- 2 days ago
John and Adam examine the theology behind a promotional video produced by Bethel Church, contrasting its visual and thematic elements with the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. They argue that the language and imagery used—particularly a recurring motif of “light coming out of the earth”—represent a stark inversion of Christ’s message that his kingdom is “not of this world.” Throughout the conversation, they explore how certain charismatic and dominionist movements have reframed biblical language to suggest that believers must bring heaven to earth themselves, rather than wait on Christ’s return. They critique how ideas like Joel’s Army, Manifest Sons of God, and “prepare the way” theology are built on appropriated prophecies and mystic reinterpretations that distance people from orthodox Christian beliefs.
Their conversation moves from personal reflections on cult experiences to historical analysis of how Latter Rain, British Israelism, and Christian Identity evolved into present-day dominionist expressions found in Bethel and the wider NAR network. They discuss theological distortions like faith in faith, secret knowledge (gnosis), and how language from mystery cults entered modern church contexts. By the end, they highlight the elitism and exploitation embedded in these belief systems, including how “nameless and faceless” narratives hide the real power structures behind movements. They conclude with a call for biblical clarity and transparency, urging listeners to reevaluate what is being promoted in popular revivalist circles.
______________________
Bethel Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd6Uz8jezoA
______________________
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
Their conversation moves from personal reflections on cult experiences to historical analysis of how Latter Rain, British Israelism, and Christian Identity evolved into present-day dominionist expressions found in Bethel and the wider NAR network. They discuss theological distortions like faith in faith, secret knowledge (gnosis), and how language from mystery cults entered modern church contexts. By the end, they highlight the elitism and exploitation embedded in these belief systems, including how “nameless and faceless” narratives hide the real power structures behind movements. They conclude with a call for biblical clarity and transparency, urging listeners to reevaluate what is being promoted in popular revivalist circles.
______________________
Bethel Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd6Uz8jezoA
______________________
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
00:30Hello, 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
00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Adam Short, host of
00:47the Grit in the Wild Podcast.
00:49Adam, it's good to be back and to talk about this weird, weird thing that you sent me.
00:55I'm still laughing at this.
00:57It's unbelievable.
00:58Whenever I left the cult, we just had this conversation right before the podcast, I was
01:05working to wash all of that nonsense out of my head, and I read the Bible over and over
01:09and over, but it wasn't the first time I'd read the Bible.
01:13I read the Bible while I was in the cult, and I'm learning even after leaving the cult.
01:18A vast majority of Christians don't read it, and I'm shocked that it's that way in Christianity.
01:27But one of the passages that really, for me, then and now is profound.
01:32Jesus said,
01:33My kingdom is not of this world.
01:35If it were, my servants would fight to protect my arrest from the Jewish leaders.
01:39He's literally saying, let it happen.
01:43This world that we're in does not matter.
01:46And, you know, for me, that's profound.
01:49But also, there's a statement, I think it's in the book of John.
01:53He says,
01:54If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you with me to that place
01:59where I've created, right?
02:00Something to that effect, right?
02:02And then you sent me this video that's Arise and Build, and it is like if you took the words of Jesus,
02:09everything that he says and all of the Gospels, and flip them completely upside down
02:14and tell the people that, no, we're going to prepare the way, not Jesus.
02:19We're going to prepare the place.
02:22And I'll let you talk, but I'm a big sci-fi fan, like you know.
02:28I've got the Millennium Falcon behind me.
02:30One of my favorite shows of all time is Battlestar Galactica.
02:35And I've seen the old version, the new version, the one from the, what is it, the 90s.
02:41There's this concept that you've got all of these invading enemy Cylons that are on the Earth,
02:48and you can't tell them from the other people because they're wanting to repopulate, rebuild the Earth,
02:53and create it as their domain.
02:55And I'm watching this video from Bethel Church, and I'm thinking, man, this is the Cylons in Bethel Church, man.
03:02They want to take over.
03:05Oh, man.
03:06Well, I am like completely illiterate when it comes to Galactica or, you know, all that fun stuff.
03:13But I think I get the picture of what you're saying, and it really is the inverse.
03:19And so what we're talking about, just for everybody's benefit, is this, and it's actually not a new video.
03:24It's been out a couple years, but it was released as part of the whole marketing push by Bethel Church
03:32in context with their new building project that they've been working on now for, I think, about two years.
03:39You can look on Google Earth in Redding, California.
03:43You can look at the progress, at least as of the satellite photo, the date the satellite photo was taken,
03:49or even look at Google Street View.
03:51And you can see they are building a very large and lavish building complex that is being pitched as really the,
04:02I think, the epicenter is what they're calling the epicenter of really the fulfillment of Bill Johnson's vision,
04:09which has been for heaven to invade Earth.
04:12And, but this video, John, when my wife and I came across this a while back, it's probably last year sometime,
04:18I, you know, we watched, and we've been out of Bethel for a good while, like, what, 15 years or so, formally.
04:26And then further extricated after that.
04:28But even watching that for us was like, it was, it was so creepy.
04:33It was so eerie.
04:33I think the part that really grabbed our attention the most is the section,
04:41it was time-stamped one minute and 14 seconds in the video,
04:45where there's literally, like, this fluorescent light.
04:48That they are, they're, like, unearthing.
04:51They're going to dig a hole, and we're going to dig up this light out of the Earth.
04:56And I'm like, we're watching this, like, this is, I don't know what this is,
05:01but it doesn't resemble anything in the Bible.
05:05And, like, and actually, I'd like to see somebody analyze the transcript
05:10and see if any, if there was any mention at all of Jesus.
05:14I don't think there was.
05:16I think this is gobbledygook, pie in the sky.
05:21I don't know what it is.
05:22I don't even know what to call this, John.
05:23Like, what is this?
05:24Please tell me.
05:26First off, you need to watch the original Battlestar Galactica.
05:30The bad guys had this light that goes back and forth in there.
05:33I mean, when I saw the light, I was like, oh, my gosh, man.
05:37This is a sci-fi show.
05:39This isn't a church video.
05:40But to the theological point of all of this, I get in trouble sometimes
05:48because I grew up in this world that was fully isolated from all of this,
05:52and we were in this isolationist doomsday cult.
05:55And I get out of this, and I get into mainstream Christianity.
05:58And in that process of leaving, I have read the Bible over and over and over again,
06:04even after, you know, the first few churches.
