiny, happy people documentary about was the battle cry for my generation and the big stadium stuff that they were doing with Ron loose. I had a little cameo of that in my life of the youth group kind of before I got

youth group age was always going to the acquire the fire events. I didn't get to go to any of those, but I did get the battle cry for my generation book, which is a nice little little crossover. And talking about the tents too, I think that we've mentioned this before. But I grew up in Southwest Virginia, people don't know in the Appalachian mountains. And so there's a lot of independent Pentecostalism of many different kinds that run through the mountains. And I used to hear my grandad tell stories all the time about the tent preachers who would

come through town and that's how a lot of them became quote unquote spirit filled was because he talked about the one he liked to tell was the legend of Billy Sunday coming through town and setting up his tent and stuff.

I don't remember any details from the story but they talked about it and that was such a peculiar thing because we're out of the middle of nowhere where I grew up we're about a hour from any kind of metropolitan area the closest metropolitan area would be Tri City's Tennessee which is Johnson City Kingsport Bristol kind of area if you're familiar with that which is not a massive place Bristol's the birthplace country music though and yeah so that there's there's lots of crossovers here their stadium Christianity is part of what sucked me into the I hop orbit just by happen stance man there's so many crossovers

points for me and this idea where do you want to start I don't know man there's so many places to start you so you mentioned the Johnson City area if you've read my latest book it is a focal point because it was a hotbed for everything Christian identity Branemism the most racist pastor in America who just also happens to be a Branemite he was labeled that I should say by social media he's from Johnson City Tennessee and DC Stevenson the most notorious clan figure from state of Indiana he's buried there in Johnson City and my research kept coming back to that area for some reason so it gets a little bit odd

but when you think about all of the connection to the revival the tent revival is the breeding grounds for religion which mixed politics which mixed ideologies which mixed white supremacy or Christian identity it all makes sense when you really take a step back but I think the biggest place for me to start is just the idea of the rally cry within this what's called stadium Christianity because not many people realize if you go to a ballgame you get so invested in that ballgame anybody who's been to a stadium and watched a ballgame will tell you that I've seen it on TV yes it was kind of exciting but there's nothing

like being there and what has happened is the religious industry has capitalized on that feeling it's a it's a feeling it's not really that the Christianity is any different they could do the same thing as televangelists it's not that anything's really new but once you're into that hype you start to get into the rally mode and you shut off critical thought even more than when you go to church which is odd I was just right before this podcast I heard that just for giggles I was looking through all of the failed prophecies that Luangal has had some of which

Some of which aren't really prophecies, but he says it in a prophetic way. He's what he's doing is he's taking advantage of the rally. You get people in the rally, they get excited, and whatever it is, you know, whether it's talking about the third grade awakening that he said would happen and didn't.

It's, you know, it's part of the rally cry. We need to build people up to that hype, they get excited, and then when they leave, they'll continue to send us our money. As you talk about that and describe that, it reminds me of my local church experience a lot of how that was almost a microcosm of that environment.

It's not lost on anybody that Pentecostalism is a lot of hype at times and a lot of emotion and getting people stirred up. But as you're talking about that rally cry, the memory that comes to mind, when I was in youth group, that's when I started leading worship, I was 14 whenever I started leading worship, 13, 14.

And we would go on these retreats to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, it was where we would go. We would get a cabin and go up in the woods and the whole youth group would pile into these cabins.

And I remember there being, it's hard to talk about now, and I think you'll relate to this in the sense that some of these moments seemed so genuine to me, and almost there I say precious still to this day.

Because some of these times were very formative, very impactful on me as a young person. When we were on this one cabin trip, I remember we were having a, we would do like acoustic worship and living room of the cabin and have little prayer services and such.

And I remember there being, I don't know what you guys called it in the brand of circles, but we had a spirit of travail fall where people start groaning. I mean, it's the rally cry in a sense.

People are like yelling. And so if somebody walked in, they would think we were all crazy and had demons, I think, is even if they didn't believe in demons, they would probably think that we had demons with the sounds that were coming out.

And I remember my youth pastor pulling me to the side and prophesying kind of over me and talking about the sound as the phrase that he used. And he kept talking about how God's gonna release the sound and that we're gonna be a part of the sound and how he attasted the sound and that we were gonna see it again kind of thing.

And really what I think he was describing was that a adrenaline-fueled kind of moment of ecstasy, I think that we experienced in those moments where everybody would live their voices and yell and shout and cry and scream.

