The Pentecostal Roots of Dominionism Explained

Music 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-Brandom.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Andrew Martin, Pentecostal extraordinaire.

Andrew, I didn't know how else to introduce you. I have a few Pentecostal friends and the really, really good friends. We don't see eye to eye theologically, but they're in a good place with their heart, and they recognize the same with me, and we have really, really good conversations. The funny part is I've not had a whole lot of people who were of that mindset on the podcast, but I did have you, and he got some really positive feedback. I don't know if you saw it or not, but people were really enjoying what they heard. So very

glad to have you back. Well, thank you. Yeah, I would not say that I am not a complete Pentecostal guru or anything like that. I just have grown up in the PAOC in Canada. My whole life is still a part of it. Asked to preach. I lead worship on the music on Sunday mornings at my local congregation.

I just speak from my experience. Well, it's good to speak from experience because you know what you're talking about. Sometimes I dive into a lot of areas that I really don't yet know what I'm talking about, but I want to get there. And so my philosophy has always been to invite people to the podcast to share their information. And I look at it like this big scattering of puzzle pieces. And as opposed to some of my peers who avoid bringing the other side on, I really enjoy it because who better to go to the puzzle pieces than

the people who are involved with it? And you get a much clearer picture of the puzzle. There was a book written by, I think it was UCBS if I'm remembering correctly, but it's talking about the Jews and the antiquities and said something to the effect on a paraphrasing greatly. The Jews, the history that we have of the Jews is not quite correct. And it doesn't match what we have in our records. However, if you look at the Jewish people and you want to know about them, who better to go to than the Jewish people? And what he's referring

to, there were a lot of, a lot of records lost in the Babylonian invasion, etc. So you didn't really have all of the history. intact, but who better to go to than the people who have it?

So I'm very glad to have you back, and as I understand it, you're wanting to talk about dominionism, but from a, I'm guessing, from a non-New Apostolic Reformation perspective, which is something I have actually really wanted to talk about with somebody.

So I'm really, really glad you came on to do this. Yeah. Before we get into that, I just wanted to clear the error on a couple of things last time I was on. We talked about my experiences with the new order of the latter reign, and my connections where I grew up in my family with Myrtlebeel.

And just a couple of details is that I had said last time that she went north to Saskatchewan where George Houghton had started stuff up, and have since found out that she actually was headed to British Columbia, and it was Regley Zell, who was having meetings up there.

He had invited George Houghton to speak at his meetings, and I haven't been able to find out whether he was actually there when Myrtlebeel was, or what the connection there is for sure, but there is a connection there just not as possibly not as close as I thought it had been.

So I wanted to clear that up, and then also that realizing she had started stuff where she was at her Bethesda mission, she had plans already in progress to see things happening there before she went to British Columbia.

And then that just made me think, is it something similar to when Azusa Street started up in California, and in Toronto around the same time there was the Hebden mission, and they were experiencing similar things and had a connection, and people went back and forth, and eventually in Canada, at least in Toronto, the Hebden mission became synonymous with Azusa Street.

So I'm wondering if that is something similar that happened with Myrtlebeel and George Houghton and Regley Zell, and that whole movement that started that became the latter and then again finding out that I think it was you who said that Myrtlebeel had given a lot of prophecies to people, but one specific was to George, or not George Jim Jones.

And if somebody who could prophesy over Jim Jones is the same person who prophesied over my founding pastors and my family members, then where do you go with that information and how do you make sense it?

Is it from God? Is it something that you need to put credence in, or is it something you just take like, okay, this has... happened and now where do we go from here? Yeah, absolutely.

The thing of it is, I have learned just from human personalities that when two humans are fully aligned and on doctrine and scripture, they're walking together, and then suddenly they hit a conflict in doctrine and scripture.

If the conflict is bad enough that they part ways, never to return, they will often forget about the part where they were hand in hand. And that's really what has happened in this movement.

You've got all of these people who are at these conventions and meetings and all joining together because this latter-rain thing was spread all throughout the United States and Canada. These people were fully walking in one accord they thought.

And then suddenly there's the biggest division in Pentecostal history. You had those who stuck with the latter-rain and those who denounced it, that created the schism that no longer are these two people in alignment, scripturally, and they don't really want to talk about the parts where they were.

