- 6/12/2025
John and Bob dive deep into the underlying dysfunctions driving modern Christian celebrity culture, particularly focusing on systemic enablers of corruption rather than just individual scandals. They begin by examining how ministries are financially incentivized to maintain silence or protect their own, describing a widespread tendency to “circle the wagons” to defend power structures instead of seeking truth. Drawing from real-world experiences behind the scenes of charismatic movements and megachurch systems, they highlight how a business-first mindset has permeated the spiritual world, with large sums of money changing hands at conferences and among prominent leaders.
As the discussion progresses, they explore how narcissism and entertainment have overtaken the servant-leader model exemplified by the early church. Bob shares how today’s ministry culture, fueled by Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy and the self-esteem movement of the 1960s, has drifted far from biblical humility. John draws parallels between historical shifts in post-WWII culture and the infiltration of these mindsets into church life. Together, they trace how spectacle-based religion, celebrity preachers, and authoritarian structures have reshaped both pulpits and pews. By the end, they set the stage for a follow-up discussion on how congregants themselves contribute to the entertainment-driven ministry culture.
As the discussion progresses, they explore how narcissism and entertainment have overtaken the servant-leader model exemplified by the early church. Bob shares how today’s ministry culture, fueled by Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy and the self-esteem movement of the 1960s, has drifted far from biblical humility. John draws parallels between historical shifts in post-WWII culture and the infiltration of these mindsets into church life. Together, they trace how spectacle-based religion, celebrity preachers, and authoritarian structures have reshaped both pulpits and pews. By the end, they set the stage for a follow-up discussion on how congregants themselves contribute to the entertainment-driven ministry culture.
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LearningTranscript
00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder
00:48of the Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books, the latest is Some Said They
00:53Blundered, breaking my decades of silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and
00:58the International House of Prayer.
01:00Bob, it's good to be back and to talk about this Christian world that we live in today,
01:05which is actually more like a dumpster fire than Christianity, and we're getting into some
01:13topics that I'm sure is going to make some people uncomfortable, but that's where you
01:17and I tend to go, so we're in our element, but it's good to be back.
01:21Last time we talked about the heresy hunters and talking about how does it help, does it
01:29hurt, what's the pros and cons, and there was a subject that we were actually leading into
01:34that we didn't get into fully, but we're going to be talking about the issues that are existing
01:43currently in today's dumpster fire of Christianity, but instead of focusing on the people that
01:49people are pointed to as the issues, there's an underlying thread of problem that exists
01:56that enables this to happen in the first place, and I think it's an interesting topic
02:02because we're going to have all of the heresy hunters who could potentially aim their fire
02:06at us, so today's going to be fun.
02:10Yeah, I think we need to have like some sort of disclaimer thing at the beginning of this
02:16that says, enter at your own risk.
02:19Yeah.
02:20But the cool thing is, again, I probably said this before, but I, over the weekend, got a
02:28chance to read the comments.
02:30There's quite a bit of comments on the last one you posted, and I have really,
02:36enjoyed reading.
02:38I normally don't, but I've really enjoyed listening, or sorry, listening, reading the
02:44comments and the perspectives of people that are, you know, kind of tracking with us.
02:50Like, it's like I'm realizing, like, you know, you and I sometimes think we're way out there,
02:55but I guess there's a whole other group of people that are way out there, too, because
02:59they seem to understand where we're coming from, which is always really nice.
03:04So I appreciate all of you and your helpful insights as we unpack a lot of this.
03:12I was telling John before we got on, I had a really interesting conversation last night
03:16with one of the younger guys that are currently sort of on a mission to expose a lot of the
03:26fraud that's out there currently in the ministry world.
03:32And I was unpacking some things for him because there's, as John just said, there's a great deal
03:41of focus right now on who's wrong.
03:45But I don't hear any discussions are on what's wrong.
03:49And there's an interesting dynamic, John, I'm sure you've noticed this.
03:55We're witnessing something right now that I described in my book, which is called The
04:01Circling of Wagons.
04:03You know, I talked about how in dysfunctional families, if you have an alcoholic parent or
04:08drug-addicted parent or whatever, in dysfunctional families, everybody circles the wagon to hide
04:14and protect the one person and keep the family reputation.
04:18I am seeing that on a macro level right now within the church world.
04:24And what's fascinating about it is it's our generation.
04:28It's all guys our age and older who I've known since I was in my 20s.
04:33And what I'm watching is, is I'm watching the system circle the wagons and protect its own.
04:47Why?
04:49Well, this is going to be hard for some people to understand and please don't shoot the messenger.
04:57But the reason why there's a lot of circle in the wagons right now is the system is highly lucrative.
05:06Let me unpack this a little bit because I've lived behind the scenes in this world.
05:13I won't name names, but I will say that before the whole Mike Bickle collapse, there was some
05:21prophetic, there was a prophetic ministry that was invited to Kansas City.
05:27That particular ministry walked away twice with $80,000.
05:33Wow.
05:35Now, think about that.
05:39That's more money than most Americans make in a year.
05:45And it happened twice from two weekend speaking engagements.
05:49It is not uncommon for speakers to show up at these conferences and walk away with $10,000 to $20,000 when there's a group of them.
06:02Have you ever noticed how it's the same group of people keep showing up at each other's conferences?
