- 6/30/2025
John and Jed discuss the role narcissism plays in religious leadership, particularly within high-control environments and prophetic ministries. Jed opens up about his own father's diagnosis with narcissistic personality disorder, using a compelling metaphor to describe the psychological burden and relational dysfunction that results. He shares personal stories that illustrate how narcissism is not just about ego or vanity, but a deeply dysfunctional need to remain at the center of all attention—even to the detriment of loved ones or the success of the ministry itself.
As the conversation deepens, they explore how these narcissistic dynamics become institutionalized within spiritual movements, such as the International House of Prayer and others influenced by New Apostolic Reformation figures. They dive into the use of technology—past and present—in prophetic manipulation, including early paper-based data mining, microphone and speech-to-text hacks, and even speculative future uses of AI and augmented databases. John explains how con artistry evolves in step with technological advancement, and how AI could further entrench charismatic fraud. Jed closes with a revelation about his father's obsession with a "database" used for ministry manipulation, connecting it with a long history of fraudulent techniques used by traveling evangelists.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 John and Jed discuss narcissism in leadership and its impact on faith communities
05:03 Jed shares personal insights about living with a narcissistic parent
11:14 John explains how apparent generosity can mask narcissistic traits
19:03 The structure of ministries shaped by narcissistic leaders
20:57 John analyzes historical faith-healing tactics and paper databases
24:28 Jed reflects on his father’s obsession with building a personal database
33:12 The role of technology in modern manipulation
40:47 John explores how memory techniques and body hacks can enhance cons
47:02 Jed describes the danger of AI tools reinforcing narcissistic narratives
56:07 Closing reflections on the risks of modern manipulation and the need for vigilance
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
As the conversation deepens, they explore how these narcissistic dynamics become institutionalized within spiritual movements, such as the International House of Prayer and others influenced by New Apostolic Reformation figures. They dive into the use of technology—past and present—in prophetic manipulation, including early paper-based data mining, microphone and speech-to-text hacks, and even speculative future uses of AI and augmented databases. John explains how con artistry evolves in step with technological advancement, and how AI could further entrench charismatic fraud. Jed closes with a revelation about his father's obsession with a "database" used for ministry manipulation, connecting it with a long history of fraudulent techniques used by traveling evangelists.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 John and Jed discuss narcissism in leadership and its impact on faith communities
05:03 Jed shares personal insights about living with a narcissistic parent
11:14 John explains how apparent generosity can mask narcissistic traits
19:03 The structure of ministries shaped by narcissistic leaders
20:57 John analyzes historical faith-healing tactics and paper databases
24:28 Jed reflects on his father’s obsession with building a personal database
33:12 The role of technology in modern manipulation
40:47 John explores how memory techniques and body hacks can enhance cons
47:02 Jed describes the danger of AI tools reinforcing narcissistic narratives
56:07 Closing reflections on the risks of modern manipulation and the need for vigilance
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Transcription by CastingWords
00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at william-branham.org.
00:43And with me, I have my co-host and friend, Jed Hartley, son of a prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer.
00:51Jed, it's good to be back. And today we have a bit of overlap.
00:55I don't know if you've been catching it or not, but almost every single time I talk to Bob, he wants to go towards discussing what made all of this mess.
01:04That's his big theme. And we've been hitting narcissism pretty hard.
01:09I don't know in the relationship of when this is recording and his is recording, which will come out first, but we've got a couple episodes from him on narcissism.
01:20And it's a really good topic because I don't think people recognize whenever the term is used.
01:26It's used so loosely in today's world that you can brand somebody a narcissist who isn't a narcissist because they do something that you don't like.
01:36Right.
01:36But there are true narcissists that are wreaking havoc in church and work and everywhere, even in leadership.
01:44I read in Bob's book, and I knew this before, but he was talking about how some of the most respected leaders in world history have been narcissists because that's what motivates them and that's their ambition.
01:58And some of them turn out to be good leadership, although they have this personality disorder, which is horrific.
02:04So there's some interesting things to talk to there.
02:09But as it relates to the church world, a narcissist really has no place behind a pulpit, yet we've created this world where that seems to be what it attracts.
02:20Yeah.
02:21I can't remember if I've ever given this metaphor to you before, but I very much believe that, well, my dad was diagnosed with narcissistic personality.
02:34And yeah, I do think that the term is used by a lot of people in a lot of, it became like a pop psychology term, which I understand, you know, like people, I get that it, it makes sense, but people think of it as this, like someone who's just self-obsessed.
02:54And it's like, a lot of people are self-obsessed.
02:57A lot of people are selfish.
02:58A lot of people have like that measure of self-focus and sort of myopic views of themselves.
03:07But when describing my dad, and I apologize if I've done this before, but you know, if I'm repeating myself, but I think that there's the metaphor that I've sort of latched on to is imagine you're in a world where you run afoul of some magician or wizard.
03:33And he curses you so that your entire existence and your life is dependent on someone, some person other than yourself, always thinking about you or always like noticing you.
03:49Have I given this metaphor before with you?
03:53Okay, great.
03:56Imagine, yeah, so imagine you are cursed so that your very existence is dependent on someone else thinking about you or having, noticing you in some way.
04:08And think about how you would then live your life and how you would bluster through all of life just attempting to grab attention of the people who are around you and making sure that you fix yourself in the sort of mind's eye of anyone who interacts with you.
04:28Whether or not people like you or whether or not people, you know, think positively with you is like secondary to whether they're just thinking about you at all.