06:06I'm still going through and watching this out of my head.
06:09And I'm reading the Bible for what it says,
06:11but I'm starting to realize that even in mainstream Christianity,
06:16you find the influence of all of this has shifted things
06:20to the extent that it's almost not recognizable between mainstream Christianity
06:27and what I'm reading in the Bible.
06:28I know various churches are different,
06:30but I'm seeing things that this can only have came
06:34from the Lateran charismatic movement, the way that they're thinking.
06:37And I get in trouble because I don't see the trivial details
06:43that divide the theologies.
06:45I've mentioned at one point in time,
06:47I was mentioning John Wimber's dominion theology,
06:52and I was calling it the kingdom theology of John Wimber.
06:55Like the kingdom now.
06:56Well, so kingdom now, I got flack for this.
07:01And the funny part is I can't distinguish the two
07:04because both are extra biblical, the way that it's presented.
07:09But if you say kingdom now, all the John Wimber fans say,
07:12no, he didn't teach kingdom now.
07:14And if you say John Wimber's kingdom theology,
07:16the kingdom now people say,
07:18John Wimber didn't go all the way there.
07:21What's really interesting is if you put the both theologies in AI,
07:25but don't mention any names, you say, are these theologies the same?
07:29And they say, well, they have the same derivative root.
07:32And it is extra biblical what they're teaching.
07:35But the issue is both of them suggest that, you know,
07:40Jesus said my kingdom is not of this world.
07:43And the other passage I was reading, I go to prepare a place for you.
07:46Jesus is preparing the place.
07:49Yes, yes.
07:49In these extra biblical kingdom theologies, it's not Jesus that does it.
07:54You do it.
07:54You do it here on earth.
07:56You're the Cylons.
07:57You're invading.
07:58You're going to push all the bad guys out that, you know,
08:01if you're the Cylon point of view,
08:02you're pushing all of the things that you disagree with away
08:06because you're preparing a place for Christ to come
08:09instead of Christ preparing a place for you to go.
08:12Oh, my gosh.
08:13Let me just talk about this.
08:14You talked about kingdom now, kingdom.
08:17Let me just go to Manifest Sons of God for a minute,
08:21and let's talk about Joel's army.
08:23Let's talk about the prophecy that it's in its – oh, my gosh.
08:31Is it Malachi?
08:32I think it's Malachi, where the prophecy was that God would turn the hearts
08:37of the fathers back to the hearts of the children
08:41and the hearts of the children back to the hearts of the fathers.
08:46That prophecy has been quoted so many times in the Bethel, IHOP,
08:54and Morningstar circles that I was a part of.
08:56And then it was also affiliated with the Joel's army.
09:01And then the line was drawn to John the Baptist.
09:05Okay.
09:06I'm going to get to what you're talking about here,
09:08the prepare the way stuff that Bethel puts in this video,
09:12that you hear Bill Johnson's voice.
09:14But I want to get to how did we get to prepare the way?
09:17It is, like you said, an inversion of what actually was supposed to happen
09:26or was spoken about in the Bible in that John the Baptist fulfilled
09:32many of the Old Testament prophecies because he was sent as one that came
09:40before Jesus to announce his coming, right?
09:44And it was said of John the Baptist that he was preparing the way for the Lord.
09:52Okay.
09:52So that's where prepare the way came from.
09:55But here's where they hijacked it is they took all these prophecies
09:59from the Old Testament, like Malachi and others,
10:02and then they superimposed this Joel's army stuff on top of it.
10:08And all of a sudden, like all of us now living in the 20th
10:14and 21st century are supposed to be like all these John the Baptists again,
10:19where we're preparing the way for the Lord.
10:21And to your point, like, yeah, it's a total inversion of the entire gospel, right?
10:26Because isn't it the gospel that Jesus actually came to us to save us from our sins?
10:34He did not.
10:36Last I checked, I don't believe the Bible taught that we're to get on a hamster wheel
10:40and literally run on a hamster wheel our whole life
10:44until we can somehow usher in the kingdom of God
10:48to such a point where light comes out of the ground.
10:52Yeah.
10:54Like what?
10:55So let's pause a bit and do a history lesson.
10:58Yes, please.
10:58You know a lot of this history, but a lot of people don't.
11:01And sadly, that's the problem, because when you make mistakes,
11:05if you erase the history of your mistakes,
11:07then you're bound to recreate and continue making the same mistakes going forward.
11:14Well, we've talked a bit about British Israelism,
11:17which is the concept that the British Isles and later the United States were grafted in
11:22as the continuation of the lost ten tribes of Israel.
11:27That was a theology that was widespread.
11:28People believed it.
11:29When it came into the United States and it merged with all of the anti-Semitic and racist themes,
11:36it birthed what became known as Christian identity.
11:40But specifically, what they were doing was they were taking passages from the Old Testament
11:45because we are the children of Israel.
11:48Anything, all of the blessings given to Abraham and his seed for the children of Israel,
11:54that applies to us.
11:55So we can take those passages out of context and say that it had an ancient meaning
12:01and it also has a modern meaning.
12:03So basically, they're overloading language within each verse that they take out of context
12:09to say that, yes, this applied to, I don't know, Nahum and his prophecy,
12:15but also it applies to Chicago today.
12:17And that is, I've given that example, William Branham said that the old prophet Nahum was talking about
12:23Outer Drive in Chicago whenever he was talking about the chariots going to and fro.
12:28And no, that's untrue.
12:31He was talking about Nineveh.
12:33But that notion merged.
12:35And so, the last chapter of Malachi, the people were, as you know, really caught up into the King James Version only.
12:44Right.
12:45And there are words that have different or shifting meanings today from what the old Queen's English had.
12:54Yeah.
12:55So, great and terrible, for example.
12:58Terrible in today's language means awful.
13:00That's an awful thing.
13:01It's a great, awful thing.
13:03So, when it says the great and terrible day of the Lord in Malachi, modern readers read it and thought, well, that means awful.
13:11But great and terrible back then, also, the word terrible might mean something that is just awe-inspiring.
13:19It's terrible.
13:20It's unbelievable.
13:21This is a great and unbelievable thing, the coming of God.
13:24So, where it says, behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet, they were trying to make the notion that that promise to Israel applied to the generations today and that this Elijah figure would come.
13:42And over and over and over it has repeated itself.