And that's really the funny part about it is that's the area that I want to be in because it shows all the connections and how the doctrines cross-pollinated. Going from with that, like how it cross-pollinated and continued on, like the PAOC I mentioned last time, formally denounced the latter-rain movement.

They went along with the same kind of framework that the assemblies of God had in the United States. And the way the PAOC is formed as a fellowship, not as a strict denomination, allows a lot more autonomy in local congregations and local pastors to be able to fellowship with one another under that Pentecostal assemblies of Canada label, but still be able to bring in who they want, preach what they want, as long as, at least publicly, they're willing to, say, we adhere to these core set of beliefs or doctrines.

So that's, and my church that I grew up and murdered the congregation, the whole time, they just publicly, openly claimed to be a latter-rain movement. And like the last time it wasn't until later on that they actually joined the PAOC.

But like all that to say, I was brought up in it. I have experienced all the Pentecostal things that you could probably think of. Like I've spoken in tongues, I've been slain in the spirit or falling out or however you want to say it.

Like I've had those experiences. I was a young teenager or pre-team during the Toronto blessing and visited there. I'm predisposed to believe all the stuff that is going on, all the stuff that's happening.

And I'm still finding myself at this stage in my life and my... or he's coming back and wanting to look at what the Bible says, what is true, and how do I reconcile the history of things that have happened, positions that people or groups have held, and try to make sense of it from a biblical understanding, not just going along with it because that's what I've heard my whole life.

Yeah, and that's really what interests me about this particular subject. So we're talking about dominionism. Whenever I go back through the theologies that the people were introducing into the movement, you can tie those directly to some of the New Apostolic Reformation structures that exist today.

New Apostolic Reformation really isn't anything new, in my opinion. They've just rebranded what was latter-rain in some of the core concepts before the split happened. And some of the early concepts, it was like Joel's army.

So if you go to IHOPKC, you're looking at Joel's army manifested sons of God, well, all of that came directly from latter-rain. So you had a group of people who before the split happened, they were starting to get so supercharged with their theology that they thought they were going to conquer the world in Jesus' name, and then Jesus would return.

And that's how the Joel's army manifested sons of God began to take shape. Now not everybody adopted that, but there were people that were proposing that. And if you follow that out to its logical conclusion, you end up with dominionism.

And that's really what I think a lot of people miss, because when you think dominionism and you look at the news, you think this is a relatively new thing, this New Apostolic Reformation thing, but it's not really, it goes all the way back to 1947.

When I've heard about it, or heard sermons, or heard it preached on, like those terms are familiar, Joel's army and all of that, it's all wording and stuff like that loaded language that is so familiar to me.

But the way that it's been presented to me isn't quite, it doesn't seem to be quite the same as what a lot of people that I've heard on the podcast and in other places have understood it to be.

So that's why I wanted to talk about it. It kind of starts with this use of that loaded language and how a lot of people will in their sermons front load the message with proof texts and truths from the Bible and present that up front before throwing out a fundamental, I don't know how to say it, like a takeaway of a truth or something they want you to get that isn't from the Bible, it's something that they fabricated or they've come up with from those proof texts.

I can think of a few, that's just kingdom principles or you need to have provision for the vision. God's anointed. A big one that's going around right now where I am is expectancy is the breeding ground for miracles or faith will never explore what we don't see as possible.

And all of these things, all of these sayings is kind of just like a word salad. They're saying things after presenting truth from the Bible that don't make full sense and don't completely tie into what the text that they're trying to use a reference. And it's usually followed with some type of follow up to the congregation if it's like trying to get validation like saying amen or hallelujah to their own sayings or asking people like, well, does that make sense to you and get one in that validation? If they're not doing that, it's usually the the opposite of condemning the congregation saying like, well, that was

an underwhelming response. I'll try it over here with this group. And that manipulation of the crowd trying to get you on board and kind of run past quickly that thing that they threw in that just isn't quite right. I don't know if you saw it from the 90s, but the Batman movie from the 90s is still my favorite Batman. And Joker, he plagues Gotham City with all of these cosmetic products and you've got the lipstick and the hairspray and different components. But if you put the components together, it turned into this acidic thing that changed people into Joker face.