It's so interesting for me to see how these tactics are used in the settings of where there's tens of thousands of people, but also in rooms of tens of people. And that was, that was a lot of my upbringing was, was navigating that our, our youth group used to do, it's very, so I, I've group in middle of nowhere, uh, Appalachia. And our church was probably, it was an assembly of God church that didn't like to fly the assembly of God flag.

We, we tried to pitch ourselves more non-denominational to be friendly to outsiders. And our youth group, around the time I was transitioning into youth groups, I'd probably been about 12 years old, um, was experiencing what they called a revival. And in what that, what happened was that we had huge influx of people, but the reason that that was happening was because of these rallies that we would do across the county. Um, we had, you know, it's, it's very Bible belt in Appalachia. Um, everybody's Christian, everybody's born Christian in Appalachia. And if you're not, you're either,

and then, you know, nobody trusts you. Um, everybody's got their ectoos fishes on their business signs and, you know, very, very heavily Christian area. And we had connections to be able to get inside the school systems of all things. Um, to where we would go and do, I think that we, we did during the day school events a couple of times, but those were very rare. But we would do these after school events that were usually sponsored by, um, either one of our youth kids that were in the SCA or, uh, the fellowship of Christian athletes would sponsor it or, uh, we would have somebody

from our church was a teacher was able to spot like, we had like all these little loop holes that we would use. And we would do these big events at these schools. And they would send permission slips home to the kids, um, to have their parents sign so that they, you know, there, there was consensual. Um, and, and it was big things for us. I mean, it felt like, I think for, for us as teenagers and youth group, I think it felt a little stadium Christianity to us. Um, and that we're like doing this big evangelistic kind of kind of thing. But what ends up happening is our little

church of probably, I say little church, what we were a big church for the area, we had about 400 people that would, that would show up on a Sunday morning. Um, but our youth group got to the point that we were running about 200 to 250 kids, um, on a Thursday night. And part of that's because there's nothing else to do in the mountains. And so it was, it's real easy to draw. Um, but, but these inside tracks that we had to schools was very unusual and I had experiences there, um, that are still hard to explain to this day. Um, but we had this one rally that we did at a middle

school. So a sponsor about FCA and we had done a Daniel fast leading up to it. We had 21 day Daniel fast. And so we were all jazzed and buzzing. By the time we walk in there, you know, thinking like, God's going to move, God's going to do something. And I remember it was super odd. A lot of this I just don't, I don't know how to explain it. If I'm being honest, our youth, we get up and do our worship.

said, I was worship leading at that time, get up there, a little worship set, a little concertish kind of thing is what we would do for for those kind of settings a little bit more. But he's past her got up and he was evangelist through and through and he could give a good, you know, pinocostal alter call at the count of three come up here. If you're going to die in a car accident, not where he's going to go. Like, I mean, he was, he had all the lines. He knew how to do an alter call and stuff. But he preached the most, what

I even called back then the most unannoyed sermon I'd ever heard in my life. And from the time we started playing music, he got sick. And so we thought he was being spiritually attacked is what we thought was happening. He was in the back room, throwing up. He was, you know, it was awful. And he gets up and speaks and it's awful. But then once he switches to the alter call, I don't know how to explain what happened after like the whole environment changed. It felt like we could send something different in the room.

You know, we're playing our little music behind him. He's starting to give the alter call. He gives his count of three for people to respond. And the whole cafeteria almost responds as a little multipurpose cafeteria we were in. And kids hit the front of the altar. And it was almost like that travail kind of thing. Like we hear these kids, these little middle schoolers going, ah, kind of thing. And I remember one of them vividly weeping and crying because they saw a vision. I don't know, you know, we'll let them decide what they experienced. But they saw a vision of their family member burning in hell. And they

were it just fraud. But the other piece that was happening at the same time is about half of them started speaking in tongues. And still to this day, like I don't know how to explain that because whenever we would go in those environments, that was very much in the, the heyday at the secret sensitive era era. And so we were careful about speaking in tongues in those kind of places. But, but I'll never be able to shake that memory of those kids running to the front, hitting the altar and speaking in tongues. And they hadn't heard

it from any of us. They hadn't, you know, I still to this day don't know how to explain that. I would offend a lot of people if I did try to explain it in Pentecostalism. So instead, I'm going to try to explain it in Hinduism. Pentecostalism is not the only religion that has this type of thing. Glossalolia happens multiple different environments. And they, there is a psychological connection to getting into that state of euphoria and getting so anxious at the same time that your brain separates from your normal executive function. And in other religions, then Pentecostalism, you'll see that this is usually whenever this glossalolia

begins to happen. So in other religions, you can see that there is a cause and effect. Let's take it a step further with the feeling of euphoria. Because I really think this is and not many people grasp it.