04:41And I think that this is a very good description of like you now, if you can put yourself in that mentality, you have a little bit of an idea of like what I think was going on and still goes on in the mind of Bob Hartley is that like he would go into situations and go into just like, like we would be at coffee shops and he would walk in and he would start making jokes to everyone.
05:09Or he would start preaching the gospel to people, but like in a very weird way, or he would prophesy to someone or he would, you know, make conversation with everyone around him, which like to some extent that was like a fun, exciting thing if you didn't know him very well and you didn't have to like travel with him and live with him.
05:32You know, it was just like he was a very interesting and engaging person because he had what seemed to be like zero shame.
05:42Um, but where it became really toxic and where I think that this is similar, like not all narcissistic personality, um, people manifest their narcissism in the same way.
05:58But I've seen some parallels of this with a lot of, um, I mean, specifically NAR leaders is they would, well, there's just this need to be at the center of every conversation, a need to be at the center of like specifically prophetic conversations and to like wrestle for different mantles and different authorities.
06:22So that they could be the person that was being elevated in this grand story.
06:27And like with my dad, like they're just no story could be told without his involvement.
06:34Like he had to be at the center of everything that was happening and everything that was being talked about and it required everyone else to buy into the same story.
06:50Everyone else around him had to preach the same message, had to be echoing the same narratives that he was saying himself.
07:00And it was, I mean, obviously as a child growing up with that, that's absolutely exhausting.
07:06Um, like you can't live and have your own independent life.
07:10Um, but beyond it too, like I, it was truly dysfunctional.
07:16And I think that's what people don't necessarily always realize too, is like, it was problematic to him too.
07:23Like he would get in his own way.
07:26He wouldn't have the patience to, um, allow his story to be told in the right way.
07:34Like he had to jump the gun on everything that he was doing and, um, had to insert himself into conversations that just like weren't about him.
07:47And so like, I can totally see how people look at like these grand leaders and we're like, they probably had narcissism.
07:54And it's like the few instances where narcissism actually like works for these people where it gets them in places of power and authority.
08:02Um, but most people who have narcissistic personality disorder, like are just destroying their own lives.
08:10They're their own worst enemy.
08:13And, um, that certainly was the case with my dad.
08:16And I, I think that it's, it's, I don't think that people have a, like, unless you've lived with someone who truly has narcissistic personality disorder, where like every moment of the day, you're like, why are you even doing this?
08:29This isn't even benefit you.
08:31It doesn't, people aren't thinking of you more positively.
08:34You're just like causing chaos for the sake of chaos.
08:37Um, I think that that's a hard thing to wrap your head around.
08:41I don't know that I've talked too deeply about this.
08:43We've mentioned narcissism and narcissists, because if you have a central figure of a cult, usually they're a narcissist.
08:50But there's one aspect as it relates to narcissism that is very interesting in the Christian world.
08:57Whenever you can go online, you can find these, anybody can look them up, find the top 10 signs of a narcissist or 15, whatever.
09:06You know, there's different lists out there and they'll give you the list.
09:09And one of the commonalities between all narcissists, most of them lack empathy.
09:16You can be, you can be different points on the scale of narcissism, but most of them are going to lack empathy.
09:22But because that's one of the characteristics or trait characteristic traits, but in the form of a Christian leader narcissist, this gets very interesting because if you're under, if you're in a high control group and your narcissist, your leader is a narcissist and you escape.
09:41Many times the people who escape have trouble labeling their central figure that they left as having lacking empathy because he's giving, he's, you know, this is a charitable person.
09:54He's giving to the poor, et cetera, et cetera.
09:57And he's a narcissist.
09:58They'll usually say this, but what you don't understand, what many people don't understand when they leave is that what looks like empathy sometimes is also narcissism.
10:10Yeah.
10:11Because there are people who give so that people will recognize their great power of giving.
10:15Yeah.
10:16I give better than anybody else can give, that kind of thing, right?
10:19Yeah.
10:20So they will give sometimes just to have their name on a list of giving.
10:23They'll give so that whenever, not many of them are very open with their financials, but those that are, those that print the papers, they can look on the financials and say, oh, wow, he's a giver.
10:33This must be a great guy, but it can still be a trait of narcissism where it gets very, very difficult when you're escaping one of these high demand groups or cults is that their lack of empathy manifests itself in the way in which they betray the people who they're leading.
10:55They will do whatever they can to just rip somebody up and even cause divisions among their own crowd so that they can rise above the division and show themselves as a hero to the division.
11:08And they have no empathy whatsoever on their audience.
11:11And the deeper you go with that, we could do probably a whole podcast on just the lack of empathy.
11:17But it's one of the characteristic traits that if you're in, if you're in a leadership like this and you recognize that somebody is doing this, it's best to get out.
11:26Absolutely.
11:27And like, I don't, the fact that it's so commonplace in, I mean, I've met probably five or six people who I'm like, these are true narcissists in my life.
11:42Like, and four out of like the six of them were all religious leaders, like my dad and Mike Bickle and, you know, others.
11:52Well, and actually I wouldn't even put Mike Bickle in that because I didn't, I didn't see that firsthand enough.
11:57But like, I think that, I think that others who have seen his stuff, like I definitely saw some of the traits of it, you know, sort of in his, in the stories about him and kind of secondhand.
12:11But yeah, like it just is, it's amazing that the people who are supposed to be our religious leaders who are closest to God, who, I mean, in the, the IHOP and Bethel world, and they're literally the people who are talking with God, are the individuals who truly do not have empathy or concern for other individuals' lives.