06:08You understand where I'm going with this?
06:10There's a system here.
06:12This system has been in play for a long time.
06:17And what's happening right now is instead of looking at, okay, we've got a systemic problem here.
06:28We have to preserve the system.
06:30We have to preserve the lucrative money-making machine, right?
06:37And let's tell everyone that if you speak against us, you now have the spirit of accusation.
06:46Have you seen that one?
06:48It's all over social media.
06:49And it's the same phrase that all of the defenders, right, of the guys who are getting busted are all using the same phrase.
07:00And I laugh about it because you know, because you come from that same world.
07:03It's always the spirit.
07:05It's this mysterious spirit that shows up.
07:10And now we're all dealing with a spirit of accusation.
07:14You and I come from a business background, right?
07:17What cracks me up, and I was telling this to the guy last night, is I said, in the business world,
07:24well, I've spent 40 years working with the NFL.
07:28In the business world, when something isn't working and we have failure, we do a postmortem.
07:35We tear it apart.
07:37We analyze it.
07:39We pull everything out and nothing's sacred, right?
07:43Everybody jumps in.
07:45Again, if you're in the NFL and you lose on Sunday, you know what happens on Monday?
07:52You're in a film room looking at every play.
07:56You're getting called out.
07:57You ran the wrong route.
07:59You were off here.
08:01You screwed up here.
08:02You let that guy loose on the back end.
08:04That's why they scored.
08:06Everybody's held to account.
08:08And then we get to the church world.
08:10And the very same thing that everyone else does is now a sin.
08:17And those that want to do it have a spirit of accusation.
08:22You see how illogical this is?
08:24That's why I'm really struggling with this right now because of the fact is in all the other areas of my life,
08:31this is considered a really good thing, a highly productive exercise, and suddenly now it's not.
08:39I have had the same type of conversation I think three times in the past two days with different people.
08:46But we're talking about exactly what you're describing.
08:50The church today has created this weird theology, and there's different variations of it.
08:57And you've got the people who believe the Kingdom Now theology or the Seven Mountains Mandate or the Kingdom Theology,
09:04John Wimber, however he branded his.
09:06You've got all these different flavors of what they consider to be the kingdom.
09:10And each one of them, if you go back to the Bible and just read the words of Jesus,
09:15just simply type in a search engine like BibleGateway.com, type in the word kingdom,
09:21you're going to find Jesus saying things like,
09:23No, Satan, you can offer me this kingdom, but this is not my kingdom here on earth.
09:28My kingdom is a heavenly kingdom and other passages.
09:31And they're the one that I always like to go back to because if people could really grasp what is being said,
09:38He said the kingdom of heaven is within you.
09:41And yet you have all of these theologies that are something different than Jesus said from ministers who have to be reading these passages.
09:49They have to know that they're saying something that is not what Jesus said.
09:54It's actually anti-biblical.
09:56But what they've done is they've created this fictional realm.
09:58And because of the entertainment style gospel that exists today,
10:03they like to make the angels and demons seem like the television and movies portray the angels and demons and spirit world.
10:13And the byproduct of that is they have created this atmosphere for the members involved that is an atmosphere of fear.
10:22They fear the demon world because everywhere you look, it's a demon and they're out to get you.
10:27And, you know, it's it gets so bad and problematic that they get afraid to question authority because then they're mentally anguished trying to determine,
10:38Well, is it the demon that's making me ask the question?
10:41And they start to think that they themselves are demonized.
10:45And it's not the biblical way.
10:47Jesus came and he's like he said, the kingdom is within you.
10:51You don't have to live in this fear.
10:53And, you know, the Bible says perfect love casts out fear.
10:56So this is definitely not a message of perfect love that they're presenting.
11:00But in the end, what they've done is they have created the perfect money making atmosphere.
11:06The people can't question it or they're demonized.
11:09Some cases they're excommunicated.
11:11The leadership has ultimate authority and power.
11:14It lets narcissists reign.
11:15And at the same time, money is all flowing uphill and large, large sums of money like you're describing.
11:22Yeah, and to make sure we're clear on what we're saying and what we're not saying is that we're talking about men and women who have big national and international ministries.
11:36The vast majority of guys in the little local churches, well, I'm not saying they don't have their issues because they do because we're all broken and dysfunctional human beings.
11:47What we're talking about is the business of ministry that's, you know, gone international and national.
11:59And these guys have these, you know, they're like stars, right?
12:03They're considered other.
12:06But what's concerned me, as I was sharing with my friend last night, is still we're in this very interesting moment right now where we keep talking about who's wrong, like who's doing it wrong.
12:23Because of the way that I'm wired and because of our, you know, the background, I come from business and athletics.
12:30The question that I keep asking is what's wrong?
12:33And here's why I asked the question.
12:35When the same thing keeps recurring over and over and over again, it's not unique to a who.
12:46You have a system that's producing something bad over and over and over again.
12:54Well, what is it?
12:55Like what's happened?
12:57Like what's going on behind the scenes?
13:00Because the who was created in an environment, they were incubated in some sort of soil, right?
13:11That's not healthy.
13:13In other words, we keep reproducing something, right?
13:17Over and over again, we do this.
13:19So I'm sort of in an interesting place because I'm watching the younger generation sort of in shock right now.