They usually hear the stories after the fact, after the event has happened. We had 10,000 souls saved in this revival, or that kind of thing, you know, and when it was healing revival, we had tens of thousands of people healed, people rising right out of the wheelchairs and walking.

I interviewed this lady, actually know her personally. She's a really nice lady. She was in the brand of movement during the healing revival, and she was a young child with a curious mind. And she was sitting just at the spot where the ushers were bringing people in through the prayer line to be healed.

And she was watching as these people were walking up to the line, and then standing in this long line that went out into the heat. And some of the elderly people were struggling to stand for so long, and the ushers would walk up and say, hey, why don't you sit in this wheelchair for a bit, because your legs might get tired.

And so she's watching one by one by one, and the people are wheeled up to the stage by the ushers, and when they get to the stage and the prayer is made, you know, the laying on the hands, well, suddenly they raise up and praise God.

And miracle, it's a miracle. Now, the preacher, in this case, it was Brannum. I'm certain he never said that they had any affliction that caused them to be in a wheelchair, but what does the audience think?

That's really the key. What they think is that somebody just raised up and got healed, and the other aspect, so you mentioned the nostalgia. There's so many different psychological effects to stadium Christianity, but one of the biggest is this, in your mind, without even thinking about it, you suddenly start to associate crowd size with evidence of truth, especially if you're a child.

If you're growing up in this thing, you could be critically thinking, you could be starting to critically process, but wait, there's 10,000 people in here. Oh my gosh, this must be true. And that kind of feeling just, especially if you're younger, that feeling hits you.

So what happens is the crowd size affects the way that you perceive the person on stage, and then the person on stage becomes all the more powerful. Suddenly this is, oh my gosh, this is the stage presence that's commanding the use 10,000 people.

And to people who are in this movement, who think this is normal, they always are curious why other Christians see it as abnormal. And I was one of those people. I never saw the stadium sizes like you had, but I did go to large basketball auditoriums for some of the revival meetings.

I felt the same things. This massive crowd, oh my gosh, this is of God, right? And then I learned that the whole thing is filled with fiction. None of it's really real. So I was in that euphoria.

I had that same feeling, that same effect. But whenever I left, and I'm starting to read the Bible for myself, I'm reading things like hearing them make the statements of what Jesus had the big crowds. Look at the loaves and the fishes and the massive. But if you actually read it, he thins the crowds pretty heavily. He does not want people to make him out to be a celebrity. And they're doing the exact opposite.

They want a bigger crowd because the more crowd, the more money. You talked about what they think is their reality. And that's how the, which was a phrase, whenever we first started having conversations, Sean, I was very uncomfortable with, which was mind control. And it's something I've warmed up to because I realized the reality of it, how real it is. Because I look back now and I see its impact in my own life. And with most of those ideas that you talked about, I have a very vivid memory from when I was in youth group, youth

group age, we would do these yearly events at local schools that wasn't affiliated with the school day. We would just run out the auditorium because it was like our biggest venues in the area at the time. And we called it youth quake is what it was. It was like this youth revival kind of thing.

We'd give many people into a gymnasium or auditorium as we could. And I remember I ended up leading worship at the end of one of the nights. And there was 2,000 people there, 1,200, 2,000 something like that. I'm a vangelasticism probably, but it was the most amount of people I'd ever played in front of. And I remember that that did something to me because shortly after that, I ended up in an innocent situation of playing in a school talent show with our worship band, which was interesting that they let us do that. But we did. And I remember people coming up to me

and how they treated me afterwards. That I was no longer nerdy, brandly. I was now almost rock star brandly is kind of how the shift happened. I was kind of a chameleon in high school. My favorite people to hang out with were the drama nerds. That was my favorite people, the theater people.

But I was also an athlete and I hung out with the jocks and got along with the band. I was in band for a little bit along with the band geeks and the choir kids and all the stuff. But there was definitely a shift of perception after that that it had turned me. And it's been one of the hard things to talk about to help people understand the impacts on me and my own journey as a 14 year old becoming a worship leader and being idolized in a culture. What that does to your brain, I think it's probably very similar to what like child stars experience, like child movie stars

and stuff. It's not the same magnitude. But the way that I was treated and the way that my family was treated and interacted with. My sister got preferential treatment at times because she was my sister. Once I moved away and went to Kansas City, nobody cared about my sister anymore.

You mentioned the mind control and that actually one aspect of this really, really ties to it. There is a series of experiments that happened in the 1950s after Hitler was able to mass-mind control an entire nation to become so hateful.

