- 5/29/2025
John and Bob explore the growing trend of public religious criticism, focusing on those who expose flawed teachings and controversial leaders. They question whether such individuals, often labeled “heresy hunters,” are contributing to needed reform or simply adding to division. Bob expresses concern over a culture built on scandal and confrontation, suggesting that the real issue lies deeper—within the church’s cultural transformation. The discussion begins with personal reflections on technology, online interactions, and the widespread appeal of calling out wrongdoing, before diving into the heart of why institutional failure keeps repeating.
As the conversation unfolds, they explore three major shifts affecting modern faith communities: the rise of narcissistic culture, the shift toward entertainment-driven gatherings, and the urbanization of spiritual life. These transformations, they argue, have diluted the authenticity of spiritual leadership and created a consumer-driven faith. Drawing parallels to historical decline in empires and major corporate failures, John and Bob unpack how gradual societal changes have led to sudden breakdowns in religious trust. Throughout, they challenge listeners to critically evaluate what is truly shaping their beliefs and whether institutional pressures are suppressing the very growth they claim to foster.
00:00 Introduction
01:37 Why “Heresy Hunters” Exist and What They Miss
07:01 From Exposure to Exploration: A Personal Shift in Perspective
13:10 What Makes a Historian Dangerous to the Religious System
20:59 Echoes, Not Voices: Why Christians Don’t Read or Question
25:56 Gradually, Then Suddenly: How Systems Collapse
29:01 Narcissism, Entertainment, and Urbanization in Church Culture
44:43 Early Christianity vs. Modern Church Models
49:41 Constantine and the Rise of Top-Down Religion
54:36 Why Churches Resist Postmortems
58:34 Next Episode Preview: From Sacrifice to Self
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
As the conversation unfolds, they explore three major shifts affecting modern faith communities: the rise of narcissistic culture, the shift toward entertainment-driven gatherings, and the urbanization of spiritual life. These transformations, they argue, have diluted the authenticity of spiritual leadership and created a consumer-driven faith. Drawing parallels to historical decline in empires and major corporate failures, John and Bob unpack how gradual societal changes have led to sudden breakdowns in religious trust. Throughout, they challenge listeners to critically evaluate what is truly shaping their beliefs and whether institutional pressures are suppressing the very growth they claim to foster.
00:00 Introduction
01:37 Why “Heresy Hunters” Exist and What They Miss
07:01 From Exposure to Exploration: A Personal Shift in Perspective
13:10 What Makes a Historian Dangerous to the Religious System
20:59 Echoes, Not Voices: Why Christians Don’t Read or Question
25:56 Gradually, Then Suddenly: How Systems Collapse
29:01 Narcissism, Entertainment, and Urbanization in Church Culture
44:43 Early Christianity vs. Modern Church Models
49:41 Constantine and the Rise of Top-Down Religion
54:36 Why Churches Resist Postmortems
58:34 Next Episode Preview: From Sacrifice to Self
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder
00:00:48of the Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books, the latest of which is Some
00:00:52Say They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets,
00:00:57and the International House of Prayer.
00:01:00Bob, it's good to be back and to talk about all things mess and chaotic in our religious
00:01:07society.
00:01:09You pitched an idea this morning, and we're going through it, and it's, you know, most
00:01:14of these podcasts I just do off the cuff because I find that people enjoy them more if both
00:01:20sides are impromptu and you hear literally raw and uncut what is coming from the heads of
00:01:26both people.
00:01:27The problem is you and I, our heads are so scrambled, I'm not certain that people pick
00:01:31it up, but it is what it is, right?
00:01:34But today we're diving into the world of heresy hunters, and this is a topic that I'm
00:01:41actually glad you brought this up because it not only does it fascinates me that this
00:01:46thing exists.
00:01:47We live in a strange world where people are becoming famous as heresy hunters, but on the
00:01:53flip side, the church is in such a mess that you have to have those to balance the scale.
00:01:58But in doing so, where does the perfection lie?
00:02:04Because on both sides, you have this kind of extreme.
00:02:07So I wanted to talk through the extremes with you.
00:02:10Well, that's good.
00:02:11I'm going to do a little sidebar here, but I just wanted our audience to know that I have
00:02:19become more engaged in the comments on our podcast.
00:02:24And I want to tell you all, I really appreciate seeing these comments and how many people are
00:02:32engaged in what we're talking about.
00:02:36That's always encouraging because we're talking about things that matter to us, and you're
00:02:41always wondering, does this matter to other people?
00:02:44Well, what I'm realizing and listening, or I shouldn't say listening, and reading the comments,
00:02:50you guys are tracking with us.
00:02:52So I really appreciate it.
00:02:54And always remember, John and I are explorers.
00:02:57So when we do these podcasts, we're asking questions on a journey.
00:03:02We don't have all the answers.
00:03:04We don't even assume that we have all the answers.
00:03:08We kind of see ourselves as two guys that started out, like all of you, we were told where to
00:03:16look, what to see, and how to interpret it.
00:03:18And then we lived our lives and discovered, well, not everything that we were told is true.
00:03:25And so now we're trying to unpack all this and try to figure out what do we have here?
00:03:31Like what's real and what's not real, which in reading all your comments, I'm realizing you're
00:03:36all on the same journey as well.
00:03:38So I appreciate you going on the ride with us.
00:03:41So let's get into our topic that we were going to talk about.
00:03:45I was telling John that I've been feeling something in my soul, and it's not always easy to articulate,
00:03:54but I have noticed over the last year, well, maybe more 18 months, it'd probably be more
00:04:02accurate, that the social media world is abuzz with a group of people who seem to be focused
00:04:13on their podcasts about pointing out who's wrong.
00:04:17And I certainly don't want to say that that's not important because it is, but it's almost
00:04:26like they're building their whole audience and reputation about being, as you called it,
00:04:31a heresy hunter.
00:04:34And what's concerning me is we keep talking about who's wrong, but what we're not doing is drilling
00:04:43down as to what's wrong.
00:04:45In other words, these various scandals, these various men who have fallen, I guess is the
00:04:57word we're all using, came up through a system.
00:05:03They were the same thing that I talked about earlier.
00:05:09They were told where to look, what to see, and how to interpret it.
00:05:11And they're sort of a product of a system, right?
00:05:17And what's wrong is the environment in which who's wrong has been incubated.
00:05:26And we don't ever talk about that.