12:40Like it is the only way in which you can have, try to appeal to the better sense of these individuals is that you have to package whatever you're trying to get them to care about.
12:55You have to package it into their own identity.
12:59So this is something that I had to do with my dad all the time is that I would, I would talk with him about like, is this the person that you want to be?
13:06And sometimes you would, I would see some like genuine reflection in him where he would be like, no, like, this is not who God's calling me to be.
13:16I'm not supposed to be like, my dad was extremely cruel to a lot of his staff and where he would just berate them.
13:25Like they would come in, someone did something wrong.
13:29And usually it was his fault that things weren't happening the way that he wanted to, because he was disorganized and he would not give people clear objectives or goals or something like that.
13:41He would just kind of talk about his whims of like, like for, I think five years, he kept always talking about like a database.
13:50He was always like, oh, we need to make sure that the database is like put together.
13:55And I still don't even know what the database was.
13:57Like he had email lists and stuff like that, but he, I don't even know if he knew he just needed, he wanted to make sure that he had all of the information.
14:06And it makes sense when he's a prophetic, you know, evangelist who is trying to prophesy to all different people and he's cheating and using, you know, phone numbers that he's gotten offline and all of this information.
14:22Like, I think he probably, I think probably what he was wanting is like a database so that he could go prophesy to anywhere and anyone, he could look up their name and have all their information about them.
14:33But because he wasn't ever explicitly telling people that's what he was doing, he just would be like, oh, we got to have a database so that I can get in contact with these people.
14:43And it's like, well, all your friends are already in your phone.
14:47Like, I don't know what you're talking about.
14:50Like you have those emails, but it just was, it was this constant thing where he was like, he would get mad at me or get mad at his staff members that he was working for, that he would kind of give them the vision of what he wanted.
15:05And then they would try to do it.
15:07And then they would come back and be like, okay, I have this master list of all of these things.
15:11And he was like, that's not what I asked you for.
15:13And this is not what you were doing.
15:14And he would attack like their person, very like identity as people.
15:20It wasn't like, man, you didn't do this.
15:22It was like, cause he would pick people who were in vulnerable states.
15:26So it was a lot of conversations about like, you know, he would get on them for like addiction or spiritual, like not being dedicated enough to God or for being disorganized.
15:43Or, you know, this just like pull at the character traits of these people who attempted to do something for him that he never actually explained in detail.
15:54And anyway, all this to say is that like this, the only way that I could get him to feel empathy for the people that he was abusing.
16:08Well, I couldn't, I couldn't get him to feel empathy for the people that he was abusing or even for me or my sisters, like his very children.
16:16It would have to be like, is this the father that you want to be?
16:21Or do you want to be a father who's like yelling at his children?
16:24Do you want to be a boss who's like yelling at his staff members?
16:28Do you want to be known for like always getting angry at your staff?
16:34And I wouldn't, of course, I couldn't say it even at that extreme.
16:37It would be like, you'd have to say the positive.
16:40Don't you want to be known as a father who is kind to his children?
16:43Don't you want to be known as a leader who led people with kindness and compassion?
16:52And that's where he would be like, yes, I do.
16:54And so, to talk with him and to engage with him, I had to drop all notions of empathy.
17:10Like if I was, you know, I was talking with you or a friend of mine and was like upset because you had yelled at me during that.
17:18I would have been like, hey, that hurt my feelings that hurt, you know, like I would talk about me.
17:22I would talk about, or I would talk about whoever was hurt.
17:25I would talk about the person that they did the wrong to.
17:27Like you hurt this individual, that's wrong.
17:31But you can't talk to a narcissist about the effect that they had on people.
17:37You have to talk about them.
17:39And then what happens is when you have ministries that revolve around the narcissist is that everyone learns, whether they're doing this consciously or not, they learn to do the same thing.
17:54They learn to talk about the narcissist and to make everything about them.
18:01And you have then an entire, like the ecosystem of the ministry starts reflecting the ego and narcissism of the person leading the ministry.
18:15This is a hundred percent that what happened at IHOP is that you had many Mike Bickles who had this sort of narcissistic traits themselves, but then they would also sort of lead into the narcissism of Mike Bickles.
18:30So you would talk with someone and it would, they would kind of be like, well, it always kind of led back to Mike.
18:38It always, it always led back to the cult leader or whoever.
18:43And it was, but then the, one of the funny things with this is that you, when, when they're in power and when they're in leadership, they kind of can build an ecosystem around their ego.
18:57They can kind of have these worlds around them, but then what happens when they don't have that ecosystem around them?
19:03What happens when they don't, when they're going in and they don't have, you know, a son to be like talking to them about how, is this really the man that you want to be?
19:15What happens when it's just, they're the staff members or they're the individuals who are trying to work for someone else?
19:24And they have to, like, it just doesn't, you know, it doesn't work all the time.
19:32You go into some place and you have this sort of like cruel way that you treat people and this massive ego and people are going to be like, what the hell are you doing?
19:43You know, it just doesn't work.
19:44And I saw that happen all the time too.
19:47Yeah.
19:47And it's that ecosystem that I really want to drive towards.
19:50But before we go there, you mentioned the database and I want to talk to that because I don't think you and I, we were close enough to the upper tiers.
19:59We understand this.
20:00And once you escape, you kind of know how all this works, right?
20:03But to the rank and file members, they have no idea.
20:06Like I get into interesting conversations with my wife because she and her family don't have any scoundrels in them.