And so it wasn't just the hairspray, you had to have the hairspray and the makeup whatever it was. I look at it much like that. There are so many doctrines that are benign, but whenever you take one doctrine that's just slightly off the mark, combine it with another one that's just slightly off the mark, you get this thing that's going to turn you into not Joker face, but into this, I don't know, this new apostolic theme that has developed that can be destructive. I think that's how I say it.

I got into a lot of trouble when I first started studying John Wimber and I published the John Wimber page. I was talking about kingdom theology. I read it, reading it from all of the components, not just the components that he was bringing in. So when he's talking about the kingdom, he's definitely not talking about the kingdom in the same way some of the new apostolic reformation people are. But I'm looking at it from a lower level of how all the components work together. And I see nothing but the same thing. So when I wrote the page out, I got people just,

I got all kinds of hate mail. They said, no Wimber wasn't like this. But if you really understand where that developed from and how it developed into this weird mess that we have today, you start to be scared of it. In Gotham City, the people would just throw out the hairspray even though it took both components to mess your face up. They're not going to is the hairspray anymore, they'd throw it out.

And I'm kind of that way if it's not something, if you have a doctrine that you can't fully prove by the Bible, in other words, it's the Bible doctrine and something else. Why would you want to something else?

That's the question that I have. And when you think of the simple gospel, it's not a gospel of emotions and doing the stuff as was presented. It's a gospel where you're loving one another and Jesus will come because we're good people, not because we're coming out to conquer.

So when you have all these components that end up into an actual army of conquerors, as Mike Bickle, some of the former IHOP KC people put it, Mike Bickle was saying things like, there will be actual bloodshed.

And they were talking like he was going to enjoy the bloodshed. When you get to that level of mindset, how can you pair that with Jesus saying, love your neighbor as yourself? And what you just said there before you're saying, why would you want the extra bits kind of thing?

Like I heard, I think you were talking with Brantley on one podcast where you came to that saying of chew the meat and spit out the bones. And I've heard that my whole life, you just got to chew the meat and spit out the bones.

Take what's good, just ignore the stuff that doesn't quite fit because there's good stuff in there. Or I've heard people talk about Mike Bickle or people from IHOP KC saying, it's the hamburger helper.

It just enhances it. If you want the truth of the gospel, if you want the truth of what the Bible says, you don't need to add that extra stuff. And like you said with Wimber and how a lot of the NAR stuff about the kingdom, it seems like it's all one and the same because taken to its logical conclusion, that's where it ends up.

And yeah, he might not have completely held the same ideas, but that's where you get to. And that's kind of where I'm coming at this idea on Dominionism from. I never heard it presented to me in the circles that I was in as a physical dominion, like not a literal army that's raising up and not going to be literal bloodshed, but a spiritual dominion and a spiritual army.

And that leading into the end times preparation for revivals or like there's gonna be mass revivals. There's one guy I'm thinking of specifically for 50 years he's been talking about a massive Canada wide revival and he's giving his life to that because of what he, a vision he had when he was at a Catherine Coulomb in meeting.

And I'm all for revival, I'm all for people coming. to know Jesus. But when you draw it out and when you take it to it's complete like the thought process, it can easily get to that physical arm and that physical dominion that you're seeking control and power. And a lot of these guys, they don't seem to recognize that.

Well, the problem is from my understanding of how it works psychologically, people begin to disassociate whenever you start talking in non-physical terms. So we're talking about these things that are happening in the spiritual and you have to believe it even though it's not fully described in the Bible. You're going a little bit beyond the Bible and you're having to pretend like they're picturing it. Well, you start to disassociate from reality. The problem is when you're disassociating to a militant form of a fictional reality or a fictional is probably the wrong word because there are people that truly believe it is their Christian concept. But

when you're believing in something that can't be proven by the Bible, I'll say it like that. And you disassociate and it's militant. There are people that will go the militant direction. They're just not capable of reeling themselves back in. So you start to spiral out of control. And I think, I truly believe in it's my opinion, people can take it or leave it. I think that is why it developed into the actual physical army concept. I think people were disassociating. Yes, it's militant.

