Who Invented Modern Spiritual Warfare

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

As many of you know, I have been looking into the history of deliverance ministries and how that evolved over time and shifted into this new Apostolic Reformation idea of spiritual covering and spiritual warfare.

I've had several conversations with Pia Hugo and Franny Nance and others talking about just how weird it has gotten, and I've, it'll probably come out after this podcast, but I was talking with Pia Hugo about just how similar the new version is to Harry Potter.

And we did a whole episode talking about Harry Potter, but all of that aside, it is different, and it is different than Christianity. Anytime I mention this, especially if I mention the name Derek Prince and associate him with some of this weirdness, people seem to get up in arms because so many people have been trained that this is a Christian doctrine, that Christianity supports deliverance ministries, and when you hear somebody come to your pulpit and talk about how they had a covenant of witches attacked their Airbnb, which is an actual thing.

They're taught to believe that is biblical doctrine. Yet at the same time, there isn't a single passage of scripture that ever talks about a cover of witches. And I'll get into that into a bit, but it has changed and morphed to match the entertainment industry more than it has the Bible.

And when you take a step back and you look at all of this from outside of it, just looking into this weird box, what you find is people are just so filled with the entertainment side of the industry that they kind of lose focus of what the Bible actually says.

And whenever a minister steps up and says, I was attacked by a covenant of witches, nobody stops to think, there's the Bible even support the theme of a covenant of witches. It's really odd. I mean, it's really odd.

So today I wanted to talk through that, and I wanted to go just a bit deeper with the comments that I've made about how different it is than Christianity. And one of the advantages that I have, all things out in the open, My family escaped one of the most destructive cults that has been created by all of this mass, and that was branemism.

Whenever I talk to people who are in the support groups, who have escaped from different groups, branemism, those people are really, really struggling to cope with what all has happened to them. It's so far more destructive than some of the other groups.

But yet at the same time, some of the other groups have very destructive themes, just being one of them. The idea that they should fear witches and covens of witches. Well, in the branem movement, we were stuck in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

We listened to the recordings of branem from 1947 to 1965, and our mindset was stuck in themes like the Cold War of the 60s. We were taught the version of deliverance that was inexistence in the movement that evolved into the charismatic movement from the 40s, 50s and 60s.

So my mindset is of that nature. Whenever I came out of this and I started experiencing Christianity outside of the 40s, 50s and 60s, I found it odd because it was eerily similar yet far worse.

I'll just say it like that. And when I began studying the Bible for myself, reading it, covered it, covered it over and over again, what I found was what we had with so far antibiblical, that it was unimaginable that this entered into the Pentecostal movement.

And then that was the foundation for what was developed from it. And so I want to talk through that. This will be a podcast talking about the shift in spiritual authority. But I'm focusing on the themes of deliverance, of spiritual warfare, of spiritual coverings, all of these things.

And for me, having read the Bible, covered it cover multiple times, and understanding what the Bible says without all of the weirdness that is being taught. What I found was this. In simple Bible terms, God is the one in control of the spirits.

And that wasn't what we were taught in branimism. So I'll divide this into six, approximately six different categories. But starting in the first century, studying what Christians believed in the first century, God is in control.

The early Christians believed that Jesus Christ had common through the power of Jesus Christ. There was authority over the demons, but it wasn't something that they did so much as it was by Jesus Christ himself.

Authority of the spirits came from Christ. And the kingdom of God basically displaced the entire authority of demonic power. So there was no need for secret knowledge or techniques in combating the spirits. You wouldn't find a handbook that's teaching you to do deliverance ministries.

back in those days, because they weren't looking to themselves as the people who were in charge over the spirits. They were looking to Christ who had came conquer the spirits and ascended to the throne.

And that's really the key difference between Christianity and what we're going to talk about today. That shift in power and authority is significant. In the Laterane movement, whenever William Brannum started to preach the deliverance ministries, the early stages of the deliverance ministries, he changed it significantly in the claim that he himself had the authority over the spirits.

I remember sermon after sermon where the preaching would end, the prayer line would form. And right before the prayer line began, he would say, now I take every spirit in this building under my control.

And to the person in the seat, they're not really looking at Jesus Christ who had died and risen and taken authority over the spirits. They're looking to the man on the platform. He's the one who just said, I have control over the spirits.

We'll talk about that in more depth, but that was a significant shift. There were people who had attended the revivals and left and said, we don't believe that this is Christianity, that these divine healers have the power that they say.

And whenever they would leave and they would talk negatively or critically about the revivals and the way that it was being presented, those who were in attendance and followed the evangelist or the revivalist, were trained to believe that outsiders who disagreed with this disagreed with divine healing in general, which isn't the case.