20:15And so whenever I talk about things that people might do that are underhanded, she's like blown away.
20:22She can't imagine that somebody would even think like this.
20:25I unfortunately came from a long line of people who think like this.
20:30I'm not going to go much further than that.
20:32But I can think like these people and that helps me in my research because half the time I don't know that they actually did something.
20:40But I will suspect – I would put myself in their shoes.
20:44If I was a villain and I was given this exact scenario, what would I do?
20:49And I would go forward with it.
20:50But the database thing, not many people think through this.
20:54So picture you're in an age where there is no technology.
20:58And you have this divine healing game that you're playing the crowds with, which is raking in large sums of money.
21:08And I have evidence.
21:09You can go look it up.
21:10It's in the newspapers.
21:11These guys made a killing off of this divine healing gig.
21:15So they go in and they've got a crowd of people and they're going from town to town to town targeting rural areas usually.
21:22After this grew, it obviously went into big cities.
21:26But they all start out with rural areas.
21:29They have men working with them.
21:32And there is no database.
21:34There is no electronics.
21:35You don't have a cell phone or a tablet.
21:38But you have people who are in on the game who are praying, showing themselves to be humble with people who are sick and afflicted.
21:47They're not the divine healer.
21:49But they're working with them.
21:51And so they're praying with brother so-and-so for his back.
21:54Or they're in a group of people saying, oh, look, we just brought our mother.
21:59She's suffering.
22:00And she just came from somewhere.
22:02I'm so glad the healer is here.
22:04Well, this guy is standing there.
22:05And he's in the game, right?
22:08All these guys are in the game.
22:09The people themselves become the database in those old gimmicks, right?
22:15Right.
22:15Now take this a step further.
22:17Whenever the post-World War II healing revival movement exploded, the guys who were at the top realized the volume of money that can flow through these things.
22:31And it needed a corporate strategy.
22:34And if you understand that what they were doing was a crime, even though it's in this gray area because it's religion, it became organized crime.
22:44So Gordon Lindsay, who later became the head of Christ for the nations, he works with William Branham, and they create this magazine, Voice of Healing.
22:54Yeah.
22:55And everybody gets in on the game.
22:57You want to be a healer?
22:59Join our movement.
23:01Get in our magazine.
23:02We will get subscriptions to people.
23:05And there were actually advertisements.
23:06I don't know if I can find one for this podcast.
23:08I'll try, but you can go to my website and you can type in Voice of Healing and you can read through them.
23:14You can see these things.
23:16But they would send – we would like for you to gift a subscription to somebody.
23:21Are they sick too?
23:22Send us their name and address and their condition.
23:25Give me your name, your address.
23:27We want your testimonies.
23:29We want all of – so they're collecting – they actually had a database, but it was a paper database from all the mail that was coming in.
23:35So you can route that to – I'm not saying they did.
23:39I wasn't there.
23:40But knowing how these con artists think, if I've got a stack of papers for a specific region and I've got a faith healer going to that region and I'm fairly – I can say with probably 90% accuracy that if they wrote into my magazine and I'm sending one of the people from my magazine to their city,
23:58most likely these people who wrote in are going to come to this meeting and I've got exactly what's wrong with them, their names, their addresses.
24:08All you've got to do is identify a human being in the meeting with the piece of paper that they sent in the mail.
24:17And that's a database.
24:18That's how this – honestly, I think if I have – if I were to give an opinion, I'd say that's how they did a majority of it, not all.
24:24But that's just one of many cons that you can do as a con artist.
24:29So when you have this elaborate scheme, this is a big deal.
24:33These guys, you have to have a level of narcissism to remove the empathy from the people who are actually literally suffering so that you can take their money away from them.
24:44Right.
24:45Right.
24:46And oh man, I like – I can't believe I didn't put this together before of like – it makes so much sense too because like the era that my dad became – launched his sort of prophetic ministry was before the internet age.
25:06I mean, it was starting – it was kind of 90s, 2000s, 2010s.
25:13So, I mean, obviously, internet was very up and running by the 2010s.
25:19But like, you know, he wasn't – he didn't build his ministry off of doing what like Sean Bowles does now where it's get the name, Google the name, and it's like the internet is your database.
25:31Like, you don't have to have your Rolodex of information because like the internet has that for you.
25:37All you have to do is have the name and like maybe one or two associations to like know that you got the right person.
25:44But with my dad, you know, I think I've said this to you before, but like I remember when I was probably six or seven.
25:56I mean, maybe I was a little bit older, but I remember we went to a ministry, like went to a church to minister, and I was with him.
26:05And, you know, back in the day, they used to have the paper church – what is it called?
26:16Church Registry, where it had the information of the people in the church because that, you know, back in the day, that's like if you wanted to contact someone in the church, you just grabbed a little pamphlet and it has the names and it has their phone numbers.
26:32And I don't think it had addresses, but I think it just kind of had the names and the phone numbers of the people who were like church regulars.
26:42And my dad had me like go and sneak and grab one of those pamphlets and bring it back to him.
26:51And I like remember doing that, and I remember it being fun, and I didn't realize why I was like sneaking.
26:56And I don't even know if he told me to sneak, but I knew internally, you know, I picked up on something that I was like I was supposed to grab that and bring it back to him.
27:07And, I mean, that picture is like a very like old school picture of a con artist of like having their son like run and get information and bring it back to them.
27:20And anyway, so what my dad would do, and for anyone who knew my dad or knows him, I'm sure he still does this.
