The Self-Vindicating Prophet: How the Cycle Really Works

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at www.Williamdashbranham.org and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder of the Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books, the latest as some said they blundered breaking my decades of silence of Mike Pickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.

Bob, I was thinking of you just the other day, maybe two days ago as doing a podcast and we were deep into the middle of it and we were talking about some subject that's unrelated to what we're going to be talking about today but the thought came to me about vindication. Any time I'm talking to any of these groups, whether it's the group, I came from IHOPKC, any of these groups that have prophetic ministries, they'll say well he's a vindicated prophet and you start to ask them well what does that mean? And they'll usually point to things that the man said that vindicated him

and I'm like well that's circular reason, I could say I'm a vindicated prophet and if you ask me how to vindicate myself I say because I said so but it actually goes deeper than that, you and I have had conversations multiple times about how it's not just the guy behind the pulpit you also have an audience and they feed on each other and so there's the cycle and basically I want to talk today about vindication what that actually means, how does it work, how does it originate, how does a person just suddenly step up and say okay

the entire world is about to end, we're all going to gather into the stadium and Joe's army will come forth, believe me and abandon all of your other preconceived notions of how the world land you know at our age I think one of the things we can probably both testify to is we've seen a lot of stuff said and a lot of stuff forgotten meaning I was finding the vindication thing interesting why do we need to be vindicated in the first place like what's the point of vindication here is this to put another merit badge on our prophetic sash

share I was vindicated in 1957 I was vindicated in 2026 you know the problem is you know where you Where I'm at at this particular point is the level of rightness or accuracy or Authenticity of prophetic stuff these days, you know, is so small I mean in some ways I got to understand the whole vindication thing because like when you're about 99% wrong You know when you get one right it's like oh, I got one, you know, it's like catching fish. I got one You know it's so I think for a lot of these guys that are trying to build a ministry and build a reputation

You know, I I see why they want to be vindicated because obviously it Establishes their credibility the problem is is that there's you get to a certain point This is where I love Ecclesiastes. I can't remember the actual verse, but it's basically where there's many dreams in visions. There's emptiness rather fear God Why is having many dreams in visions emptiness?

You know, that's you know a lot of people will read that but my question always is well, why would I why right and I think a lot of it Has to do with what we know about economics right when you have a bunch of something?

It's not valuable. It loses its value and I If there's a heartache to be honest with you that I have because you know and full disclosure I love the prophetic. I think the prophetic has So much to offer the Christian community my heartache is the fact that it's been so badly abused And so misused That it's lost. It's it's value in a way, right?

It's it's just like we've reached this space where there's just such a Volume level of it people are glazed over now before I even begin my podcast things were just taken too far I don't know if you caught on to this or not Maybe you might not have been in the movement when it got this destructive But as these movements become more and more destructive Should anything unusual or extraordinary happen?

It's always a sign. There's all in some religious doctrine and ties back to it and so As I was having this conversation the other day I was thinking through just that Something unusual happens and it always turns out in favor of the person who's behind the pulpit who's got control of the crowd Why is that so I started thinking just simply through the mechanics of it You have the phenomenon something happened who knows what it was in our Group that we escaped. There was these weird things with clouds in the sky or lights and the

Camera photographs just weird stuff. That's it's unusual, but you can go Oh, right down the line to almost every group, there's something unusual happens. And what happens is after that, the people are like, huh, well, that's unusual.

And then the guy or girl behind the pulpit says, well, that happened because, and they give the interpretation of what the sign means. Because of those two things, and I'll carry on with where that heads, because the person always has an answer for the unexplainable, they always look to this person for the answer to the unexplainable, which creates the cycle that never ends.

Because after he gives the answer to what happened, the people start to use that unexplainable thing, actually as validation of the ministry, of the man who just gave you the interpretation of it. So they're saying what this is a vindicated prophet, because the sign happened.

Why do they say this? Because the guy told them what the vindication is. When that loop begins, what happens is it spins off into authority. If you can get people to believe that you have the answer to all questionable or extraordinary things, and that those same extraordinary things are vindicating you as a prophet, authority, an apostle, whatever, you can take control over the heads of the people.

I think I wrote a little bit about this in my book, because, and again, this is my perspective. You know, other people may have a different one, but I watched Mike do this. And when it was the 1980s, and I was in my 20s, all of our peers were gathered at Kansas City Fellowship, and Mike would get up there, and he would tell these Bob Jones stories, and then it was Paul Kane's stories, right?

And the prophecies were all, and the way that he would use them were a vindication of everything that I'm saying is Mike Bekel, and everything that Bob Jones or Paul Kane is saying, right?