13:27You know, I've probably spent the last years of my life dealing with huge disillusionment and shock.
13:33But I'm not surprised at all.
13:35I mean, I've been behind the curtain.
13:37You've been behind the curtain.
13:39You know what it's really like.
13:41And so, you know, and so what I really want to, you know, kind of go down this road and kind of ask.
13:50And I've been talking about this actually for about five years now.
13:55And there's something that's happened in the church world.
14:01And in the beginning, well, let me just say this.
14:06In the beginning, in the early church, right, you had a group of small business owners and an ex-government employee who were basically the founders of the church, right?
14:23These are hardworking, blue-collar guys.
14:25They're fishermen, right?
14:26They're hard.
14:27And how did they view themselves?
14:31And I think what's fascinating is go back and look at the original Greek word, which was diaconis.
14:44This is the word that we now translate it into English as ministry.
14:52That word is basically describing a table waiter or a servant.
15:01Even Paul the Apostle, in all of his letters, defined himself as a bond servant.
15:12What's happened in the last 2,000 years that we've gone from ministry being something where I lay my life down for others.
15:21I serve a group of people.
15:24It's where we get the word deacon from, right?
15:26I serve others to now I am a star.
15:29I have a ministry, right?
15:33You know, I'm viewed by others as extraordinary.
15:38I'm lifted up on a platform.
15:39Like, this is 180 degrees different than how this whole thing started when Jesus, you know, when they were Jesus' disciples and he poured into them his kingdom of God worldview.
15:52Like, it's way off the reservation.
15:55We're not like a little bit off.
15:57We're 180 degrees off.
16:01You see what I mean?
16:02Like, I know that sounds shocking, but think about this.
16:05These guys saw themselves as servants.
16:09You know, I've never told this, I don't think, on the podcast.
16:13So, my grandfather was the pastor at the Branham Tabernacle here in Jeffersonville.
16:17I can ride my bike to the church that he led for 50 years.
16:20After Branham died, a series of events happened, and he became the head pastor.
16:25Well, the NAR and the charismatic movement and the shepherding movement and many of these other movements, whether they like to admit it or not, they built much of their empire on top of Branhamism.
16:38What Branham did financially during the Lateran revivals and the post-World War II healing revival as a whole, they wanted to mimic his financial structure.
16:50And how did he achieve this?
16:52What doctrine was he doing that was enticing to the itching ears?
16:56That's literally how this all came to be.
16:59Well, at my grandfather's church, after this thing had spun off into a highly, highly destructive cult, one of the worst – there are documented evidences of the different destructions that have happened in this cult, and it's unbelievable.
17:14It's astounding.
17:15Jim Jones' People's Temple, the biggest of which, right?
17:17Many of these people say that Branham went astray in his later years, and so we like his early years, we discredit his later years.
17:27Yet at my grandfather's church, not many people are aware of this.
17:30While my grandfather was there – I don't know if it's still happening because I've not been there – key executives from major, major NAR institutions were coming to visit and learn how this authoritarian structure was still in operation.
17:45Interesting.
17:46I have had some – I could name names and people, their jaw would drop, but I have had people contact me and say, why are you doing this?
17:54I knew your grandfather.
17:55I visited his church many times.
17:57And I'm like, wait a minute, you did?
18:00And I've not seen and invited any of them personally, but they've actually – some of them have reached out to me, some of which wanted to, I think, gather dirt on me, but who knows why they did it.
18:12But the point that I'm driving at, the structure of the church, the cult church that I attended, that my grandfather led for years, that these NAR figures are visiting and trying to understand how they did it, it is so different from what other Christians understand as church that they can't even fathom the authoritarian structure of it.
18:37So the word deacon, like you said, it does mean servant.
18:41I studied this heavily because I was shocked that that's what it meant.
18:45In the charismatic NAR churches, it's obviously much more different than the servant.
18:52It's not somebody who's there to serve.
18:54It's a different structure altogether.
18:57But in my grandfather's church, the church where these NAR executives are visiting, it means military police.
19:04William Branham, in the years that they claim Branham did not go astray, these are the ones that they deem to be the good years, he literally said – there's a book, I've got it in the other room, it's called Conduct Order Doctrine or something like this.
19:22It summed up Branham's doctrines on the church establishment, the building and structure.
19:28And it said, these are God's policemen, they're there to enforce, they're there to kick people out of the church should they violate our rules.
19:36And I watched as people did this.
19:38This is during the years that these NAR people were there.
19:42If a lady come in and she was wearing her best, Sunday best slacks and a blouse, well, the slacks weren't permitted.
19:49They would physically eject the lady from the church.
19:52That's how these enforcers were.
19:54And that's what these guys are visiting and watching, right?
19:57So they're looking at how this authoritarian structure was created.
20:02But beyond that, they're also looking at other aspects of it.
20:06Like you said, I'm a businessman, you're a businessman.
20:09How did the marketing work?
20:11How did Branham market himself?
20:13What were his styles and his techniques?
20:15What branding did he use for himself?
20:17And you start to notice these other guys, like Bob Jones.
20:22Granted, he may have been genuine, but many of the similarities between his life story and Branham's, it blows your mind, man.
20:29Yeah, it's really wild, isn't it?
20:31Yeah.