27:30But he would have like, I mean, he had hundreds of three ring notebook binders, and he would have all of these printouts that he would do, and then he would write in them.
27:45And he would just continually write and write and write and write and like, so say we were going to a go minister at a church, we would go and stay with a host family.
27:58And he would bring out one of those notebooks, and he would already have a list of names that he had procured somehow, either from the pastor or for someone else.
28:08And he would talk to people who are in the church, and he would ask the people information about like, oh, okay, I have this name, you know, John Collins, tell me about him and his boat, you know, or something like that, and get specific information.
28:25And then he would just write it down on paper, but like, he was very disorganized, so he would lose a lot of his papers, and he would lose a lot of his writing.
28:35And so I now see, it totally makes sense, because I'm telling you, John, I like until today, I never really put it together, but he, because it was like a five year thing, where every single month, he would be talking about how he needs his database, he needs his database.
28:57And everyone was like, I don't know what you're talking about. We have like, a list of emails. And if you want, because that was the sort of thing of like, okay, well, if you want to sell your product, because that is what he always was talking about, is like, we need to be able to like, sell our product.
29:15And it's like, well, the emails are sufficient for it. Like, if you have the name in the email, that's totally sufficient for it. And it's like, people will unsubscribe or whatever, but like you have, I mean, he probably had something like 10,000 names, if not more, like 15, 20,000 names on an email list.
29:35And it was like, there you go, there's your database. And, and people would work on having like more organized databases where like, oh, we could see here's the engagement that people were clicking on, and versus not here are your people that you really want to sell to and here are people who don't, but it wasn't enough, because he needed what church they were affiliated with, he needed their phone numbers, he needed their address, like, he needed more information.
30:02I can't believe I didn't put this together. But like, and I knew it was just like, really confusing, because you would have these people like he was, he was saying that he wanted it for his the purpose of selling his product. And like, there were people who were experienced in selling product, who did a good job of establishing a database and giving it to him.
30:28And he would be so angry and upset with them because they didn't give him what he wanted. And now it makes total sense. Because what he wanted is he needed that Rolodex that if he was to go administer to places, he needed to be able to have that sort of like, all of the information that he had collected any problem.
30:48What he probably what he probably wanted is people to go through his notebooks and take his writing that he wrote about all of these specific individuals, and put it in a digitized format and organize it for him so that like, next time he goes and ministers at you know, the church in Oregon that he once went there, he now has all of the hard work that he already did.
31:16Because as he got older, because as he got older, his memory was worse, and he couldn't remember these people and what names were associated with what and man, I it's just it's blowing my mind that like, that makes so much sense that that's what he was going for. And, you know, that was also the prophets before him.
31:39I especially Oh, shoot, what's his name? Paul Kane, Paul Kane had a Rolodex, like he had physical copies of people's information. And I totally understand that my dad was trying to sort of emulate that of having like, all of the physical papers that he had used throughout his entire life.
32:03He wanted that sort of consolidated and digitized, but he couldn't just outright say it because it was it was fraud. And he couldn't just tell people, hey, help me with my con. You know, he had to keep up the illusion of it.
32:20I don't think he ever once out loud said anything that would have recognized the con. Like, I don't think you ever described any of his con artist behaviors or anything like that. Because like, it wasn't even just about not getting caught. He just could not.
32:40He would do actions that he couldn't verbalize himself because like, he didn't want to be that person. He didn't want to be a con artist. And so if he spoke it out loud, it's sometimes, you know, it suddenly becomes real.
32:55But man, that's blowing my mind. I can't believe I want to like call my sisters right now and be like, this is what it was about. And they would be like, oh, wow. Yeah. Or maybe they would be like, duh. I can't believe you didn't figure that out already. But yeah, so many arguments. So many arguments were about that database.
33:16And just he would get, I mean, he fired probably half a dozen people because they wouldn't get the database for him. And he always would, he would always send them to me. Oh, man. And this makes sense too. Sorry, John. This is probably terrible podcasting, but this is me figuring out my own father's procedures.
33:39But he would, he would send them to me a lot of times and would be like, Jed, help these individuals get the database. And I was always like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know how I can help you. And it makes sense because like, he knew out of everyone, I was the one who like understood his grift the best.
34:05And like, because I had like confronted him about it in the past, but like also helped him in the past with certain stuff. I mean, when I was really young. So he probably was like, if anyone could kind of like figure it out, it was, it'd be Jed. And like, that's probably true. I of course did not figure it out. And I did not help those people and they all got fired.
34:31Have 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?
34:46You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
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35:32Not everybody thinks like a con artist. I unfortunately have the gene because it, it runs through the family. I'll just say it like that.
35:40Yeah. And I, sadly, I would make a good cult leader if I was just a little bit evil, but I don't have enough evil in me to do it.
35:47But people who don't have this, people who, and especially in a religious setting, you go and you shut off all your critical thinking when you're in a church.
35:57You have no idea that the guy is conning you.
35:59And so you don't even want to believe that he is, even if you suspect it.
36:03And so you turn off your critical thinking and you don't pick up on the things.
36:07But then when somebody escapes after having been conned, like I get countless emails, how did William Branham do this in the Healing Revival?
36:15How did he know their names and their addresses and their whatever it was, you know?
36:19And they're looking for a one-size-fits-all answer.
36:24But that's not how con artists work, man.
36:27If he's in one building and there's a certain setup or scenario, he's going to apply his con to that building.
36:32If he's in a city, it could be regional, whatever it is.
36:36They're going to take the con and make it fit the situation.
