From Prophets to Performers- How Christianity Became a Stage Act - Bob Scott - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John and Bob dive deep into the growing entanglement between modern religious leadership and the culture of entertainment. They begin by exploring how charismatic figures use divine authority as a tool to justify behavior that contradicts traditional Christian teachings. Drawing from their personal experiences and research, they trace how religious performance evolved into spectacle—shaped by branding, narcissism, and a demand for attention. They also discuss how market-driven ministry, rooted in the postwar influence of fundamentalism and cultural narcissism, turned church leadership into celebrity and ministry into a monetized brand.  As the conversation unfolds, they highlight how entertainment values overtook sacrificial service within spiritual life. The duo critiques the technological evolution from print to screen and the psychological manipulation baked into digital media and megachurch marketing. Bob reflects on church scandals, the illusion of prophetic authority, and the use of staged drama to maintain crowds and income. John exposes the shifting narratives behind so-called prophecies and how modern religious media outlets repackage failed predictions for popular appeal. They close with an indictment of modern prophetic performance, where spectacle has replaced repentance, and entertainment has replaced humility.  00:00 Introduction 01:04 Questioning Why So Many Religious Leaders Act Unethically 02:22 Narcissism and the Market-Driven Ministry Model 05:12 From Repentance to Self-Esteem: Cultural Shifts in the Church 08:03 Public Validation and the Rise of the God Complex 11:08 Entertainment as a Tool for Church Growth 12:02 The Psychology Behind Fallen Leaders Returning 13:43 Celebrity Preachers, Irrelevance, and the Illusion of Importance 14:28 Entertainment Culture and Ministry Burnout 17:01 Christian Identity and the Branding of Fundamentalism 19:36 Technological Evolution and Attention Manipulation 25:03 Las Vegas Algorithms and Psychological Manipulation 28:01 Scandals as Publicity in Religious Movements 30:08 Prophetic Movements and Manufactured Authority 33:04 Congregational Complicity in Entertainment Culture 35:36 Hierarchies of Sin and the Illusion of Moral Superiority 38:02 Martyrdom vs. Prosperity: A Shift in Christian Values 42:18 Propaganda, Manipulation, and the Loss of Discernment 44:13 The Shift from Decreasing Self to Increasing Platform 45:12 Prophetic Ministry as Performance 47:04 Random Predictions and Manufactured Prophecy 50:04 The True Role of Prophets: Calling for Repentance 51:07 Prophets vs. Secular Truth-Tellers 53:09 William Branham’s Changing “Prophecies” and Charisma Media 55:39 Entertainment Culture’s Influence on Religious Media 56:02 Closing Thoughts and Preview of Next Discussion ______________________ 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:/

Transcript

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 Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books. The latest is Some Say They Blundered,

00:53Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, The Kansas City Prophets, and The International

00:59House of Prayer. Bob, it's good to be back, and I'm aching and anxious to get into this

01:05topic as we talked about last time, and I was listening as I was editing the last video,

01:12and I kept crying squirrel because I kept going towards the entertainment. I'm just dying to

01:16get there to talk about. You and I are aligned in this. We're aligned in many things, but

01:22specifically this. We want to know why things are such a mess. Why in the world, in the name of

01:29Christianity, are all of these people doing unchristian things, and worse than that, claiming

01:35divine authority while they do them, as though they're inspired directly by God to do them?

01:42This, you know, I started obviously in the William Branham cult, and I started researching to find why

01:47he did it. But as I'm researching, I find, well, he's one of a thousand people, 10,000 people that

01:54are doing the same thing. Why are they doing it? And it led me in my history way backwards to,

02:01you know, the early ancient religions with the ancient theaters and the ancient, we've talked

02:06about this, it's basically entertainment. It was ancient entertainment. It was spiritualized back then.

02:13It's spiritualized now. It's a mess. So today, as I said, I'm dying to get into it, but we're going

02:18to talk about entertainment. Well, you know, if you're just tuning in, and you don't really have

02:28any context for our discussion, because this is the second part of something we started on the last

02:34session. And I talked to John a month ago about the fact that I've been fascinated watching all of

02:46the social media posts about pointing out what all these various celebrity, ministry celebrities are

02:53doing wrong. What I'm not seeing any discussion on is what's wrong. And the reason why this is

03:02important is, is that if you go back and you refresh your understanding of Jesus, one of his main

03:13parables was the parable of the sower, right? Which you see in Matthew and Luke. And what he talks about

03:20is soil. What's the soil? There's good soil and bad soil. And so what I'm really been wrestling with

03:30is what's the current state of the soil of the American church? Because we keep having the same

03:40bad fruit. We keep having recurring problems, right? So what we did, or the reason why this is important

03:50to me, because as everyone knows, if we don't get to the what's wrong problem, we're doomed to keep

03:57repeating the same problems, right? This isn't going to go away. This is just going to continue to be

04:02cyclical. So what we talked about last session or last episode was the fact that there's been this

04:11gradual infiltration of cultural narcissism, and it's become our new norm. It's all about me,

04:20right? Which we all laugh about, which previous generations would have found utterly distasteful,

04:28by and large, right? Has become acceptable and even lauded. You know, look at me, you know,

04:34has really consumed the last three generations, and a generation is usually 20 to 25 years, right?

