- 2 days ago
John and Charles discuss the roots of the modern deliverance movement and its deep ties to the Latter Rain revival and the rise of the New Apostolic Reformation. They open by challenging the manipulative theatrics often seen in deliverance circles, emphasizing how these practices prey on those lacking critical thinking. Charles focuses on identifying whether post-message movements are safe for former followers, while John stresses transparency in documenting the historical record—especially when modern ministries attempt to erase or sanitize their origins.
A major focus is Derek Prince, his involvement in the Latter Rain offshoots, and his central role in the Shepherding Movement. Though Prince later distanced himself from the movement, Charles points out that his teachings—especially on authoritarian five-fold ministry and harmful deliverance doctrines—remained consistent throughout his career. They critique the cult-like structures built on these teachings and set the stage for the next discussion on how figures like John Wimber and Lonnie Frisbee helped spread this ideology through the Jesus People Movement.
00:00 Introduction
04:11 The Latter Rain roots of the deliverance movement
10:15 Why Charles avoids all branches of Latter Rain
14:28 Sharon Orphanage and the birth of Latter Rain
17:59 Shepherding Movement’s formation and growth
25:06 How cult structures enabled abusive leadership
30:50 Derek Prince’s legacy in deliverance and five-fold ministry
37:58 From Seattle to Fort Lauderdale: spreading the ideology
48:51 Pat Robertson’s conflict with Shepherding leaders
52:00 Recanting, reputation, and unresolved harm
57:53 Lasting influence despite later denials
1:00:55 Next episode preview: Wimber, Frisbee, and the Jesus People Movement
______________________
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
A major focus is Derek Prince, his involvement in the Latter Rain offshoots, and his central role in the Shepherding Movement. Though Prince later distanced himself from the movement, Charles points out that his teachings—especially on authoritarian five-fold ministry and harmful deliverance doctrines—remained consistent throughout his career. They critique the cult-like structures built on these teachings and set the stage for the next discussion on how figures like John Wimber and Lonnie Frisbee helped spread this ideology through the Jesus People Movement.
00:00 Introduction
04:11 The Latter Rain roots of the deliverance movement
10:15 Why Charles avoids all branches of Latter Rain
14:28 Sharon Orphanage and the birth of Latter Rain
17:59 Shepherding Movement’s formation and growth
25:06 How cult structures enabled abusive leadership
30:50 Derek Prince’s legacy in deliverance and five-fold ministry
37:58 From Seattle to Fort Lauderdale: spreading the ideology
48:51 Pat Robertson’s conflict with Shepherding leaders
52:00 Recanting, reputation, and unresolved harm
57:53 Lasting influence despite later denials
1:00:55 Next episode preview: Wimber, Frisbee, and the Jesus People Movement
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend,
00:00:47Charles Paisley, the founder of christiangospelchurch.org, and the author of Come Out of Her, My People.
00:00:54Charles, it's good to be back and to talk all things deliverance ministry.
00:00:58I'll never forget the first time I started just even mentioning deliverance, and because
00:01:04a lot of my website has critical information about some real scoundrels, just the mention
00:01:11of deliverance, you get all of these people to just get up in arms, man.
00:01:14Like, what's he going to say?
00:01:15He's probably going to say something bad about deliverance ministry.
00:01:19And the funny part is, you know, I have seen things that have happened that I just can't
00:01:26explain in the Branham movement, and I realized that some of the things that happened, we were
00:01:33in a movement that, by and large, I can't say was a movement by God.
00:01:37There was so much fiction, so much false teaching doctrine.
00:01:41Some things were actually anti-biblical, and when I look at that, and then combine it with
00:01:47some of the things that are happening, I don't know what to do with that.
00:01:50But whenever I start publishing anything skeptical, when I did start publishing things skeptical
00:01:57of deliverance, it's really funny, because some of the things that I'm publishing are undeniably
00:02:02false.
00:02:03Like, there is no question that these guys were using gimmicks and stage tricks in the examples
00:02:09when I publish them, but you get all the deliverance people up in arms, like, well, we like this
00:02:15false thing.
00:02:16We like this stage trick.
00:02:17And I look at the whole thing, and I equate it to going to watch, you know, a magician on
00:02:24stage.