36:41And I came across a book.
36:43I mentioned this in the podcast with Bob, but James Randi, who was a magician, he discovered that all these faith healers were just conning the people.
36:54And he devoted his life to exposing the con artists, which was kind of funny.
37:01And I bought his book, The Faith Healers.
37:03And he goes through.
37:03He says, I was a magician.
37:05Here's how they did this.
37:06Here's how they did this other thing.
37:07And he's walking you through, and I'm reading it like, oh, my gosh, man.
37:12Why didn't I pick up on that?
37:13We're in a modern age.
37:15I'm smart enough to figure this out, but I had shut off all critical thinking.
37:20But his book kind of exposed it.
37:22He exposed Branham, among others.
37:24And he walks you through from the ancient, well, not ancient, but from the early faith revival leaders that he was in contact with up until the modern age when they're using the electronics.
37:36And so he's taking you there.
37:38What it made me do is it made me pick up on things.
37:42So I mentioned the people who were working the crowds.
37:46So these men who were, I mean, legitimately praying with the people.
37:51Yes, we'll pray with you, and we'll give you a prayer card so you can go up and see the healer.
37:57Well, then the healer, William Branham, would say the oddest things.
38:01You in the red sweater with the pink polka dot top, you with the yellow sweater with the odd-looking, what you call it, you with this.
38:12I mean, he is literally using visual cues.
38:16But that was just one of many techniques.
38:18There were several techniques.
38:20James Randi went through these techniques.
38:22But he took you all the way up to, I think it was Peter Popoff that had the little device in his ear, right?
38:29That book was published before the late 90s and the early 2000s.
38:34So there was a technology shift that, see, I'm a software guy and I have the unfortunate gene.
38:41So I understand that all you have to do is pay some developers.
38:46The moment in which flat screens technology came out, you can even devise pulpits that had a flat screen in it back then.
38:55And speech-to-text technology, I want to say it came out maybe it was the early 90s, maybe mid-90s.
39:04But there came a point in time in which you could talk into a microphone, and the microphones were only about the size of your thumb.
39:11Talking to a microphone, it could go into a computer that could be mounted anywhere in the pulpit.
39:16And as you talk, your talking became the typing.
39:21So picture in a Google search, I'm talking, well, my words go in there and hit enter.
39:27In today's world, we have these AI tools and Siri on your iPhone and all of these.
39:32People understand how this technology works now.
39:36Back in the 90s, man, late 90s, early 2000s, nobody knew how that worked.
39:41They didn't even know you could do it.
39:43Take it a step further.
39:45Probably about, I want to say it was after the flat screens came out.
39:50It might have been five years.
39:53But software developers realized the power of this, and they were building the early prototypes of what would become Siri.
39:59And it was some really cool technology.
40:02I wish I could remember the name of the software, but you can install these softwares.
40:06So if you had a phone call, for example, or you had a business meeting, and you started talking, and the other person's talking too, both feeds went into the microphone.
40:18Both feeds started to access a database, and it would pull up visual cues as they're talking so you could understand better what they were saying.
40:27If you take a devious mind minister who has the funding to pay for a development team who can take that technology and apply it to a database of people that he has in his congregation, think of that.
40:41You've got a flat screen monitor on your pulpit.
40:44And I'm not saying anybody did this, right?
40:46I'm just saying that as a con artist, these are the type of things that you can do.
40:50But you can talk, and you can literally have it such that as you and they are talking, you can pop up visual cues on your database and see it.
40:58So that technology hit probably 2000s.
41:03I'm not aware of any single faith healer that did that.
41:07But where I'm headed with this is now, now that we have AI, we have all of these other tools, the power to take over the minds of people and hijack them with these kind of tricks now is so far amplified and undetectable because now everybody has the same technology.
41:24Who's to say he's not setting his tablet on the, you know, right there on the pulpit and he's preaching from the Bible and his notes are in his tablet.
41:33Well, in that same tablet, you can have multitasking and you can have a whole array of things that are your database.
41:39People have no idea that he's doing it because he's reading the Bible from that same tablet.
41:43Yeah, or don't do the tablet, like have the earpiece because like the tablet is, you know, is I think that I really think that it's good, obviously, that you and I and others are talking about these things now because like in 10, 20, 30 years, it might be really hard to catch people.
42:07Like if you and I wanted to create a, you know, profit and I mean, it'd be like it picks somebody and we like train them to be a profit, like we could easily do it in a way where they wouldn't be recognized because, you know, you can make it more of a magic show.
42:32Just like magic, if you go to, I live in, you know, Los Angeles and I go to the magic shows here and I'm like, I legitimately have no idea how people do it because they, they get really good and they aren't hiding what they are to themselves.
42:48This is, this is another thing that like my dad's narcissism was his own worst enemy is like, he never was able to just like outright tell people what he wanted in his database because he was not able to like come to terms with that's who he was.
43:03It's like if you, if you, if you know, I play chess and I'm, I'm pretty good at chess, but like, I'm not anywhere the level of like being, you know, some of the best in the world and grandmaster stuff.
43:15stuff. But if I like, you know, there are, there's technology now where like the computer is far better than anybody, you know, um, these like chess, uh, bots are, are far better than Magnus Carlson or any of the best like chess players in the world.
43:34So, and it would be like, if I started cheating and using that, you know, had an ear pace or something like that, but yet I couldn't even come to terms with the fact that I was cheating.
43:45So like in my own head, I still thought I was a brilliant chess player, even though I was getting all the moves from here.