And we have an example on the website of this, the most famous and brannemism in the latter reign, actually famous even to the extent of what's happening in New Apostolic Reformation, was Reverend Best, Reverend Best opposed William Brannum and FF Bosworth and said, I don't believe in the way that you guys are teaching divine healing.

He was a Baptist minister who actually did believe in divine healing and published books on the subject. He just did not believe in the authority that these ministers were claiming to have. And so they held this debate and during the debate, they captured a photograph and the lighting makes it look like William Brannum has a halo above his head.

That halo is referenced by ministers today in the New Apostolic Reformation. So it was a shift in authority and that shift went from God to the man on the stage. Then we have number three, the deliverance specialist who develops the system. Interestingly, Brannum had a pardon this as did Gordon Lindsay, his campaign manager.

They began holding these deliverance seminars, training others to do the same stage acts and that's really how this all developed. This was bringing in people like Derek Brannum. Basham, A. Allen. If you go from the 1960s into the 1970s, this is about the time the shepherding movement starts to form.

And the shepherding movement had William Brannum's campaign manager, Ernst Baxter. Four others were joining together to create this authoritarian structure. And they were claiming spiritual authority, not only over the spirits, but also over the people, which was a little bit disturbing.

Well, this eventually transitioned into around the 1980s through the 90s. Now ordinary believers have that same authority. So it had shifted significantly from God to the man on the platform, to a group of people, these specialists, to now you too can do the thing.

And we're going to give you the power and equip you to do all of the spiritual stuff. Well, that transference of power made things even more complicated because instead of just a handful of people who claimed that they had authority over the spirits, now you have thousands of people who are being taught to believe that they also have charge over the spirits.

And therefore, if we have this many people in this big army of people fighting spirits, well, what happens whenever you don't have enough spirits for all of the people to fight? So authority began to expand into places and regions.

And people were saying, I have authority over the spirits in this particular continent or this particular country. And from the 90s through the 2000s, this was the big deal. We now are fighting this war, and we have platoons that are targeting different regions.

And then later, 2000s to present, it turns into this thing where every believer now becomes a spiritual warrior. And no matter where you go, no matter where you are at, or who you are with, you may encounter a demon or a spirit.

And you may not even know it. It may just be in conversation, and somebody may say something, and that's a demon talking through this person. So when you look at the changes in each era, it's just a subtle little change.

And apparently, not many Christians really caught on that things were shifting away from the core values of Christianity. But if you compare where it was in the beginning to where it is now, it is a significant change.

The early Christians believe that trusting Christ's authority was all that they needed, all that they needed to understand. He was the one who had conquered the unseen world. We in today's world, if you're believing the spiritual warfare thing, you believe that you must see this unseen world.

You must manage and exercise control over it. And it becomes increasingly complex in how you do this, because it's an unseen world. How do you even prepare for an unseen battle? And so when I look at all of this...

transition away from what the Bible says. I have to believe that people were reading other sources outside of the Bible to get this type of doctrine. I mean it's very plain and simple whenever they're talking about Covins of witches and there is no Coven of witches in the Bible, where did it come from?

What what extra biblical source did this come from? And what you find out is if you align each one of these eras with something that was very popular in the secular world, you're going to find that it's like a zipper closing. On the one side you have the deliverance type ministries who are introducing new themes and on the other side you have books, you have movies, you have radio programs, you have publications, all of this stuff that is extra biblical coming into even anti-Christian sources, coming into the movement. And for me looking at it historically that is really significant. If you have a movement that is

feeding on things that aren't in the Bible, can you really say that it is a Bible-based movement? And I simply could not. Before I get into the history of spiritual warfare, I wanted to talk a little bit about what spiritual warfare is not. If you read the Bible and you read it just simply for what it says in context without adding anything to it that is taught by the modern charismatic world today, you can find that it does plainly talk about elements of things that they're using as truth, but they're twisting just a little bit or they're

adding to it. If you read the Bible you can find it talking about demons and unclean spirits, you can find it talking about the authority to cast them out, principalities and powers, demonization, possession, sorcerers, medium, spiritual conflict. You can find almost every element obviously with the exception of Covins of Witches, which is another topic that I'll get into later. But what you don't find are many of the themes that have been added to it. You won't find it talking about identifying territorial demons that are governing cities, for example. The Bible does talk about wars and battles, but what you don't find

is the Bible talking about identifying territorial demons that are governing cities, for example. An example of this is Daniel. Daniel talks about the Prince of Persia, the Prince of Greece, but Daniel is not told to identify them and name their territorial spirits or any additional territory spirits. He's not told to bind them or rebuke them or to map their territory.