00:05:27In other words, what created these guys?
00:05:33What was the incubator that they were born in?
00:05:37I mean, once you understand the soil in which the ministry world is planted, you're less
00:05:42surprised by the bad fruit they bear.
00:05:44In other words, if you understand the system, right, that they came up through, you're less
00:05:49shocked by the bad fruit.
00:05:52If you understood that in the beginning, you'd know where this was going to end up.
00:05:56And when I was younger, people always thought I was prophetic, right?
00:06:02Because I would sort of say, I have a bad feeling about this, and I think this is going
00:06:08to end up over here.
00:06:09And it always did, right?
00:06:11Well, the fact of the matter is, I'm just curious.
00:06:19And I know some of you guys are going to laugh, because you've all pointed it out in
00:06:25the comments.
00:06:25I started asking why, that little three-letter word that haunts me all the time.
00:06:32Why?
00:06:32Why am I observing things, right, that are causing me to feel this foreboding feeling?
00:06:39Why am I, why do I have a sense of yuck in my soul?
00:06:43I know that's a terribly sophisticated word, but I think you guys understand what I'm talking
00:06:47about.
00:06:47You're sitting in church, and there's something in you that's going yucky, like this is yucky.
00:06:52And you don't always know why, right?
00:06:55And you feel like, I need to go home and take a shower, because it's slimy.
00:07:00Yeah.
00:07:01You know, it's funny, because this is a podcast about perspectives.
00:07:05And my perspective, based off of just the limited knowledge that I have of what's in
00:07:11your head, my perspective is a little bit different than yours.
00:07:14And I come at this from my own example of my own changes in how I view the world and
00:07:23the religion, et cetera.
00:07:25So whenever I'm doing my podcast, if I'm exploring William Branham and I'm documenting
00:07:33history, much of that history has been covered up to the people who are in the Branhamite cult.
00:07:39And so to them, I'm a heresy hunter, because I'm exposing the heresies and the nastiness,
00:07:46right?
00:07:46But to everyone who's not a Branhamite, I try to do what I do in a very balanced way.
00:07:52Here's the history.
00:07:53You can make of it what you will.
00:07:55To them, I don't come across like that.
00:07:58It's funny.
00:07:59I'll get emails.
00:08:00Why didn't you just come down hard against such and such?
00:08:03Well, that's not me.
00:08:05I'm not.
00:08:05My personality, I could never be a heresy hunter.
00:08:08I just couldn't do it.
00:08:09But the point I'm trying to make here is to the groups that are being exposed, I come
00:08:14across that way.
00:08:15Anything that I document about history of John Wimber, for example, anything, I don't
00:08:20care what it is, I can find 10 different, very respectable authors that give the same
00:08:27histories in their book.
00:08:29But if I present it to the Wimber crowd, I'm heresy hunter against Wimber.
00:08:33Why are you doing this, John?
00:08:34Wimber apologized for that in his last years.
00:08:36You can't say this.
00:08:38But it's not that way, man.
00:08:40Here's the history.
00:08:41I don't care what you think of it, right?
00:08:43But now take that to the flip side.
00:08:46Let's say that I were a heresy hunter.
00:08:49The issue that I have is that when I was in that type of religion, I had the same mindset.
00:08:56I'm always right.
00:08:57I don't care.
00:08:58Whatever you say, I'm right.
00:09:00I have that mentality.
00:09:02I'm always right because I know the cult that I grew up in.
00:09:05And whenever I left the cult, that mindset stayed with me for a long time.
00:09:12I came across that way.
00:09:13And the problem is when you have that mindset, you're not open to learn.
00:09:19And so I was very closed-minded.
00:09:21I didn't learn.
00:09:22I didn't grow.
00:09:23And it wasn't until, gosh, I'll bet I was out of the cult for five years before it finally
00:09:29dawned on me that I know nothing in this world, man.
00:09:32Absolutely nothing.
00:09:33And I started fresh from nothing, and I just started adding to it with an open mind that
00:09:38everything that I know, say, or do could be wrong, right?
00:09:42And so there's that learning aspect.
00:09:45Now, from a business standpoint, I run teams of developers.
00:09:50And for years, many of the contracts that I would engage in, you would have a team of
00:09:56developers.
00:09:57And if you approach the development team such that you knew everything and they knew nothing,
00:10:05which was the mindset I was programmed to have, ironically, what happened was you constrained
00:10:10them from learning.
00:10:11If they didn't make their own mistakes, they couldn't learn and grow.
00:10:16And if you don't control them to that level, the end result is actually better.
00:10:21You get a better product if you let people make mistakes and learn from their mistakes.
00:10:25There's a phrase that we use in the IT world, fail fast, fail hard.
00:10:30So failure is not a problem in the IT world.
00:10:33You fail, you fix it, you move on, and then you evaluate, what did I learn from that mistake
00:10:40that I just failed in, right?
00:10:43Interestingly, in the heresy hunter world, it is an all right, all wrong, very black or white
00:10:51mentality in most cases.
00:10:53I'm not going to say that everyone who's labeled that has that mentality, but in most
00:10:59cases that I've seen, they have what is their core doctrine that they believe, and it's all
00:11:04right, all wrong.
00:11:06And interestingly, if you take a step back and just rise above all of that, rise above the
00:11:12actual problems they're pointing out in the church and the people who are pointing them
00:11:15out, the reason why we have so many denominations in Christianity is because some of the core
00:11:23doctrines that one crowd or the other deems heresy, heretical, they will draw a line in
00:11:29the sand and say, no, we're forming our denomination on this side or this other side.
00:11:34And so you can't really coexist in this world.
00:11:36So we have a Christian world where you can't coexist in a black or white mentality, but
00:11:42then within that realm, you have people that say, no, it is black or white.
00:11:47Otherwise, you're in heresy.
00:11:49And what happens is, where do you point the finger?
00:11:53Well, one of the things I've observed about you, which I don't think the Christian community
00:12:00quite grasps.
00:12:01It's sort of interesting, but you're a historian now.
00:12:06It's in the religious context, but as a historian, when you're doing your research and you're
00:12:16writing the book, you're telling the story, right?
00:12:20You're doing your research and you're telling your story, good, bad, or ugly.
00:12:26You're trying to be honest, right?
00:12:28You're trying to tell an honest story.
00:12:30I mean, I got to be careful here because I don't want to pull us into the political
00:12:35specter, but we're observing this right now, right?