20:32And it's like these guys either, maybe it's a genuine story, but maybe he was chosen because he matched that genuine story.
20:40For whatever reason, they're down to the marketing, to the structure, to this thing that is called Deliverance Ministries.
20:50Branham is a large reason why this exists.
20:53Not many people are aware.
20:55He and Gordon Lindsley held these big conferences that are teaching people how to perform these stage acts because they created this fictional kingdom of what they called God's kingdom.
21:07And created the realm in which all of the things, it's like a Dungeons & Dragons game, all of these fictional demons that, I've got a book somewhere that talks about how you cure the hiccup demon.
21:21That's how weird this gets.
21:23So they've created this fictional world and they teach people how to live in it in such a way that it's financially profitable.
21:29And they've combined business strategy, marketing strategy with spiritualism, not Christianity.
21:38But this whole thing, this whole package that has been created is an entertaining package that the itching ears love to hear.
21:47Well, you know, Jesus talked a lot about fruit, but he also talked about soil.
21:51And I think what's on my heart for the next couple sessions is I would like to talk about the current soil in the church world.
22:03Another word you could use is environment.
22:06I just pointed out something that's transpired over 2,000 years where there's been a fundamental shift from I'm here to lay my life down for others.
22:20I'm willing to be a martyr.
22:21I'm willing to die on your behalf.
22:25To ministry now is an elite group, a small group of elite people who are chosen.
22:32And we all follow them and adore them and idolize them.
22:36And we've created a celebrity environment around them.
22:42So, but there's two things that have happened in our lifetime that I think I want to point out.
22:49And again, I hope people will be gracious in that I have a passion for sociology.
22:55So, this is funny.
22:59Where most people want to be on the front row of meetings and events, I want to be on the back up high.
23:06And the reason is, is that I'm one of these guys that likes the 360, 50,000 foot bird's eye view.
23:17Where most people are like, I want to be in the front so I can experience it.
23:20But I'm more interested in what's really going on here right now and what's happening across the whole of the crowd, right?
23:28So, this is going to be a 50,000 foot kind of insight here.
23:34But in our lifetime, there are two things that have happened that have absolutely transformed the church environment or the soil of the church world.
23:47And they've happened in our lifetime.
23:49One of them is that we have adopted a culture of narcissism.
23:55Now, again, I think initially people kind of will push back on that.
24:00But let me develop this here in a minute and explain to you a little bit more about what I'm saying and why this is so key.
24:10Because it's become so ingrained in our culture right now that we don't even see it anymore.
24:17Because it's happened over decades.
24:19And the second one is we've adopted a culture of entertainment.
24:25So, let's start with the culture of narcissism.
24:29Give some perspective here.
24:31You know, our grandfathers, you know, were alive during the Titanic, right?
24:39When the Titanic disaster happened.
24:41One of the things you hear or read about in the Titanic was how they didn't have enough light bulbs, right?
24:49So, what happened?
24:50The mentality of our granddads was it's my role to lay my life down and sacrifice so that others can live, right?
25:06And so, they put the women and the children in.
25:08And lots of men went down with the boat.
25:12And they didn't think twice about it.
25:13And we're talking about multimillionaires, right?
25:16Jacob Astor, people like this.
25:18These are high-profile people with millions of dollars who, like, that's interesting, right?
25:27Then look at our dads.
25:29World War II happens.
25:31Evil hits the world.
25:35On both the East and the West, right?
25:38What do our dads do?
25:40They rush down, you know, to sign up to go in the military.
25:46In fact, they're so driven by laying their life down for others, they're lying and saying they're 18 when they're 16, right?
25:56In other words, our dads had the same thing that their fathers had, which is my existence, my role,
26:07my place in society is to lay my life down for others, to sacrifice on others' behalf, right?
26:15It's one of the reasons why when they came back and used the GI Bill and got a college education,
26:23they built the biggest, most dynamic economy in the history of humanity, right?
26:29They worked their butts off.
26:32Now, what ends up happening, and this is some of the dynamics that are in play, is that our dads came back from the war damaged.
26:41My uncles had PTSD, whatever.
26:44And if any of you have watched The Sound of Music, you see the Baron von Trapp kind of figure, right, with all the kids.
26:53And he's distant, right?
26:55He's other.
26:56There's like this gulf between him and the kids.
26:59Well, a lot of our generation grew up like that, right?
27:03We grew up with dads that were emotionally distant.
27:07They were broken.
27:08They struggled with nightmares.
27:11You know, I had uncles who lived their whole life with guilt because they survived D-Day and their best buddies didn't.
27:21I mean, you know what I'm talking about?
27:23It's like that was the generation that raised us.
27:26So what happens in the 1960s?
27:29What does our generation say?
27:32Where's the love?
27:34Right?
27:35Yeah.
27:36And the reason why this is important is because it's in our generation, there was a fundamental shift from we to me.
27:46Our dads saw themselves as existing in a world of we, right?
27:52It's our communities.
27:53It's our family.
27:54Like, we're here for we.
27:55But we became so driven by our emptiness of soul that we started this whole thing like, okay, where's the love?
28:09Well, the problem is laws and rules aren't loving, so let's get rid of them, right?
28:15So we did all these things.
28:16But in this space, and this is where, again, I don't want to get preachy here, but I want people to understand there's a very specific thing that happened in America that launched all this.