04:40So what has that produced in the church world? Things that are so normal to us, but previous generations

04:46would frown on, right? It's a phrase that we hear all the time, my ministry, right? Like when people

04:56say that, we don't even think about it, but is it your ministry, right? If you're a servant of God,

05:04is it your ministry or is it his, right? Ministry has become a marketable brand, right? That's something

05:14that's really new. Try to publish a book or get a record deal, right? Nobody cares if you have great

05:24content or you have a prophetic word from God. What they're interested in is do you have a marketable

05:30brand with followers and can we make money? Yeah. Right? Like you might have the most brilliant idea

05:37in the world. Nobody cares unless you have a brand. And brand is now associated with people, right?

05:47Churches and parachurch organizations are now run like enterprises, right? They're run like businesses.

05:54This all started in the 1980s when church consultants became a thing. I remember it vividly. I was

06:00planning a church, right? And all they did was simply take business principles and put Christian

06:07verbiage on them. And so what ended up happening was is that all these pastors and leaders got trained

06:14to run a business under the guise of it being a church, right? Something to think about is from the

06:23beginning of colonial America until the 1960s, preachers confronted people about their self-centeredness,

06:32repentance, right? Repentance was a thing. Like that was a word that you heard a lot because you

06:39were repenting from your selfishness, your self-centeredness. Now you go to church and you're

06:46told how wonderful you are. You know what I mean? I mean, again, we're stepping back here. We're

06:52looking at all this, right? The whole self-esteem movement that Ayn Rand, we talked about Ayn Rand's

06:59objectivism, right? That self-fulfillment and personal success is the goal of life and how this

07:06infiltrated all of our academic institutions and that then infiltrated the business world and all

07:14these sectors of society, right? Well, I remember when it infiltrated the elementary schools, right?

07:22We were telling Johnny how wonderful he was. Well, what did it produce? A whole generation of brats.

07:29Little brats, right? Who ended up having a collision in adulthood when they realized nobody really

07:37cared about Johnny, right? So I was reading through the comments of one that we recently did about the

07:44heresy hunters. And we both just really asked the question, are they helping? Are they hurting? We

07:49really never came to a conclusion. But it's funny if you read through the comments, those who think that

07:55we did come to a conclusion strongly objected to whatever conclusion they thought we came up to.

08:01But at the same time, many people missed the context of what we were saying.

08:08Right. And I think for the relevance to this episode, I think I need to clarify that just a bit.

08:14So a lot of people don't realize this. Not many people are public speakers. And those who are

08:20of those, not many people are really out in the public. And so there is this problem that exists

08:28and nobody is immune to it, including myself, wherein when you speak in a very public audience,

08:36you are looking at your audience to see, did they accept you or did they reject you?

08:43Do they like what you say? Do they dislike? You're always wanting that, not just the feedback,

08:49but you're always wanting the assurance that you're doing what is correct. You're saying what

08:53is correct. What you're saying is on the mark and it is appealing to your audience.

08:59Now take that thought and apply it to a religious setting. Whether you're a heresy hunter, whether

09:05you're a minister who's oblivious to all of this, or whether you're one of the ministers that are

09:12the targets of the heresy hunters, all categories have the same issue. Once you enter that thought

09:19into the spiritual realm, if the audience likes it, well, God must have spoken through me and the

09:25the audience must hear my divine voice. Whether you're a heresy hunter or not, that comes out.

09:32Now, not every heresy hunter, and I'm using that label very loosely, be aware of that. It is probably

09:39derogatory, purposefully so for the title and for the YouTube caption so people would click it.

09:45But there are people who are in that with really, really good intentions, some of which aren't

09:51doing that at all, but others who don't realize that they have the God complex at a much lower

09:58level than their targets. I'll just say it like that. The more you speak, the more you speak with

10:05any sort of authority to a public audience, you're going to get that God complex and nobody is immune,

10:12myself included. I have an unusual help in all of this in the fact that I'm so far out of my element.

10:22I do not like public attention. I'm the guy, my wife used to, we used to talk about this with my wife,

10:29because it's odd that we even connected. In any sort of gathering, I'm the guy that's standing in

10:35the corner watching everybody else make fools of themselves while I'm sipping coffee. That's my

10:40personality. So I'm not immune to the God complex thing that I'm describing. However,

10:46I don't like it. And whenever people started, there was a point in time in which the people

10:53who would call me a heresy hunter started saying, John's preaching, John's preachy, he's gaining a

10:58following. John is creating a cult all of his own. I actually walked away from all of this because

11:03I don't want it. That is not me whatsoever. But the problem does exist. And I must mention for the

11:09entertainment sake, this is a problem in that the entire movement that we're about to explore and

11:17get into in this podcast, it was built on the framework of entertainment, because it could draw a

11:23crowd because it was a business. It was backed and funded by people called the full gospel

11:30businessmen, funded by the Kardashians, leaders in the entertainment industry. This was an

11:37entertainment movement that started with latter rain out of L.A., developed into charismania,

11:44developed into the N.A.R. So everything that I'm saying applies.

11:48And I mean, you go back to Amy Semple McPherson, same thing, L.A., drama queen.

11:56I mean, we can go on and out. We'll get into some of that stuff. One thing that I'm fascinated by right now

12:01is now that some of these scandals, as it were, have sort of got time and distance,

12:11there's this thing starting to happen about these guys coming back into ministry.