Daniel just simply talks about there's a prince of Persia and a Prince of Greece, and historically you can obviously go back and you can find these people that are being referred to. So the Bible does not instruct Christians to identify territorial spirits, to map spiritual strongholds. You won't find it talking about discovery.

bring demonic legal rights. You won't find it talking about researching a city's occult history to diagnose its spirits, for example. It just simply doesn't exist in the context of the Bible. You won't find it saying that we need to identify the spirits through bodily sensations. That's one that I could go off into a full podcast on, but they want you to feel this emotion of this spirit. That's what they're really striving for. If they can get you to emotionally connect, then you will believe more of what they're saying than if you don't emotionally connect. So identifying spirits through bodily sensations is just

simply not something that's biblical. You won't find it talking about finding or closing spiritual portals. That's something that makes great science fiction, but not really a Bible theme, or cleansing the land of territorial spirits. Think of the children of Israel as they left Egypt land. In the greatest example that could have been used for this, they did not cleanse the entire land of territorial spirits. But the modern New Apostolic Reformation has gone so far to extremes, they will ask you to map out demonic hierarchies, something that just simply cannot exist without all of the other things that we've just mentioned

is not in the Bible. You won't find the Bible talking about conducting coordinated warfare efforts against which Covans, because again, which Covans are just simply not in the Bible. You won't find it talking about determining which specific demon causes which specific behavior. That for me is the most manipulative thing that has been adopted by the movement in large is trying to say that if you have a condition, many of which are just simply human conditions, if you have a human condition, you can name this one demon for it. That does not exist in the Bible. And if it doesn't exist in the Bible, how do they know? Who's

the guy who come up with the idea that if you have the demon of hiccups, then demon Ralph is the one who gave you this demon and inhabited your body with hiccups. So you have the Ralph demon. It's just unbelievable the levels that this movement has taken all of this doctrine, compounded upon other false doctrines that really aren't in the Bible, but yet are teaching people that it is in the Bible. And the way that they do this is so insidious because they'll take some far off fantastical doctrine and they'll give you just one element of truth and give you a Bible verse. And they'll say, see, it's in the

Bible. Here's this verse that talks about a principality. Well, yes, it may talk about a principality, but it does not talk about a principality that we can mark in a territory, we can name, and it's going to give you the demon of hiccups. And I realize that's an absurd example, but I have Randy Clark's handbook on...

writing all of these demons and hiccups is truly one of the demons that they're teaching in this weird supernatural doctrine. For me, this just doesn't make sense at all. So understanding what the Bible doesn't say is very critical to understanding the whole rest of this.

If you don't understand what the Bible doesn't say, according to what they're telling you it says, they can say anything that they want and you will believe it because you're not critically thinking about what they're teaching.

That for me, if you take nothing else away from this podcast, that's the most important thing. Critically think about what's being said. And with the spiritual warfare, you can simply say, does that make any more sense than what my 10-year-old would tell me when they're watching Harry Potter or playing some, I don't know, some fantasy game?

This is fantasy. That's really all it is pure, plain and simple. In previous podcasts, I've talked about how the spiritualist craze in the United States strongly impacted the laterane movement. And I won't rehash that history, but you can find it if you go look on the website or look through the podcasts.

But that did not end with the spiritualist craze. That was just one of the occult crazes that hit the United States. There were others, some of which inspired movies and books and all kinds of different propaganda.

One of the biggest was in the late 1940s, in the United States, there were priests of the Catholic Church that performed a series of exorcisms on an anonymous boy. And the boy went by the pseudonym Roland Doe or Robbie Manaheim.

He was apparently a 14-year-old boy that was a victim of alleged demonic possession. And the events of the demonic possession and the exorcism was recorded by the attending priest. This is just another event where two worlds begin to collide.

So on the one hand, you've got the revival evangelists. They're telling every person who comes through the healing lines or the sermons that are preached before the healing lines that if you have a sickness, a disease, a broken bone, it's because a demon has possessed you.

And then in the Catholic world, you have demonic possession and exorcism. And those two worlds are completely separate. So what happens is, because it was recorded, this eventually made it into the newspapers and the newspaper coverage eventually led to fictional stories about the demon possession.

And that actually led to the book and the movie, The Exorcist. So as those paths are starting to evolve and grow and spread, both sides are adding elements of fiction to it. And The Exorcist, it's not a movie that I've actually seen, but I do know about it.

It was actually based on this event that happened in Catholic history. So when you compare the two, from 1949 to 1959, you have this exorcism example. it was reported in the Washington Post. That inspired William Peter Blattie. He's the guy who authored the exorcist. And as that is developing, healing evangelist, healing revival grows in America.

William Brandham describes demons and supernatural discernments as early as the 1950s. Did he read this newspaper article? I don't know. But through cross-pollination, these ideas were beginning to spread. And it was spreading in the other worlds, not the religious world, but Catholic world into the newspaper world, into the fictional world at the same time that it was spreading within the laterane revivals. Fast forward to the 1960s. From 1960 to 1969, there is this weird occult revival in the West. You have witchcraft and satanism becoming far more visible.