In other words, you know, we're being vindicated, and you need to listen to us, and whatever. And what I saw was tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people, flocking to Kansas City, because of the fact that these stories, these prophetic stories, were vindicating Mike.

And we were all excited about it, right? It's terribly exciting. I mean, it's an adrenaline rush. You know what I mean? It's exciting. It's exciting to go to work. It was exciting to work every day for me, because it was like, oh my God, I'm a part of an end time movement.

You know what I mean? I was a young guy going into the ministry, I wanted to serve God. Like I wanted to be a faithful servant, and oh my gosh, I'm in the heart and soul of it.

I'm in the epicenter of it, right? I mean, Kansas City, like it, people are coming from all over the world, and it's, and what I realized over the course, of time. It was all based on these prophetic words. Like the whole aura of Kansas City was really because of these three prophetic guys and their words, right? Which was so interesting because when we started the church, it was about Mike preaching the gospel and being a Bible teacher, right? And focusing on prayer. Somehow, you know, within four months of the church starting, Bob Johnson had come in and completely taken the whole direction of the church away from

this focus on Bible teaching, right? Because we were evangelicals, right? You know, exegesis, we're going to open up the Word of God and we're going to, you know, we're going to study it too, all this prophetic stuff, right? All this sensationalism. I realized over the course of time, as I got older and began to understand how guys like Mike work, I began to realize how manipulated it all was because what he was basically doing, and I don't know if he was aware of it, like he was cognitive of it, or it was just his nature. But the whole thing, when you, when I sort

of stripped away at all, it came down to this basic thing. What's Mike doing? He's using these three prophetic eyes to vindicate his ministry and to establish the fact he was special, right? He wasn't like all the other guys in the ministry. He had a special calling. It was an elite calling, right? And every, every prophetic thing, you know, every incidence just kept building this pyramid, right? Another layer, another layer of how special it was, all vindicating how special it was, and the transaction was, look, how special I am. I know you want to be special too. And of course,

we all do, right? Everybody that's sitting in a chair that's not in the ministry, they either want their ties and offerings to go to serve God, or they want to, you know, be involved in something, they're not any different than the guys in the ministry. They all want to feel special, right? They all want to feel like they're a part of something, rather, and I started realizing how vulnerable we all are. It's like, oh my gosh, we're all out here desperately wanting to please God. We're all out here desperately wanting to be bonds, servants, and serve, and whatever capacity we can. And

oh my gosh, this is like drugs. This is like Mike and Bob Jones were like pushers, like drug pushers. And instead of it being heroin, it was prophetic words. That read that every few weeks were like another jolt.

You know, another, you know, well, we could be more less extreme than called vitamin B, with a vitamin B in general, right? You know, how they do that in the health clinic. We got a vitamin, suddenly we have all this energy and we're special and we're gonna take the world, right?

And we're being vindicated and I realized, oh my gosh, this is crazy. Like this is a little scary here in the sense. Like, who's checking us? You know what I mean? It's like we're in our own space.

And here's what's, who's confirming all of this? We are, like we're confirming our own stuff. We're vindicating ourselves. And you see what I mean? It's like it's incestuous. And then I started realizing, oh my gosh, this is how people go off the edge.

This is how people go over the cliff. Cause they lose their bearing. It's like you become so full of yourself and you're in your own little bubble and you're self-vindicating, right? Because everybody wants to be, right?

Cause what did all the guys that vindicated get? So you have the guys that need to be vindicated and the vindicators, what did the vindicators get? Lots of money. Cause they got put in the pulpit as guest speakers.

Got big offerings, like $70,000 in the case of I have to vindicate the guys who were in charge. It's like pay for your own praise. Is that a thing? Pay the praise? I think so.

So I'm going to step on a few heads here and not purposefully so, but this is actual history. Oh, like we're so uncontroversial, John. I can't believe you're going to do that.

I'm going to take you back to one of the earliest splits in Pentecostalism. And it's over. I've looked at it in many ways. A lot of people look at this as a historical theological thing, but I actually look at it more related to this podcast than I do the history.

Okay. Picture everything that you and I have said in the past entire series that we've done together. Let's talk about the personality types. Which personality types become a leader? How they usually act? How they usually behave?

It's not that it's a bad thing. Like you said, even presidents use, share the same personality types. That's all accurate if you study psychology. Now, picture this. You had this event happen. It was a revival at Azusa Street.

Everybody starts breaking out and speaking in tongues. And people were coming to get this gift of speaking in tongues. You had among the people who were coming to that revival, those who wanted to learn to speak in tongues.