12:17And what fascinates me is the psychology behind it or the worldview, which is, I'm so important.

12:27I'm so essential to the church world that it needs me. I can't sit on the sideline, right? In other

12:35words, if I'm not involved, what God wants to do isn't going to happen. Again, you see the narcissism

12:45that's crept into this whole thing. I've watched many famous preachers reach old age and disappear

12:57into an old people's home where they're wearing diapers and all this stuff. And guess what? Nobody

13:05cares. Life moves on. You're old news. And it's a real struggle because suddenly I'm irrelevant.

13:14Like I thought I was, the world revolved around me and suddenly, wait a minute, I'm not all that

13:20important anymore. Right? And that's a brutal reality check that I've had to walk through with a

13:28lot of men. Like, oh my God, I'm not as important as I thought I was, even though I had this big

13:34following. Right? But you know, as Jesus learned, you can have lots of followers, but what's driving

13:42them? Right? Gimme, gimme, gimme. Feed me. Absolutely. And that's really, for me, that's

13:48the biggest thing, right? A lot of people who are in Christianity don't realize that aspect.

13:53So they go to one of these apostles or prophets thinking they're going to God's divine spokesperson,

13:59not realizing that it is all about that person. It's not so much about God. And so they're just

14:07shocked and overwhelmed when the person is shown to be human and have human sins and human problems.

14:12Suddenly, oh my gosh, this guy, he's a scoundrel. We need heresy hunters to come in.

14:19Well, what's helped create this environment that we're in is the second piece of this equation,

14:27which is that we've adopted this culture of entertainment, right? Which is, I know,

14:34because I deal with the burnout and the fallout of the guys who aren't, don't measure up, aren't as

14:41good of entertainers, right? And end up burning out and leaving the ministry and end up hating

14:49everything and everyone because they're giant failures. Because, and so one of the questions

14:55that I've been wrestling with is what happened? Like, how did the church world go from laying your

15:03life down for others, you know what I mean? A sacrificial caring about others focus to it's

15:10all about me and I need to entertain everyone, right? That my job as a pastor or the ministry or

15:18however I'm going to build my brand is I have to be an entertainer. So how did that happen,

15:24right? Because that's happened again in our lifetime. Like, this is not something that's historical

15:30that goes back thousands of years. This is something that's happened in our lifetime. That shift, just like

15:37the epidemic of narcissism, has happened with, and I don't think people realize how we've become

15:46increasingly passive as congregants or people that attend church, right? Where, and, and we've become

15:54more and more passive and expect others to do the heavy lifting, right? We expect them to produce the

16:01content, them to produce the show, and then we show up and get entertained. And if we're not entertained,

16:09we just go to the next place. I mean, I just think about my kids' generation, right? I'm watching

16:18my kids' generation. Well, how do they pick churches where their kids have the most fun? So guess where

16:25they naturally gravitate to? These big mega churches that are like Disneyland for kids, right? It's a

16:32spiritual version of Disneyland. So their kids can be what? Entertained, right? We can drop them off at

16:40youth group. We can drop them off at, you know, Vacation Bible, right? You know, we can just let

16:46them do the work. So, you know, they can be entertained. And so what's happened is, is this whole entertainment

16:54culture has put so much pressure on preachers and pastors to perform?

17:02In my latest book, the Christian Identity to the NAR book, and we actually spun an entire podcast series

17:10called Weaponized Religion on this. But the problem that we're talking about, even though it is

17:16specifically dealing with entertainment, it's a very complex issue. It isn't, you know, when you're in

17:22these movements, you're trained that it's black or white, there's one cause. But there's actually

17:26multiple sources of background that are causing this. One of the biggest of which is Christian

17:32identity. And the reason why I say that is a factor. There was a point in time in which, you know,

17:40Christianity, after the war, Christianity was becoming something far different than it was before the

17:46Second World War. And the Christian identity leaders feared that the people were leaving

17:53Christian fundamentalism and entering into more liberal forms of Christianity. Yet at the same time,

18:01many of their fundamentals and fundamentalism were not really Christian values, but were more

18:07political values or Christian identity values. And so you had this wide swath of Christian,

18:13before the evangelical movement, people who eventually became evangelicals, this whole swath

18:21of ministers that wanted to make the nation sway itself back away from that liberal Christian

18:29viewpoint into Christian fundamentalism. And one of the ways in which you do this is you make it

18:34more appealing. If the liberals, Christians want to go a certain way, part of it was branding.

18:41They branded normalized Christianity as cold and formal religion. If you're a Baptist, it's cold and formal.

18:48If you're a Methodist, it's cold and formal. If you're a Catholic, it's certainly cold and formal.

18:53The Catholic Church is the villain in this case. So what they did was they branded everybody who wasn't part of

19:00the movement as cold and formal, and then made the new version of what they were creating far more entertaining.

19:09So when people went and they saw the entertainment, when you compare entertainment to what they're

19:15considering to be cold and formal, well, yes, wow, this is entertaining. I can feel the spirit.

19:20I can see the stage act moving. This must be God in our presence.

19:24So one of the contributing factors historically was that liberal versus fundamentalist debate.

19:31Yeah, I think one of the other contributing factors to this entertainment culture is technology.