The United States and other countries wanted to figure out, well, this is a power he harnessed. How did he do it? And he started performing all of these experiments and the government was funding some, others were just self-funded, but there's this one experiment that was the ash conformity experiment, I think it was called in the 50s.

And what they would do, they would have this classroom and they'd have a projector, and on the projector there would be two cards. One had a line of a certain length, and the other card had ABC, I think, and D, lines of different links and one matching.

So there's truly one correct answer and two to three incorrect. Well, they'd go around the room and they would ask each person which was the correct answer for the matching length. And all of the people were in on it except for one test subject, and they would go through different test subjects, and all of the people in the room would give the wrong, the same wrong answer over and over, and they would get to the test subject, and I remember the look on his face like, what in the heck are these people talking about?

There is no way that that is the correct answer, and they would fight it, but there were 25% of the people that they tested who would at least one time, and sometimes every time, would conform to the audience because that hype, you're getting into this area where your mind begins to second guess itself.

So if you're in a large crowd like this, and they say something this just off the wall, you're like, well, is that true? Everybody else believes it, I think I will too. 25% of the people are gonna do this, right?

I remember at the shock that hit me, there were so many boisterous claims in the Revival, and some of them were just outlandishly faults, and I remember going back and studying some of those, and in previous podcasts, I think I've mentioned exactly which ones, but it was Brannum, and he would say things that were just pulled straight out of his butt faults, and he would say, don't you remember that brother so-and-so?

And brother so-and-so would say yes. It was absolutely false, but I got to thinking about it. So you're in this crowd, five to 10,000 people, are you gonna stand up in front of five to 10,000 people and say, no, that's not true, you lied.

You're a liar. Nobody's gonna do this, right? And more to the point, whether they do or not, usually if that happens, I did find one person that called him out, but usually when that happens, they just keep quiet.

No, I don't think that happened, but who knows, maybe it did. Maybe I'm wrong, and they sit there in silence. Well now you've got, if it's a crowd of 10,000. and you've got $9,999 who think it's true because the person didn't object.

If people listening, if you have stepped out of religious environments completely and haven't been set in a Sunday morning sermon in a long time, it's an interesting exercise. To step back in and hear the things that are said in a pulpit on a Sunday morning and hear the amends in the audience. It's so funny because we live in such a culture that's digital, technology first, that political rallies, Sunday morning sermons, theater, art stuff.

It's very rare that we get people together in a room and have these big speaking things anymore. It's very peculiar. I'll hear things from time to time as I'm still in church circles. I'm like, I hear somebody say, Amen from the back corner and I'm like, do you realize what's being said right now? You're talking about if you de-churched for a while and then suddenly come back, the shell shock that you get, I actually recommend people, if you're in one of these types of movements to do what I did. I wasn't yet ready to de-church and so I was sitting there listening

to things that just it was causing my skin to raise. I knew that something was off. I didn't really know what. So what I did mentally, I would go to church and I would pay close attention to everything that was said. And then for the next two Sundays, I would actually tune it out in my head and I would be thinking about either work or dinner or whatever else and totally ignore what was being said on purpose so that I could compare the two differences and was their variance.

And when I did this, I was like, oh my gosh, I see where they're heading with this and sure enough, they were trying to step back into the healing revival mode in a non-healing revival type church. This was a mainstream denomination and ended up creating this center for faith healing that was just so incredibly wrong. Faith healing for people with mental health issues that really need help way beyond what the preacher could give them, right? So I did that and I was able to at least tell that something's off here and then I started asking questions and I learned that there

are some churches. You just don't ask questions in. I don't think I've ever shared this here. I don't think. I don't know if I've shared it on a podcast before. Whenever I was a kid in Kindergarten, I got diagnosed with a vocal condition. Doctors at Vanderbilt at the time told me that I would never be able to talk above a whisper and that I would never be able to sing specifically. I ended up having four surgeries over the course between kindergarten and fourth grade. It was these warts that grew my vocal cords and they would have to laser them off. My church, this was in the

heydays of Brownsville, Toronto, all of that going on. And so my church would pray for me and they would fast and I would say probably for the past five, six years. like that, I've kind of shifted my opinion of what happened, I guess. And I think like reassessing all the things we've believed in things are just part of this process. And so I've kind of just said on the shelf, I even had a point where I had a pastor asking me if I would share my healing testimony. And I told him, no, and I was like, you know, I don't know how I feel about that anymore.

I'm not sure how I process it or what that reality is. And so I have my fourth surgery. And doctors at that time, what they told us from Vanderbilt was that if it ever went away, it would be as I'm coming out of puberty in my early mid-20s is the only chance that I had of it just going away.