And then you had evangelists going out, teaching other people how to speak in tongues. So, as these evangelists would go out, they would enter into a church where the minister may not have yet spoken tongues.

What if it was a minister that had that same personality type? Wait a minute. Peter here, these people have something I don't have. And eventually what happened is they started to claim out of this movement that came out of Azusa Street that the evidence that you have the Holy Spirit is whether or not you can do this thing, which is good for the people that can do this thing.

Now, I'll take the other side. What about the Holy Ghost, Field Minister, who knows that he's walking with God, knows that he has the Holy Spirit with him? Is he going to sit back and say, wait a minute, I agree with you, you have the Holy Spirit and I don't.

So there came to be the schism, and ultimately it played a good part into the role of the creation of the Assemblies of God. There were ministers who said, no, that's not the initial evidence of the Holy Spirit.

Some of us also have the Holy Spirit. So with this, that division, if you carried that theme forward, whenever there's an event that happens that's unusual, the thing that happened at Azusa Street, that's unusual.

Well, you had people who are interpreting what this means saying, well, that means we have the Holy Spirit. You don't have it yet. We'll come give it to you. It gets to be this self-fulfilling authority on doctrine and scripture.

If you can do something that the other guy can't, well, you must have something he doesn't, because you're interpreting what that initial phenomenon means. You're triggering me. I just, I'm having flashbacks here. So as you know, we've talked about this.

I'm in Pathic. I feel people's pain and whatever, right? So imagine an empathic person going to a full gospel business men's event with business guys who are all being told unless they speak in tongues, they don't have the Holy Spirit.

And watching very dignified executives who are put in this really awkward situation with a whole bunch of guys staring at him while they're sitting in a chair and guys are praying over him and they're trying to get him to speak in tongues, right?

The confusion in these poor men's minds going, nothing's happening to me. Like I'm not feeling anything. But if I don't do something, I'm never going to get out of this chair because the more time I take, not speaking in tongues, the more extreme this is getting, the more intense it's getting, and the heart of their all trying to make me do this.

And I watch guys either humiliate themselves, right? To not just get it over with, but just make up something, right? Which of course, everybody's going, yeah, it's brother. And then, you know, they're calling me on the phone.

True, it's gone. That was just complete fake. Like, I just wanted to get out of there. You see what I mean? It's like, and yet there's a whole bunch of guys that are bragging to everyone else and we got brothers, I want someone to speak in tongue.

Vindicating them, right, this whole thing. And you're just going, oh, this is bad. I couldn't go to those things. I mean, it got so bad, like I could not be there and feel the anxiety and the shame and the embarrassment that all these very distinguished guys were going through in these high pressure situations.

So I can imagine the zoos of state, right? Because here's the problem. Nobody, when you're in a group situation, there's very few people that have the psychological strength to say, no, I'm not going to be like all the rest of you, right?

That's why we've talked about this before. Why most innovation comes from people they're weird and rebellious? That break the status quo, the popular point of view, they're anti, right? And so in these group situations, this is where I find vindictiveness.

Vindication, such a trap is because what's behind it, right? Everybody's wanting to be accepted. So people will lie, people will manipulate, people will act, we ask, right? They'll just go, oh, yes, of course that happened, right?

You know, can you imagine, like I was in situations with Mike where he turned him to go, right, Bob? And like I didn't know what to do if I was of a different, I didn't know what to do if I was of a different mindset than him.

I would just change this subject, you know what I mean? It's like, how do I extra-dite myself from this very awkward situation right now, you know? So yes, I can see why those uses street and a lot of the panic also, especially, I mean, again, let's unpack the social dynamics.

A lot of this was happening primarily in small rural communities, right? You know, it did happen in some major cities, but a lot of it was happening in smaller, you know, in a lot of the full gospel stuff that I went to was stuff outside of St. Louis or whatever, right, in small communities.

Where everybody knows everybody, they even know you, if you don't go to their church, like these are small communities. And so to be ostracized, right? To be the only one not speaking at all.

So the only one that does it, you know, believe in, and the big urban area is it's a little easier just to disappear, like just not come back to church. Nobody misses you, right?

In a rural area. For everybody knows brother Satsos, not it, not showing up at church, so yeah, that's still a lot of pressure there. So I am also an empath, and I've thought about this in many ways.

It's funny because I've studied quite a bit of histories of Pentecostalism and how it morphed into laterane, healing revival, et cetera. Not many people talk about this because it is just a bit offensive to the people who are of the mindset, you know, so I know I'm stepping on heads and I'm not meaning to, I'm trying to delicately walk through history.