13:45Frank Sanford said that he was this Elijah figure.
13:47John Dowie said he was.
13:49William Branham said he was.
13:52And then the Lateran movement, they – as you have to understand, there is – the culture surrounding all of this is very militant.
14:02You've got the World War I and World War II coming on the heels of all of this.
14:07So, they took the passage from Joel and combined it with Malachi to claim that this Elijah figure will restore the hearts of the father to the children, the children of the father, by creating this end-time army.
14:19That was a Lateran prophecy, which if you're an IHOP, you know this intimately because they just copied and pledged it, right?
14:27So, all of this theme was created and as – towards the end of Lateran, after it's starting to shift into the charismatic movement and they realized that William Branham's a nut job, the theme started shifting from an individual as the Elijah figure to, well, it's really the army that's the Elijah.
14:49It's the spirit of Elijah across multiple, multiple people.
14:53And that's really the background for how this theology emerged.
14:57But what they essentially created was the notion that we will, as this army, we will kick out all of the invaders who have invaded our country and changed our ways and we're going to kick them out and establish heaven on earth, basically.
15:13Interestingly, it applied more towards – they were really focused on – during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, they falsely thought that the quote-unquote false Jews from the protocols of the learned elders of Zion had already invaded the United States.
15:34And much of the theology comes from that political era.
15:38After the Roosevelt administration and all of that dissolved, it kind of sat dormant for a while and now it's rising up again.
15:46So, we have another situation.
15:48I document a lot of this in the book, Openized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
15:53Yep, I'm reading it right now.
15:55It's taken me a while because it's so dense.
15:56But, yeah, I remember you mentioning so much of the – well, like Sanford and then how that just continued to move its way down into history moving forward.
16:06But, yeah, like moving that conversation beyond like the Joel's Army and back to the Bethel video and the Bethel beliefs around literally bringing this kingdom to earth,
16:22even though it was never meant to be a physical kingdom.
16:26I mean, this is back to Dominionism 101.
16:29And I think that, if anything, it reminds me of the Catholic Crusades where there literally – there were actual armies that went to Jerusalem to –
16:43and they wanted to have a conquest of Jerusalem and take over physical territory, and there was an army to do just that.
16:54Even though I won't go so far as to say that Bethel or any of these movements are telling people to take up arms necessarily directly,
17:02I think that it sort of looks like that in an indirect way because with Dominionism, you know,
17:11you're literally taught to infiltrate each mountain of society in each sort of sector.
17:17And even though it's supposed to be a peaceful, you know, you're supposed to be a kind and peaceful person and not do –
17:25you know, not treat people unkindly, it actually results in a lot of harm for people.
17:32It results in harm in the people who are indoctrinated to do that, and it also results in harm to, for example, business owners who –
17:41what if you hire an employee?
17:42I mean, I'm a business owner.
17:44What if I hired an employee who believes in Dominionism?
17:48How would that impact my business?
17:49I mean, it would probably impact my business quite substantially if they believe that eventually they're going to take over my business.
17:57Like, I mean, you know, that was like the thinking at Bethel, like, who's going to be the next president?
18:04Or who's going to be the next fill-in-the-blank, you know, top guy in Hollywood?
18:09Or who's going to be whatever?
18:12And there's so much of that baked into thinking that the ultimate goal is that you actually sit on top of the mountain and you rule it.
18:21And so back to the whole Arise and Build project with Bethel, I think that that is a physical manifestation – pardon the trigger word, but it's a physical manifestation of the belief system that we're going to literally raise $100 million, and we're going to build a facility where God lives.
18:41And what's crazy is, like, it's almost like they're trying to recreate Old Covenant all over again with the Ark of the Covenant, where, you know, back then, the Holy of Holies is where the Ark of the Covenant sat, and the literal glory of God was in that container, and nobody could approach it.
19:02The common person couldn't approach it, and only the Levites and the priests could approach it under certain circumstances, and certain – they had to wear, you know, their certain dress, and they had to perform all of these rituals and sacraments and things like that.
19:17It's like Bethel's doing that again.
19:19Like, we are going to be the epicenter of God on earth.
19:26I mean, quite literally, you've got a fluorescent light tube.
19:29I go back to that again.
19:30I just, like, burned in my head.
19:31You've got a fluorescent light tube in the dirt, and you're digging it up in the video.
19:36This is what our goal is, is that the light of heaven is coming out of the dirt.
19:41And I would love for somebody to analyze that theologically in more depth.
19:49Like, what is this exactly?
19:50I can't quite get my head around it.
19:53Bill keeps saying in the video, can you see it?
19:56Can you see it?
19:56And my question is – my big question, among others, is what is going to happen to this empire once Bill is no longer with us?
20:09Who is going to be the next monarch to run the empire?
20:13If you're going to build a $100 million building with this huge, sprawling campus, like, who's going to lead that when Bill's gone?
20:22I don't think there's anybody, you know, in this line of succession who could even do a fraction of what Bill is from it.
20:32From, like, a visionary slash leader standpoint, I mean, his son Eric, you know, left Reading, like, three or four years ago, so I don't think it'll be him.
20:44Maybe he will go back.
20:45I'm not sure.
20:46But, anyway, that's just a question I have.
20:48Like, once you build all of this, once God lives in your building and you've fulfilled your vision, who's going to take that?
20:56You know, who's going to take it from there, basically, is my question.
20:59And I'm curious what you think.
21:01Like, do you think that Bethel will continue in all of its influence after Bill is gone?
21:07Or do you think it will just kind of wane, like, sort of, like, decrease in influence and sort of eventually fizzle out?
21:16What do you think?
21:16Or will somebody create a new splinter group and 50 years from now, somebody else, your grandson's having a podcast talking about, you know, NAR 3.0?
21:26You know, well, like I said, history repeats itself over and over again.
21:32If you don't document your history and you're covering up, concealing your history, you're going to make the same mistakes over and over.
21:39Here's the thing.
21:40The ideology itself wasn't, isn't new with Bethel.
21:45It wasn't new with Latter Rain.
21:46It goes all the way back.
21:48Literally, you can go all the way back to Gnosticism.
21:50I saw the – I caught the quotes that you're talking about.
21:53Can you see it?
21:54Can you see it, my brother?
21:55You know, that was common for me in the Branham cult.
22:00Every Sunday, they would talk about these things that literally you can't see.