Branum used militant language all through his sermons. I grew up with it. When we were children, we would walk down the Isles to Sunday School singing onward Christian soldiers were marching as to war. So you get this war concept as even from an early childhood age. Well, there are people that spun out of control and they went kind of nuts with this. So I think there's a there's a heavy psychological problem. But when you go to the root of it, it is a theological problem.

They're not grounded in simply saying what the scripture says, they want the hamburger helper. And I've had the real and I've had the hamburger helper. And I got to say, I like the real stuff a lot better. You said that song. I've I grew up singing that song in Sunday School and in church.

And I always was able to dismiss that idea of or the ideology of dominionism as being a negative thing because it was always couched as having a concern for non-believers to come to Christ.

It's couched in a way and presented in a way that is saying people need God. They need Jesus. They need to know Jesus. And we need to be able to share the gospel with them. And I believe that that's a good thing. But because of how it gets presented in that way, then it's taking the ideas of those encompassing ideologies from proof texts that are out of context from the Bible. And then Like we said, like twisting it to become something that the Bible isn't quite sane.

So like the couple examples would be like the Lord's prayer even your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And if your kingdom needs to come on earth as it is in heaven, then we need to be doing stuff to see, to make that a reality, to make your kingdom come.

Whether it is in that literal physical sense of an army in establishing a kingdom and having dominion in the seven mountains or if it's that more spiritual aspect of, we just need to see revival happen and see people come to Christ.

But it's all connected there. And even the Great Commission, like when Jesus said go and make disciples of every nation, then that being taken to say, see that's a call for everybody to, we need to go out like Canada needs to be a Christian nation and disciple other nations.

But is that what it's really talking about or is it talking about individuals knowing who Christ is and individuals from every nation having the chance, the ability, the opportunity to know Jesus personally in a relationship as their savior?

Again, it's that proof texting, that taking things and then using their loaded language to twist it in a way that presents the dominionist ideas or ideals but then not present the gospel like clearly and accurately.

It makes me think of in the Pentecostal circles I grew up in there, it's a term called the full gospel. I don't know if you've heard that. But this idea that the gospel is not complete just talking about Jesus.

You need to have the power of the Holy Spirit present and seen through these miracles and gifts and signs and wonders. And if you're not seeing that, then you're missing out on the fullness of the gospel and divine healing is incorporated into that.

And it's all a mess of stuff that gets twisted into this push of, we need to see the kingdom come now.

We need to be a part of making the kingdom come on earth as it's supposed to be in heaven or will be in heaven. And it's just twisted in a way. I don't see that when I read the Bible when I read the text for myself.

There's so much to unpack in what you just said. I actually think you might have to come back a third time. So when Jim Jones, you mentioned Jones earlier, when Jim Jones left the Methodist church, he left because it was during the height of the Laterane movement.

And you could clearly tell a Laterane Pentecostal church from a non- Laterane Pentecostal church because in their advertisements and the newspapers they had full gospel. And what this meant to the full gospel, Pentecostal churches of that era.

FF Bosworth and others had taken the idea that healing was in the atonement and then flipped that on its head and said, how do you know you're saved? Well, you're saved if you can be healed.

So they combined the two. So salvation and healing were one and the same. And Brannum would say things like, how can I teach him algebra when they don't even know their ABCs? Meaning we need a gospel that's more full and complete than the church down the street.

So we have something that's greater than the gospel. And anytime you think that you have something greater than the gospel, it isn't the gospel. It's something else. You know, there's that something added. And it comes down to this problem which you just hinted at.

I'm gonna go there with you and see if you follow me. Whenever this was spreading, it was spread by a lot of people who did read their Bibles but didn't fully understand their Bibles or the Covenants.

And I was of that mindset. When I left, I was 37 years into this cult. I left and I was a little surprised when I started going to a church that was actually teaching Sunday school and teaching all of the stuff in the Bible, not just the parts that sounded good to the religion.

And I'm learning, well, wait a minute, the old covenant and the new covenant and understanding what all of this meant, what the mosaic law was, how it was applied, why the blessings to Israel, why the curses came, why the prophets came to say, this thing will happen to you into the future because you failed the law on this one aspect and this is the curse that I promised you.

So the prophets weren't for fortune tellers. None of the Bible really read the same ways it was taught to me for 37 years. Here's the problem. In the mosaic law and the old covenant, there were provisions for Israel's conquest of land as they were going to their new territory and there would be things in the Old Testament like possessed the land or occupy and there were militant words in it because it was a militant type operation in some circumstances.