28:29And it started with a woman called Ayn Rand.
28:33Now, Ayn Rand, in some circles, is considered this incredible philosopher because she had a huge impact on my parents' generation, right?
28:44So Ayn Rand, for people that don't know, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, like in 1905.
28:53And she came to the United States.
28:55She had relatives in Chicago.
28:57But she came here because she wanted to be a screenwriter in Hollywood.
29:01So she worked with Cecil B. DeMille and people like that, right?
29:06And then in 1935, she released her first novel, which was called Fountainhead, and she got all kinds of critical acclaim.
29:15And then in the 1940s, she started getting involved in politics.
29:19And then in the 50s, right, which is the precursor to the whole hippie movement, which was in Greenwich Village there, you had Jack Kerouac and Dylan and Alan Greensburg and all these philosophers.
29:32And she was hanging out with these guys, right?
29:36And she started gathering this whole group of people around her because that's exactly what happened.
29:41And you had, like, these little cults, right, in Greenwich Village.
29:45And she had this whole following because she was a very, very smart woman.
29:50In fact, I know some of you know the name Alan Greenspan.
29:54Alan Greenspan was, I think, the Federal Reserve president.
30:01Alan Greenspan, when he was in his 20s, was one of her disciples that was involved.
30:08But anyways, she ended up, what's key here is she ends up having an affair with one of her disciples, a guy named Nathaniel Blumenthal, who later changed his name to Nathaniel Brandon.
30:23It was really important, this whole, because history moves on relationships, right?
30:28There are a 25-year difference between the two of them, but they have this relationship.
30:32In 1957, which is the year I was born, she published what most people consider as her magnum opus, which was called Atlas Shrugged.
30:43A lot of people have heard all this.
30:45You know, in our generation, if you went to college, you had to read all this stuff.
30:51Like, that's how much influence she had.
30:53But anyways, Aarand had a philosophy, and her philosophy was called objectivism.
31:02That was what she called it.
31:04And let me read how she described it.
31:06She said, objectivism is the concept of man as being a heroic being, with his own happiness, as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.
31:28Now, the reason why this is important is her philosophy literally infiltrated all of the Ivy League schools in America.
31:40Objectivism became a thing in the 50s and 60s.
31:44Like, huge, right?
31:46All of our political leaders, all of our business leaders, all these people were highly influenced.
31:52Well, break that down.
31:55You know what objectivism is?
31:56It's all about me.
31:58You see, I'm God.
32:01Have 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?
32:14You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
32:21On the books 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.
32:35You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
32:42If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
32:48And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
32:55On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
33:00You know, it's funny, because you and I came to similar conclusions, but from different angles.
33:07See, I began trying to understand the entertainment world of Christianity that exists today by studying early history.
33:16So I went way back, 1800s and before.
33:19Because after I left Branhamism and I started entering into Christian churches, I didn't really understand it.
33:26I was a student of my Bible when I was in the cult.
33:30I read my Bible.
33:32I've mentioned this a few times now, but I was programmed and manipulated where I could read entire passages that were totally condemning what I was in.
33:41But I was mentally programmed to block and misunderstand those passages.
33:46But I did read the whole thing.
33:48Then after I left, I read it continuously, nonstop, just as much as I could read it and wipe all of that garbage out of my head, I did.
33:55But the problem I ran into is, as I'm going into the churches, what I'm reading doesn't really match what they're doing.
34:03And the whole strategy, it just felt like entertainment.
34:08And especially, you know, I went to a couple of the bigger ones that had the lights and the gases that flow from the stage and all the weird stuff that they have.
34:18You know, the dry ice or fog machines, I guess they're called.
34:21So that's definitely entertainment.
34:24But even in some of the smaller churches, the structure and style of the sermon itself was meant to be entertaining.
34:31And rightfully so, right?
34:33Because people aren't going to come back, unfortunately.
34:35If they just hear the pure gospel without some entertainment, they'll never show back up.
34:40The doors would close, etc.
34:41So I began in the early years, I began to study, well, how did this shift?
34:46And World War II, like you mentioned earlier, and I think we mentioned a lot of that in the last episode we did.
34:52But I want to go back to that because World War II had a humongous impact.
34:57Not just within Christianity, but things that we take for granted today.
35:04It came because of World War II and the fears of World War III.
35:10One of the things that happened, which I'm very thankful for, I'm a big cartoon fan.
35:16And the shorts was in its heyday after World War II because people could not really sit and have a full feature cartoon and pay attention to it.
35:29Because there's so many fears and anguishes and, you know, people have died.
35:33Many family members that I know who went to fight in Germany, they're now dead.
35:38And so these little shorts that they could play before a feature film, people loved it.
35:43And the Bugs Bunny cartoons that everybody looks at and thinks this is, you know, the 80s that these came out.
35:49I was a little surprised when I actually learned that most of my favorite ones were from 1939 up until, like, 1947.
35:59That's when the really good ones came out.
36:01So you had this shift in entertainment.
36:04Well, what happened with that shift is that, you know, back then they did not have the cartoon network.
36:12They did not have all these TV networks.
36:14Like you mentioned, maybe before we were talking, I grew up, we had three channels over the air.
36:21And you're really lucky if you got all three.