22:05Literally, you have to go out on this leap of faith that takes you far away from the Bible.
22:09And they said, can you see it, my brother?
22:12And that's how it was.
22:13It was the secret knowledge.
22:15If you go all the way back to the Gnostics, what is Gnosticism?
22:18They had Gnosis.
22:19They had a secret knowledge.
22:21And that's what made them different from the other people who weren't Gnostics.
22:26Us versus them.
22:27Us versus them.
22:29So fast forward to Christian identity.
22:31We have the secret knowledge that everyone that we see today, back to Battlestar Galactica, we can't tell the difference.
22:38They're Cylons.
22:40Basically, they're the false Jews.
22:43They're the ones who aren't the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel.
22:47But they look like us.
22:48They act like us.
22:49They're in Christian churches like us.
22:51But we have that secret.
22:53We know the difference.
22:55Can you see it, my brother?
22:57That's interesting.
22:58That invaded the churches.
23:00And what happened?
23:02Originally, it was very anti-Semitic.
23:05And it turned into a lot of violence and hatred against Jews.
23:08Then after World War II ended and things just kind of settled down, it kind of went back underground and then flared its head again in the 60s.
23:18Same exact thing.
23:20Different set of people.
23:21We have the secret knowledge.
23:22We're invaded by these false Jews.
23:24And who is it?
23:25It's the blacks.
23:27It's the African Americans in the United States.
23:29Then you have all the civil rights battle.
23:31And literally, if you go back through the newspapers or it's hard to find the propaganda, but there exists on the Internet propaganda speeches and magazines, etc.
23:42It's the same exact thing that they were doing with anti-Semitism in the 20s and 30s.
23:48Now they're doing it religion versus the blacks and the African Americans.
23:53And that's why this turned into such a mess, because how do you fight this?
23:56They're teaching hatred of blacks inside the churches, largely in the South.
24:01Well, that dies out after the 60s, civil rights kind of dies down, and now we have more equality.
24:10Well, it's rising again, but instead of pointing to a black or a Jew, it's literally divided on political parties.
24:18And they're taking the same notion that our country has been invaded.
24:22You can't tell the difference.
24:23They're going to churches just like we're going to churches, but they have a more liberal mindset.
24:28And I want to be very careful how I say that, because people will take that the wrong way.
24:34There are certain things within the ideologies of the people who the religious, these extremists are against, that the ideologies themselves are anti-biblical.
24:46However, it goes beyond the things that are anti-biblical.
24:51It's more about dividing the party lines and making sure that you program people to believe that it's us versus them.
24:58It's not a persuade them to believe the things of the Bible.
25:03It's we need to conquer them, because basically we're going to beat them into submission.
25:10We're going to claim dominion over them.
25:13And I'm very, very glad you brought up the business aspect, because I've never talked about this, but it is a huge problem because of the mindset.
25:21I've had my business for years.
25:25When I was in the cult, I had the same mindset.
25:28I believed that every single person I was working with, even though they're going to a Christian church, they were not us.
25:35It was us versus them.
25:37Okay.
25:37But after I left the cult and I started to deprogram, now when I go into a place and I see people who are in the cult who are in positions of management, the first thought that comes into my head, do you know that those people think that they're going to eventually rule over everyone in this building?
25:56And watch their management styles.
25:59Watch how they act as an elitist.
26:01Watch how they act.
26:03Yes.
26:03You know, I sit there and I think, should I warn them?
26:06Should I warn the company that this is a problem, or should I just let them notice?
26:10And interestingly, I have seen the companies begin to take notice.
26:15A good leader doesn't act like this.
26:17Right.
26:17They are teaching you from your inner personality to act like an elitist.
26:23Yeah.
26:24Oh, my gosh.
26:24I'm so glad you brought that up because it kind of takes me back to my Bethel days when, you know, many of us were fortunate to find professional jobs, I being one of them.
26:38Although it was difficult to find jobs back in Reading at the time because it was during the famous financial crisis that happened around the 2008-2009 timeframe, which had wide, you know, widely reaching impacts.
26:55But there was this, there was absolutely that same kind of vibe slash mentality that we were sort of taught at Bethel, which it was.
27:04It was a very elitist, but, but here's the, here's the, and I'm not sure if this applies in your situation, like with the Branham organization, but at Bethel, it's almost like it was very subtle.
27:16It was subtle.
27:17It was out front, but it was still subtle in the sense that like deep down, you know that, okay, God has opened the door for me to work at this business.
27:26And, you know, I, you know, I'm obviously going to come here and do my best work I can, but there's always going to be this sort of carrot on the end of the stick that this is a stepping stone to lead to greater influence, greater authority, greater, you know, fill in the blank.
27:48I don't know, fame, greater, I don't know, fame, greater, whatever.
27:52And, but it's like the subconscious belief system that was in there.
27:57And, and as I look back on my previous version of myself, I'm like disgusted that that's how I thought.
28:03Like, because now I think like, well, the way I think now is like completely opposite.
28:09Um, matter of fact, I've said this before, I feel oftentimes way more comfortable interfacing and doing business with people who aren't even Christians than Christians, much less people who, you know, who are in these hyper charismatic circles.
28:26So, uh, because there's just so much noise to filter through, there's so many curtains you have to pull back to actually get to, who is this person that you're interacting with right now?
28:38Um, am I dealing with just, and, and, and, you know, and they may not even be aware of the kind of mindset they're in, but like, it's hard to know who are you dealing with?
28:50Who's the actual real person behind the curtain?
28:53Um, because the indoctrination really is so deep.
28:56Have 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?
29:10You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
29:17On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
29:31You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
29:38If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
29:45And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
29:51On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
29:56There's another passage in John 18 where Jesus said, I have spoke openly to the world.
30:02This is the polar opposite of what Gnosticism is.
30:06You have Jesus who's speaking openly.
30:09He said, I've always taught openly.
30:11Why do you question me?
30:12You know the passage.
30:13Well, Gnosticism, they try to teach you that God keeps things hidden to a very secret group.
30:20And the reason why this exists, during the time whenever Christianity was spreading, there were all of these mystery cults.
30:29They had some divine mystery, whether it be of the gods of the Greek or Roman pantheons, etc.
30:36And they had this secret that nobody else knew, and it made them better than the rest of the people.