00:12:40With these books that are coming out about Joe Biden's mental capacity, right?
00:12:47And you see it in the political world.
00:12:49The historian people are going, well, this is an honest evaluation of what was actually
00:12:55happening.
00:12:56But then the diehards are going, you betrayed us.
00:13:00You know, that's not true, right?
00:13:02And so you see the ones that are trying to protect the system are fighting the historians,
00:13:08right?
00:13:09So one of the things we always have to ask ourselves when we're listening to somebody talk is what's
00:13:18their perspective?
00:13:19Like, why are they doing this?
00:13:23And there are some people who are just dog loyal and will go down with the ship protecting
00:13:28the system.
00:13:30It has nothing to do with what the facts are.
00:13:32It has to do with this thing is God.
00:13:35Therefore, you know, we have to protect it at all costs.
00:13:38And they don't really have the capacity to step back and be objective.
00:13:43They're too emotionally engaged in the whole thing.
00:13:45So I think if people understand that in our discussion, it's two guys who are pseudo historians.
00:13:53I mean, we don't have degrees, you know, in history, but then even the people who have
00:13:58degrees in history these days are just pretty weak in there.
00:14:03It's not like the older historians, right?
00:14:06But you look at Abraham Lincoln.
00:14:07I mean, people that write about Abraham Lincoln, you know, when he was a sitting president and
00:14:14he's, and to this day has the least popular rating of any sitting president took a hundred
00:14:19years for his reputation to change.
00:14:23If you would have written about Lincoln in 1870, half the country hated him a hundred years
00:14:31later, he's a hero.
00:14:32Now he's on our money.
00:14:34We have a memorial to him and he's considered one of the greatest presidents ever.
00:14:38Why?
00:14:39Because historians went back in there and separated out the emotional perspective from the facts.
00:14:47And one of the reasons that I got attracted to you is as I was watching some of your podcasts,
00:14:54you were peeling the historical onion.
00:14:57You were going down.
00:14:58I watched you through your, you know, your various podcasts.
00:15:02And it's like, you kept peeling layers off, right?
00:15:06Because you were trying to get to the heart of the matter.
00:15:08Like, what's, what's the real truth here?
00:15:10And you were telling stories going, well, no, the fact is this didn't really happen.
00:15:16And, you know, this was hype and this was actually authentic.
00:15:20You see what I mean?
00:15:21Because, and that's what historians do.
00:15:23So if people can sort of get outside of their Christian snobbiness or their prejudices, right,
00:15:31their emotional prejudices and realize sometimes you just got to be a historian and go back
00:15:38and tell the story.
00:15:39Exactly.
00:15:41You know, I was going to leave politics out of this, but when you think about today's world
00:15:46and you think about Christianity, sadly, you really can't avoid politics because they have
00:15:51merged and they're one in the same.
00:15:53But one of the things that you said made me really think about today's politics, which
00:15:58I'm still going to do my best to avoid.
00:16:00But what has become popular, and I don't know really why this is, but it has become
00:16:09popular to have witch hunts.
00:16:12And in, in this world that we live in today, you have Christianity is a good prime example
00:16:19of how a culture and society can influence something to become far beyond what it should
00:16:25be.
00:16:25And so we have elements of entertainment mixed with our Christianity.
00:16:29We have elements of politics.
00:16:31We have all of these different things that are making it.
00:16:35And what's happening is there are people, sadly, who are Christian who don't read their
00:16:40Bibles.
00:16:41In fact, I've read some statistics.
00:16:43A majority of Christians have never read their Bible, which is really odd to me, man.
00:16:48If this is the book that is the foundation for your worldview, why in the world would you
00:16:53not read the thing, right?
00:16:55But they don't, because they haven't read it, they don't understand that these political
00:16:59themes have nothing to do with Christianity, or these witch hunt themes have nothing to
00:17:04do with Christianity.
00:17:05All they hear are the elements that connect the dots given to them by pastors, and so
00:17:13they think it is part of Christianity.
00:17:14But we've created this world of witch hunts, and people are trying to find fault.
00:17:21But now, I like to balance things.
00:17:24So take the other side of that scale.
00:17:26If you're of that mindset where there's a witch hunt, there must be a witch hunter.
00:17:31And so, as I'm writing the history, and I'm presenting the history, and like you say, I'm peeling
00:17:36little layers of this onion to try to get to the core and see what is this mess.
00:17:40What's funny that I have found, and it comes directly from the political influence, I can
00:17:47peel an onion, and people know what is under the next layer, because often I will peel so
00:17:53slowly that I dissect it properly, and I can evaluate everything.
00:17:58So I'll publish one thing, and you'll have this crowd of people that know, well, he just
00:18:02found this.
00:18:03The very next thing he's going to find is this other thing, which he didn't yet say.
00:18:07And so what happens is, in the comment feed, you can watch people who start fighting over
00:18:12the thing that I did not yet say, because that's how, in this weird world that we're
00:18:18living in today, that's how you're trained to do.
00:18:20You're trained, there's a witch hunt, so therefore there must be witch hunters, and
00:18:24therefore we must fight them, and let's head them off at the pass, like the old cowboys used
00:18:30to say in the military.
00:18:31I was very shocked years ago when I saw George Barna's research on who reads their Bible.
00:18:40It's really rather mind-boggling.
00:18:43What, this is, please don't be insulted when I say this, but you need to hear my heart here.
00:18:49The vast majority of Christians are echoes, not voices.
00:18:53And what I mean by that is, is there's so few people that actually read their Bible or
00:19:00do their own research.
00:19:02And so when you hear them comment, all they're doing is echoing something that some Christian
00:19:11leader told them.
00:19:14And you find out when you push them a little bit and drill down on why they have the perspective
00:19:20that they do, they can't actually tell you where they discovered this truth, they're
00:19:26just echoing it.
00:19:28And that's created a huge problem.
00:19:34One of the things that I've observed is that we all assume that our church culture is normal.
00:19:44Like the way we're doing church right now, nobody in America, well, I shouldn't say nobody,
00:19:51very few people in America challenge our models or how we do church.
00:19:57We just all kind of assume that the American way is God's way.
00:20:04And we never think about it.
00:20:06We don't really think about what's going on.
00:20:10How did we get here?
00:20:12Is where we are right now really the Christianity that Jesus taught?
00:20:20Or do we have an Americanized version of this?