You've got rosemary's baby, which was a popular novel in the late 1960s film in 1968. This is the same time that Derek Prince begins to talk about his sustained deliverance ministry, and charismatic renewal begins to spread. Deliverance became a major teaching emphasis at the same time that this occult revival is happening. Was it specifically targeting the popularity of the occult revival? I don't know, but I can see the two paths converging in many ways. And again, they're talking about Covins of Witches. Well, that's coming out of the 1960s whenever the occult world is talking about Covins of Witches. So this gets really scary when you

piece the two timelines together. Fast forward to the 1970s. The Extrasus novel, as I mentioned, the Extrasus film in 1973. Demon possession becomes a mass market entertainment in Hollywood and books and newspaper articles. There is a public fascination with the occult that just simply explodes. That's the same point in which Don Basham wrote his deliverance from evil book.

Frank and Ida May Hammons pigs in the parlor book, which Chino and I mentioned in our podcast on deliverance. Deliverance ministries were literally creating ways to systematize and reproduce the deliverance concept to combat things that were happening in the fictional world and in the occult world. Fast forward to 1974. Dungeons and Dragons was released from 1974 to 1985. You had occult horror films, witchcraft books. They began to flourish in the United States and abroad.

The New Age movement began to grow in spread and in the 1980s you had the satanic panic. So when you compare the two worlds over on the deliverance side, this is the same time that they began to introduce these demon taxonomies. They resurrected a concept that William Brannum had introduced in the fifties about generational curses and how this generation- curse could impact you. Suddenly, these occult doorways became standard teaching among the deliverance ministries, and deliverance training began to spread to combat all of these sudden evils that are emerging in the world. By 1986, the virus had spread and even impacted mainstream

Christian churches. In 1986, Frank Peretti published this present darkness, and these supernatural spiritual themes became so commonplace that mainstream churches were teaching it, revivalists were teaching it, deliverance ministries were teaching it, and think about what's happening on the deliverance side. This is the time when C. Peter Wagner visits Argentina, and he comes back telling his stories of deliverance. There's a sudden mapping of the spiritual territories that happens in 1989. So as you can see, this is not simply just copying an idea from either a book or a movie or a magazine. This is happening over time, this is happening through cross-pollination

of ideas, so much so that the mainstream Christian world starts to even adopt some of these things. These periods of time are evolving based off of the growth and concepts of ideas that aren't all coming from the Bible. Some of them are literally coming from the occult world, even occult fiction. But what's happening is when the occult fiction begins to be adopted by the mainstream church, now the deliverance ministries have to adopt ways to combat that fiction. And none of it, nobody took a step back to say, wait a minute, is any of this even biblical? The Christian

world just started to say, well, we have this battle to fight. Let's fight it. Let's go in head first and let's not even look behind us at the Bible to see is what we're doing actually biblical.

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 Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to

contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. One of the more alarming things for me about the Pentecostal charismatic movement as compared to mainstream Christianity is that But a lot of secular themes, politics, different aspects of life that are outside of the Christian Bible, enter into the sermons.

And I'll never forget, I grew up in a world where we were listening to recordings from 1947 to 1965 of William Branham. And because I'm living in a world that has passed that, I never really recognized some of the political themes or the pop culture themes that were embedded in the sermons, it really wasn't until I began researching and understanding history, and then aligning history timelines with the timelines of the movement as it was developing.

It wasn't until that that I realized this is really a lot of pop culture that I'm hearing, and none of it makes any sense because it's not my pop culture, if that makes any sense.

I really was taken aback whenever I came to terms with that, but at the same time had entered into a mainstream church, and I stopped and thought about it was approximately a year into being in the mainstream instead of Pentecostal Charismatic.

I had not yet heard a single sermon about politics, and I grew up in a world where almost every sermon was about politics, but it was politics of days gone by. That is the case, and we've talked about it many times and all of the different podcasts that we've done of some of the themes that were extra biblical or sometimes even anti-biblical that made it in because it was pop culture, or it was sometimes it was a developing pop culture.

An example of this is the UFO themes. Yes, this was a UFO craze, and it probably should have been addressed, but not in the way that they did. The Laterane Movement ran wild with the UFO themes, and you can find sermons and books and literature and all kinds of stuff where they're talking about how the UFOs that you see in pop culture, that's really these angels that are coming down to take us in the rapture.

And that was widespread throughout the movement. Christian identity is another thing. It wasn't really pop culture, but it was a developing culture that could have become pop culture, and Gordon Lindsay, William Branham, others were adopting it until they rejected it, and then they just erased that history and wiped their hands of it.

So you find all of these different themes that are making it from pop culture into the sermons, but sometimes they're not quite right, or they paint a picture that is much different than the Bible paints.