43:50It just like, that's the sort of narcissism of believing you're so grand.
43:55And that's definitely what my dad was doing is he was cheating.
43:57He had the ear, you know, he didn't, it wasn't ear pace, but he had all of these like really shady ways that he was.
44:04Getting the information, but he still believed that he was this grand profit.
44:10And I think that that's what kept him from being actually very good at it.
44:15Um, because he could have, he could have had a database.
44:20He could, I mean, he was a good performer.
44:22He could have gotten people to really believe him, you know, and he could have had information.
44:27Like what he did better than what these Sean Bowles and Chris Reed don't do is like, he didn't have technology.
44:34And that's like a huge red flag for people.
44:36Like if you see iPads, people are going to be like, this isn't something's up here, but if you just have paper or if you have, you know, your Bible and you have it scrawled in the little notes in your Bible, you know, that's people won't know.
44:52And it'll be convincing.
44:53And I think, you know, now, like if you set me on like finding out a bunch of information and filling out the Rolodex, I could do it.
45:04Because like, there's so much information online that people don't even realize that they have information online.
45:10And, um, as long as you're able to violate ethics, like there's so much technology is like omnipresent.
45:19We literally have access to a near omnipresent God.
45:23It's not God.
45:24It's, um, or, um, omniscient, not omnipresent.
45:27And, um, I mean, it's kind of omnipresent too, but an omniscient God that just knows everything about us and it's not God in the heavens that we're talking to.
45:38It's chat GPT and it's the, and it's, um, you know, just internet in general and like finding out so much of people's lives are on the internet and they don't even realize it.
45:50And so I think that it's so important that we're talking and identifying all of the tactics that they're doing now, because if the group decides if it continues to evolve, it's going to be a lot harder to pick it out, um, in the next 10, 20 years.
46:10It's kind of funny because I've, I've toyed with chat GPT a little bit, some of these different AI tools and, and the technology I do.
46:18And it's funny because many of the ministers who are in the research that I have on my pages have 0% knowledge of what is true theology, but now they've got tools like chat GPT that can write their sermons for them.
46:32And I'm not saying it produces the perfect theology, but it's far better than what they had before.
46:37Right, right.
46:38So like you said, it's going to make it, eventually it'll be very difficult to detect people who are conning you.
46:44But one of the other things you mentioned, so technology, there are people who are using the technology and they're very, very obvious that that that's a con, but there are body hacks and there are body things that you're born with that can make it even more possible.
47:00I think this is common knowledge.
47:03So I'm going to, I'm going to say this with caution and for anybody who's taking what I say verbatim and quoting me, I have heard from multiple sources that Paul Cain was using stacks of phone books.
47:17And this is a guy who's doing the, I know your name and address kind of gimmick, right?
47:20And his faith healing for, from multiple people.
47:23And I believe somewhere I read it online, but I've looked and I can't find it again.
47:28But if that's true, if what the person, what the people have told me is true, and some of them were in his inner circle, that he had these stacks of phone books.
47:37And before he'd go into a revival convention, he would get phone books from the city and he would be, they caught him reading them basically and ask him, why are you doing this?
47:46And I think the quote was something to the effect that God has given me the gift, but sometimes you need a little bit of help with your gift.
47:54Hamburger helper.
47:55Hamburger helper, something like this, right?
47:57That's the, yeah.
47:58So what this tells me, knowing that, because if I were to give you a stack of phone books, would that help you?
48:06You have to have a photographic memory for that to work.
48:08So what it tells me is that one of the cons by one or more of the people, Paul Cain must have been one, had a photographic memory.
48:18And so this is a way you can con people.
48:19If you have this gift and they don't, you have an edge.
48:23But here's an interesting part as it relates to IHOPKC.
48:26Whenever I learned that that was a possibility, I started studying Branham sermons heavily on techniques for memorization.
48:39So the colors is a technique, right?
48:41Here's a person who's got a polka dot sweater and it looks odd, whatever it is.
48:45But there are other techniques as well.
48:48One of them to improve your memory is fasting.
48:52If you fast and when you're in the fast, your memory is, I've experienced, I've done fasting, I think I told you this, I lost 45 pounds in 45 days fasting.
49:05All of your senses are heightened.
49:07Your memory is better during the fast.
49:11Even though your body's weak from the fasting, I had more energy.
49:14I was able to work out harder during my fast.
49:17It was kind of crazy.
49:19If it didn't kill me, if I did it long term, it probably would have helped me.
49:24But it did help my memory.
49:26And then when I went off of the fast and started just eating regularly, my memory was depleted.
49:33So during the fast, and so I started looking when I recognized this.
49:38William Branham says, now every time before I go into a healing revival series, I'll do a fast for, I think he said, seven days, something like this.
49:46And I'm starting to piece it together.
49:49And what I really found odd is as he traveled from town to town, he only had like five sermons and he would just repeat the five over and over again.
49:58Yeah, right.
49:59Everything that he had was copied from somebody else, basically.
50:02But he would say things and then he would pretend not to remember and he would have the audience help him, you know, with his memory.
50:12And then he would go to the next city for the same exact subject, same topic and say, I can't remember.
50:19Forget the same thing.
50:20Have the audience help him.
50:22This is a con.
50:23If the audience is helping you, you're training them to believe that I can't remember anything.
50:28And then I'm going to do this faith healing gimmick where I'm going to tell you your names, addresses, phone numbers, whatever.
50:35So there's many different cons, a variety of cons.
50:38But the body hacking thing, it's real.
50:42People can do that.