30:42Well, as Christianity is spreading, people who were of that mindset thought, well, I can apply this to Christianity, and I can create my new sect.
30:50And they did that.
30:52So Christianity –
30:53By syncretistically, I guess.
30:55Yeah.
30:55It's really weird when you step back and you see how this thing spread and why.
31:00But anyway, it's called a mystery cult because they have a divine mystery.
31:04Okay.
31:05And one of the premises of latter rain was that there were these divine mysteries that God is revealing to us in the last day.
31:13And that came directly from the same mindset that I'm talking about where British Israelism, Christian identity are taking these things that are said in the Old Testament,
31:22and they're quote-unquote twofold, to apply to the children of Israel of ancients and also to apply to the children of Israel of present.
31:32So they have the secret knowledge and the statement, can you see it?
31:39The problem with this is all of the mystery cults, old, new, Bethel, IHOP, whatever mystery cult you're in,
31:49they never tell you what the exact mystery is because they themselves don't have all the answers.
31:55No human has all the answers.
31:57So if you're saying these things, you know, one of the phrases, what did he say?
32:02It was like, with his blueprint in our heart, it's like, from that video, he said something about the blueprint.
32:09Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:09Can you see it?
32:10Can you see the blueprint?
32:11Well, it's like we have the secret knowledge.
32:13We have this blueprint.
32:14But where's the blueprint?
32:16Who has the blueprints, right?
32:18So what happens is each individual, because they have this mentality where they must know the secret to be part of the elite group,
32:27and the leader's telling them that they already have it, well, this invokes cognitive dissonance.
32:34I'm told that I have the blueprint.
32:35I don't know what the blueprint is.
32:37So therefore, both of those things are true.
32:40That's how the mind works through cognitive dissonance.
32:42And inwardly, people create in their minds what they think this blueprint is.
32:49And that's one of the huge problems, because you get one of these people working in your place of employment,
32:54and you don't know what's in their head.
32:56They could think this blueprint means, well, I need to force my authority over all of the people.
33:02It also could be benign.
33:04Like it could be, well, the blueprint is just to be kind to others, which is a good thing.
33:08And you don't know what, since they're not explicitly saying what is this blueprint, you don't know what it is.
33:14And this, quite honestly, it's dangerous.
33:18This type of theology is dangerous.
33:20Oh, yeah, for sure.
33:21Well, it reminds me of another, I think, source where this whole Gnostic mystery cult junk comes from,
33:30which is it's an exploitation and a hijacking of Psalm 25, I'm sorry, Proverbs 25.2.
33:36And this is a proverb that's quoted a lot at Bethel, and it is, it is the glory of God to conceal the matter,
33:43but the glory of kings to search it out or search out the matter.
33:47And so that, I remember that verse being quoted a lot at Bethel to kind of support the line of thinking,
33:56the belief system that, you know what, God actually has hidden mysteries for us to discover,
34:03which is true, but to put a spin on it and hijack it to say, like, there is this mystery that we've got to go.
34:12Again, the onus is on us.
34:14It's always back to the people.
34:16We've got to pull the goods down.
34:19We've got to manifest these supernatural goods, these supernatural things from heaven.
34:26And it's that, that burden is on us.
34:29Like Bill says, we owe the world an encounter with God.
34:32I mean, in what Bible is that written?
34:36We owe the world an encounter with God.
34:39Like, does God encounter people?
34:41Yes, I've had encounters with God.
34:43And I still, I have no doubt that that was legitimate.
34:46And I know a lot of people who have, but no man came to me with that encounter.
34:51Like, there was not a broker or priest or intermediary that, like, dispensed that encounter with God that I had
35:00or other people that had legitimate encounters.
35:02By and large, they were supernatural, divine, sovereign experiences that happened regardless of the action of a person.
35:14You know what I mean?
35:15You get what I'm saying?
35:16And so, I just think that that is another kind of example where a real verse in the Bible has been hijacked.
35:25And it's like this Gnostic spin has been put on it.
35:28But again, you're left with like this dangling carrot because at what point do you actually know that you've searched out the matter and found the mystery?
35:37I don't think that you ever will arrive.
35:39There's always going to be more.
35:41There's always a deeper level.
35:43There's always a higher level.
35:44There's always a greater mantle.
35:46There's a greater revelation.
35:48And at the end of the day, if you spend your life in this, you are going to wear yourself out on the hamster wheel.
35:54Because by the time you get to the end of your life, you're going to be like, oh, my gosh, I don't know if I've discovered this mystery.
36:01What mystery?
36:02But the sad thing is, is in Christ, all these mysteries are revealed.
36:07And that is the gospel, that he actually revealed God to us by coming to us, not by us trying to pull him down.
36:17Back to your original point of like how this has sort of been inverted.
36:21When I was reading the Bible over and over, I would take, as I was doing it, I would do different things to augment or enhance my ability to understand it.
36:32And often I would, as I'm going through some of the New Testament, I would read about the ancient cultures that are being talked about in the New Testament.
36:40Paul, for instance, he's going through all of the Greek and, you know, Roman gods.
36:45And there's a passage that is really interesting to me.
36:50He goes to the temple of the unknown god.
36:52And so that fascinates me.
36:54I want to know more about this.
36:56But because he's going to, literally going to the places where these mystery cults exist, Paul frequently talks about the mystery, the hidden mystery.
37:07Yeah.
37:07And one of the things that Latter Rain did, and it did it well, unfortunately, was it taught people the ability to take one single passage and use it as a context, ignoring the rest of it, and focus on powerful passages like this mystery concept.
37:29So they would read the passage by Paul, whatever it is.
37:32There are several books that talk about this.
37:34And then they would say, see, he's talking about the mystery.
37:37We have it.
37:38Can you see it, my brother?
37:39Can you see it?
37:40That's how it was.
37:41But if you continue reading, like for Colossians, I think it is, Paul said, the mystery that's been hidden through the ages, it's now before us.
37:50We see it.
37:50Being revealed, yeah.
37:51It's Christ in you.
37:53It's always the light is Christ.
37:56It's not that we bring the light.
37:57It's not that we're doing anything.
37:59It's that it came.
38:00And that was the mystery.
38:03And that scene that you're talking about in the video where the light's there, it's this mysterious thing, and then it's talking about we need to bring the kingdom down.
38:14What that is doing, it's flipping upside down.
38:16There are passages that talk about Jesus being the light, but it's not a physical light like this thing in the ground.