For example, any of you who are listening to any of the podcasts that I've done with people in the charismatic movement who talk about witches and covens of witches, the very first thing that comes into your mind when you think about this is the Wizard of Oz lady that says, I'm melting, I'm melting with the hat and the black cloth, et cetera.

And yet in history, whenever the church was rising up against ladies that they said were witches and were actually burning them and killing them. That's not how they looked. These were just normal human beings that they believe they were practicing some weird evil thing. And a lot of that history has actually been overturned. These were not, this was not a good thing the church was doing. So when you get that picture in your mind, you're actually thinking of the Hollywood version or the Halloween version of a witch.

Now there are some deliverance ministers who will correct this and they'll say, what you see in Hollywood, that's just a fantasized version. Think back to the Witch of Endor. And that is really the only clear example that you can find anywhere of a witch. I don't believe there's any example of a warlock in the Bible. And there's certainly not a coven of witches that is developed directly from different types of history. We can get into that. But the thing of it is the Witch of Endor, if you read what the text is saying, you find that it doesn't really say

what they're trying to make it say. It's not a witch in the modern terms of a witch. And in fact, the translation of the word witch is under dispute because it is trying to apply a modern concept for the time in which the Bible, that translation that has the word witch, was written. But yet it's talking about actually a medium. What it's actually referring to, according to the Hebrew Bible, Saul wanted to summon the prophet Samuel. And so he went to this place where there's this lady better translated, I guess, you would say the woman of the lake and the lake being this weird

place where you could go find spirits. That's really how this should be translated. She was not a practitioner of magic. She was not what she would call a witch. She was a medium who was talking to the dead, talking to the evil spirits, or sometimes good spirits, apparently, if that passage is correct. But the version that is in the Bible does not match the version that is in the deliverance ministries. That's the point I want to make. However you interpret that scripture, and there are articles you can go online. You can just type in which of indoor. You can see the

issues with the translation. And I lean toward some of the critical analysis of that particular translation because what is describing definitely is not a witch. And there are some other theological issues with the way in which it's interpreted. So you can go look that up. That's another topic for somebody else to handle, who handles theology. But historically what has happened is they are merging history of the witch trials and the witch history in world history, modern witches. They're trying to translate that into the passage. In other words, make the passage say something that it doesn't.

because it really doesn't say anything about witches and magic. It is a medium and the interesting part about all of that, if you go listen to most deliverance ministers who have been directly descended from the latirane tree.

In latirane, there were people who were communicating with the dead, which is doing exactly what the witch is doing, while condemning the witches, which is kind of funny. William Brannum was talking about this lady.

I believe it was her son, is the lady. The lady had died, though he had pronounced healing on her. She had died, and so to cover this whole thing up, he apparently, according to some of the people who were there witnessing it, said something to the effect that I went to the other side and talked to her, and she's so much happier there.

And he's referring to heaven, not some dark place, but at the same time, he's also doing the work of a medium when he's doing this, if he really did it. I strongly question whether he did it, but he set a standard that seems to have developed into this pathway where medium is okay.

If you follow the deliverance pattern that's mimicking William Brannum, that's why you have this thing like grave soaking, people who are trying to communicate with those spirits. That's the work of a medium, that's the work of the witch of indoor.

And they're not wearing pointed hats, they're not crying, I'm melting whenever water hits them, but they're doing the same thing as the witch of indoor, which is a problem for me. And so, if you take that a step further, look at how pop culture has influenced the nation.

When I'm referring to the nation, I'm talking about the United States, but this has actually spread into other countries as well. Look at the way in which it has developed. One of the clear problems that you have, whenever you're talking about this history, you begin to connect the dots between what's happening in the secular world and what's happening in the charismatic world.

And the people who are influenced by those movements that had descended from that charismatic route, it must be black or white. And so, they think things like, well, yes, we find this in this Hollywood event, but we can't say that that is what caused us to preach this deliverance ministry.

Those aren't connected, black or white. The problem is it doesn't grow black or white. These ideas, they develop, they call it pop culture for a reason. It is developing popularly through the crowd of people, through the culture of people.

And as the culture gets an idea, it cross-pollinates. This is where it gets weird for me. The cross-pollination of ideas, yes, it doesn't show a direct linear route, but they're influenced Christian churches while they're in a secular route.

So, there's this cross-pollination of ideas. The UFO thing has a great example of this. It's mystery that's surrounding all of these UFOs, and now we can read the history of the UAPs. The mystery itself was popular, and so books like Gordon Lindsay published the mystery of the Flying Saucer.

They were trying to capitalize on the popularity of what was happening outside of the church, so they could bring it into the church, wrap a doctrine around it, and say, this is a biblical situation.

And it's not. It's UFOs. And it's aliens. And what happened is because they took the wrong turn, they deviated from the passage of Scripture that talks about, you don't need this mystery, Christ is the mystery fulfilled.