00:20:23And I know these are big questions, but you get there when you've gone through, I think,
00:20:30what most of the people that follow our broadcast do, which is go through seasons of disillusionment.
00:20:37It's like, I think a lot of our audience, at least the ones that are commenting, have gone through similar journeys that we have.
00:20:46And they've gone through disillusionment.
00:20:48And so they've sort of taken a step back a little bit.
00:20:51And everything's on the table, as it were.
00:20:54It's like all of the assumptions that they had where they knew the truth.
00:20:59And they died on the hill of the truth.
00:21:04I mean, I've had more conversations than the last year of people going, like, I am completely gone back to kindergarten in my faith.
00:21:15Like, I am challenging everything.
00:21:18And I think that's healthy.
00:21:19Ernest Hemingway, everybody knows Ernest Hemingway, famous author.
00:21:26In 1926, he wrote this novel called The Sun Also Rises.
00:21:32And there's this interesting interaction between two of the main characters.
00:21:36And one of them asks the other, how did you go bankrupt?
00:21:40And the guy answers, in two ways, gradually and then suddenly.
00:21:44And the reason I point this out is because the mess we're in, because I don't think any of us can deny, we're in a mess right now.
00:21:57I mean, we know some of the more high-profile situations that are showing up on social media, particularly in the Pentecostal and charismatic world.
00:22:11But I can tell you, as someone who moves between all of these various denominations and sex, the other groups have all the same problems.
00:22:23They just handle them differently.
00:22:26And the reason is they have systems in place, and they handle it behind the scenes.
00:22:31We're in the charismatic Pentecostal world, because we have this man-of-God model, you know, where we have the superstar entertainer guy that we're all following who isn't connected to anything.
00:22:45We end up in these more sensational situations.
00:22:48So, one of the things that I think people will identify about this phrase, gradually, then suddenly, think about things that are not in the church world.
00:23:01Companies.
00:23:02Kodak.
00:23:04Right?
00:23:04Remember how Kodak, you know, from the early 1900s all the way to about 20 years ago, like, you didn't take a picture, you took a Kodak.
00:23:12Kodak is gone.
00:23:15Like, it gradually, and then suddenly, it's gone.
00:23:18Right?
00:23:19It went from gradually to suddenly.
00:23:21How about Xerox?
00:23:23Right?
00:23:24You didn't make a copy.
00:23:27You Xeroxed.
00:23:29Right?
00:23:29Gone.
00:23:32Blockbuster.
00:23:34Remember how Blockbuster was, like, this massive video franchise?
00:23:39And, I mean, they thought they had a sustainable model until online streaming happened.
00:23:45Right?
00:23:46Woolworths.
00:23:48RadioShack.
00:23:48I mean, these are secular things.
00:23:50Well, how about in the Christian world?
00:23:53PTL and Jim Baker.
00:23:56All right?
00:23:57How about Willow Creek and Bill Hybels?
00:24:00How about Mike Bickle and IHOP?
00:24:03Or Keith Green and Last Days.
00:24:04Right?
00:24:05In other words, this gradual and then these suddenly moments are happening, not just in
00:24:11the secular world, they're happening in the church world.
00:24:14So what are the, so one of the questions I ask, what are the gradually dangerous, subtle
00:24:21dynamics in play that we see currently affecting American culture that's impacting the church?
00:24:31Here's a hard truth, and this is one of these things we've got to be honest about.
00:24:37The Christian community initially was established by Jesus to impact the cultures that it existed in.
00:24:46In other words, Jesus saw his message as transformative.
00:24:52In one of my books, I have this line, the transformation of the soul is the soul of transformation.
00:24:57In other words, Jesus saw transformed human beings will transform societies, and that happened.
00:25:05I mean, Christianity had a huge impact on transforming pagan cultures.
00:25:12But something's happened in our lifetime.
00:25:15And what's happened is, is the secular world is now impacting the church world.
00:25:25It's like there's been a reverse polarity.
00:25:30And these are things I'd like to talk about.
00:25:34So as I was telling John, I have three topics, and we may end up discovering more,
00:25:41that'll probably take us more than this session to discuss.
00:25:44But the three, I think, gradually, suddenly, problems that we're dealing with is,
00:25:54one, we've adopted a culture of narcissism.
00:25:59We don't realize it because it's happened so slowly over such a long period of time.
00:26:06But we live in a world right now that's very narcissistic.
00:26:12And I'm going to explain how that happened.
00:26:15And it's impacted the church world.
00:26:19Second thing is, is we've adopted a culture of entertainment.
00:26:24This is critical because this has totally shifted in my lifetime.
00:26:29And the reason this is also significant, and we'll develop this more,
00:26:38is that when a culture of entertainment impacts a society or a group,
00:26:45like it did when the Romans, you know you're on the road to this thing ending.
00:26:50The culture of entertainment so impacted Rome that it ended up deteriorating the morals,
00:26:58ethics, and values of the whole culture.
00:27:01And then the third thing that we can address at some point here is the urbanization of the church.
00:27:06As we were talking about earlier, before World War II, 65% of the population lived in rural America,
00:27:14which has a very traditional communal experience.
00:27:22And then after World War II, we've grown these massive cities, and now we have megachurches, right?
00:27:31We have massive institutions of 10,000 people showing up in massive arenas,
00:27:38all ready to be entertained, like we're going to a rock concert.
00:27:46And we think it's so normal, and we don't realize that this is a dramatic shift.
00:27:52So anyways, that's the kind of stuff I'd like to unpack if we can do it.
00:27:57Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started,
00:28:00or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,
00:28:05charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
00:28:10You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
00:28:15william-branham.org.
00:28:17On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
00:28:23Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,
00:28:27with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:28:32You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
00:28:38If you want to contribute to the cause,
00:28:41you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
00:28:45And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
00:28:51On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:28:56One of the things that you said that I want to go back and hone in on,
00:29:00you were talking about the way in which people think and how they become,
00:29:05you know, people are basically, sadly, many of them parrots,
00:29:09and they're parroting what they hear.
00:29:10And if you study the ancient mythologies in the ancient world,
00:29:14what's interesting is you find that the world that we have sadly created today
00:29:20very much mimics what we had in the ancient world.
00:29:23In some of the ancient cultures, for example,
00:29:27whenever a king or pharaoh died,
00:29:30there were large numbers of people,
00:29:32sometimes the, I don't know if it's the entire population,
00:29:35but large sections of the population would die with them to go be with them in the afterlife.