You can read the Old Testament and you can find where there are provisions. If you go into a territory, you even, in some cases, you even got some of the wives. It was, that was how the verbage is.

I grew up with sermons where they would have a position on something modern and they would start with an Old Testament passage and they would just read two or three verses about this militant thing and then they would talk about the common politics of today.

Well, in your mind, you're linking those things together and you're basically taking people out of the new covenant into the Old Covenant but specifically choosing the ones that are going to supercharge you against whatever is the agenda of the preacher.

That may be all well and good because you're reading the Bible to do it but you're kind of twisting what the Bible is saying to the heads of the people, especially... those who don't really understand the covenants and understand that history, I didn't understand that history.

So I was filled with all of this militantly charged nonsense. And what's funny is when I talked to my peers who were in the movement who are still kind of beholden to the movement, they'll say, it wasn't like that.

We didn't have anything militant, but they never made that connection in their brain between, well, wait a minute, he's reading a very, very militant verse from the Old Testament and he's given us this modern concept that we're supposed to link it.

How else do you read that? Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William 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 McCummery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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My experience is kind of similar, different in a way, because I was taught to take those kind of passages in the old covenant examples from the mosaic on what Israel was meant to do coming into the promised land and the conquest that they were meant to take over the nations that were there.

But it was always under the umbrella of as believers in the new covenant, like using kind of verses like Galatians 4, I think it's 6 and 7, where it talks about us being adopted as heirs when we believe in Jesus as our Savior.

And because we're heirs in this family of God, we're co-heirs with Christ, we are taking on the identity of what Israel was meant to be in the Old Testament and in the Old covenant, but we are now in a sense Israel for today.

And when we're Israel for today, when we are co-heirs with Christ, then we're able to claim the promises that were made to Israel for ourselves, no matter where they are in the Bible, no matter what the context was or what Israel was going through at the moment that promise was spoken to them.

Jeremiah 29-11 is a really popular one. I even have a plaque of it on my wall of I know the plans I have for you to clear to the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you hope in the future.

And that's a great and encouraging word, but it was written to Israel while they were in exile, encouraging them to take roots and live their lives while they were there because the fulfillment of God's promise was that there was a certain time they would be in exile before he brought them back.

So while you're there, do what you need to do, he has plans for you. But then taking that kind of idea and applying it to anyone today saying, well, you can take any promise that was made to Israel and apply it to you because you are in a sense Israel, because you've been adopted as an heir when you know Jesus as your Savior.

And you can take different things like even Psalm 72 is a big one about having dominion from sea to sea. And if you read through that, that was a verse that was used in the Constitution of Canada.

And it's been a prophetic word in the circles that I've been raised up for Canada my whole life because we have the Pacific coast and the Atlantic coast. We have the St. Lawrence Seaway and Hudson's Bay, like north to south, east to west.

The verbiage looks like it can apply directly to us as a nation. And then taking that and saying, well, that is proof that Canada is going to have revival. Canada is going to be a Christian nation.

But it's not about us having dominion. It's about God having dominion. And it's about recognizing his place, his authority over his creation, right? It's not something that has to be twisted in a way that you make apply to yourself when it's not even about you.

And just that going back to that idea of like being able to claim these promises. And also it makes me think that if you take it to its logical conclusion, you get into this idea of almost British Israelism of we are Israel.

We are God's chosen. And anything that the Bible says is a promise to the people of Israel is ours. And you take that to the extreme. Like you said, it can be twisted to become that physical dominant dominionism that is again that twisting of the militaristic language to try to make it apply to something that it doesn't actually apply to.

I was actually heading in that same direction. So when British Israelism spread into the United States in Canada, and for those who are unaware of what This is the British, people of the British Isles, there was a growing movement that believed that they were the descendants of the lost 10 tribes of Israel.

And as it spread into the United States, obviously, the people of the United States said, well, we're grafted into this too. So the United States and Canada became Ephraim, if I remember correctly, they separated the tribes that they were to be descendants from.

Well, one of the strongest adherents to this was C.A.L. Totten, who was a military instructor. And he has written, actually, had written a very popular war game book that still was used for strategy during that era.