If not, it was going to be yearly surgeries where I was going to have to have these works removed. And which was very medically traumatic as a kid, having me put to sleep and waking up and all that kind of stuff. And I went down a rabbit hole, maybe like a week or two ago, it was very recent.

And with AI, because I was just curious. And it's like one of the things where you can put in a quick thing, give me sources, you know, whatever, and then go start reading around on the internet. And found out that they have what I had was a strain, I guess, of like HPV is what it was that was on my vocal cords as a birth side effect is what it was. And research now is showing that it will eliminate itself as you're entering puberty as well as whenever you're exiting puberty.

And so this time frame of whenever I had my my last surgery was in fourth grade, is what it was, which would have been right around the time that I was entering puberty as a kid.

And so to see that now is, I don't want to say it's unsettling because I felt for a while that it wasn't something divine, if you will. But I remember how my church responded. And that's what made me believe it. That God had given me a miracle was they literally, John, they literally, it was like a Sunday night service or a Wednesday night service. Something I remember is nighttime. And it was a couple of the deacon's elders. I can't remember what we called them in our church, but

who threw me up on their shoulders and they marched me around the church almost like in a procession, celebrating the healing that God had done for me. And I'm not even sure at what point we decided that it was gone. I'm not sure what that timeline was because I was a little kid that I don't know if it was right after the surgery or six months after the surgery. I can't I can't formally recall when we when I was declared healed. I probably shouldn't ask my mom about that. But

yeah, it's it's so funny. Like whenever I'm not going to look at them as a fourth grader, I don't know how old you are in fourth grade, maybe 10, 11, 12, something somewhere in that ballpark.

So it's probably about 10. not going to look at a room full of adults and go, no, God did not heal me. But that came became a core part of my identity because then I started leading worship and singing.

And so what everybody wanted to say was doctor said he would never be able to talk above a whisper and he would never be able to sing. And now it just seems disingenuous if that makes any sense at all. But that's a big part of my journey of having to figure those things out. And in that fed into me going headlong and to being a worship leader, like the things that I was told was the devil tried to steal your voice, the enemy tried to steal your voice. And now, you know, you have to use your voice for God's glory kind of thing

was was was kind of the messaging. And yeah, no, that's that's something I hadn't shared before that that just kind of came to mind. And in recent developments, I guess, I'm still in process. As you said, I'm new to all of this, which I didn't believe you, but I'm I'm believing you more week by week. 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-Branum.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. I don't think I've mentioned this on the podcast. I usually try to avoid anything about my family or myself, because if I'm talking about my family, people will think that I have some sort of agenda against them, which I don't. Or if I talk about myself, I'm trying to point to myself, which I'm absolutely not. But I have mentioned that my father was healed in one of these faith healing revivals. My father was in one of these revivals with William Brannum on the platform, where he went up to the platform. He was prayed for. He had rheumatic

fever and it was this great miracle that they still talk about to this day. And he was given by the doctors just a few weeks to live. They said, you need to take him out of school, be home with them, the boy's going to die. And rheumatic fever, if you don't know what this is, this is a infection that's caused, it's a bacterial infection that's caused by, I think, strep throat.

People develop this thing where it really, really brings them down with their hearts having trouble. They get really tired. It's a big deal. It really was a big deal. So my grandparents, instead of taking him out of school, they took him to William Brown and to be prayed for, and through positive confession, they confessed that he was healed, put him back in school, which now in hindsight I'm looking at all of this, asking some really hard questions.

But long story short, the very next year, he won the Physical Fitness Award in high school. So if you're in the movement, this is a miracle. This is pure, plain and simple. The blow is going to die.

He goes to the healer. Now he's winning the Physical Fitness Award. Four years, I would tell the storied people, and I was pointing at William Brownham because in the crowd mentality, in the stadium culture, you're looking at the guy on the stage.

You're actually not looking at Jesus. And so we were believing that Brownham was the healer, and Brownham had healed him. Well years later, I find out that number one, it's not a death sentence.

People who have this, many people have survived. There's a large number of people that are survived. Number two, it's treatable. This is something that if you just go to the doctor and the doctor gives you meds, if he tells you to stay out of school, let him rest, we're going to give him this treatment.

It was a healable thing. It still is. Those who have it, those who have it and heal, they have ongoing issues, some with their heart, some other issues. And I started going through this list of issues that happen when somebody heals naturally.

And it matches the very same symptoms that I'm watching in my father. And I'm reading this thinking, oh my gosh, did they lie to me this whole time? But that was the first thought that come in my head.