00:02:24I like the magician.
00:02:26I really do.
00:02:27But the difference is, I separate the magician from God, because when I go there, I don't
00:02:32expect that the magician is doing it by the hands of Almighty God.
00:02:37He is tricking me, and I know he's tricking me.
00:02:39And it is a fun stage trick.
00:02:41So, on the one hand, I give it to the people who are in deliverance ministries and who enjoy
00:02:48this kind of thing.
00:02:49Yes, it probably is enjoyable.
00:02:51But on the other hand, you have to take a healthy level of skepticism and look at the
00:02:57whole thing and say, yes, part of this is a stage show.
00:03:00Can God do these things?
00:03:02Well, the Bible says that he can.
00:03:04So, I'm not to discredit God for it, but why do they need to use trickery whenever they're
00:03:11doing this?
00:03:12And more to the point, why do they need to use techniques that prey upon the minds of
00:03:19people who don't have critical thinking engaged?
00:03:22And that's the big question that I'm going to ask for this podcast.
00:03:25Yeah, you know, there's so much there, John.
00:03:28And a lot of times, the people who come from that background of ideology, which, hey, John,
00:03:33we do.
00:03:35And we know very well, you know, even just to kind of talk about it in that way, you know,
00:03:40immediately causes people to turn off and not listen, right?
00:03:43So, you know, there's just ways that you can't even start a conversation with people on this
00:03:49stuff.
00:03:50And, you know, when you look at the deliverance, you know, you're right, John.
00:03:57I mean, there's stuff in there which is so obviously false.
00:04:01And people just, they're more focused on making an excuse for the false, right, than actually
00:04:07doing anything about it.
00:04:08And that's incredibly problematic, I know.
00:04:10Now, in our last episodes, we wrapped up talking about the post-Brandom history of the message.
00:04:16And we spent, you know, about 35 episodes talking about the big events in message history from,
00:04:22what about 1966 up through the 1990s.
00:04:24And today, we're shifting gears a little bit.
00:04:27And in my book on message history, you know, the final chapter of volume two, I started to
00:04:33look at how the message influenced the groups who created the new apostolic reformation.
00:04:38And today, we're going to start talking about the groups and the people who will eventually
00:04:42connect the dots between the latter rain movement and the new apostolic reformation.
00:04:48And it'll take us probably, I think, four or five episodes, maybe, to walk through all
00:04:51of that.
00:04:51And this is going to be our first one kind of in that arc.
00:04:55And, you know, as we start this off, I do want to first explain kind of the angle and
00:04:59motivation that for the reason that I'm even doing this, because I know you and I,
00:05:04John, we do have a little bit of a different objective or different areas of interest in
00:05:09this.
00:05:09And I know what I'm focused on, what really interests me the most is I try to help the
00:05:15people leaving the message, you know.
00:05:16And with these other movements that we're going to start talking about today, while I do have
00:05:22a lot of knowledge and awareness of them, my really my main interest in looking at these
00:05:27movements is to determine whether or not they're safe places to go when you leave the
00:05:31message.
00:05:32That's really my main motivation, even, in looking into these things.
00:05:36That's really the primary interest I have in these groups.
00:05:39Are they safe groups?
00:05:41And for me, personally, you know, I don't want to have anything to do with any branch of
00:05:45the latter rain movement.
00:05:46I mean, that's just kind of where I have landed.
00:05:49I think a whole lot of that is a mess.
00:05:51I think the latter rain movement and its doctrines are a cult factory.
00:05:56And I do still want to be a Christian, you know, who follows Jesus and believes the Bible.
00:05:59But a lot of the extra biblical doctrines of the latter rain movement, the fakery within
00:06:06the deliverance movement, right, has proven to be so destructive over its long history in
00:06:12harming people.
00:06:13I really, I personally, I don't want anything to do with that anymore, John.
00:06:17And so tracing out the branches of the latter rain ideology, for me, it's an exercise in
00:06:22identifying places that are not safe.
00:06:24And that, more than anything else, is really my motivation into looking into the other branches
00:06:30of the latter rain movement.
00:06:31And the truth is, John, the deliverance movement does come straight out of this stuff.