His books and his language were used as instruction materials in Frank Sanford's Colton Maine. Charles Schwach's poem, as you know, went to Frank Sanford's Colton, John Dowie's Colton. So he's being trained with the British Isles concept and it's being taught in the militant way.

So as this is entering into Pentecostalism, it's being entered into Pentecostalism in the militant way. Now, fast forward through the years, many Pentecostals decided that they don't believe British Islesism. But by the time that they abandoned that notion, they had already created all this building blocks of theology.

And so there were many Pentecostals who were teaching much like I described. This blessing for Israel is also a blessing for us. And so I grew up in circles, for example, who would never agree for British Islesism at all, but they would read an old covenant passage thinking that it applied to a modern time or a modern political issue.

So we were taught to read the Bible as though every passage was written both to Israel and to us, especially from the Old Testament. When you do this and you read those militant verses that are literally talking about wars and conquering of nations as they're making their way into their territory, there's no other way to take it but a military way.

And so the problem, as we fast forward into the New Apostolic Reformation years, the problem is that that foundation of theology did exist. And so it was very compatible with people who weren't even in the New Apostolic Reformation.

That's why this interests me so much, because like you said, you can read that militant language all throughout some of the writings of people that you would never even consider connected to nor. But it's because of the way that they built those building blocks of theology.

Yeah, the way that what I would consider the heroes of the faith, at least from the 17th century on, where the more I look into what they taught and what they preached about, the more I'm learning, so many of them had that kind of a similar foundation.

And like I said, how it's been presented, it can switch. which are not quite go as far and it wasn't taken that far where the people I heard used it, but it can be taken to the extremes.

And I'm just starting to recognize that, like what I've grown up hearing, what I've grown up being taught and the even stuff that I've preached and taught myself over the years that recognizing now there needs to be a more careful examination of what the Bible really says and taking it in context.

A big thing that I've noticed in that is in the Pentecostal circles I'm around, the idea of the Holy Spirit wanting the moving of the Holy Spirit, the manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit and how in practice or in theory I should say, it sounds all good.

It sounds, this is biblical, this is straight from the Bible, but in practice, I'm noticing more and more that it's really not about wanting the presence of God and the Holy Spirit in your life.

It's about seeking power and control, having some type of influence or affluence that you get from being able to say, look at the way the Holy Spirit manifests itself in my ministry and what I'm doing.

And if you don't have that, then you don't have that fullness of what God wants for the church. I've heard you talk about it, I've heard some others talk about it. Even my pastor here, he has some personal connections to John G. Lake, part of his family grew up in Spokane, Washington, right, where he was when he was in the States and just that idea of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit are talked about as the anointing.

You need the anointing, you need the, it also becomes like the force from Star Wars. You can manipulate it, you can use it in a way that other people can't. And if you're strong enough in the force, if you're strong enough in the anointing, if you're connected enough to God, then you'll be able to see and do all these things and have that fullness, like have the ability of that full gospel.

And when you have that full gospel and that power and that annoying, I said annoying, I'm an anointing, you'll see the signs and wonders, the miracles to be able to demonstrate that you have the power.

But if you're missing that, then you're not in line with... what God wants for the church. You're not in line with what God wants for you. I see that connected to dominionism in a way that, honestly, it scares me a little because people don't recognize that the seeking of the Holy Spirit in that sense and just wanting that power, that control over a force, how that pursuit of that power can be twisted in a way, this is proof, this is evidence that you need to listen to me, that I'm the one in charge, that I'm the one in control,

and can very quickly become, or place themselves in a position like a Michael or somebody where it can go to the extremes that it shouldn't be going to. And then the people following them are all caught up in it and they don't realize that the person I'm following is not somebody who's safe.

There's somebody that is taking the Bible and the truth of the word and manipulating it to be able to get other people to follow them without realizing that if they were following what the Bible says, it would actually be calling this person out as somebody who is dangerous and you need to be wary of them.

I don't know if you played this game as a kid in school, but somebody would say a sentence or a phrase, and then the next person would inject a few words into it and watch how the structure of the sentence can be changed to a whole new meaning.