But now let's carry it forward to the healing revivals. You had those people who believed that speaking in tongues was the initial evidence. If you could speak in tongues, you had the Holy Spirit.

If you couldn't, we need to give this to you so you can get the Holy Spirit. You had the people who broke away and said, no, no, no, I have the Holy Spirit. What in the world are you talking about?

I know my walk with God, so they kind of split and this was a major schism. Well, what happens when you get bad apples in that part of the schism who also have the same personality type?

Well, you guys are wrong. I have something you don't have. You must be lying. I must have the Holy Spirit and you must not. And so this idea began to develop that healing was the evidence and they reframed it, refraised it.

Basically what they said was that the healing was in the atonement and if you had the atonement, if you were saved, you could be healed. And if you carry that out to its logical conclusion, if you're not healed, your salvation must be questionable.

And I've read studies on this. You can read Christ, the healer, etc. or there are different books written by these guys. But they try to bundle healing in salvation. And so the person who's really suffering, the person who isn't getting healed, maybe you have cancer, maybe you're crippled, whatever it is, will you actually start to question, well, am I saved?

Do I have the Holy Spirit? What have I done to offend God? And you had leaders who were in that movement who may have had some condition and yet they believed that they had the Holy Spirit, they were preaching.

So you were literally creating a schism that had a group of people that were trying to say that they were better than the ones who believed that the initial evidence was speaking in tongues.

But also they were offending anybody who had some sort of an affliction. That for me turned into something that's really, I really struggled whenever I think back of what people must have suffered going through that.

You know, unpacked the psychology of it, which is basically personalities. You could almost, I mean, I know there's more than two, but I'm just saying I could think of two types of people within the church world.

Those that need to be right and those that need to be popular, right? So you need to be right people. tend to gravitate towards theology and academics and Bible schools and Bible college it, right? In other words, they want to get their facts right. But a lot of the guys that, and especially this is true for the guys that are trying to build big churches and parent church ministries, they want to be popular. And understanding that motivation is, to me, very critical and understanding why they do what they do, right? You know, if you're a tenured professor at a

university there's, you know, being right, you know, which is as far as I have a couple of professors in my family and you know, it's like they said, well, we write books, but nobody reads them. We write books to our peers. Like in that little world, it's all about debating, you know, who's right, but it's a very small little cloistered world, right? And then there's certain engineering type personalities in the church world that will always argue with you about being right. But the vast majority of people just want to be liked and popular. And most of the guys in the ministry, right? So this is where, to me, where it gets,

you know, to some of what you're talking about here, it's like it gets really twisted and distorted because there's an underlying motivation, right? So the minute something doesn't get you more people, the people that are popular tend to jettison it. And what you notice about people like that, and I've, have you noticed this, again, this is just me observing, have you noticed how there's different groups who keep changing their identity? It's like whatever the, you know, because I've seen this, you know, you know, they were a Toronto blessing church, right? They were a vineyard church, or then they were a

Toronto blessing church. Well, then they were an I hop, you know, they were I hop, right? Like they keep changing their name based on what? The latest hot trend within the latest fad within popular fad that's in the Christian world. And so suddenly they're that now, right? And it's kind of like, I mean, gosh, I'm gonna get in trouble with the ladies here, but it's kind of like ladies with their wardrobe, right? It's like, okay, which pair of clothes are they gonna, what's the event? When it closes, am I gonna wear for it, right? And so I see a lot of

leaders, especially in the church role, they just flock to the latest conference, right? And put on those clothes, right? I'm this now, right? And I always ask myself, well, why? And it's like, well, because underneath at the core of who they are, they want to be liked, they want to be popular, right? They want to be You'll walk, right?

And so they end up taking on whatever that is and wearing those clothes. One of the jokes we see about the church world is how everybody dresses like the pastor and his wife. Have you ever noticed that?

You go into churches and there's a culture, right? It's like I was at a church a few weeks ago and everybody's got a beard. Pat and I'm like, why is everybody got a beard here and sure enough the pastor and hops up there and he's got a beard, you know?

That's like, oh my gosh, all right? They're all wearing blue jeans and sort of flannel shirt, you know, or there's like, wow, okay. You know, then you got the suit wearing churches and it's like, we all just humans just do not like to be independent.

I mean, that's really, and when it gets into the church world, it's a vulnerability. It really is and the guys that lead it, they know how to play that card. They're very good at reading people.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter reign charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. So I'm gonna step on a few more heads. Wow, is this step on head day? Okay, you're just being bold today.