00:06:35And they have several of the core doctrines of the latter rain movement in it, which is
00:06:39why they have the fakery, and which is why dangerous, deadly things happen so often in
00:06:44the deliverance movement.
00:06:45The deliverance movement has killed probably tens of thousands of people.
00:06:49I think it'd be very safe to say tens of thousands of people have been killed by the
00:06:53deliverance movement.
00:06:54Certainly, certainly thousands of deaths that can be documented that were caused by the
00:06:59deliverance movement.
00:07:00Now, did they help some people?
00:07:02Sure.
00:07:02But then they killed thousands of people, too, right?
00:07:04I mean, and so you have to balance all that out, right?
00:07:07And so when you talk about the fakery and the other stuff, you know, I just kind of tend
00:07:12to just jump straight into the, you know, they killed people.
00:07:15They killed people.
00:07:15Hobart Freeman killed hundreds of people, you know, and you go through the people where
00:07:19these practices, they killed people, you know?
00:07:22Derek Prince, there's people who were killed by Derek Prince's ministry.
00:07:25There are people who were killed by T.L.
00:07:27Osborne's ministry.
00:07:28There are people who were killed by the shepherding movement's ministry.
00:07:31You know, there's people who were killed by the, all of these things led to deaths,
00:07:35right?
00:07:35There are people who died and all of this stuff.
00:07:38And so anyways, that's, it's just, I don't want to go there in part because I, A, don't
00:07:42want to kill people, and I, B, don't want to be killed myself.
00:07:45So that's the kind of stuff that, in the crazy end of this, that it leads to, you know?
00:07:51And that's, that's just the worst end.
00:07:53There's all kinds of middle of the road bad stuff that happens in between there too.
00:07:58And so anyways, back then, if you go back in time, I think, John, as we start this off,
00:08:07tracing out the branches of the latter rain ideology for me, like I said, it's just really
00:08:11an exercise in identifying the state where it's not safe to go.
00:08:15So when we talk about the New Apostolic Reformation, that is exactly really what it is.
00:08:20It's a branch of the latter rain movement that I don't want to go to.
00:08:23And so besides, besides all that too, there, there is also another reason that I'm reluctant
00:08:29to talk about these groups, John.
00:08:30I know we've, we've, we've went back and forth about whether or not to record on these
00:08:34people lots of times, and I have always been very reluctant to get too deep into it.
00:08:39So another reason, John, that I'm kind of reluctant to talk about these people is, it's hard to
00:08:45talk about the, from the, what comes between the latter rain and the New Apostolic Reformation
00:08:50without talking about these people, because some of these guys are very key guys who are
00:08:55responsible to spreading these very dangerous ideas, but they have complicated legacies.
00:09:01You know, some of them, they were in this ideology, and then they left this ideology.
00:09:07And they, they, they kind of sort of left it anyway.
00:09:09And so it gives them a complicated legacy.
00:09:12And some of them, they, they pretended to leave, but they didn't really leave, you know,
00:09:16and there's, there's just a complicating factor in, and each of them kind of have some nuance.
00:09:20And it gives them just very complicated legacies.
00:09:24And for, and some of them also, John, have really massive following.
00:09:28Some of them have followings just as big and bigger than the message, the whole message
00:09:32itself, right?
00:09:33And so when, when you're dealing with something that big and that complex, you know, I feel
00:09:38the need just to be very careful in how I approach it, because, you know, we're dealing
00:09:41with, um, we're dealing with things that for people are, it's their whole world.
00:09:48You know, you, we know what it's like to come from these backgrounds, John.
00:09:52Um, it's, it's these people's whole world that grew up in this stuff.
00:09:55It, it's their whole life.
00:09:56It's their whole identity.
00:09:58Um, and so it's just something I feel personally the need to be very careful in dealing with
00:10:02it, because, you know, depending on what people do with it, it can be very impactful
00:10:06to their lives.
00:10:07And so, anyways, I'm just feel a very strong need to be cautious talking about this stuff.
00:10:12And people I'm talking about are people like John Wimber, people like Derrick Prince, people
00:10:17like that.
00:10:18On one hand, they are very guilty in spreading this ideology.
00:10:21They are.
00:10:22But then on the other hand, there's a lot of people who were saved and became genuine
00:10:26Christians because of that.