38:24In the dirt, no less.
38:25In the dirt, no less.
38:26But when it uses it, it is using it as a metaphor, saying that Jesus was the light that exposed all of the darkness.
38:34You can read passage after passage talking about Jesus as the light.
38:39It's more about there are many evil things going on in the world that people are just completely unaware at that period of time.
38:48Jesus came and he shed light on the evil in the world, and now things begin to change.
38:54And historically, if you go back, you can see they had human sacrifice and child sacrifice, all these things.
39:00Jesus, Christianity comes, and this starts to dissipate over the coming centuries.
39:06So Jesus came, Jesus was the light, and then his light exposed the darkness.
39:12It wasn't that his light oppressed the darkness or controlled or governed or showed dominance over the darkness.
39:21It was more of a, I'm shedding light on these things.
39:23That's what the passage means.
39:25But the way that they have flipped this up, it's like this light is the secret thing.
39:29And can you see it?
39:31Can you see the light?
39:32So they get the light in themselves, and then they, as Joel's army, they start to invade with this thing that they're calling the light or whatever it is.
39:41So it's less about Jesus and more about the entity that is not Jesus and is not the Bible.
39:49Oh, this is interesting, John.
39:51So you know what it makes me think of is, and you've probably looked at this, the word of faith concept, the teaching of faith in faith.
40:01Have you heard that concept?
40:03It was propagated by the likes of Oral Roberts and Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagan, people like that.
40:11And I wouldn't claim to be an expert on that movement or anything, but it's sort of adjacent to NAR.
40:20But like this concept of faith and faith where it's almost like the faith is the object.
40:26It's like faith is the goal here.
40:28We're looking to increase our faith as much as possible.
40:31And actually, they would teach that you can have faith in faith.
40:34And so when I go to this video, I've got it over here on this other monitor.
40:40I'm looking at these two people, and there's the fluorescent light tube in the ground.
40:47Back to your point about the light wasn't the actual object of the whole story to begin with.
40:53If you think about it like when you turn on the light, darkness just dispels automatically.
40:59It's not like we're going to say, oh, wow, look, look at how beautiful that light is.
41:03It's just like, no, what does the light reveal?
41:06The light reveals everything in the room that was originally dark when the light was off, right?
41:10And so I think that is such a great sort of contrast to the biblical gospel, which is, yes, Jesus is the light.
41:19He said, I'm the light of the world.
41:22But the object wasn't like, hey, look at the light.
41:25It was like, I don't know, this isn't coming out quite coherently.
41:29It's like the focus, he puts the focus back on what the true focus should be rather than these sort of ancillary, flashy things that we've been captured by in these movements.
41:46You know, so, yeah, that was kind of a convoluted way of saying I agree with you.
41:55Well, and you didn't realize that you did this, but you also just affirmed something that I said in the beginning when I was talking about how the language of the King James has, it's morphed from what it is today.
42:09The language has morphed over time and some things have different meanings.
42:12So what you're talking about with Oral Roberts and the Word of Faith movement, et cetera, there was this teaching that originated with Branham.
42:21He had these series of sermons that were called Faith is the Substance.
42:27Okay.
42:27And he would focus on the word substance.
42:30Okay.
42:30Because in the King James Version, it used the word substance in – what was the passage?
42:36It's from Hebrews.
42:37It's Hebrews 11.
42:39Darrell Bock Yeah, faith is the substance of things hoped for – like I've got this memorized because we heard it over and over.
42:44And then it was, can you see, my brother?
42:47Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
42:51Well, that word substance, if you take the Greek word for its original meaning, that substance word – the Greek words are more complex, but it means things like confidence or assurance.
43:04It's more like it – what we're seeing justifies your faith.
43:09You see the evidence that has been made manifest because you believe these things are coming to reality.
43:17But because of the word substance, Branham took that notion and ran with it, that faith was an actual substance.
43:26And he would do things like early in the ministry in the latter rain movement – not many people know this – but he would gather crowds around and he would do things like hang a bracelet from the rafters and say, look, faith is the substance.
43:40I can make this bracelet move right before your very eyes.
43:44Darrell Bock But it was hanging from the ceiling?
43:46Darrell Bock It was hanging from a string.
43:47And there are different tricks.
43:48I've watched how the magicians do it.
43:50It's a magician's trick.
43:51And remember, he's not – back in the old ways of preaching, there were no audio systems.
43:58You screamed like a madman.
44:01Well, the force of your breath will make the bracelet move.
44:04Darrell Bock Oh, interesting.
44:05Darrell Bock There are different techniques, right?
44:06Darrell Bock So he's doing these stage tricks, and at the same time, he's telling allegories that – I assure you are not real, but he talks about how he gets – he goes into this pasture, and there's this mad bull in it.
44:21Darrell Bock And the bull starts charging him, and he started thinking about faith as the substance, and how a divine, perfect love merged with faith.
44:30Darrell Bock And he spoke to the bull and said, I love you, and the bull just fell to his feet and worshipped him.
44:35Darrell Bock What's funny is it's actually a story from the Buddha, but –
44:39Darrell Bock Oh, my gosh.
44:40Darrell Bock That's another story for a different day.
44:41Darrell Bock Well, I like how he – between squirrels and bulls, man, he's got it covered.
44:46Darrell Bock Well, and I'm telling that not to make myself look like a fool,
44:50Darrell Bock Because I believe these foolish things, but picture a world of a thousand evangelists that are in this movement that are listening to this guy tell these silly stories that you and I can laugh about today.
45:02Darrell Bock This sounds like nonsense.
45:03Darrell Bock Well, picture audiences of 100,000 people.
45:06Darrell Bock I mean, he's going to large, large crowds in the heat of this, and he's telling the same nonsense, but back then they're believing all of this nonsense.
45:15Darrell Bock 100,000 people is a huge – I mean, that is a massive number of people.
45:20Darrell Bock Well, I should give that a caveat.
45:25Darrell Bock That's his exaggeration of the numbers.
45:27Darrell Bock Oh, okay.
45:28Darrell Bock Okay.
45:28Darrell Bock He would say things like this, but he – we have proven he over-exaggerated many of the numbers.
45:34Darrell Bock But, like, back to – back to the bracelet thing, and it reminds me – I don't know if you and I have talked about this.