00:29:40They're taking their kingdom with them into the afterlife.
00:29:43Well, what about that one person who questioned and said,
00:29:46wait a minute, do I really need to die to go do this?
00:29:49Can't I just die later and join them later?
00:29:51Is there a static timeline?
00:29:53You know, the person who's critically thinking would have died anyway,
00:29:56because as soon as they ask the questions, they're dead.
00:29:58That's the way it works.
00:30:00And so carry that forward into today's world.
00:30:02They like to suppress questions, and I have seen it.
00:30:06You know, in the cults, obviously, they suppress the questions.
00:30:09But even in some of the mainstream churches we've attended, I have seen this.
00:30:14Not to the same degree, but I have seen it.
00:30:16They like questions, and they encourage you to ask questions
00:30:20until those questions challenge core beliefs.
00:30:23And I go back to what I said about developers.
00:30:26You know, there are times when I see a developer who's going to go down the wrong path
00:30:30and do something that I know is a mistake.
00:30:33But often, unless you let them make that mistake and learn from it,
00:30:37they don't learn why it's wrong to do this.
00:30:40So if you want a powerful developer, you let them make the mistake.
00:30:43You, you know, protect them, make sure that they can learn and grow from it.
00:30:48Well, what happens in the churches today?
00:30:50Because that theme exists, you can't ask questions if it's going to challenge core beliefs.
00:30:58People aren't growing and learning in the same way.
00:31:01And what happens as a result is that people don't really ask the questions that they need to.
00:31:07And worse yet, because of the heresy hunting mindset that we have today,
00:31:12powerful questions are suppressed.
00:31:14For example, when I started doing what I'm doing,
00:31:18I was strongly encouraged by several people in the apologetics community.
00:31:23I received all kinds of emails.
00:31:25And I made a name for myself, apparently, by challenging some of this.
00:31:31Because as they were encouraging me,
00:31:34they were trying to also control and corral the way that I presented it.
00:31:38They all had agendas, didn't they?
00:31:40They all had agendas.
00:31:41Because as one person who's rather famous put it, and I won't say who it was,
00:31:47John, it's great what you're doing,
00:31:49but you need this other thing that I'm going to force you to do.
00:31:53Because if you don't let them do that,
00:31:56they'll ask the questions about what you're presenting,
00:31:58and then they may ask the bigger question,
00:32:00is there a God?
00:32:02And this is the big problem, right?
00:32:04Some of the people who are involved in these heresy hunting things,
00:32:09they don't want people to ask the basic questions.
00:32:12And they see this, oh, my gosh, they're asking, does God exist?
00:32:16That must mean they're going to be an atheist.
00:32:18Oh, right.
00:32:19And my question always in response is, well, which God do you serve?
00:32:23The God that's powerful enough to control the pathways of people
00:32:26who ask the questions and take their journey to their faith,
00:32:30or the God who's powerless and requires people like you to corral them?
00:32:34Because I can't believe in a God that's that limited,
00:32:39that that's powerless, right?
00:32:41And those basic questions need to be asked.
00:32:44I think every child who's growing up should ask the question,
00:32:47does God exist?
00:32:48Well, why?
00:32:49Because along with some of the questions in religion,
00:32:53there are questions that can be answered,
00:32:55and those questions are the ones that many in the heresy hunting crowds will allow.
00:33:01But at the same time, there are a large number of questions
00:33:05that can never be answered in this life,
00:33:08and those are the ones that they try to suppress or discourage.
00:33:12And if you allow a person to, I'm using the word loosely, grow,
00:33:16if you allow a person to grow without asking the questions that can't be answered,
00:33:21are they really converts,
00:33:22or are they just simply going through the motions and becoming parrots?
00:33:27Yeah, that's a good point.
00:33:28I know I've run into that criticism,
00:33:34but it's a little different in that people have said to me,
00:33:38well, if you're pointing out what's wrong with the church world,
00:33:43you're causing non-Christians to not want to become Christians.
00:33:48And the reason why that's so interesting to me is because one of, I think,
00:33:58and then we'll get into some of this as we keep talking,
00:34:02is that there's this attitude or perspective that's seeped into the church
00:34:08is that we got to look good so God looks good.
00:34:11And so, and the reason why this is so insidious in a way or so dark
00:34:21is that that's what's created the facade of religiosity, right?
00:34:28The pharoxicalness of our lives,
00:34:34which the non-Christian community sees right through.
00:34:38So, this is so interesting to me because it's like people get real upset,
00:34:44you know, and they'll say,
00:34:45but Bob, you're causing the Christians to stumble.
00:34:49And my response is, no, you're causing the Christians to stumble
00:34:52because you're not being authentic.
00:34:55My response is, is it actually stumbling or, like I've been pointing out,
00:34:59do they learn and do they grow and do they become stronger for it?
00:35:03Exactly.
00:35:05But I think, I mean, you know, I think I've mentioned this to you before.
00:35:11If you really want to find Christians that have sort of had enough of the church role,
00:35:17just go to bars.
00:35:19I learned this my years in the music business, you know, as we were traveling.
00:35:26I couldn't, I was so shocked by that because I was so naive, right?
00:35:29I didn't realize what would happen.
00:35:32But then when we got into those situations and we were honest about our spirituality,
00:35:39well, they suddenly all came forward and were telling their stories.
00:35:42But the common thing I realized after a decade was the one thing
00:35:47that everybody was looking for was authenticness.
00:35:51Like, they didn't care if you weren't perfect.
00:35:54They didn't care if you made mistakes.
00:35:57They just wanted you to be honest.
00:35:59And the big offense for so many people is we're not.
00:36:05We have this need to look good.
00:36:08And I think on a previous episode, I talked about a spiritual experience I had at KCF
00:36:15where I realized that everybody that walked through the door put on a character.
00:36:20They had a Sunday spiritual character.
00:36:25They went into character.
00:36:27Like, the minute you walk through the door, you go into character, right?
00:36:30And you project a spirituality because you want everybody to respect you and like you
00:36:37and think you're important and all that.
00:36:39But it's facade.
00:36:43And so I think that's one of our great weaknesses.
00:36:47And second thing that I've noticed about my peers in the ministry is to admit you don't know
00:36:57is like the worst thing you can do.
00:37:02You know what I mean?
00:37:03Have you noticed this?
00:37:05It's like somehow if you're in the ministry, you have to know everything.