36:23Many times you only got one or two.
36:26But before all of that existed, people went to the religious arena to have their entertainment.
36:34So these traveling ministers would come in and set up a tent in some remote area.
36:39Well, that was the entertainment.
36:40And they're selling hot dogs from hot dog stands outside.
36:44I mean, it's like a circus, right?
36:46You walk up and they step right up, step right up and see the traveling preacher kind of thing.
36:52And that was their entertainment.
36:54But then as the entertainment industry began to shift, Christianity somehow shifted with it.
37:00And through every stage of this, what's odd is if you study the kingdom with its angels and demons and the way it spawned in the Christian world as this was happening,
37:15those versions of angels and demons ironically match what was being portrayed in Hollywood.
37:20And so as people are going and they're watching these, well, ministers, they're in the entertainment industry already.
37:27It is an entertainment gospel.
37:29Amy Semple McPherson.
37:31Yeah.
37:31So if I can make what they're seeing on television and screen match my sermons, every time they see it on screen, it's more powerful.
37:39So there's more power in the sermons.
37:42But in doing so, you're creating this fictional world, right?
37:45This is something invented by Hollywood.
37:47Fast forward into today's world, you have people that literally believe that everything negative that can possibly happen to them happens because there's a demon out there to get them.
37:59And they're scared.
37:59Some people – I've met people who are scared to walk out their door because of this.
38:04And it's taken away the power that – when the Bible describes Jesus conquering all and he says it is finished, it takes that verbiage out of the Bible completely.
38:15It is finished, it is finished, no longer exists in this world.
38:18I'm going to get myself in trouble here, but okay.
38:22So when I joined Instagram, I joined it because I wanted to see what my friends were doing.
38:30I wanted to see their grandkids, right?
38:34What I did not understand was I was going to be exposed every day to thousands of pictures of people posting of their own face.
38:45Right?
38:47Now, you're all laughing, but let me explain something to you.
38:51That would have never happened in previous generations, ever.
38:57People would have thought that's absolutely rude, over-the-top, self-centered, like something right now that's a technology that we all use every single day.
39:12And we think it's so awesome, almost every previous generation before us would have said, that's gross.
39:21You're so preoccupied with yourself.
39:25It's sort of like, what was it, Sleeping Beauty, mirror, mirror on the wall.
39:29Who's the fairest of them all?
39:31It's like we're preoccupied with posting pictures.
39:34Like it's non-stop, right?
39:36And it's, sorry, it's all BS.
39:39It's everybody's dressing up and trying to present this facade that I'm this somebody, you know?
39:45I mean, when the most popular people that people are following, right, are all entertainers who are posting pictures of themselves non-stop,
39:57and some of them in very risque outfits.
40:01Like, what's wrong with us?
40:03See, I'm immune to this because I've got this ugly mug.
40:06Nobody wants to see me posting that.
40:08So, how did this happen?
40:10See, this is what I'm trying to, I'm hoping people will track with me.
40:13Because here's what's gone on, which is really bothering me, is that for at least a few hundred years, maybe longer,
40:24the church world impacted secular culture, right?
40:29There are a number of books out there that are great books that explain how diabolical the world was
40:37and how the values, morals, and ethics of Christianity transformed cultures, right?
40:45But since World War II, the cultures are impacting the church.
40:52Like, there's been a reversal going on, and I don't think people are aware of it.
40:56And the reason why is it's happened over decades, slowly, a little bit, right?
41:03And what I'm trying to do is explain to people how this started, right?
41:06You know, as anybody that studies sociology knows, and the reason why certain groups of people went right after academia
41:15is academia is where the ideas start, and they trickle down.
41:21That's the bastion where worldviews get shifted, where things get shifted.
41:27Academia is where that happens.
41:29And it filters out, because what happens is you've got a whole bunch of 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds
41:36who have virtually nothing in their head, go to these universities, and are told,
41:42this is where to look, what to see, and what's important, and this is how you should view everything.
41:47They're given a set of glasses and told, this is how you view life.
41:51And they walk out of there, and that's exactly what they do.
41:54And until they face some sort of life crisis and disillusionment, they're just little echoes in the system.
42:03Well, where did this start?
42:05And that's what I'm trying to explain.
42:06Ayn Rand, who's this name that most people have kind of heard of it, but they don't really know who she is,
42:14her worldview, her philosophy of objectivism had a huge impact.
42:20And here's where the next chapter of this goes.
42:22So she and Nathaniel Brandon, who's 25 years younger than her, have this toured relationship, and then they break up.
42:32Well, who is Nathaniel Brandon?
42:35You know what he becomes?
42:37The father of the self-esteem movement in the 1960s.
42:42Nathaniel Brandon is the guy, based on objectivism, that starts talking about,
42:48you know what the problem is?
42:50We just don't love ourselves enough.
42:55Right?
42:56And he starts what he calls the self-esteem movement in California in the 1960s.
43:01Right?
43:02And we throw off all the rules, and we become self-indulgent, and it's all become self.
43:09Right?
43:09And then we go to conferences where we're taught about self-fulfillment, self-awareness, self-love,
43:16self-strengthening, self-care, self-acceptance, self-access, self-actualization, self-adjusting,
43:23self-advancement, self-actualization, right?
43:25This list can go on and on.