19:39And let me share some stats, which I'm sure you're aware of, but maybe some of the listeners would find

19:45this fascinating. Before 1920, humans got their entertainment and their information via newspapers,

19:57newspapers, books, or attending gatherings, right? Somebody was an adventurer, they went to Africa,

20:03and then they would come back to the US and they would go on tours. And we'd all go to an auditorium

20:09and listen to them tell stories, right? I mean, they'd have spellbinding tales. But, you know,

20:15you were, again, you were active. You had to read the books, read the newspapers,

20:21go to the meetings, right? Then in the 1920s, the radio became a household device, right? So now we're

20:29talking 100 years ago, and families now could stay home and gather their news and their entertainment

20:37by listening to this little box that had, you know, voices coming out of it. I mean, that's my mom's

20:44generation. I had many stories of everyone sitting around listening to Roosevelt during the Second

20:51World War, or, you know, she grew up in Chicago, so you had all these little shows. But one of the

20:57things that you needed when you had a radio was you used your imagination, right? Because you heard

21:04the sounds and the scripts and all that, but you had to picture it in your mind. So you were still

21:09actively involved in the process. What ends up happening is, is after World War II, in the 1950s,

21:18the TV starts becoming popular. You know, in 1946, there were only 6,000 TVs in the country.

21:26By 1950, there were 12 million, and the average person watched a TV two and a half hours a day. By 1960,

21:35there were 55 million. So you can see now the adaptation of this technology completely changes

21:45how we get our interaction, or we get our information and how we interact, right?

21:52I've told this story before. In 1983, the VP of Sprint, which was just on the road from the church,

22:00and he was one of our congregants, came into my office and basically prophesied, I mean, and what

22:09I mean by prophesied, told me the future. So in 1983, he told me that the future was the world was

22:18going to receive their entertainment and their information on a three by five rectangular screen,

22:25which I just thought was like, wow. Like, really? Like, this was, you know, science fiction at this

22:34particular point. Well, do you realize, this is 1983, he's telling me this. The first photo to show

22:41up on a phone happened in 2002, right? So nearly, it was two decades later, before what he prophesied to

22:48me in 83 actually came to fruition. And it was 2007 that the first iPhone came out, right? With the

22:56three by five screen. And I remember when I got my first iPhone going, oh my God, this is what he told

23:02me back in 83 was going to happen, right? What people don't realize though, is that Apple recruited

23:09psychologists to help design the iPhone? And the red dot and the ding they figured out were, guess

23:21what? Dopamine injections. They made the iPhone addictive. Like, it was purposely designed to

23:30addict you to it, right? In other words, this wasn't, oh, an accident. That, they actually designed

23:37it so that it would keep, so every time your phone dinged, you'd go, you know what I mean?

23:42Or every time, you know what I mean, you saw that red dot, you couldn't say, no, I had to go figure,

23:47I had to go see what that is, right? And the whole idea of notifications became a thing, right?

23:53So think this through, you know, we ended up creating now what I call ADDOS culture. So attention

24:02deficit disorder, OS means, oh, shiny. It's like, right? We look for things that are shiny and

24:10entertaining. The average American now spent, I said, seven to eight hours in front of a screen

24:17and four and a half hours being entertained every day. I mean, think about how significant of shift

24:25this is just in the last hundred years, right? So what's it done, right? It's created this whole

24:35world because out of every hour of television you watch, you're going to get 15 minutes of

24:40advertising, which tells you, you need this, this, and this. And if you want to be cool,

24:46you'll wear this and you'll drive that. And what did that produce? Materialism.

24:51People don't realize and recognize the power of suggestion and manipulation that they go through

24:58from day to day. I'll never forget. I had a client that took me, I can't mention which one,

25:05but one of the big hotels that everybody's familiar with in Vegas. I got to meet with their CIO who had

25:12been there for, I don't know how many years, but he is interesting meeting because he was there back

25:17whenever the gangsters ruled Vegas and he says, everything's different now. He said, people walk

25:23in this wearing the shorts and t-shirts and back then they would, they would call you out and you

25:27might blow up in a car bomb. If you did that in the old days, you had to dress nicely, but everything's

25:33changed and everything is more about the, the excitement than it is about the actual gambling.

25:40He said back when the gangsters ruled it, you could do all kinds of things to rig the gaming,

25:47but now the industry is so controlled that what they're doing now is actually more powerful than

25:52what the gangsters were doing. When you walk into the casino and I, again, I wish, I wish I could tell

25:59which one this is, but I'm certain they're all like this. What you see in the casino and what you see in

26:06the massive mall that is associated with the casino pales in comparison to the data center

26:12that's under the thing. And in this data center, they're capturing algorithms with everything,

26:18every piece of information they can buy, scrape, get. When you walk in the door and this was,

26:24remember this was years ago. So some of this technology sounds familiar. Now it didn't back

26:29when he told me. So when you walk in the door, it does a facial scan and facial recognition and tries

26:36to match you to a passport or ID. If it can do that, it knows your address. Then it goes out and

26:44it finds out who are your neighbors? What is like, what is your culture like in your neighborhood?