00:37:11And you have an answer to everything.
00:37:14Like, you can't just go, you know, I don't know.
00:37:18I'm still trying to figure that one out myself.
00:37:20Again, what does it create?
00:37:22It creates this facade.
00:37:24Well, two things.
00:37:24It creates pressure on all the guys in the ministry to be know-it-alls, right?
00:37:30And it creates, again, another facade.
00:37:36And then you have this gradually and suddenly, and the guy falls.
00:37:44And the reason he falls is because he never honest with you about the fact that he was
00:37:48actually struggling with all kinds of things.
00:37:51And how do I know this?
00:37:52I have spent 40 years of my life picking up the pieces of guys who fell.
00:37:58I know this story up close and personal.
00:38:00I could tell you story after story.
00:38:04But one of the things that causes this disillusionment in them and why they go off the rails is because
00:38:14they don't know and they've never really admitted that they don't know.
00:38:19And they get to a place where the don't know becomes too much.
00:38:25Then they go off the rails.
00:38:27And I've seen it over and over and over again.
00:38:30Because the expectation of the audience is, well, pastor knows everything.
00:38:39He's the answer man, right?
00:38:40That pressure on guys in the ministry is overwhelming and one of the roots of why we have this mess
00:38:49we're in right now.
00:38:50Right.
00:38:51It's one of the things that I mentioned earlier.
00:38:53Christianity is no longer just Christianity.
00:38:56It's this Heinz 57 blend of other things.
00:38:59And only one component is Christianity.
00:39:01The rest are all these other things added to it.
00:39:04And business.
00:39:05So Christianity has become big business.
00:39:09Like it or not, if you go to a church, there is a big or small, you can take a small church
00:39:14and it is a business.
00:39:15They have to run it like a business because they have to keep the lights on, sometimes
00:39:19rant, etc.
00:39:19Well, business has marketing and they have to make Christianity look pretty.
00:39:25You have to fill those seats because if you don't have people who are paying either tithes
00:39:30or sometimes just cheerful giving, you can't keep the lights on.
00:39:34So you have to make it look pretty.
00:39:35Christianity and often what happens, I don't know if you've seen these, they do some documentaries
00:39:41and things on what they actually go through to create an image that is appealing enough
00:39:46for you to buy fast food.
00:39:49And sometimes what you're looking at is like Elmer's glue to make it look shiny.
00:39:53I mean, there's some really weird things they do.
00:39:56Well, what I have seen is churches try to do the same thing with Christianity.
00:40:00They pretty it up and they make it look like this glamorous thing, especially if you're
00:40:05in a megachurch.
00:40:06But Christianity has never been this absolutely pretty thing.
00:40:10It is a religion of taking the lowest people who are just, they're at the bottom and God
00:40:18lifts them up.
00:40:19I have a colleague, we've been friends for 40 years and I remember he was in the mergers
00:40:24and acquisition world, you know, where they buy distressed companies and reform them and
00:40:32then resell them and make millions of dollars.
00:40:35And we were sitting in this hot tub in Phoenix and he, you know, it was like 10 o'clock at
00:40:40night and he looks at me and goes, you know, it's all a perception game.
00:40:44And it was funny because it was just a casual comment.
00:40:48But every once in a while, you know, I'll have one of those things that just goes zing.
00:40:54Like it went, I went, oh my gosh, that's the church world.
00:41:00It's a giant perception game.
00:41:03And I know that's terrible.
00:41:04I would never say that to anyone because I probably would insult every ministry guy out
00:41:09there.
00:41:10So I always kept it to myself.
00:41:11But I realized over the course of many years in that world that it's true.
00:41:17It's a perception game.
00:41:21And so, yeah, that's why I just think it's important that we need to go back and sort of
00:41:27look at how do we get where we are now?
00:41:30To your point, if you think about early Christianity, this is kind of wild.
00:41:37To become a Christian was a death sentence.
00:41:42You know, there was this whole idea of looking good for God, this whole idea of, you know what
00:41:50I mean, bright and shiny, you know, and I'll put lipstick on a pig or whatever you want to
00:41:55call the term.
00:41:56Now, it didn't exist for 300 years.
00:42:00To become a Christian meant it was a death sentence.
00:42:04You were isolated.
00:42:08You know, there's a reason why we have underground cities in Cappadocia, Turkey, that house 20,000
00:42:15people underground.
00:42:18So what happened?
00:42:21You see, these are the why questions I ask myself.
00:42:24If this was, you know, Christianity in the beginning, how did we get now, 2,000 years later,
00:42:32to where, like you're saying, it's a business, it's a show, it's entertainment?
00:42:39Like, how did we get there?
00:42:41And here's what's even crazier for me.
00:42:43Why do we all think this is normal?
00:42:47Right?
00:42:48In other words, nobody stops and goes, wait a minute.
00:42:53Are we, you know, is this expression of Christianity that we have normal?
00:42:59Like, is this God's heart?
00:43:01And this is a terrible thing to say, but I was driving with a friend, we were on the road
00:43:07for a couple of days, and I said to him, I go, this is terrible, but so many Christians
00:43:13in America think God looks like Uncle Sam.
00:43:16That's their version of God, and I go, that really is bothering me, because right now we're
00:43:24in this really patriotic moment, but it's like, I'm like, oh my God, people think that
00:43:31Uncle Sam is God, and it's like, how do we get here, right?
00:43:34So that's the stuff I'd like to really kind of unpack with you and go, what happened here?
00:43:39Where did we go to where you go back?
00:43:45I mean, if you go back, this is a hard thing to say, but if you go back and you read the
00:43:54Sermon on the Mount, it's almost antithetical to most people's American view, right?
00:44:05In other words, our whole drivenness towards the accumulation of wealth, achievement of
00:44:14status, right?
00:44:16The status and the stuff, that's the two words I used in my book, climbing the social ladder
00:44:23to get status and accumulating stuff, and you go back and you read Jesus' teachings, and
00:44:31they're the exact opposite of that.
00:44:33We're not even on the same page here.
00:44:37We're not even in the same universe.
00:44:39He's telling everybody there's no greater love than to lay your life down for another.
00:44:44He's telling everybody, if you've got two, give one away.
00:44:47He's telling everybody, when you go to the feast, sit in the back.
00:44:52Don't sit there, right?
00:44:53I mean, it's all the opposite.