Well, basically I'm just walking through history because I will talk about the history that a lot of the people are just a little bit skeptical of and a lot of other people don't really want to talk about yet, they kind of know it.

Right. There are many different schisms that happen and it happened over things like I just described. Pentecostalism has split over various reasons and it always comes down to two different groups of people thinking they're right and the other one is wrong.

Right. That's how any split happens. That's nothing unusual. Yeah, because there's 40,000 Christian denominations to your point, like, are you kidding me? Like, exactly. Why? And have a name, do we need... 40,000 different versions of Christianity.

This is insane to your point. The reason why I'm examining Pentecostalism is because of this one fact. And it does separate Pentecostalism from some of the other denominations of the 40,000. Within Pentecostalism, you had exactly what I'm talking about.

You had this extraordinary thing happen. You had the interpretation of that. That turned into vindication. That turned into an authority of some sort. I know that the early Pentecostals or the true Pentecostals will say, no, no, no, we don't agree in that type of authority.

But remember, those who were at Azusa Street had a higher superiority in transference of this gift than anybody who wasn't there. So you did have it. It was there. Well, so we walked through Pentecostalism when it was birth.

We walked through the healing revival. Now come into the charismatic movement. In the charismatic movement, there's this weird phenomenon that has happened, that changed it from the other versions of this. And that is this fact.

After you get conditioned to interpret signs like this, something extraordinary happens, we look to a person, he's got the answer, why it happened. Well, eventually, over time, now ordinary events turn into supernatural signs.

They can be used for vindication because you've grown so accustomed to doing this method. I remember going to churches where it didn't matter what happened. If something just slightly unusual happened, even if it was ordinary, you would hear the minister talking about it.

Remember when we were at that event and X and Y and Z happened. Well, once ordinary events start to function as a sign, now the spiritual impartation, the interpretation of those events, that starts to increase in frequency.

Because now you've got a lot of events that could be supernatural. Well, to understand that fully, you have to experience it. And charismatic movement basically introduced the idea that yes, we're seeing these things happen more and more frequently.

We need to feel it, we need to be part of it, we need to actively participate in it. And that's where it gets a little bit sketchy because how did they determine which experiences were they supposed to notice and which ones were they not?

That's really the biggest question. A person who's never been in this at all, they've lived as a Christian in some mainstream church that doesn't have any of this type of experience. When they visit one of these churches, everybody's talking about this thing that happened that to them is just an ordinary event.

And they're thinking, I don't know why they really care so much about that. I was at the same ballgame and I saw the same hitter do the same thing. So what happens is once it becomes...

hums, common place, then people start to look for things that aren't really there. For people that are interested in the KCF, IHOP history, one of the interesting dynamics for me is I went back and talked to the people that were at South County Christian Fellowship when Augustine and Colors showed up there in 1982 and Mike Matt with them and he prophesied but there's not a single person that was in that meeting, not a single one who thought one it was about Mike having a special calling that elevated him above everyone else, nor did anyone think Mike was going to leave, I mean that could go on, there's a whole list

of things here that all then became later when Mike presented the story was vindication of what he was doing. See what I mean? It's like that always was kind of like, wow, that's kind of weird, like Mike, you've always used this event, this situation as your vindication for leaving St. Louis and going to Kansas City and starting Kansas City Fellowship except for nobody else in the meeting thought that, like no one, only you, that's kind of odd.

So one of the things that's bothered me, I mean you know how we call red flag right, I've had this red flag for years and the red flag, I have the huge red flag for the charismatic Pentecostal world is self-indication.

It's like, where's, like, and I even remember telling Mike this, it's like, I don't even know another guy here who's got a hidden agenda coming to Kansas City and telling us how awesome we are and how blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right.

It's like, because they all want something. What I'm interested in is somebody who's not a part of our world, we might not even be a Christian who looks at what we're doing here and goes, oh my gosh, this is so authentically something that I want to find out more, like where's that, right?

It's like we have this, you know, I call it self-vindicating but self-perpetuating, so it's like, it's like we're our own engine, like we're feeding ourselves here, like the whole object of the exercise I thought based on reading Jesus was who we are would, you know, would impact those outside of our community.

Hence Jesus goes to a well in a public square and has a conversation with somebody that in his community is their enemy, their religious enemy. He has this conversation with her. She's supposed to hate him.

He's supposed to hate her. In fact, everybody else in his community won't even walk through her neighborhood. They'll go across the River Jordan and go up north on that side and then over to get to Galilee because they will not touch the Samaritan soil.