My grandparents lied through their teeth. But I've come to realize that it's not really that. The people really do believe it because it's the hype. You get into that hype and that hype makes you continue to believe.

Here's the interesting part about this. This is a hype fueled religion, the stadium religion mentality. It's one of the reasons why they call it a high demand group because you must maintain that hype.

You must keep the people in the hype. The moment you don't, you have what's called the great falling away. You can't have boring Christianity. It's got to be hype Christianity. And so picture of the stadium mentality, picture, Lewingo, he says, we've got stadium Christianity and you keep going stadium after stadium, next event, next event.

And people go to those from event to event to event. What would happen if he would say, okay, the next time we're all going to go sit in a room and we're going to bow our heads and we're going to be quiet and we're going to pray to God for an hour.

back to this. You can't have boring Christianity. And yet at the same time, the boring Christianity is what the Bible is describing. The hype is what the Bible is saying, Jesus avoided. And I think it's probably why Mike's, one of Mike's primary messages was enjoyable prayer.

It was one of the things he talked about because nobody wants to sit in a room and pray all day. We're not made to sit in comfy chairs for eight hours a day and stare at the ceiling. It's just not supposed to happen. But it makes me think of that's why I don't think anybody ever called it an enemy or or anything directly like that. But burnout and disillusionment were like combated heavenly against those were things that were talked about becoming disillusioned and letting your heart be offended. And if you're burned out, you must be striving in the flesh and

you know, stuff's not making sense. But I want to throw a phrase at you that I think kind of segues our conversation. There's the phrase no news, but good news mean anything to you, John.

More than you know, we actually had songs with that as the chorus. No way. I was not expecting that. In fact, that's that song's going off in my head at this moment. Everybody know.

That's so I ended up granted. So I just started driving. I had my I think I had a 95 Toyota Camry that had like 200 and some thousand miles on it that was given to me by one of my dad's co-workers and that's different story. But it had a tape player in it. And so the only thing I could listen to when I was driving either I had to do the little CD connector. If y'all remember those that the cord came out of the cassette hole and he plugged it into the CD headphone jack or I had

listened to cassettes. That was my only form. The radio didn't work too well. The radio antenna. And they had done some cleaning out of one of the closets at the church. And I'd come into the church lobby one one day either I'm away in or way out. I saw these tapes sitting there.

So I started thumbing through them and he had sign ups and free take whoever wants you know. And I saw one. I think I can't even remember what it was labeled if I'm being honest. I can't remember what made me pick it up. But I remember whenever I popped it in, I remember what I now know is Mike Bickel's voice. And Paul Kane is who it was. I wish I could find this tape. It probably got trash somewhere. But that was the first time I'd heard him talk begin to talk about stadium Christianity. And if you put yourself in in my shoes as at this point, I'd been leading worship

probably two years as about 16 years old. And I'm here in this story painted to me. And this is probably I don't know if you've talked about this a whole lot. It's probably a underrated skill that we probably not talked about a whole lot. But I imagine comes from like the voice healing stuff and all that kind of thing the way that they're narratively able to describe something and put you in the moment. As I heard Paul tell the story of this vision quote unquote that he had of of the stadium, and it was in Kansas City at this time, when it retails the story, it was

Arrowhead Stadium. And he talks about this almost like flying in shot of this, this news anchor standing at the top of the stadium. And he's hearing them say there's no news, but good news that pretty much the whole world is shut down because of this revival that's happening.

People aren't filling stadiums because of their favorite football teams or anything like that. If anything, the teams are giving their stadiums to these revivals, so they can use them to because nowhere else can hold all the people that are coming. And there was the idea of, that was the first time I'd heard the idea of nameless faceless, that there was a nameless faceless people on the platform. They were rotating, I can't remember what the time frame feels like every three days or something like that. They were going for like crazy much time, and they were doing these shifts and rotations. And the thing that I remember is, was the healing

aspect that it was, I can't remember if this phrase was used, but this was an eye-hop lore, prophetic history phrase, was that no disease known to man would stand among this people.

But I remember them talking about taking people in on stretchers into this tent. And that some of them were dead. Some of them weren't even sick. They were dead. And they were coming out healed and alive. And I remember being 16 years old and thinking, man, if I could be a part of something like this, if God could use me for something like this.

And at this point, I may have known Mike Bickel's name, but I did not know the house of prayer, and I did not know that they did 24-7 worship in prayer. So that set me up for something, definitely. As time went on, I discovered the house of prayer. But it was this vision of grand iosity that it gave me, that Stadium Christianity did. I remember having moments, I guess, pictures in your mind. We called vision in your mind. And of me leading worship at big events like this.