They went down that pathway, and then what do you do with this? You've got a doctrine. Well, you must build upon that doctrine to keep it going, and it eventually ended up in, they were believing in little green men coming down as angels.

I know there are some in the Pentecostal Cares Maddachroud that will say, no, no, no, we don't do this. We don't take fiction and add it to our sermons. We'll all remind people of the book, this present darkness, and we'll compare it to the Deliverance Teachings.

It was released in 1986, so think about whenever the Deliverance Ministries begin to shift into the way that the NAR has adopted it. And it was using many of the same themes that we see in the New Apostolic Reformation today.

Again, we can't say that it's traced directly back to this book. It was a cross-pollination of ideas, but this was a fictional book talking about invisible beings that influence human affairs. Much like it was happening in Latter-Rain, there were these invisible alien beings and UFOs that were influencing human affairs.

And if you take it all the way back to the ancient mythologies, it's these invisible beings in the sky that are influencing human affairs. It's definitely not a Christian teaching. But this was coming in a book that was presented as a Christian fiction book.

Demons were operating with assignments and organization. Look at the NAR. Demons are organized spiritual beings with specific assignments and areas of operation. It was a cross-pollination of ideas. You can't say it came directly from the book, but as this idea was spreading in mainstream popular culture that all of these different weird horror culture and witchcraft culture and UFO culture, all of these different ideas were developing into this unseen enemy that we can't understand who is actually very organized, very military strategic, and we need to combat them.

That's really what was being adopted by the church. Look what's happening today in the New Apostolic Reformation as it relates to the territorial spirits. They can influence cities and regions, institutions, spiritual warfare is basically us confronting this invisible enemy we can't see, but they apparently have taken charge over a city.

Well, in the book, a town or an institution. and could become an arena of supernatural conflict. So it's like, it's not the same exact idea, but you can see how that idea can develop through cross-pollination of culture.

And that's the point I'm trying to drive at. It's a cross-pollination of culture, not something that is going directly back to a Bible passage that is saying, this is what you can expect in the end times.

It's coming from pop culture. Human prayer affects the invisible battle. And that's one of the things that, if you are a Christian, most Christians even in mainstream Christianity believe that. But when you combine it with the other things, you have this invisible battle that not all Christians really believe in because it's not biblical.

There are things that, maybe it's true. I don't even know if it's true or not, we can't see it, but we can clearly say, the Bible doesn't say this thing is coming. So the prayer is actually different when you're in one of these movements than it is if you're just in a Christian church that doesn't believe any of this weird stuff.

One of the big ones, and this definitely did not come directly from the book, but through a cross-pollination of ideas, some of which developed and laterane itself, invisible causes lie behind the human problems that we see.

In other words, you might have a problem and you're not even in control of what happened. It's this outside demonic force that's causing it. And I remember the first time I came across a person who was given a testimony in the voice of healing and said, I was in the prayer line, I was being prayed for and they cured me of cancer.

And then she went on to say, I did not even know that I had cancer. And that's just the type of thing that we're dealing with here. Once you take a human problem and you put it into this realm where you can't quantify it, you can't critically examine it.

It's in the spiritual realm, you don't see it, but I see it because I'm behind the pulpit. Once you do this, you can make anything fantasy or real come to life and that's what's happening.

The supernatural realm operates according to recognizable rules. This one is troublesome for me because after we left the cult that we escaped from and we entered into mainstream churches, to some extent this is actually invaded mainstream.

I sat through a meeting where we were talking about all of the ways in which the demonic forces can operate and how they operate, none of which you can find any resemblance of that strategy in the Bible, but they have apparently come up with these ideas of how demons operate.

And I took a step back even while I was listening to this in the mainstream church and thought about how similar it was to some of the fantasy movies that I have seen or the fantasy books that I have read, you can't quantify it.

I can't stand up and say, no, you're wrong preacher. I don't believe that these demonic forces have this covert strategy and they can spy and all of them. weird stuff that you're saying. I can't prove it either way. The only thing that I can say is not a single thing that you have said, can I find in the Bible, and I just, I don't want to, I don't want to think about that. It really doesn't do me any good to think about all of the things that are outside of my control, because if you're in a true Christian church that hasn't been

invaded by any of this culture, that's all you care about. You're caring about a God who is in control so that you don't have to be. That's really the difference that core concept you don't have to be is the difference between deliverance ministry and Christianity. When you piece together a historical timeline of how all of these cross-pollination of ideas began to develop, began to be changed and altered, entered into fictional reality, fictional reality entered into Christian sermons, developed into the New Apostolic Reformation. It's a little bit disturbing. In 1985, C. Peter Wagner visited Argentina, and he encountered the Argentine revival, the spiritual warfare,