And here's Jesus having a conversation with her. Here's Jesus going and healing the servant of a Roman centurion. Like the Nazi Gestapo guy. Wow, right? See, this is, and this is how you're getting into the core of kind of the longings in my own soul and why I just get so frustrated sometimes in the church role in the kind of gospel.

It gets us like to me, it's like this stuff that we're supposed to be in possession of, these truths, this understanding, this power, this is supposed to be pouring out for others outside of our community.

Like we're so incestuous, you know what I mean? It's like we isolate ourselves in these self-affirming communities. Like who are we impacting outside? And that's where I just get back to just, you know, with a lot of the people that I've worked with over the last couple of years that have been disillusioned with the, you know, because they were a part of the IHOT machine, right, the machine that was gonna basically impact the world.

And I've basically said, don't give up. Just be that in your own personal life. Like you don't need my bickle. You don't need prophecies to be like Jesus and love and care for orphans and widows in the poor and people in need.

You can do that every day of your life. Go do it. Or do you need to be seen? Do you need to do it in a community where you're getting affirmation and you can, you know, tick and I've ticked on your belt, you know, a little thing.

Oh, yes, I helped the poor person. Oh, he's a dead brother. So look at the ministry he has or the she has, right? It's like we just need all the time to be, you know, vindicated and praised and be seen.

And it's like, I think we're gonna be shocked one day when we get on the other side and we find out who Jesus really honors. I mean, it's probably people we've never heard of.

In a roundabout way, you made it to where I was gonna build up to this great point. I seem to always do this with you, don't I? You do. Well, so I've transitioned through history and we've talked about how it has developed into what it has.

And to speak to your point and to confirm your climax, which matched my climax, once these experiences become commonplace. There is this problem that exists, and this comes also, it ties into a conversation I just had with Chino Ross. In the Bible, there are extraordinary things happen. Yes. But your reading of extraordinary things compacted into a book or a letter. What about the average Christian that never had an extraordinary thing happen? Are they less valuable? Well, the movement started to anticipate extraordinary things happening, and people started saying that you will feel it. You can do the

works and you can feel it. You can do the stuff. You can feel it. Well, they conditioned the people to believe that they needed to experience the extraordinary. And so what happened is the movement started looking everywhere for the extraordinary. What happens whenever you're thinking about a person and coincidentally that person calls you? Oh, that's a sign. God told you to call me.

You know what I mean? People dreaming is something that is a big thing. And not many people understand the psychology of how a dream works. Dream is your brain processing what you're thinking about, what has happened. You could be so intently thinking about a person who's suffering and struggling because you're an empath that you start dreaming about it. Oh, my gosh. God just gave me a dream. And then if the person just happens to do something that even slightly resembles what happened in your dream, I saw a prophetic dream about you, my brother. And it said

that you need to do X, Y and Z. And it might be so far off in left field that it doesn't even match the situation. Or what, and this one really bothers me, preachers will be preaching and they just may casually mention something that just happens to be relevant to an audience member, somebody who's in the congregation. Well, after church, that member of the congregation will come up to him and say, hey, man, you really spoke to me. Did you know that I was doing X, Y and Z? Well, the preacher doesn't know that he's talking about this person. The person doesn't know that the preacher is

not talking about them, but then they make that connection. And because of the way that the system has been developed, they may not even be doing it as a manipulation tool, but the preacher will connect to the person thinking, well, God is using me to speak to you, my brother, my sister.

Right. So you start to see supernatural things where they aren't there. And the question that Chino asks, which is a good question, what about the prophetic that says, you're going to live an uneventful life. You're never going to have anything extraordinary happen to you. You're just going to live. You may be sick for the rest of your life, and you're going to die and go to heaven. That's also an experience, but they tell you that your experience must be something extraordinary. So the point I'm building up to, which you kind of beat me to it is, we were so conditioned to look for

something that is so extraordinary in every place that we began to to see things that weren't there. And we started to devalue our ordinary lives. And for me, that's really robbing people of your existence.

I don't know that I've ever shared this publicly, but I've had a vantage point that maybe most people haven't had, but I have this, for people that don't know, it's not really, I don't do it much anymore, but I've had this consulting counseling organization called Joseph Company Global.

I've been doing it for 40 years. So I move between the business world, the athletic world, sports, arts and entertainment, geopolitical, religious, all of it, right? So I'm in all these different sectors, talking to high profile people, very gifted people in all these different sectors, right?

Some Christian, some not. What's fascinating to me is, and I'm gonna say this, and get me in trouble, I can see no difference, a very little difference between the world outside the church and the world inside the church.