43:27And it all starts with one interesting little four-letter word called self.
43:34Right?
43:35And it's so normalized now that we don't even realize that we've become what?
43:44Self-centered.
43:47Nathaniel, Ian Rand and Nathaniel Brandon brought into American culture self-centeredness, i.e.
43:57narcissism.
43:58That's why we have this culture of narcissism, which has now impacted the church world.
44:05It's everywhere.
44:06There's no difference between us and them.
44:09It's such a complicated thought.
44:10It's really difficult to get it out in a way people understand.
44:13When I'm talking about what happened in the church after World War II, it is a flood.
44:19Somebody opened the floodgates of culture, and culture is entering into the church, entertainment,
44:24all aspects of life, basically.
44:27And ironically, it transitioned to people who are saying that we need to go conquer these
44:33seven mountains of things that have shifted in our church worldview.
44:37But Ayn Rand and her history, you know, I can remember.
44:41I'm old enough to remember reading columns in the newspaper from Ayn Rand essays.
44:46I don't know if they were fresh and new.
44:48They might have been republications.
44:49But I remember them, and I'm almost positive, although it's a very old memory, I'm almost
44:55positive I heard a minister read from one of her columns.
44:59It was either her or the Dear Abby.
45:00It was one of the two.
45:01But I heard a sermon that was based off of that.
45:04And Ayn Rand basically took everything that the world had held as culture and tried to flip
45:11it upside down.
45:12And one of her – when you talk about just simply the self-importance, it doesn't even
45:18skim the surface of Ayn Rand.
45:20She was a hardcore atheist, which makes it a little ironic that she's being read in the
45:25pulpit.
45:25Darrell Bock And man is God.
45:26But she believed and taught that your mind is basically the God.
45:34You need to feed the God of your mind.
45:37And that was her philosophy.
45:40And one of the things – she would have hated me.
45:43She would have absolutely hated me.
45:45I had to take one of these tests for one of a client that I had, a personality test.
45:50And they actually sat me down with the counselor afterwards because they said, my altruism was
45:57too high to be doing what I was doing.
46:00I could not – they said, you are off the charts.
46:03And she showed me like this bar graph.
46:05I'm fully into the red.
46:07I'm beyond – I think her exact words were, John, you are in a position of you're managing
46:13people, but you're in such a weird position because you would actually die for those people
46:19you're managing if given the chance.
46:20Darrell Bock But Ayn Rand taught that this type of
46:24selflessness was evil.
46:26So whenever she created the God of the mind, she rated altruism as a pure evil that's in
46:32this world and went through various stages of trying to describe this.
46:36So she's coming out hardcore atheist, and the Bible says there's no greater love than
46:41to lay your life down for another man.
46:43She's teaching that that is evil.
46:45But the church is absorbing all of this culture from entertainment industry to things like
46:52Ayn Rand to – there's a whole slew of other things that is – it's all coming into the
46:57church.
46:58While the biblical church is not something that is swayed and structured by culture, it is
47:05trying to define and establish good morals so that you can be different than the culture.
47:11Darrell Bock Yeah.
47:12So what I see –
47:13Darrell Bock Called out, right?
47:14Darrell Bock Yeah, the called out ones.
47:15So when you've got all these isolationist cults and this NAR mess where they're trying to
47:20say that we're being discriminated against because they're in the entertainment industry
47:26and all of this, they don't understand that it's a problem of their own making.
47:29Darrell Bock Well, they don't realize how infiltrated
47:33they've become by these philosophies.
47:35You know there are now, in our lifetime, this happened, there are 600 English words that
47:42start with self.
47:44I mean, think about that.
47:45Over 600 words now in our vocabulary in English that start with self.
47:52Darrell Bock See, again, this has happened so slowly over
47:56such a long period of time, we don't even realize what's happened to us.
48:00And it's become so normalized, right?
48:03I mean, if you think about it, in the Old Testament, didn't God tell them not even to
48:09make an image of themselves, right?
48:12I mean, think about this, how far this thing has shifted.
48:15We've gone from, no, do not make an image of yourself to, hey, everyone, look at me, look
48:22at me, look at me, look at me, right?
48:26I mean, and what's the whole ministry world?
48:29Whole ministry world is, look at me more than them.
48:35It's just insane.
48:36Like this whole thing, I sit there and I look at this and I go, we're way, like we're so
48:41way off the reservation.
48:43And here's what's crazy about it, is we don't know it and we all think we're what?
48:48Normal, right?
48:50We're a, I love this one, we're a New Testament church.
48:56Really?
48:57You have no idea how different your mindset, your perspectives, your worldview is in the
49:06early church.
49:07You're not even on the same planet.
49:09I went to one of those New Testament churches and the guy come out.
49:13Yeah, the guy come out and it was interesting for me because I had left this authoritarian
49:18cult that was stuck in fundamentalism and he was teaching these sermons filled with grace,
49:23which is a concept that we didn't have in the cult churches.
49:27But he comes out and he says, we're a New Testament church.
49:30Well, I'm sitting here in an audience, I don't know how many thousand people.
49:34Well, he's a hologram on the stage.
49:36They had recently expanded, they had all these campuses and they didn't have ministers to
49:41fill them.
49:41So they set up a hologram projector.
49:44And so he's saying that and it's all entertainment, man.