that was apparently developing in Argentina. Not long after this, Frank Peretti publishes this present darkness. So you can see these are two very similar topics, but it's across pollination of ideas. 1989, taking our cities for God is published, and so you suddenly have the idea of spiritual strongholds. Once the spiritual strongholds are established, now you go back to Argentina and you do this case study on how to do strategic spiritual warfare. And by 1990, the Sentinel group is founded by George Otis Jr., and he gives the movement the name and helps systematize and popularize spiritual

mapping. So you've got strategic warfare, now spiritual mapping, 1991, Wagner edits the engaging the enemy had a fight and defeat territorial spirits. And that same year, Cindy Jacobs publishes her book, possessing the gates of the enemy, understanding that progression, and understanding that Christian fiction was integrated in that timeline. It starts to open the door to questions that just can't be answered. So around 1990, you've got this spiritual mapping thing. So many questions that a person should have asked, and I don't know that anybody did, if demons could really control territories, how do you know which demon controls which territory? You're not going to find that

in the Bible anywhere. How do you fight an enemy that you can't see? How in the world can you even pray to God to fight this enemy if you don't even know that the enemy is there? And what is God going to think when you're doing this? It becomes, for me, when I take a step back and just look at all of this, it's the blind leading, the blind, because the blind can't see. You have a blind leader who's blindly saying there's a demon over a territory, and the people- who are praying blindly because the leader says this, it is truly the blind leading the blind.

Yet, that is what is happening with spiritual mapping. And what happens when you combine all of this is you start to see that it is actually a mythology that has been created. So while Christians believe they're worshipping God and they're believing in Christianity, they're actually believing in a mythology that was created by key individuals of the charismatic movement, combined with Christian fiction, combined with pop culture, combined with all sorts of different things that weren't really in the Bible.

It was myth. It was mythology. See Peter Wagner, he brought all of these streams of deliverance, third wave ministry, these territorial spirits, the spiritual warfare, and he began to develop and teach a strategic spiritual warfare ministry through all of his networks.

Jenny Jacobs began to help organize this and she started saying that intercessors would receive supernatural intelligence like the CIA to inform prayer and spiritual action. So she's bringing her own things that aren't really in the Bible.

They're just something that she concocted and said, well, this makes sense. But if you look at it from a biblical standpoint, none of it makes any sense. The mid to late 1990s is when all of these weird things begin to emerge and again, it's based off of this history that is pieced together in this timeline that I've presented.

You have the prophetic intercession, you have the prayer assignments, spiritual intelligence, prayer waking, identifying strongholds, territorial spirits, identifiable repentance, spiritual mapping, taking cities or territories and spiritual gates, coordinated intercessory networks, none of which, not a single one of those in that list can you find in the Bible.

So they have based it off of this mythology. This mythology came from a coordinated effort of combining pop culture, politics, all sorts of different things into this thing that is going to become the belief set of Christian believers, none of which is based on the Bible, mostly based off of mythology, and Christians began to wander off into myth.

So at the point in which they wander off into the myth, that is when the New Apostolic Reformation officially is named. C. Peter Wagner describes it as something that pre-existed him. He didn't invent this, which is true, but he didn't really say it was a cross-pollination of ideas that were extra-biblical.

But he did, whenever this was established, because we needed key figures of this mythology, he created demigods, but he gave them the name of Apostle. So the Apostles provide the authority in the mythology.

They are the intercessor between God and man, and sometimes so-filled with God that they become a God-man, which is a demigod. really what it is. Prophets provide the supernatural intelligence just like the prophets of the ancient mythologies.

Intercessors conduct spiritual warfare just like the ancient mythologies, they're fighting the battles in the sky that humans can't see, but they're being fought by these intercessors. Spiritual mapping and strongholds think of the ancient mythologies, how they mapped them out to the stars, the church and networks began to mobilize believers.

That's where it gets scary because in the ancient world, all of these ancient mythologies led by these demigods mapped out to the stars, they began to conquer and invade other nations. And when you look what is happening in the world today and look at how the church, the New Apostolic Reformation of the church has invaded politics and watch what is happening in the military, it's a little bit scary and concerning for me.

So the end result of all of this is they have scaled up the supernatural spiritual authority from basically the room being alone in your prayer room to the nation. We now control the nation or we attempt to control the nation is what they'll say through the seven mountain mandate.

So it went from individual deliverance back in the latirane movement to now we're going to actually go conquer territories, but we need a physical army to do this. So the movement is suddenly becoming capable of deploying supernatural strategies at scale through humans that are intercessors and humans who are weaponized.

In the end, this gets really scary because spiritual warfare suddenly becomes cultural warfare. And that historically throughout time has always ended in disaster. And remember where we first started, in the beginning of this we talked about the early Christian church, what the early Christians believed.