And especially when it comes to what we'll call we define in the church world as a spiritual experience, a prophetic word, whatever. I can act on, you know, because of professional reasons, I can't unpack these stories, but I will say this.

I can tell you that some of the most innovative, most influential people that are not in the church world are who they are because of spiritual experiences. They've had ideas that literally came out of nowhere, like they weren't thinking about it, weren't studying it, literally dropped in.

I know of situations where people have had dreams. My whole point here is this, we think because we go to a church and we are in the church world that somehow we're in a special space, that we're special to God.

What I've realized is God is the God of creation. And he's at work as much outside the church world as he is inside the church world. And because of the fact that the people outside the church world don't have this need to tell everybody, I got a word from God, but they won't tell you, God talked to me.

Well, if it wasn't him, it was something spiritual. I had an experience and I'm talking about, I've had hundreds of these stories of people who are not in the ministry. So this is, and the reason I'm sharing this, This is so you guys have some frame of reference of why I'm I have the perspective that I do and why when I get into the church Roll and I hear I see all the preachers suddenly make a big deal about all of that. I'm going. You're not special.

You're not different. You're not unique. You're not better. Like I mean, and here's why I mean some of the people that have had these experiences are running some of the most impactful companies and organizations and are in some of the most influential places that you guys can't even touch.

And so it's kind of like I know this is it's kind of like what was that movie with I think it was art. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito is like you have this giant and this little midget guy.

Well, we're the mid the church world is the midgets. I'm just telling you when it comes to spiritual experiences, you're the midgets. What you think is a big deal in terms of right now, I don't want to demean the fact that those, you know, that they can help an individual.

What I'm talking about men and women who have it had experiences that have changed nations in history that the church world can't touch. So I have this. That's why I wrote the book in the company of Joseph. I was trying to get people to understand that what God is doing and who he works through is way bigger way broader and way more diverse than you can even possibly imagine. You think it's you think God needs to work with Christians. In other words, you think he's limited to only people that believe in him. If he's really the creator of the universe, right?

You think he's limited to our little puny clubs? No, he is at work in all kinds of situations. And I have had I have watched people sit in front of me and break down in tears going if anyone ever knew that I am who I am because of something that was given to me that I never even asked for the guilt. I've had to deal with a lot of people who feel guilty. Like what's that called imposter syndrome? I'm not right. It's like, I mean, you heard, you know, you know, you're a musician, right?

You know, I think it was Paul McCartney, the song yesterday, just dropped, dreamed it, never wrote it, never came up with it. It just dropped. You know, I don't Taylor Swift has had those experiences. It's just they get dropped, right?

And then you know it in the music world. It happens all the time. I mean, there's guys that have worked on a song for 10 years, right? And there's moments where it's just like, whoosh. It's like what they call it lightning and a bottle, right? It's just there.

I know this has happened in the IT world. It's happened in the sports. in all kinds of things, moments where people can go back and go, that was supernatural. I have no idea where that came from and why that happened, but that just is not normal.

So, that's, you know, sorry for ranting here, but it's where my perspective comes from, because I have first hand knowledge of God moving in a lot of different ways. And so, I get kind of frustrated when I watch the church world go, it's like we're an exclusive little club and God only talks to us and we're special. And I'm like, no, you're not.

You haven't seen it yet, but I just recorded a podcast. I think it comes out before this one. Who owns the Revival Culture? That's one of the big problems with the revival culture is when you're in the revival culture, you think, well, God can't operate outside of this.

Well, what about the other church that God is operating? And a lot of people accuse me of being against the gifts and not believing in all of the experiences. It isn't that at all. It's just that I have seen what happens whenever a person starts saying God told me because some experience happened and I was there for the original experience and I know exactly why the original experience. Well, my question is, why does people need to know God told you?

See, when somebody says to me, God told me, you know, the first thought that goes through my mind, why did you need to tell me that? Why don't you just tell me what God told you and let me determine whether God told you that? Because I don't know. You see what I mean? It's like, I'm sorry, but this is what happens when we get to be older. You just start looking at this going, oh, wait a minute. I'm in front of a wannabe. Somebody who's desperately needing, right, they got to add the God told me on it, you know, to, you know, give a little extra juice to what they're saying.

And to let me know that they're a God here. They got the red phone to heaven and God, I don't need to know that. I'll know that by what you tell me, right? It's like, and that's why I just, again, it's this whole culture. The God told me culture. Like, where did that come from? Right?

Again, to me, it's rooted in insecurity, low self-esteem, a need to be seen as special, a need for valedict. Like, I could go on and on and on. Just tell me what you think? I don't know if it's God. Penny will drop. I mean, all the time, I could tell people right away.