45:46Darrell Bock We probably have – I've talked to others about it, but the whole priming concept, priming your faith concept, and I believe it was Mike Winger I talked to about this.
45:56Darrell Bock Where – and he came across a story where one of the – and I won't mention her name, but one of the NAR leaders, very well-known, was caught putting gold dust in her Bible prior to speaking at some church or conference or whatever.
46:17Darrell Bock And, you know, and somebody discovered, hey, you put glitter, you put gold dust glitter in your Bible, and then you're going to go up there and preach, and, you know, oh, my gosh, my Bible has gold dust.
46:29Darrell Bock And, you know, interestingly, her rebuttal to that, as I recall, was, well, this is – you know, so what if it's gold dust or glitter that I put in there?
46:40Darrell Bock If it primes the audience's faith to expect and believe God to do something, then what's the problem?
46:49Darrell Bock And so I think, you know, it reminds me back to the bracelet on the string on the fishing line thing.
46:54Darrell Bock If I preach loud enough and I spit at it, it's going to probably move a little bit, and people are going to have some more faith.
47:03Darrell Bock And – but isn't the destination of that just, like, nothing?
47:09Darrell Bock Like, because you're not – you don't actually – is the faith in God – I mean, do you have faith in God when you do that, or is it just – I'm, like, superstitious, kind of like back to the lottery God concept.
47:22Darrell Bock Like, I can pull this slot.
47:23Darrell Bock I'm going to pull this slot, and it's going to give me what I asked for, because there's this magic formula, A plus B equals C, every time.
47:32Darrell Bock So I just need to stay in my lane, A plus B equals C, and live happily ever after.
47:39Darrell Bock And I can have all the money I want and, you know, have a perfect life.
47:44Darrell Bock Yeah, it's interesting, because as I'm studying Gnosticism, it's actually a really fascinating study.
47:51Darrell Bock You can go back and you can read the – Irenaeus Against Heresies really talks through all of the different versions of Gnostics that he encountered and was aware of.
48:02Darrell Bock And it's a really difficult read if you read that book, because he's saying things that you just won't understand.
48:07Darrell Bock So as I'm reading a chapter of his, I'd have to go to different sources online and find out, okay, what are these words that he's saying?
48:14Darrell Bock I have no idea what this is.
48:15Darrell Bock So it took a long time to get through it, but there's this Gnostic idea that essentially – and he used a completely different word for this.
48:24I don't remember what it was, but the meaning of it was lies for the sake of a holy end.
48:30Darrell Bock So Gnosticism is Christianity merged with these mystery cults.
48:34Darrell Bock So we have the secret knowledge, and because of the secret knowledge, we can tell people lies as long as it furthers their faith.
48:42Darrell Bock That was the concept, which is fully anti-biblical.
48:46Darrell Bock The Bible says – it clearly says where people go who are telling lies.
48:50Darrell Bock Well, that faith and faith concept, that also was part of the early years of the revival when Branham was the foremost leader of the revival.
49:02Darrell Bock He is saying things like, I had an angel who came and visited me in the room, and that angel told me, if you get the people to believe in you, William Branham, not God, get the people to believe in you, then their faith will be heightened enough that they will save themselves.
49:20Darrell Bock I remember that story.
49:21Darrell Bock Right.
49:21Darrell Bock And then added to this, whenever he would have these healing lines, he would say, do you believe me as God's prophet?
49:28Darrell Bock It's not, do you believe in God, do you believe Jesus came and died for your sins and died on the cross?
49:35Darrell Bock It's, do you believe me as God's prophet?
49:37Darrell Bock Well, this theme continued and developed until the point where – I can't remember what year it was, but there are examples of this.
49:46Darrell Bock He says things like, I'll take any child that has crooked eyes, bring them up to the platform, and without even praying for them, I'll make their eyes come straight.
49:58Darrell Bock Okay.
49:59Darrell Bock So it's taking God completely out of the equation.
50:01Darrell Bock I'm not even praying at this point.
50:02Darrell Bock Right.
50:03Darrell Bock It's the power within me.
50:04Darrell Bock Yeah.
50:05Darrell Bock And that was the concept that developed because of this Joel's Army Manifest Sons of God stuff.
50:11Darrell Bock Okay.
50:11Darrell Bock You get God and the people, they become the God.
50:13Darrell Bock Yeah.
50:14Darrell Bock And then they can do – if you can get the people to believe in the God, which is the preacher on the platform,
50:20Darrell Bock They're basically – they are fulfilling every passage that applies to Jesus, but it applies instead to the minister on the platform.
50:29Darrell Bock Okay, so much there.
50:31Darrell Bock First of all, that pretty much describes what we were taught at BSSM, Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.
50:42Darrell Bock We were taught you don't actually need to pray for a healing.
50:46Darrell Bock You release it, right?
50:48Darrell Bock You're releasing healing because you are the dispenser of the goods.
50:54Darrell Bock They didn't use the word goods.
50:55Darrell Bock That's my, you know, after hindsight interpretation.
50:59Darrell Bock You're the ones releasing the goods onto the people.
51:03Darrell Bock And now I look back, I'm like, how arrogant, how arrogant of us to think that we are some, you know, spiritually elite group of people
51:14Darrell Bock That we can just go around releasing cancer healing.
51:17Darrell Bock I mean, does God do that?
51:19Darrell Bock Yeah, I think he, I think he does.
51:21Darrell Bock I think he works through messed up people who have lots of problems because we all do.
51:26Darrell Bock Let's face it.
51:27Darrell Bock We're all just messed up people.
51:28Darrell Bock But, and we all have problems and he still chooses to work through us.
51:34Darrell Bock But are we like, are we going around like you're saying, like these, this army, this Joel's army,
51:40Darrell Bock We're going around and releasing, quote unquote, heaven to earth.
51:45Darrell Bock And this reminds me of a thread on Twitter from yesterday where we, several of us were talking about this video clip from Lou Engel where, you know, and he's, he's rocking back and forth with his microphone.
52:02Darrell Bock He's talking about the, you know, the generation that God's raising up to contain his glory.
52:08Darrell Bock It's the same old stuff we've, we've heard, you know, and I frankly just can't listen to it.
52:14Darrell Bock It wears me out to listen to people scream on microphones about, especially about a generation being raised up.
52:20Darrell Bock That's like just a trigger I can't even deal with.