49:47It is such a big, massive entertainment.
49:50It's almost like this thing has been like, you know, like a drip you get in the hospital.
49:55It's been this drip that's got into the church's bloodstream.
49:58And decades and decades and decades later, we've been transformed and we don't even realize
50:06it.
50:07We don't realize.
50:08We have, I mean, I, I grew up, I remember even back in the eighties, we used to say ours,
50:15we, no, it's all me and my, and especially in the ministry world.
50:20So my first half of this equation is, is that we have a soil in the church.
50:27And narcissistic leaders.
50:30That's why right now, the reason why most of these guys are fighting so desperately to
50:37get back in the ministry is because they're so distorted in their brain that they think
50:43they're indispensable.
50:45Like they think the rest of us all need them.
50:49They're so important to what God's doing.
50:52And they're going to have a very rude awakening in the months before they die.
50:59And they're going to realize how significantly unimportant they are.
51:05I remember seeing pictures of old Roberts in his little house, you know, as an old man,
51:12you know, and, you know, he was just this shriveled up, you know, you know, somebody that very
51:19few people even came to say, like, you're gone.
51:22Like we live in such a narcissistic culture right now and a news cycle that's 24 hours
51:28that you're done.
51:30Like you have your time in the sun and then nobody cares about you anymore.
51:34And that's what these guys can't get through their head.
51:37We don't care about you.
51:38They all have this weird, distorted sense about themselves that they are absolutely vital to
51:46what God's doing.
51:47Therefore, we'll have double standards.
51:50Therefore, we can have these facades, these ministry facades, right?
51:55And because, as I said earlier, most of these guys aren't anything like what you think they
52:02really, what they are.
52:03There's two versions of all of them.
52:05There's very little authenticity.
52:09Again, not in the local pastors that are working their butts off to take care of their
52:15congregants.
52:16I'm talking about the guys that need to be on TV and show up and make $80,000 at these
52:22conferences and they write all these books and they keep telling you how you should think
52:27and where you should spend or send your money, which is to them because they're indispensable.
52:33That's narcissism.
52:36Darrell Bock Absolutely.
52:37And it explains why you have so many different ministers who are trying to mimic and recreate
52:44Branham.
52:44Why the guys are coming to visit my grandfather's church when he was still alive.
52:48Because Branham set up a strategy where people could be elevated and be looked at.
52:54Show me.
52:55Show me.
52:56Show more of me.
52:56You know, the books, even the propaganda that was sent out, a man sent from God, this kind
53:02of thing.
53:03If you go back and read the Voice of Healing magazines, which was from its inception, it
53:09was the ability to create a ministry in a stage persona.
53:13And they were all doing the same thing.
53:14I had an angel.
53:15An angel came to me.
53:16Darrell Bock Well, they're all other.
53:18There's all of you.
53:19Darrell Bock Yeah.
53:19Darrell Bock Yeah.
53:19Darrell Bock Yeah.
53:19Darrell Bock Heons, and then there's me.
53:22Darrell Bock Right.
53:23Darrell Bock And I'm other, right?
53:24I'm on an elevated plane.
53:26I have elevated revelation.
53:28I have an elevated, right?
53:29That's whole, as you and I call it, the man of God model, right?
53:33That's so, whatever.
53:34They don't even realize it's all narcissism.
53:38It's all rooted in this narcissistic worldview that's crept into the church world.
53:44It's nothing like the early church, sacrificing, laying your life down.
53:49Darrell Bock Down for one another, all of that.
53:51The narcissism thing, while it's in the church world, it's predominantly in the ministry world.
53:58The entertainment culture I want to talk about is our problem, us that sit in the chairs,
54:03and what we want from our ministers, where we go.
54:07So we'll deal with that next time.
54:09Darrell Bock Yeah, that's a subject that fascinates me,
54:12because I love entertainment anyway, but the fact that entertainment culture has shifted
54:17and molded the church is just mind-boggling when you think about it.
54:22You read about these great men and women of old who, they molded the characters of others
54:28because they had solid, really reputable characters.
54:32And then, I don't know what happened.
54:34It's like after the entertainment culture crept in, everybody's trying to,
54:38instead of being this person that stands out in a crowd,
54:41they want to be somebody who can be like the other guy that stood out in a crowd years ago.
54:45And you think about, you know, the grave soakers and all the weirdness that goes on.
54:50They're trying to resurrect something that happened years ago
54:53rather than standing out in a crowd themselves.
54:56So that will be a fun and exciting episode.
54:59Darrell Bock Well, it's the pressure.
55:00This is the thing, as somebody that deals with young guys in the ministry,
55:04the pressure they're all under to entertain people.
55:07Darrell Bock Yeah.
55:07When we come back, we'll do that one.
55:10Darrell Bock Okay.
55:10Sounds good.
55:11Darrell Bock Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information,
55:13you can check us out on the web.
55:15You can find us at william-brannum.org.
55:17For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation,
55:20you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
55:24And for more about Mike Bickle and the IHOP KC,
55:27you can read Some Said They Blundered,
55:30Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle,
55:32the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.
55:35Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
56:05Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
56:07Weaponized respecting���rannum.org.
56:08Weaponized原因 in pret
56:16Thatẽ non-cilled interviewing with John Keone Laugh