And they simply believe this, Christ defeats the supernatural powers, the spiritual powers. And Christians must simply resist evil. Christians can cast out demons, yes, Christians can pray, but the authority and the power goes to God not to the humans.

The humans are simply powerless and they must believe and that's all that they have to do. This began to accelerate rapidly into chaos through the healing revivals because now you have a specifically appointed leader who is exercising authority over all of the spirits.

And the people in the audience are being told that he has the power. They don't have the power, God intermediating the power, I guess you would say. But in some cases William Brannum would say bring any cross-eyed children before me.

And without even praying for it, I'll cast out the demon and make its eyes come straight. That's a direct quote by paraphrase just slightly. But you can find that in the very first sermon, I believe it is, that's on Brannum.org.

you study this, he is saying that he has the authority. And what happened is others, other ministers, other evangelists, they wanted that same power. And so they started teaching the same doctrines, thinking that they would eventually be empowered and that led to the deliverance movement. This invisible world that they have power over is now creating these elaborate mechanics that are really going to be destructive to the church. So we must create a movement to fight these invisible forces. John Wimber, the third wave of Pentecostalism, taught that these ordinary Christians now can fight these forces. The supernatural ministry

is happening through them, through their experience. And it just continued to develop. Wagner comes along, it's now a battlefield, now we have territories, Otis brings the spiritual mapping, you have suddenly strategic territories by the demons. And you can see it is just going out of control. Not a single aspect of it comes from the Bible. It's all coming from the mythology that they themselves have created. So culture itself suddenly becomes the territory.

The government, the education, the media, business, arts, entertainment, family, religion, what they've described when they talk about the Seven Mountains mandate is the culture. They have really wrapped up all of these terms for the Seven Mountains in such a way that when people hear we're going to go invade somebody else's culture, most people would reject this. They would say no. But if you tell them we're going to go invade the Seven Mountains, they can get on board with it because they have disconnected from the believer's mind, the idea that we're going to go conquer a culture. Historically conquering cultures is a

bad idea. Look at the Catholic church in the Spanish Inquisition. This doesn't work out well. And that's what they're trying to achieve. So when you take a step back and you look at all of this, the Seven Mountains, the spears of influence, all of these things that they have concocted and then realize that a lot of it came simply from pop culture, not from the Bible.

Ask yourself why they did this. Why do we need all of these things? Instead of simply say, I'm going to resist evil. God has already conquered the enemy for me. I don't have to worry about any of this. Think of that mindset. And compared to the mindset of somebody who's trapped in this movement, thinking, I have to worry about everything. There are demons everywhere. There are territorial demons over my city. That's a person who is in high anxiety. And I can tell you from coming out of the movement, I had the high anxiety. It's a horrific mindset to be in. And it all comes down to

who is in control of the spirit world. Is God in control or are the leaders of the new apostolic reformation in control? So I've mentioned been several times in several podcasts that the New Apostolic Reformation and parts of the charismatic movement were really entertainment gospel based off of entertainment based off of Hollywood.

And that's a really complex thought. So I hope this podcast has been able to unravel some of that a bit because it's not really that demons were borrowed from entertainment or exorcism was borrowed from the horror movies.

So beings weren't really originating in the entertainment industry, but what was happening was this cross-pollination of Christian ideas. And through that cross-pollination, what happened was the ideas, some of them did exist in the Bible.

You can read the Bible, you can find demons, you can find exorcism, you can find all of these things. But what happened was the Christian version that developed from this laterane mess started to create elaborate descriptions of what was happening with these demons.

And some of those elaborate descriptions eerily match Hollywood, eerily match horror movies, horror books, horror fiction, witchcraft histories, things that aren't really in the Bible. And that for me becomes problematic when you think of all of the complexities of where this came from and where it is headed, where it is headed really scares me.

We're talking about rules governing supernatural interactions of other countries where a territorial demon is sitting. We're talking about invading a culture using Seven Mountains Mandate as the name of cultural displacement or cultural genocide.

That's really what we're talking about here. And we're also talking about a shift of authority. In the early Christian churches, I've mentioned all authority, all power over the unseen world was given to Christ.

In the new modern version, it's given to the individual people. And to do that, in order to give the people that power, they had to create all of the details to instruct the people how to use, how to wield that power.

And the question that you end up with is this, once Christianity or pseudo Christianity, I'll call it, began to fill in all of these details of what it looks like with these demonic territories and which demon was over which territory and how to intercede between God and you to conquer these territories and invade these territories and change the culture of these territories.

When all of those details started to come into the movement, where did they come from? Because they're not in the Bible, you can't find them anywhere in the Bible. Where did they get the ideas?

That's the simple question that you can ask that unravels the whole thing. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org.

For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to... The NAR, available on Amazon, Kento, and Auroborno.

The NAR, available on Amazon, Kento, and Auroborno. The NAR, available on Amazon, Kento, and Auroborno.