26:49Are you in a rich neighborhood, poor neighborhood? Are you more likely to gamble or more, you know,

26:54it goes through all these scenarios. By the time that you sit down at a slot machine,

26:58it knows more about you than you know yourself and more about your neighbors than they know

27:03themselves. And it's a minority report where they had advertising, right? It scans you. It's like

27:12it knows who you are. And then suddenly it's got you in all these different clothes. And yes, right.

27:18Well, one of the tools that he said that they'd use for manipulation and nobody catches this unless

27:24you're there at like 4 a.m. You don't notice it. All of the machines at random, if nobody's on it,

27:31start dinging. So while you're in the meeting or while you're in the gambling room and everybody's

27:36pulling the slot machines or whatever, you hear this other person that sounds like they're winning

27:40and there may not even be a person there. That's legal. You can do this, but it is a mind game

27:45they're playing with you. And if you, the facial recognition could tell if you're suddenly getting

27:51sad and there were spotters who would watch for sad people, they would bring you a free drink on the

27:57house to keep you excited in the moment. And it's all part of manipulation. And what I'm talking about

28:03is you can tie this back into the, to your latter rain world, right? Cause now we're going back to the forties.

28:10When I was picking Paul Kane's brain about, you know, that world, cause it was so unfamiliar to me.

28:18He was telling me about how a lot of these tent revivalists would go into towns and do something

28:26scandalous so that they would appear on the front page of the paper.

28:33Right. It was before cell phones and whatever, but it's that whole thing again, right? About

28:39look at me, look at me.

28:44That's exactly where I was heading with this. So what I'm talking about was Vegas and my

28:48it weird business, but in practice. And in fact, I can't say who some of the, some of the revivalists

28:57were attending Vegas meetings in secret and all kinds of other things going on.

29:02There's a, there's a bigger story there, but when these revivalists would go into town,

29:07if we're talking tent revivalists, they're doing it. If you're talking modern day apostles

29:11in big conventions and auditoriums, they're doing it too. There is no news. That's bad news.

29:17If there's a scandal happening, that scandal can attract people to it just to see the curiosity of

29:23the scandal. So you may have this big influx of people into a convention who don't believe

29:29at all, but they're there for the scandal. Then the subset of people who's probably smaller,

29:35who is there thinking that this is divinely inspired by God. And oh my gosh, look at the

29:41thousands of people here. They must be inspired by God to come to this too. But it's all about the

29:47scandal and it's all about the, it's all about the manipulation and the psychological tools that

29:53they're using. Now take that a step further towards the stage persona. When you suddenly

30:00come to terms with the fact that no news is bad news, scandals bring crowds. Now it's like the get

30:07out of jail free card and monopoly. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started

30:15or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic,

30:20and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on

30:26William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website,

30:34you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,

30:39John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

30:46You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

30:52If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button

30:58at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version

31:03that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research,

31:08we want to thank you for your support. How has that shifted now with technology? We don't have

31:14to go to the meeting anymore. We can watch it all online. We can, we can do, you know, we're all

31:22following the scandals now on Twitter, and we're following the scandals on Facebook, right? In other words,

31:29again, now we don't even have to leave the comfort of our couch, and we can be in, but what are we doing?

31:36We're tuning in, right? We're all tuning in. And so, again, what's ended up happening, and without

31:45even realizing, it's like the, you know, the old frog in the boiling water, which isn't actually true,

31:51but it's a great analogy if it was. It's the slow burn. And it's happened with narcissism. It's slowly

31:59crept in and become so normal. And because it's happened over decades, people have lost perspective.

32:08And they don't realize where we are. You know, again, why are we figuring this out is because of

32:15our personality. We're standing back from the crowd looking at this like historians over decades,

32:23and you see, when you see it, like when you step out of the situation and don't need to be the person

32:30being entertained, and you can stand back and you look at it, you see these huge cultural shifts,

32:36not only in our secular society, but in our church culture. And that's why we're trying to explain to

32:43people. We're in this mess, because we've made it all about us. We've become narcissistic and don't

32:48even realize it. And we want to be entertained. And if you don't entertain me, I'm moving down the road

32:54to the next guy, right? So again, I'm going to be a little bit, I hope this doesn't come off too hard.

33:03But the narcissism side of it, I look at as problematic on the leadership side.

33:09The leadership has this problem of narcissism more than anyone else. That's why they rush in

33:17to wanting to be in the ministry, so I can get people to pay attention to me, right? I can be the

33:23center of attention. The entertainment problem is on the other side of the equation, which is the people

33:30in the congregation. They're the other half of the problem, because they're creating this culture

33:39where if you don't entertain me, make me feel good about myself and tell me what I want to hear, right?

33:46How about that? There's nothing new there, right? Remember, you know, before Jesus and Isaiah,

33:54say to the seers, see no more visions than the prophets. Give us no more visions of what is right.

33:59Tell us pleasant things. Prophesy illusions, right? Or in Timothy, for a time will come when people will not

34:07put up with sound doctrines. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great

34:12number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from

34:19the truth and turn aside to myths, right? We've become that. It's like, tell me what I want to hear.