50:43There are – I can't do it, but my wife knows.
50:46She was a school teacher, so she knows these memorization techniques.
50:51You can do little mind memory mapping things.
50:56She has the name for it.
50:57I don't.
50:58But people can do this and people are actually – some people are really, really good at it.
51:02I'm not.
51:03I have to take notes everywhere I go.
51:06But that's one of the techniques.
51:07And this is – I think I've listed 10 techniques at this point, but there's probably a thousand different techniques that these guys use.
51:14Yeah, well, yeah, no, I mean, everything that you're saying, yeah, that's exactly what my dad would do.
51:22I mean, my dad had a really incredible memory for numbers.
51:29Like, he could remember phone numbers super well.
51:33And he would, like, show off this in non-prophetic context.
51:40Like, he would pick – if you have a four-digit number, 1742 or something, he would try to associate that with biblical passages, like the Psalm 1742, man.
51:54And he would read that passage, and it makes it way easier to remember because it's about a subject, but it's also way easier to – the performance of it feels way more impactful because it doesn't feel like you're just straight reading numbers to it.
52:11There's, like, way more of an art to it.
52:13So, the body hacking – just every way that you can use any advantage to make it more powerful, they really – I mean, my dad learned from several other individuals, you know, including Paul Kane and others, to, like, how to do these things and was good at it.
52:35Like, that was his job.
52:36His job was to find every little edge to make his message work.
52:45And, you know, just to go back to something that you were saying at the beginning, using – having ministers who, like, use ChatGPT to make their nonsense words make sense is, like, obviously people are going to be doing that.
53:01But something that was really eerie that happened is I – a few days ago, or maybe, like, a week ago, my dad released a podcast.
53:11And it was the first attempt to, like, do public ministry that he's done since I spoke out against him and since, like, he's been banned from Bethel and IHOP.
53:28And so, he released this podcast and I listened to it and I'm like, who are these people talking?
53:36It was, like, a young, you know, 20s, 30s-something male and female talking about the yellow house and talking about, well, Bob Hartley had this prophetic dream and it's really powerful, da-da-da-da-da.
53:51And I'm listening to it and I'm like, who are these people?
53:55Like, who did he rope into his world?
53:58And about – it took me, like, three or four minutes to be like, oh, this is AI.
54:04Like, this is a – and I was shocked that I got, you know, the cadence of it.
54:12Like, they would be like, um, well, and, you know, very slow in the sort of way they delivered things and then they would talk over each other, too.
54:23And I was like, it was just a really, really good chat GBT or, I mean, AI thing.
54:32And it was super, super eerie.
54:34It was – it didn't make any sense, you know, it – the sentence – the sentences did, but the content didn't.
54:42Like, the content was just, you know, it's like if you had an AI explain your dream, you know, and you had talked into the recording at 1 a.m.
54:57when you were, like, half asleep and then chat GBT was, like, trying to make that something real.
55:03It's just, like, yeah, they're using proper sentence structure, but the content is just bizarre.
55:10And AI does this horrible thing of being so affirmative to anybody who does – like, you were, like, oh, you put in something and it's, like, wow, that's a great, interesting idea.
55:22So, it's – the way that – this could be a whole other thing I'm saying right at the end of the episode, but the way that AI feeds into narcissism is, like, gonna be a problem.
55:33Because you have these narcissists who have these, like, grand delusional ideas and then you have AI, a very intelligent, you know, resourceful, somewhat seeming sentient being repeating back to you.
55:51Like, wow, this is so profound.
55:54This is really great.
55:55Yeah, you're really on to something here because it's, like, programmed to be the most, like, affirmational thing you've ever met in your entire life.
56:03And, yeah, you're 100% going to get these delusional prophets creating delusional content with their narcissistic sort of narratives.
56:17And they're going to get better at it because ChatGPT is going to be really good at helping them.
56:22Absolutely.
56:23It's some scary stuff.
56:24I've toyed with it for a variety of different things that I've got going on technology-wise.
56:30And it's basically – it's a birthday cake with a hand grenade in it.
56:34Right.
56:35That's the best way I can describe it.
56:37I started using it – I have trouble because I multitask heavily.
56:42And so, I'll type out this big article and sometimes I'll have it proofread it.
56:46And it does a good job at getting the grammar correct, but if you don't read what it has given you back, there's a hand grenade right there that's going to explode when people read it.
56:56So, it's some scary stuff.
56:58And to think that that is our future.
57:00Ministers are going to be using that and not hand grenades, but theological nightmares are going to be embedded in their sermons now.
57:08This is a very scary thing.
57:11So, so much more we talk about.
57:13I think we've got an hour now.
57:14And I've only covered just the skimming the surface of all of the cons that I am aware that these guys can do.
57:22But I think it's enough that people get the picture.
57:24Whenever these guys want to toy with your head, they can do it.
57:28They can.
57:28Yeah.
57:29And the resources are only becoming more plentiful to do so.
57:33Yeah.
57:34Absolutely, man.
57:35Well, this was incredible fun.
57:37Like I said, I have the unfortunate gift of thinking like this.
57:41But it helps in the research because I can put myself into their shoes as I'm researching these guys and think, okay, if I was a bad guy, what would I do as a bad guy?
57:51And sure enough, half the time I've figured it out just by reading their environment and their scene and their setting and their scenario in their city.
58:00Yeah.
58:01Yeah.
58:01Well, thank you so much for doing this.
58:04If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
58:07You can find us at william-brannum.org.
58:10For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
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