And that's where I think that was my idea of success. And it wasn't the numbers. It wasn't the people. It was the, at least that's what I told myself. It was the impact. It was that you were being used by God. Yeah, we had such a corrupted sense of self, very inflated since a self, to the point this is unrelated. But I remember at one point during that same period, opening the book of Isaiah and reading something about the servant of the Lord and thinking it was talking about me. That's how it inflated like the ego gets and the self gets. Whatever your

in these environments, you think that you are God's answer for humanity. That if you don't do it, who will? Who will go if you don't... go like those are the things we were told in the ultra calls, you know. But that was my introduction, the stadium Christianity, John, was that conversation between Mike and Paul and later I began to see it. So I mean, you can imagine 2007, which have been around that same time, shortly after, when Lou did his big 7707 event in Nashville, where they filled Titan Stadium and I remember vividly, it was, it was formative for me. It was, it was very formative.

What I find most interesting about the stadium Christianity is that it came from, it was developed from the birthing of the restoration Christianity. We're starting to restore the church, we're restoring the apostles. Not many people have made this connection, but Charles Fox Parham's movement was called the apostolic faith. And so now you've got the apostolic faith, missions of John G. Lake, you've got the apostolic networks. He was restoring apostles to the church, that's what he was doing. He's the father of this movement, though some people tried to reject or deny him, but they were trying to restore early Christianity and it developed into this weird thing that does not

in any way resemble Christianity. How many of these people were in this stadium Christianity, how many would say now, when we leave here, instead of meeting at a big event the next time, instead of this big stadium, I want you to bring somebody from your work to your home and I want you to meet in your homes in groups of two or three and I want you to share the gospel with them and not send any money to me. It's just not going to happen. That's not what, or even, even better.

We're going to convert them, bring them back to the stadium, you convert them, bring them back, even better. We've made quite a bit of money during this event. What we're going to do is give each of you money and I want you to go out into your local park and I want you to set up a table with food. I want you to invite the poor and needy and I want you to feed them and I want you to tell them the gospel, I want you to share the gospel with them. We'll supply everything. We'll

give you the money. It's just not going to happen. Or you know, if you really think about how Christianity truly spread, we want you to go across to other nations and be persecuted. Come join me and be persecuted because we're going to spread Christianity across the world. They had from the initial inception of this movement, they had the initiative that it was to share the gospel to the world so we need a movement and they created a movement, but then the movement stopped that agenda. They really don't want to spread it. What they want to do instead is attract

you to send them money and if you haven't caught on the two of the theme that I'm trying to hint at here, there is a thread that binds all of this together. Money?

I don't think I've been to a single one of those events either job where whether it be a one-thing conference where they had the big Bartlehall rented out the convention center or any of the call events or any of that stuff that I didn't see a plea at some point of, we're not meeting our expenses.

We need you to give what you need to give. And this event costed this much money and we only have this much please. And I'm like, I think half the time it was probably BS like after I see things like, especially nowadays, I'm so thankful for the people who've put in the work to show allegedly what Sean Foyte has done with his money that he has made from his COVID super spreader, Jesus Christ super spreader and a little lettuce worship movement that he had, that a thing like that has real cost but him being able to buy five properties

after the fact is a little sus. And yet when you got grandmas, like that's the thing and that's like, why tell evangelists are so sleazy. She got grandmas there who, you know, they're not making their unfixed income and whatever nest egg they got, it's what's supposed to last moment.

They start manipulating and God's telling you, you got a number in your head and God's telling you to give 10 times that. Look, that's the kind of stuff they would do and they would feel like they had to in that poor grandma.

She would think she would give that and then, you know, the next day, she'd get a check in the mail for $10 and she'd be like, God, heard my prayer. It's like, grandma, it's a percentage of what you gave.

But it's, yeah, but money's at the root of all of it. It's crazy how, how did she use this? Money and attendance. You know, I was thinking about this, not many people have made this connection either.

In the early days of the revival, rapture theology was that Jesus would come like a thief in the night just as the Bible said. It's gonna be a small group and we're gonna be carried away before the tribulation.

That was the chain of events that was to happen. And then what happened next, after the sudden surge of the battles for the largest tent, getting the biggest crowd into the movement, getting the hype, the energy, well, who's going to be energetic about coming back to this thing?

If you're gonna be taken away silently in your home and it's gonna happen to you. Oh, no, John, I'm blowing up a world right now. Well, what has happened is the doctrine actually shifted to the kingdom theology from that version of rapture theology.