34:26Entertain me. And so what happens is, in some ways, it's a bad brew, right? You have narcissistic,

34:34you know, driven people who want to be stars, right? They don't think it's ministry as being,

34:43I'm a servant to all. I want to be a star. I want to, you know, I want to be a Hollywood

34:48star, only I'm in the ministry world. That's what I mean. Go back to the Amy Semple McPherson's and

34:53that whole, the entertainment culture, right? And I want people to show up in these auditoriums

34:59and think I'm the most wonderful thing and that I'm God's servant, blah, blah, blah, blah. And on the

35:06other side of it, we want people to do that. You see what I mean? We're feeding it because we want to

35:13be entertained. And so, you know, as Paul said in Romans, all have sinned. And in this situation,

35:23it's really easy to sit in the chair and point the finger at the leaders. But what I'm trying to

35:30communicate to people is, no, we're part of the problem.

35:34The other thing it does, and I know I'll get pushback on this because this is heavily

35:38teached in the opposite, but what they've done in creating this atmosphere is trying to push the

35:47notion that there are some sins that God views as greater than other sins. Biblically speaking,

35:53if you go back and you look at all of the examples of sin, there are sins that have

35:58consequences that are greater than. But in God's eye, all sin separates you from God. It's not

36:04something where they, for example, we had a person on the podcast who in the past had been

36:11homosexual. We had a whole slew of people contacting me saying, no, man, you can't have

36:16him. Basically, he's ruined for life. He can't come back. He can't be on your podcast. And I'm not

36:23going to have you on the podcast with you because they have indoctrinated people to think that this

36:28is the sin above all others in today's world. It's a politicized sin. And therefore, it's greater than

36:35the other apostle who's doing X, Y, and Z. But that's not the way it is in the Bible. In the Bible,

36:40at least the passages in my understanding from reading them, there are consequences to those

36:46sins that are far worse. For example, if you were to tell a lie to somebody, well, that lie,

36:54the consequences for you are simply you told a lie, but the consequences for the person you told it to,

36:59they may go off and do something horrible because you did. That consequence is that worse than killing

37:05somebody. All at the same time, they're all sins. It's just there are consequences and results from

37:11the sin that are different. But the way that they've twisted it through this entertainment

37:15environment is they've categorized sin in such a way that it's a hierarchy. And interestingly,

37:22if you study it enough and study the men who preach it and women who preach it enough,

37:27that hierarchy usually tilts in one way or another depending on their own sin and their own lives.

37:32But at the same time, they're elevated to apostle status and they can easily be returned back into

37:39the ministry. And, you know, predators can get more prey because they've been forgiven and they've

37:46been restored back into the ministry by these guys. They've created a hierarchy of sin in which

37:51they control. And that hierarchy is all part of the entertainment system.

37:55Probably my first real, I want to say revelation or grasping about how this shift has happened,

38:06this entertainment culture in the church actually surrounded my first book, which I released in

38:142007. And it's the story of 16 of the most amazing people who were killed on a peace and reconciliation

38:22project in Zimbabwe. Now, historically, they would have been considered martyrs, right? All through church

38:31history, people who died for their faith were martyrs. So I'm writing this book because I feel

38:42this unction from God that their story not get lost, that it gets recorded and, you know, it's put in print.

38:52I'd like to make a movie out of it someday, but I can't, everybody wants to make some really weird

38:59religious movie out of it. And I want it to be gritty and real. But anyways, long story short,

39:05I go into Mardell's, which was the big Christian bookstore at that point to see where my book would

39:14fit, right? Because I want to get the message out. So I walk into Mardell's in Overland Park

39:21and they have this big wall of the top 20 selling Christian books. And I'm reading all the titles and

39:31every single one of them was about how you get something from God. And I'm just looking at this

39:39going, oh Lord have mercy. Like my book is all about losing everything for God. And yet all the top

39:48selling books are about these three steps, these five steps, like there was this whole,

39:54all these books were all processes, right? For how you can get blessing from God. So you can get

40:02better status or higher status and more money was basically the status and stuff thing, right?

40:09So I'm like, oh my gosh, well, obviously I won't be in the top 20 best selling books,

40:15but maybe there's a place for this story. So I go up to the desk and ask the lady,

40:22do they have a copy of Fox's book of martyrs, right? Which is a historically classic book.

40:33And she looks at me and goes, huh? I go, you know, Fox's book of martyrs, right? And she had no clue

40:42what that was. And so she looks it up and goes, oh, we have one, you know, and it's back over here

40:51in this section. So all three of us walk over there and it, nobody can find it. And my wife

40:57like looks down at the shelves underneath all the displays and pulls it out. It's buried under,

41:06she goes, Scott, we've had this book for years because nobody's interested in it because we are

41:14an entertainment culture. And as I learned the hard way, when I was sharing my story in LA,

41:22somebody yelled out back from the back of the room, bummer, man, we don't want to hear about people

41:27dying. And that's when I began to realize, wait a minute, things have shifted significantly,

41:37right? People don't want to hear about martyrdom. They want to hear about losing anything. They don't

41:43want to hear about self-sacrifice. I mean, people like Elizabeth Elliot, you know who that is, right?

41:48Whose husband, you know, the saints, all those people that were, I think it was Ecuador where they

41:53were all martyred, right? I mean, she was a rock star, you know, from the 1950s all the way up.

42:00But as time went on, her story became increasingly more relevant. I remember her and I talking about

42:06this, you know, and the pain she felt like it's, it's like, what's happening to us?

42:13Like, where are we going here? Like something's wrong here. And now we're, you know, now we're way

42:20down the road and it's just like, wow, tickle my ears. Tell me what I want to hear. Entertain me.