52:22Darrell Bock But the conversation under that video clip was, there was comment, there were comments in there about this is, this is manifest sons of God teaching here.
52:32Darrell Bock And here's the ironic part, John, back to your point about the platform and the preachers on the stage.
52:40Darrell Bock Isn't it so ironic that what we were taught, at least in the NAR movements, was God is raising up a nameless, faceless generation, right?
52:51Darrell Bock Like Joel's army, nameless, faceless was a very, very loaded phrase that was used all of the time.
52:58Darrell Bock And here we are, those of us that were in our 20s back then, now we're in our 30s and 40s, we have kids, we have a family, we have a career.
53:07Darrell Bock We're like looking back on how we got, like we were hijacked by this belief system, this teaching, like you're, you're going to be a nameless, faceless generation.
53:16Darrell Bock Here's the ironic part.
53:17Darrell Bock Why is it that the guy with the microphone in front of the camera, his name is known by everybody in the world, but the people that are the little peon people who are actually doing all the work, supposedly like these fiery, whoop-dee-doo, Avenger, supernatural action figures going around supposed to heal stuff.
53:40Darrell Bock Like why is it that we're nameless and faceless, by the way?
53:43Darrell Bock Like isn't that the most ironic thing ever?
53:48Darrell Bock Somebody made that point, and so I said, you know, this is what I said, John, on Twitter yesterday, I said, you know, so that's a lot of pressure for any person to carry.
54:00Darrell Bock And isn't it so weird, like who wants to follow a God who doesn't have a face and a name?
54:05Darrell Bock And we're all just walking around with no face and name.
54:08Darrell Bock We're just little gods walking around with no face and name.
54:10Darrell Bock Like that is the most ridiculous thing ever, but that's actually what, if you follow that line of thinking out to the end, that's what they're teaching.
54:18Darrell Bock We've mentioned it before, and it's another podcast for another day, but this thing was started by the Kardashian family.
54:25Darrell Bock You can trace its roots all the way up to the Kardashian patriarch.
54:30Darrell Bock Full Gospel Businessmen's Association Fellowship was highly influential in the charismatic movement and still today in the NAR, and the founder was the nephew of the Kardashian patriarch.
54:44Darrell Bock The co-founder lived about 15 miles from my house and was a Branamite.
54:50Darrell Bock So you had a Branamite and a Kardashian that joined.
54:53Darrell Bock Are you talking about the actual, like, Kardashian, the famous Kardashians?
54:56Darrell Bock The actual Kardashian family, yes.
54:58Darrell Bock That is the family.
55:01Darrell Bock Like I said, this is probably our next podcast.
55:04Darrell Bock Okay.
55:05Darrell Bock They sponsored an Iranian faith healer who came and showed them that they can bring throngs of people together, so much so that the town cannot hold all the people, and they're having to wheel in hot dog stands to feed all of the people.
55:19Darrell Bock Oh, interesting.
55:20Darrell Bock It's a long, crazy story, but the Kardashian family saw this.
55:24Darrell Bock Well, they created the ministry in the style of the entertainment industry of the era, and I don't know if you've ever been on stage.
55:33Darrell Bock Mm-hmm.
55:34Darrell Bock When you're on stage, you've got these lights shining on your face.
55:37Darrell Bock What's interesting about what you just said is when you're on stage and you're looking at the audience, they are nameless and faceless.
55:44Darrell Bock Interesting.
55:45Darrell Bock Because that light's in your eyes.
55:46Darrell Bock You can't see them.
55:47Darrell Bock Can't even see them.
55:48Darrell Bock But every single one knows who you are because you're the entertainer.
55:53Darrell Bock You're up on stage.
55:55Darrell Bock You know how this works.
55:56Darrell Bock It's funny that he says things like that because I've been on stage, and that's one of the first thoughts that comes into your mind.
56:02Darrell Bock Hey, I'm seeing a bunch of people with no faces.
56:04Darrell Bock I mean, literally, that's what goes through your head.
56:08Darrell Bock It's true, though.
56:09Darrell Bock I've been on the Bethel stage several times with the microphone in my hand, and I didn't preach at Bethel, but I got to share a few things here and there.
56:17Darrell Bock Back then, and yeah, you're exactly right.
56:20Darrell Bock At Bethel, you can't really see the people sitting in the chairs because you've got all these big old lights on you, so it's true.
56:28Darrell Bock That's an interesting observation.
56:29Darrell Bock Maybe that's where they actually got it from, was like, you know, we can't see y'all, so we're just going to call y'all nameless and faces.
56:36Darrell Bock Oh, by the way, you can raise the dead, too, while you're at it.
56:38Darrell Bock Yeah.
56:39Darrell Bock Well, it's funny because these thoughts pop into my head.
56:43Darrell Bock It's not like I analyze and come up with this, but I have been in places where I know things that the other leadership knew, and I've watched the way these things form.
56:54Darrell Bock Even prophecies, the way it forms is literally somebody saying what has hit their brain without actually processing it, nameless and faceless.
57:03Darrell Bock I said that, too, when I was on stage.
57:05Darrell Bock That's the way this works, but maybe for another podcast down the road, we can just talk about how people will come up with these things, and it's literally because of the feelings and emotions that they had as a speaker, and it creates an entire doctrine because they've had this sudden thought come in their head, and people think, wow, that came from God.
57:27Darrell Bock But, no, it's because they're in this environment.
57:30Darrell Bock Anyway, I could literally talk for an hour on this, and another hour on this, and we've gone an hour, so maybe we'll wrap it up by saying, I saw the video you sent me.
57:42It was crazy, and it wasn't really the gospel, so what is this mess?
57:48Darrell Bock Yeah, exactly.
57:49Darrell Bock Yeah, always a pleasure, John.
57:51Great to talk through it.
57:52Darrell Bock I feel like we kind of, or at least I bounced around all over the place, but people, y'all should go watch this.
57:58Darrell Bock Y'all should go watch that video, just form your own opinion about it.
58:01It's two minutes.
58:02It's a two-minute video, but it's packed with lots of stuff.
58:06Darrell Bock Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
58:09You can find us at william-branham.org and the Grit in the Wild podcast.
58:14For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
58:28For more information, you can find us at william-branham.
58:58For more information, you can find us at william.
59:28For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:30For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:31For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:32For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:33For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:34For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:35For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:37For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:38For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:39For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.
59:40For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.