And so if you really take a step back and think about this, when all these people come into this event, this stadium, stadium Christianity is trying to show you the kingdom developing here on earth.

And that's really what happened. You cannot make the argument that we're gonna be silently taken away and where two are gathered, one will be taken, one will be left. That type of biblical argument can't stand in the stadium revival movement.

So you have to abandon everything that Jesus said about how the end of days will play out. Instead, we're gonna see it for... build before our very eyes in this very event come see the rally we're going to see the third great awakening it's going to happen folks that's what they do it's it's more like a circus step right up step right up and see the kingdom right here at hand and I don't know how the book of Joel became central to all of that I mean that the we've talked about the Joel's army and all that kind of stuff that the way that Mike would would talk

about it because they weren't shy about it like the stadium thing like that was it was talked about like all the time like there was going to be the great harvest and the billion soul harvest I think's what Mike would call it and he would still that phrase from from the book of Joel and he would say it's going to be the great and terrible day he said it's going to be the greatest revival the greatest light of all time during the time of greatest darkness and so those eyes were repeated against each other and they use that framework

of Joel for the solemn assemblies is is kind of the way that they couched it all it's curious looking back at it now see just just see it how much we bought into it is is is the idea even even in the I mean in the prophetic history part of what we looked at and I've had it wasn't prophesied over me but I had I have friends who would probably would probably go on the record and say it was prophesied over them about senior leaders that they were going to have a procession from Grandview from where are the FCF building was which I think

they don't own now I think they sold it which is peculiar is that the FCF building and the road that the intersection is sits at it goes all the way I think it's called Blue Ridge Blue Ridge procession and it goes all the way to Arrowhead Stadium and they would talk about they had a number for it and you may know the number I can't remember what how many apostles it was and stuff but they had all these apostles that were going to lead this procession I'm not sure if Mike's golden chariot came into play there or not but they were going to process up Blue Ridge

all the way to the stadium and that's how the revival was going to happen and and what's really ironic if we want to go here a little little full circle moment is before Mike Bickel's exposure and stuff they kind of tried to self-fulfill this prophecy and they marched up Blue Ridge with a bunch of them and got a tent and went and ended up at the stadium and tried to get clever angles to show that the stadium was full and really you look at it and there was only people on the field hardly anybody in the Arrowhead seats but that was the world we were living in and people

would tell us you were going to be them they would say you know you're going to be the name of faceless that's who you are but for us we didn't know that nameless faceless meant broke and abused like that's that's that's what that's what ended up being so nameless faceless we were all broken up the creek without a paddle and that's why we're all flopping around in our 30s and 40s trying to figure out life still and what's interesting is it came from this weird anti-bibkel vision that random claim he had he was seeing same army marching through. And the details he gave was that he saw this one group go through

and they said that this is Paul's people. We learned the message of Paul. And then the next group would have the different messenger. And when it came to his people, his being Brannum, he said, I preached the same message that Paul preached. And they all said, yes, we're resting on that.

And what he was trying to display is that each platoon in the army has the general. And he being the general of the in-time army for his group, well, what has happened is Paul came and apparently carried that forward. That's what's going to say. That sounds very familiar.

I can't play. I don't know if I've heard you tell this before or if that was sent into the server, but I feel like I heard Mike tell something very similar of the groups of people walking by and God telling him who they were or an angel or somebody. This is bringing back something you're unlocking something. Yeah, there's there's so much there and it all goes back to a misinterpretation of Joel that began with Pentecostalism. They took everything out of context for British Israelism and the specific passage for the early Pentecostals was I will pour my

spirit out on all flesh. That was from Joel to 28 if I remember correctly. But Joel also has the latter reign, the former reign. So that that was the next iteration. Well, the last iteration has to go back to Joel, because if you believe the other two iterations are true movements of God, and we're the same movement, you have to bind it all together. So anyway, I was I was curious what you thought about stadium Christianity. And again, I I've talked about it briefly, but I don't know that I've took a deep dive in this. Yeah, I'm not sure that we deep dove today. We kind of

kind of talked about it, but I mean, I'm even having as we're talking, I know we're wrapping up, but I'm having the thoughts of what the stuff video clips have seen, what happened in Germany and the things and how they rallied people and the big groups and the songs that they would sing and the different things would happen. I'm like, this is the same kind of thing like it.

Yeah, there's there's a lot here. Yeah, definitely a lot here. Well, thank you so much for doing this. This is this is making me want to dive even deeper. I think this is important.

Well, the Lord's calling you deeper, John. Absolutely. Well, if you've enjoyed our 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.