42:28I want to go to church on Sunday. You know what I want to do? I want to walk out there feeling good.

42:33I want to have had fun. I'm thinking, wow, no wonder we're in a mess. Like we are so far

42:41off the reservation from, from what Jesus taught and his worldview and how he thought about, right?

42:48It's like, wow. You know, key point in view that for this discussion, Fox Book of Martyrs is one of

42:57the propaganda books used by William Branham in the Lateran movement. He wasn't the first, obviously,

43:03but it is heavy, heavy, heavy psychological bias against Catholicism. It is, it does have some facts

43:11in it. There are factual statements. Because of the Inquisition. Yeah. Yeah. There, there's some facts

43:16in it, but it uses a whole bunch of hearsay and it's not, it's not considered a historically accurate

43:23book. It is more. No, but it's, it was, it was a, you know, one of those required readings almost at

43:28every Christian college, right? And it's okay. I'm not saying anything bad about the book, but

43:34you have to take it with a heavy, heavy grain of skepticism, which is all part of the problem

43:38that I'm describing here. They use things like this as manipulation tools. And, you know, I'm,

43:44I'm not pro-Catholic. I'm actually not as anti-Catholic as some people who comment on the

43:50threads, but you can't, you can't go to both extremes. You know, if you want to say something

43:56about the, bad, bad about the Catholic church, stick with the things that are actually factual,

44:01but then the Catholics can do the same thing about, look what we have in Charismania and in AR.

44:06They can do the same exact thing. There is this, there has to be this balance and there isn't.

44:11But I'm, I'm, I think I'm more fascinated by just the shift in John the Baptist saying,

44:19I must decrease. So he must increase, you know, which is kind of the Fox's book of martyrs,

44:27you know, thing. It's like, I'm going to lay my life down for others to, I must increase.

44:33It's like, you know what I mean? And how do I increase by entertaining everyone? Right. In other

44:41words, you don't increase by, by telling people to lay your life down for others. You don't have

44:47a ministry. Nobody's listening to you. Right. And so again, we're creating this soil for narcissistic

44:57people who want to be the center of attention to stand up, right. And feed us all what we want to

45:06hear. So one of the things that now we'll shift this into the whole prophetic, the reason why I,

45:18I actually, my last book, the one, um, you know, some said they blundered the original title

45:24for it was prophetic or pathetic. You know, I shifted it only because of my relationship

45:31with David pitches, who wrote some say they thundered, you know, which was a complete fantasy

45:37presentation of what was going on in Kansas city. But again, um, what's happened to the prophetic

45:48I get it's entertainment. I mean, this is, I wrote about this in the book. I watched guys like Mike

45:56and, you know, other people put these prophetic guys out in front of, um, audiences. And Mike was

46:06like PT Barnum and this was the three ring circus and we're going to entertain. And I watched 5,000 and

46:1210,000 and 15,000 people all excited because, you know, because of a word of knowledge, right. It was

46:20entertainment. It had no relevance to anyone else, but maybe one person. But even in that, a lot of it was

46:28faked, right. Because again, and I talked about this, I think you and I've had this conversation. I watched

46:36the pressure on the prophetic guys to produce entertainment, which led to the bullshit. Sorry

46:44for the phrase, but it was like religious bullshit because they were feeding people sensational

46:51stories, right. And sensational things because there was all this pressure put on them to entertain

46:59because if they didn't entertain, they didn't get any money. Yeah. I've mentioned several times,

47:05whenever I left this, I wanted to wash it out of my head. I kept reading, reading the Bible over

47:09and over. One of the things, many things stood out, but one of the things that stood out because we

47:14were also enthralled with the prophetic. When you read the prophecies in the Bible, it isn't what,

47:23what's your name and what's your address so I can heal you. It isn't that stuff. It isn't what's

47:27coming in the future. What is there going to be a radio broadcast with Joel's army and training and

47:33all of this weird stuff in the future? Can I peer into my crystal ball for God? Those were the bad

47:39guys. If you read the Bible, the bad guys are the ones that are doing that kind of thing.

47:43The prophets, the actual prophets of Yahweh were more to the point of you've sinned. You need to

47:51clean up your lives. You need to humble yourselves. You need to get back to me, me being God, not me

47:56being the prophet. And I started, I took a step back and I started thinking it was, it was all

48:02about me in this prophetic movement, but me wasn't the same me. It wasn't I am that I am. It wasn't

48:09God. It was me, the prophet. What can I do? How can I, how can I enthrall you? How can I convince you

48:17of my supreme deity as a prophet by telling you something in the future that you can watch happen

48:24and see? And more to the point, because I know how all this works. I was watching it work. How many

48:31random facts or how many random predictions can I throw out, some of which are predictions based on

48:38facts that I already know, and see which one sticks so people will think I'm a prophet? I know you've

48:45probably seen this. Many of the people who are in the inner circles have seen it. That's how all of

48:49this works. It's not that there's this great prophecy. And people are often shocked if there

48:55ever is a recording, which usually they avoid it for obvious reasons. If their original prophecy is

49:01ever recorded and somebody hears it years later and thinks they're a prophet because of it, they go

49:06back and listen to it. Well, that doesn't sound like a prophet. That would be like me saying the