That's really what has happened here when you think about it because exactly what you said, they're seeking the power and the Bible does say these signs shall follow them that believe. And that's the verse that's typically used by most of the people that are seeking power.

But if you add phrases to it, it sounds entirely differently. These signs shall follow them that believe and so therefore you individually must seek for those signs or these signs must follow, these signs shall follow those that believe.

Therefore you must go to this anointed person and he will give them to you. You can add things to it and you make it sound entirely different when you do that, you'll never understand the verse and evil and adulterous generations seeks after a sign, which that's also in the Bible.

Those two are actually incompatible, but you have to add to it. The early church, the way they looked at the gifts was that God is blessing us as a community. God is showing these things that were God's people and he's doing this.

It's not that each individual person tried to become a wizard within the community that they're in, but this has turned into a community of wizards and the modern era. You have to go to the convention, you've got to learn from the Apostle.

It gets really, really weird when you think about it, but that same theme applies to the word overcomer. I can't tell you how many times I heard the word, overcomer in my language. When I go back and I read just the passages that are talking about being an overcomer, it means nothing like that they trained me to believe. It wasn't these in-time mature sons, like they're teaching in Joe's Army, or we call ourselves the bride, really overcomer, meaning that we're a level above the other Christians. We've got the algebra, they've got the ABCs is how they would say it in my group. It's all because you add a few words to it and you change

what the language means. In other words, you're reading more into it than is there. I think that's where the hamburger helper became the real problem. The big thing that I see or that I've noticed where I am is the idea of when somebody says you need to be open to the spirit, don't quench the spirit. You can't question somebody's personal experiences, or if you expose somebody's personal sins, you're going to hurt the movement. This idea of what is my response to that? What should my response to that be? Am I worried about defending person or movement? Am I more concerned about

what the biblical truth of the matter is? What does the Bible actually say about this? Is my faith rooted in the public persona of a person or leader, or is my faith rooted in Jesus?

If I can hear something that is said about a leader or a person, and my immediate response is come to their defense, hide whatever I can, like downplay it as much as possible, to save face for them, then I really need to think like, is it them that I'm focused on or is it Jesus? I think that's really what comes down to the heart of it is so many people are finding the security of their faith in what these people are saying and who these people are presenting themselves as instead of who Jesus is and what the Bible says about him and how we can know him for ourselves

in relationship as our Savior, then it gets twisted in that way that we're lifting up that person, that leader instead of holding true to what the Bible says, and when we do that it is so easy to push for the idea of, well, you just need to have that power and I need to be able to prove that this person has that power of the Holy Spirit instead of really understanding who the Holy Spirit is and his place in our lives as believers. What really comes down to me like as a kind of trying to start wrapping it up

is the understanding of what's my motivation. Am I speaking about this? Am I talking about it? Or sharing about it? Because I want to discredit or tear somebody down. Or am I concerned for the church that they not be led astray? If my motivation is to tear somebody down, I just don't like this person. I don't like what they're saying. I don't click with them in their personality.

Then okay, I just don't need to listen to them. But if my motivation is out of love and concern for the church, for the body of Christ wanting them to know the truth of what the Bible says and the the truth of the gospel, then I need to make sure I'm doing what Paul said to the Corinthians and make sure that it's in love. If you can have the demonstration of the gifts of the spirit, you can have all the signs and wonders. Like you said, the signs and wonders will accompany those who believe. But are the signs and wonders accompanying those who truly believe what the Bible says?

Or is it like the people who come to Jesus and say, look, I prophesied in your name. I did the miracles. I healed people and Jesus says to them, I don't know you. And they're sent away. The way that some of these people are printing what they call the full gospel leads me to think that they actually do believe that they themselves are the ones who truly believe. And they're just caught up. They don't understand that what they're doing is actually not a relationship to God and the Holy Spirit, but they're just seeking that power and that control instead of understanding who

God is and this place in their lives. Well, think of that verse that you just mentioned. Lord, have I not prophesied in your name? Have I not done these miracles? It's always have I not done.