Because it'll suddenly, you know, because to me, I know it's God because it'll be a key. Does that make sense? When you know it's God, it's always a key to something, to unlocking something, right? Because that's really kind of what proficiency should be. It should unlock something.

And so I'm in a situation somebody comes to me and because I had this sense blah blah blah blah. I go, oh my gosh. That's the key That's what I needed to unlock. Thank you. That was God And if you tell me that was God, I know When the end it turns into a tool for manipulation think about this think about the minister who's up there behind the pulpit And he says I think we should do this Well then people in the congregation can say well, I agree with you pastor and they can do it or they can say

I don't know if I agree with that. Let me think about it. You get the choice, right? But instead if they say well God told me we need to do this Well, you're questioning God if you question it's manipulative. That's really it's manipulative It's that's one of the big problems, but it's corners you right? You're cornered now Like what are you gonna do? You got your only response is to reject God

Or go, oh brother, thank you for hearing God, right? It's like you only have two choices And so yes, I you know and again, this is just me being me, but I just find the whole God said The whole need for vindication to be rooted in some very broken dish functional human Soul issues, right? It's it's just this need to be validated This need to be vindicated this need need need to be seen this need to be valued, right?

I mean, it's it's needy, right? It's just so in my Sorry guys, but in my I call it my Economy my spiritual economy when you come to me with God said to me her God showed me My first reaction is I'm sorry. You're so needy

That's where my brain goes Oh gosh, I'm dealing with somebody you that needs to be validated somebody that right? This is really actually now I think about it. It's more about them than it really is me getting the word Right is like this is really about you not me. I saw this I mean, I just I think I should share this story with you, but Bob Jones's impact at KCF was so Incredible that I watched the whole group of people that had come to pray and study the word Suddenly turn into all these prophetic wannabes who could not have a conversation with you with that out without it's starting with God showed me

Like it's just literally every single day 50 times a day. I was confronted with well God showed me in a dream God gave me a word Brother like it's just like it became the thing and suddenly we were this whole church of wannabes like prophetic wannabes like everybody wanted to be like Bob not this Bob the other bomb

showed me right and then what even got weirder was they had to tell me the dream which was like something from an LSD trip of all these types and right and then you're sitting there going through 10 minutes or something that's like a bad drug trip only for them to be the only one that could then interpret it for you what it was that all this meant I just told you can we just get to the end like tell me what the point is here kind of the cliff notes version or can I just have the

executive somebody's can we get to the point here and the reason was again they were so needy they were spending 10 minutes trying to get strokes and validation and be seen as sub right that's what I mean it was like oh my god I'm sitting here having to go through somebody's painful dysfunction and right and I guess I'm a pastor at the church I need to be nice about this but you know most people out there got to a point where they just couldn't deal with and they laughed this is one of the things like everybody brags about you know how many people came to KCF and how many came to

I have you know what they never talk about was for every one person that came there was 100 that laughed yeah hey couldn't deal with it you know it's just like can we can we have some like authenticity here can we fight is there doing normal here do we have normal people it's funny because what about the people that come up and tell you this who's the one who stands up and says well that's interesting God told me something different right I mean that can happen right well it's Elijah and the prophets of bail right it's a battle for it's a battle of the prophets we don't have any of those

like we can have wwp worldwide prophetic wrestling right we can like start a whole thing let's get these two opposing prophets in a ring and battle it out for who's I'm sorry I'm just being weird here but it's just I mean it's just my brain goes there right it's like it's what it feels like well if anything we can stop it from going there by what we're doing but honestly I see it actually going to something like that if it continues this well I just say one thing just in closing and I think you'll concur with this there's something else coming and my point in this

is because we're so needy there's gonna be another i hop another wings of healing another panic hostile movement and why do we know this because we if you go back and look at our previous episodes we've taken you back hundreds of years and showed you the pattern there's a pattern here there's a need that humans have we all want these validations in the supernatural experiences so I'm just waiting sorry I'm the old fart now sitting you know in my rocking chair going okay what's coming next you know it's like I feel like I'm sitting at one of those just

watching the cars go by there's another one coming there's another big movement coming that will all be about you know how special you are and how special they are and they're all connected to God and they'll be sweeping thousands of people into it absolutely we're getting ourselves into trellis John but you know what we're both at the point of our life it doesn't really matter much today this is our this is who we are right 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

from more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation you can reweaponize religion from christian identity to the n-a-r and from more about mike bickle and the ihop k-c you can read some said they blundered breaking my decades of silence on mike bickle the kansas city profits and the international house of prayer

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