49:10chiefs are going to win next Sunday. Well, yeah, if they win, I can't say that I'm a prophet. I say that I

49:15guess pretty good. Well, many of these prophecies are like this, but solely for the purpose of

49:20entertainment, because if it does happen, if all of these random predictions happen, you're going to

49:26get this crowd of people that say, whoa, the prophet. Well, to circle back to the very beginning of this,

49:33you know, when we were talking about soil, I think to your point, that's what the prophets of old

49:40focused on. The state of our individual and national soil, right? In other words, motive,

49:52you know, our value systems, you know, how we've deviated from the heart of God. That's what the

50:01focus was. In other words, being a prophet was pointing out to individuals and we'll say corporate,

50:10corporate, when I mean corporate, I mean nations, you know, groups of people that you're missing the

50:16mark here, right? Which is what repentance basically is. You're missing the mark. That's why, you know,

50:22the word repentance is a big word for profit. And why? Because they're saying you need to repent. You

50:30need a course correction here. You need to get back on track. And I think that's the real heart and soul

50:39of the prophetic, the whole entertainment culture that has so infiltrated the church world has created

50:46the showmanship of what we have now called prophets. And I think it's so distorted. Like it's really,

50:57it's sad in a way. If you want to get, you know, you like facts, the truth be told, screenwriters,

51:08musicians, and authors outside the church world are far more forth telling and more accurate about the

51:18future and what's going to happen to humanity and events than anybody in the church world,

51:25not even close. And that's one of the things I find embarrassing is we're so unable to self-evaluate

51:32and be objective. Like we think we're like, we're this big deal. And you're like, you guys,

51:40like 90% of these prophetic guys missed the mark. Like we're down here in the 10% right phase.

51:49And we just think that's awesome. Like in every other genre of life, that's gross failure.

51:58That's terrible results. Like every company, if you had 10% success in a football team, you're in

52:04last place. If you have 10% success as a company, you're out of business. But somehow in the church

52:12world, we hang on to the one guy who got it right the one time. And you're like, well, the odds just

52:21guessing will give you the same rate as the supposed revelation, right? It's like the same odds are there.

52:29But when you look back at significant projections, forth telling or foretelling, people outside the

52:38religious world have been far more accurate. I mean, I think, you know, I mean, one of the guys I talk

52:43about all the time is Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who, you know, who came here in the 70s, and told us all

52:51where we'd end up now, back in the 70s. He told us exactly where we were headed as a culture. And here we

52:59are, just like you, you know, just like he said.

53:02And next time, I want to get deeper into the random predictions that are thrown out.

53:08There is, so right now, you may not be aware of this, but Charisma Magazine loves William Branham,

53:15and they continue to publish his alleged seven prophecies of 1933, of which he also said 1931,

53:251932. Like the Mormon prophecies, he says, and I wrote it down on this piece of paper,

53:30which you, my cult, will never ever see, because I buried it in the cornerstone of my grandfather's

53:36church. And at other times, he would say, now I'm going to read this letter that, oh, by the way,

53:41I mentioned was buried under the cornerstone. Nobody's ever seen this thing. Well, nobody really

53:47catches that the seven so-called prophecies change. And Charisma Magazine loves, when something

53:55happened, some world event, they love to say William Branham was right. And whenever Kamala

54:01was elected, she came out onto the platform that has a big picture of her, and they said,

54:07was William Branham correct? And they were insinuating that he was, because William Branham

54:12predicted that a vice president would be a female. But the original telling of this prophecy was that

54:19the president, not the vice president, would be female. And because I'm such a misogynistic freak,

54:27that's going to lead the whole world into destruction, because America elected a female

54:31president. Over time, that shifted to vice president, because he apparently wasn't,

54:37his randomness wasn't working. And so Charisma published the second iteration of this when

54:42Kamala was elected vice president. Well, recently, there's a United States Pope.

54:49What people don't realize who don't, you know, if you're never in the Branham movement,

54:53you don't know this. It started out as a female president. It shifted to a female vice president

55:00with a male president. That shifted further to John F. Kennedy, because he was strongly against

55:06Kennedy. Then later, it shifted again to a United States Pope would be the one to lead. So it's the

55:14same alleged prophecy, but it keeps changing, because they're throwing out these random predictions

55:20that may or may not happen, and then calling it prophecy. Charisma and other similar tools that are

55:27out there like this, they're manipulation tools. They want to give the entertaining idea that this was

55:34a real prophecy, which it wasn't. Well, why do they do that?

55:39Yes, for money. They've got to sell magazines. This is what I'm saying. This whole entertainment

55:44culture thing is so infiltrated that they're going to put up sensational, because sensational and

55:50controversial, what does it do? It sells. Next time or sometime after that, we'll talk about random

55:57predictions that become prophecies. I think there's a lot there, but anyway, another story. Well, you're a

56:02stat guy. I wish we could somehow or another create some sort of stats, like if we could figure out

56:12what percentage of prophecies actually. Well, and I can. I have the software to do it. If everybody

56:20out there listening will send me the failed predictions and the accurate ones, I will compile

56:25some stats. So anyway, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out

56:31on the web. You can find us at william-brannum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic

56:36Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. And for more about

56:42Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read Some Say They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike

56:49Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.

57:19So stay tuned.

From Prophets to Performers- How Christianity Became a Stage Act - Bob Scott

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