It's not those people were not thinking about what Jesus had done. They were thinking what they had done. And that's really the problem that I see that is the difference. And it goes through every layer of this, every building block of theology that this was built upon takes you all the way to victory. And if you read the biblical version of victory, well, Jesus gave you the victory. It's already done. It is finished, but they have to become the mechanism that's doing the victory and these types of movements because that's the doctrinal framework that was developed

that they're preaching and adding new doctrines to. It's a totally different framework of doctrine. When I realized that, I had to take a step back and think, well, what do I have that's real in my doctrine? And I'll be honest, I just went to a clean...

late. I walked in one day. I've mentioned this before. I'll never forget to look on the minister's face because I sat down. I told him, I'm starting over from ground zero. Tell me why you believe the gospel. What is it? And I just started from ground zero. Nothing was on my slate. And I just started building back pieces. But I took it in this new way.

I wanted to only add a doctor. And if I could find it exactly, word for word verbatim, what they were teaching. And most of the doctrines in you can funnel through. I can't remember the passage. You may know it. But it says basically all doctrines are built in love. Have I become a tinkling symbol of those passages talking about I can do all these great works in miracles. But if I have not love, I'm nothing. So I would take a doctor and I added on, well, can I love my neighbor if I'm believing this? Yes or no? And you can almost build

your entire faith in that way. And it's quite different, a religion than what I came out of. I think that is the hard part for people to understand who are in the middle of that is the idea that it's really focused on yourself and what you can do and what you're doing instead of who is Jesus and what has he done for you and living your life in response to that, not creating or causing it. Even the idea of building your faith, what is your faith rooted in? I've heard so many people talk about that. You need to decree and declare

to be able to prove that you have faith in your prayer language. And if you're not decreeing and declaring things, you don't have faith to see, to understand that it's already been accomplished in the work that Jesus did on the cross. To the point where the guy saying this gave an example of going to the hospital and the doctor telling him he had shingles. And then he looks at the doctor and says, well, no, I don't. I don't have shingles. Yes, you do.

You have shingles. The outbreak is right there on the side of your skin. No, I don't have shingles. And just refusing to acknowledge it, lying to himself and to other people that he doesn't have it, but then still needing to treat it for three days. And maybe it was a miracle that in three days, it was able to be treated and left. You know, I don't know, but maybe shingles last longer for certain people, maybe three days is a typical thing. But just that idea of if you don't have enough faith to decree and declare, then you don't have enough faith to be

in the fullness of what God has for you. And it's just nonsense. The same guy had to later go and have heart surgery. Like, did you not have enough faith to be able to decree and declare that you didn't need the heart surgery and you didn't have problems? It doesn't make sense.

And yet this is the type of leadership that people are willing to put themselves under and follow because they don't completely want to take responsibility of what are we called to as Christians, how are we called to live? We're called to live in response to what Jesus has done for us. I think at the example of the people who come to Jesus and he says, you may like come into the kingdom, you took care of the blind, you went to jail, you took care of the poor, you did all of this and when you did it to them, you did it to me.

And then others come and he says, no, you didn't do this, you didn't do it as unto me. You're not coming in, away from me, you evil doers. I think it was in Matthew. It's either Matthew 7 or Matthew 25. That idea of you're living your life in response to who Jesus is and what he's done, that's what's important. And it comes back to how Paul, again, explained it, if it's not done in love, then it means nothing. It's just a sounding gong or a clinging symbol.

And if we don't understand that, then it's just a vain pursuit. It's going to be seeking that power and that control of showing who God is instead of living your life for him. And that's what I want to share with people or encourage people with is when you read the Bible, it's all there for us to be able to see and to understand. It's okay to ask questions.

It's okay to seek further understanding, but do it because you want to know God.

Don't come into it trying to prove one person right or wrong. It come into it wanting to know who God is and let the Bible minister to you because it's all there for us.

Well, I decree and declare that I won't have shingles because I took the shingles vaccine. And for those who are interested in knowing a little bit more, if you get the antiviral within 72 hours, it clears up very quickly. You can find studies of that online, but the point I'm trying to make is there are things that we try to spin into the miraculous that aren't really that miraculous, but whenever somebody does it, it elevates somebody's faith in the miraculous and the faith is in the miraculous rather than faith in Jesus. That was the mentality that I had. We actually had faith in faith if that makes any sense, but that was the

mentality that I had. So very glad that I no longer have a religion of faith and faith. Thank you so much for doing this. Well, thanks for having me. You've enjoyed our show and you want more You can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. From more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

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