00:44:55And so this is where I have these collisions in my soul going, what happened here?
00:45:01And maybe that's the reason why we're not impacting our civilization.
00:45:09Our civilization is impacting us.
00:45:11Something happened where we are no longer transforming anything.
00:45:18It's transforming us.
00:45:20What's funny is I've come complete circle, so here's where I'll give some credence to
00:45:26the heresy hunters.
00:45:28And like you, I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm unpacking some of these things as I go.
00:45:33In the Christian world, there are two camps of people.
00:45:37There are people who still strongly believe that today is filled with spirits and demons,
00:45:42and there are others who don't view it in the same way.
00:45:45They think that, according to the Bible, these things did exist, but the way in which they
00:45:50exist today are different.
00:45:52So there's two camps of people.
00:45:55Historically speaking, if you go back to the early Christians, so you mentioned Christianity
00:46:02was a death sentence.
00:46:03You believe Christianity, you're going to die.
00:46:06Well, that wasn't always the case.
00:46:08The earliest Christians were in polytheistic religions, and they didn't care who you worship.
00:46:14You could worship any of the many gods.
00:46:17You could worship the unknown god, right?
00:46:19You could worship any god.
00:46:21But what happens is whenever famine hits a town and a bunch of people die, or war, their
00:46:28town is pillaged, whatever it is, they start looking around, okay, who of you serves the
00:46:33weaker god?
00:46:35And here is Christianity, who is recently birthed.
00:46:38Well, this is a brand new religion.
00:46:39That must be the weaker god.
00:46:41And yet the early Christians weren't integrated into the politics, because it was an early
00:46:48religion.
00:46:49There was no church and state with Christianity for the early Christians.
00:46:54Well, once they started to figure out that this must be the quote-unquote weaker god, now
00:47:00is when you started to bring in the martyrs, and all the early Christians were persecuted,
00:47:05and that continued for centuries.
00:47:07But Christianity, until it mixed with Rome, did not become a union between church and
00:47:13state.
00:47:14And even when it did, there were people who rose in opposition to it, and especially when
00:47:20Protestantism come.
00:47:22So now fast forward this into the modern world.
00:47:25The spiritualist craze that hit the United States in the early 1900s swept through the nation,
00:47:35and it brought this thing that was the polar opposite of Christianity.
00:47:39It was basically resurging all of the pagan ideas, the occult, all of these different things
00:47:46that was the complete antithesis of Christianity.
00:47:50The Lateran movement took the more popular elements of that, mixed it together, and called
00:47:58it Christianity.
00:47:58So it blended all of these pagan and occult practices into the movement.
00:48:04And we see very clear examples of this.
00:48:07You can go read—don't take my word—you can go read any historian who's skeptical and
00:48:13critical of the Lateran will openly declare this mess.
00:48:16So it brought in all of the occult, but with the occult brought the lights, glamour, fashion,
00:48:24the entertainment, because that's how the spiritualist movement grew to such craze in
00:48:31the United States and abroad.
00:48:33It was mixing in elements of the entertainment system.
00:48:37So historically speaking, they created this thing that wasn't Christianity, and it spread
00:48:42throughout the globe, and it wasn't Christianity, but did have elements that if you listened
00:48:49to it, you could hear the gospel in some of the ministers, maybe not all, but some of
00:48:52them would preach the gospel and this other thing, and this pagan thing.
00:48:57So they're doing both, and that became commonplace.
00:49:01As that became commonplace and started to emerge into the other movements, now the current
00:49:07cults, NAR today, traces its lineage through this.
00:49:11So the gods generalists, for example, they're going back through this lineage of this mess,
00:49:16this thing that wasn't Christianity.
00:49:17So if you ask, how did this happen?
00:49:19How did this grow today?
00:49:21If you're in the camp that spirits and demons still exist, well, here's clear evidence
00:49:26that we have.
00:49:28The occult has a mix with Christianity.
00:49:31If you're in the other camp, you see something that's not Christian making something Christian.
00:49:35So in either camp, you can see how this happened.
00:49:39Well, I get one of my concerns right now is if you go back and study church history.
00:49:44So for the first 300 years, Christianity was subversive, meaning that it didn't have political
00:49:54power, right?
00:49:55It didn't have any of the cultural leverage to influence from the top down.
00:50:05It influenced from the bottom up.
00:50:07And it was relational, right?
00:50:09People, you know, you don't read anywhere where somebody went to a coliseum and held a revival
00:50:16meeting, right?
00:50:18And thousands of people got saved.
00:50:21There's none of that happens, right?
00:50:24That's a very modern kind of thing.
00:50:27I mean, in fact, people would, that would have never happened, right?
00:50:31Because the civil authorities would have never allowed it to happen.
00:50:34So there was never any, Christianity didn't grow, you know, by big meetings.
00:50:42It grew by your neighbors and your influence, right?
00:50:46It traveled relationally.
00:50:49Where that shifts is with Constantine.
00:50:54Because once Constantine, who was then the emperor of Rome, embraces Christianity, he begins
00:51:03to use his political power to stop the resistance against it and opens the door for it to become
00:51:19a key part of Roman culture.
00:51:21Two emperors later, they suddenly make Christianity the state religion, right?
00:51:29So suddenly now, it's no longer, well, I shouldn't say no longer, but it's less about relationships
00:51:36from the bottom up, and it becomes more about political power coming down.
00:51:44And the reason why this is important is if you go back and you study how Christianity,
00:51:50quote Christianity, at least the name Christianity, spreads, it's because certain
00:51:59religious leaders went to a king, converted the king, and then the king sent an edict out that
00:52:08everybody in his realm converts to Christianity.
00:52:13So it was never about an, you know, where the early Christians were so-called baptized in
00:52:19the Holy Spirit.
00:52:20In other words, they had a spiritual experience and they were changed from the inside out.
00:52:25Their morals, values, and ethics, their motivations, everything transferred from the inside out.
00:52:31Now that we're imposing a religious expression on people that's driven by people with an ulterior
00:52:40motive because they're wanting to unify their realm, right?
00:52:46And what you end up with, of course, is the utter corruption of the Catholic Church.
00:52:51I mean, by 700 AD, it's a complete mess.
00:52:56You know, then we have the Reformation.
00:52:58But even in the Reformation, it was about transforming institutions, right?
00:53:05And who joined Luther?
00:53:07All the German rulers, right?
00:53:11Again, what's driving all this?
00:53:15And so we've gone through all that.
00:53:17And there's been these different reform movements, but again, we don't ask a lot of questions
00:53:24because we have all these models right now that are so normal to us that we don't stop
00:53:30and go, wait a minute.
00:53:33You know, and the reason it concerns me, and I said this to somebody the other day, I go,
00:53:38well, in business, when you have a problem that keeps recurring, what do you do?
00:53:48You get everybody in a room, you have a postmortem, right?
00:53:51You tear that thing apart.
00:53:54And you keep tearing it apart, or peeling the onion, as we like to say, until you get to the root cause.
00:54:01In your programming world, it's a piece of code that didn't get coded right.
00:54:09But it's way down inside, right?
00:54:11So you got to keep going through layers and layers and layers until you get, oh, my God, we coded this wrong.
00:54:20All right?
00:54:21In business, it could be, you know, we have a product fail.
00:54:24I mean, it's like we got this thing made in China, and they didn't do it to spec.
00:54:28And oh, my God, we got a mess on our hands, right?
00:54:30There's all kinds of reasons.
00:54:31But in the church world, we don't want to do that.
00:54:34You know, that's largely why what I have exists, because my entire website, video, podcast, everything is a postmortem.
00:54:43It's a postmortem to what I came out of, right?
00:54:46But you're right.
00:54:47That's the thing.
00:54:48And whenever you're in this heresy hunting world, it really – I hate to say it because I have friends who are in that world,
00:54:57but it limits the way in which you can have postmortems if you totally offend the other party.
00:55:05If I'm in a group of developers and they've made a mess, and like I said, we have the philosophy, fail fast, fail hard.
00:55:13Well, say one of them just had a failure, whatever it was, and I just totally pounce on them and say,
00:55:20hey, you did this, and it's wrong, you know, I just totally condemn the guy.
00:55:25Well, next time, he's going to be afraid to learn and grow because I have just totally destroyed his world, his worldview.
00:55:32So that's why, you know, it's really hard to do what I do in a balanced way,
00:55:36but I try to just tell the history as it is, and you can learn from the history, and you can learn from your mistakes.
00:55:42That's why I present it in the way that I do.
00:55:44I have friends who are in the heresy hunter world that do this.
00:55:49Interestingly, the ones that do it have the provocative thumbnails that look like they're going to be pouncing on somebody.
00:55:56But you have both sides.
00:55:57You have some that do it in a very nice, structured way.
00:56:01Hey, look, this might be wrong what you guys are doing, and here's why.
00:56:05And then you've got the other side that are just condemning them to hell for doing it.
00:56:08I mean, I guess what fascinates me operating both in the secular and sacred worlds is it's like all these things that we do in sports or business or whatever,
00:56:21where we do the postmortems and we just have these painfully honest discussions, right?
00:56:29Because we want to solve the problem.
00:56:33That's the mission.
00:56:34Solve the problem so we can do better.
00:56:36Then you just flip over, and I go over the boundary and get into the religious world, and suddenly now, oh, you have the spirit of accusation, brother, right?
00:56:48It's like suddenly the dynamics completely shift, and you're not allowed to have a postmortem.
00:56:56Yeah.
00:56:56And, of course, me, I'm going, well, why not?
00:57:01Like, who made that rule, right?
00:57:04Like, I do this in every other area of my life, and I get over here, and suddenly now I'm out of bounds.
00:57:13I'm an accuser of the brethren.
00:57:17I'm a disgruntled ex-something.
00:57:21You know what I'm saying?
00:57:22It's like all these things get thrown at you, and yet everywhere else we do this.
00:57:28So what are we so afraid of?
00:57:31Like, why are we so afraid to have honest conversations and peel this onion back and get to some of these root things?
00:57:40I know in the sports world, right, we have situations where, okay, this particular player, we need to replace them, right?
00:57:50Which is what I'm seeing in the church world right now.
00:57:52It's like, okay, that player failed, so we're going to kick him off the team.
00:57:58But what you discover quite often is that it's the system that's the problem.
00:58:05There are certain sports franchises that can never seem to get over the hump, and the reason is it's because the way they're run, the way that's the system, it's what's behind the scenes that's the problem.
00:58:19It's the same thing in business.
00:58:21I mean, I've watched all kinds of companies fail, and you see all the same issues, but nobody wants to have that.
00:58:29So anyways, that's kind of my frustration.
00:58:31That's why I know we don't have time today to go into this, so we'll do it next time.
00:58:37But I want to really unpack this whole thing about narcissism in the church, because I, just to give you a preview of where my brain is, is that if you look at, okay, and I'm talking about our age group.
00:58:53So we're boomers, but if you look back at the generation, you know, each generation has a characteristic, or it has characteristics that define that generation right.
00:59:04So our dads are all called the greatest generation.
00:59:08And our dads lived through a depression in the Second World War, but what's so interesting to me about that generation is when evil presented itself, they all ran as fast as they could down to the Army, Navy, Marines, whatever, to sign up.
00:59:31In fact, they lied about their age, and why?
00:59:37Because in their generation, your value, your status, your manliness was based on your sacrifice for the whole.
00:59:50That was an intrinsic value in my dad's generation.
00:59:53They saw themselves as their role was to die on behalf of everyone else.
01:00:04That was like normal to them, right?
01:00:06Which is so interesting, because it's sort of Christianity.
01:00:09Well, what happened?
01:00:10Because there is an enormous shift that happened between our dad's generation and our generation.
01:00:18And I'd like to unpack that, because once you get to that root, and I'll explain what happened, I think you guys will find it very interesting.
01:00:30Because we went from we and ours to me and mine.
01:00:37There's a distinct shift in how we viewed ourselves, how we viewed society, and all of that has impacted the church, to we're now over here thinking that we're living in normal.
01:00:53And because it happens gradually, and then suddenly, we don't even realize where we are, and how far we've traveled, you know, in 60 or seven years.
01:01:07So anyways, I'll unpack that more.
01:01:09But it's very distinct what happened, and who influenced who, and how it got there, and why we're here now thinking it's all about us.
01:01:18Well, there's so much there to unpack, and it's going to be incredibly fun, right?
01:01:22Right.
01:01:23Right.
01:01:23If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:01:27You can find us at william-brannum.org.
01:01:30For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:01:37And for more about Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read Some Say They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, The Kansas City Prophets, and The International House of Prayer.
01:01:52We'll see you next time.