00:10:28Um, and, and it makes their, makes their legacy something really complicated to talk about.
00:10:32But here in our next few episodes, that's what we're going to tackle, because there's
00:10:36really no way to talk about the events that lead into the birth of the new apostolic reformation
00:10:41without talking about them and really the very critical role that they play in it all.
00:10:46I agree.
00:10:46And, you know, people often in the comment feeds will ask me my agenda, or they will mistakenly
00:10:53give me an agenda.
00:10:55They'll say, John has this agenda.
00:10:56And honestly, the agenda that I have, if there were to be one, is simply to document the history
00:11:03because so many of these groups are erasing their history and they'll create this wonderful
00:11:08ministry that they're building on top of just complete nonsense and heresy.
00:11:13But then whenever it's exposed that the person or persons responsible for their foundational
00:11:20doctrines turn out to be complete lunatics, they'll just wipe that chapter away from their
00:11:25history.
00:11:26And so I'm just kind of piecing together the history as it goes.
00:11:30But you can really tell the cult mindset whenever somebody just gets up in arms, when you publish
00:11:36the accurate factual histories.
00:11:38If they're trying to cover that up, there's a reason why they're trying to cover it up.
00:11:42You mentioned John Wimber.
00:11:43I have to be very cautious because I can't really label his group as a cult.
00:11:49And, you know, his churches, by and large, have reformed quite a bit.
00:11:53But the problem is some of the key players who are really lifting up and supporting the
00:11:59group, they're guarding that history as though they don't want it out.
00:12:05They want to keep it secret from the members.
00:12:07And I see this as a huge problem.
00:12:09So I'm documenting the history.
00:12:11Some of the figures that we're talking about and some of the names you've even mentioned,
00:12:16I don't even have any real problem with.
00:12:18It's just that in the chain of events leading to the New Apostolic Reformation, these people
00:12:25played a part.
00:12:26They played a role in some way or another.
00:12:28Some of the things that they did were questionable.
00:12:31And we, you know, we reference that.
00:12:33We talk about that.
00:12:34But they were used as stepping stones to what came later.
00:12:38And if you look at the mess that happened now and then understand that we really need
00:12:43to learn from that history.
00:12:44We need to learn from those mistakes so that we can see what's happening today.
00:12:48If I had an agenda, it's to learn from the mistakes.
00:12:52And even in my own work, when I'm documenting this stuff, I make mistakes.
00:12:57So I go back and I correct those mistakes.
00:12:59And if it's a huge mistake, I often publish a, you know, some sort of a blog or post or article
00:13:05explaining the mistake, why I made it, you know, what's the correct information.
00:13:10That's transparency.
00:13:11And the thing that I'm really targeting and advocating for here is transparency.
00:13:18If you erase your mistakes, you can't learn from them.
00:13:21And the people don't really understand.
00:13:23But more than that, because it's in the spiritual realm, it really skews what people perceive
00:13:29as spiritual.
00:13:30So to think this movement is from God because they've erased all the mistakes.
00:13:34God doesn't make any mistakes.
00:13:36But when you start to piece together all of the different things that happen to lead to
00:13:41where we are today, you can clearly see that there's a huge problem.
00:13:44And that, for me, that is the agenda.
00:13:47Just simply publish the history.
00:13:48Be transparent about it.
00:13:50Let the people learn for themselves.
00:13:52And they can decide if your ministry is good or bad.
00:13:54But they need all the information to make that decision.
00:13:57I think that's a very, very well said, John.
00:14:00And it's a very good way to look at things.
00:14:02And I hope that, you know, having said all this before we get started, that our listeners
00:14:07will understand the angle we're coming at, you know, in our next few episodes.
00:14:11Because, you know, at the end of the day, like I said, I mean, I'm mainly just looking
00:14:17what is dangerous?
00:14:19Where should we not go?
00:14:20What should we not involve ourselves in, right?
00:14:22What are the other branches of the latter rain that I want to stay away from?
00:14:26And so if you go back in our podcast series, if you go all the way back to episode 32, John,
00:14:31so that's a long time ago.
00:14:33I bet we recorded that one, like, what, probably a year and a half, two years ago, episode 32.
00:14:37We did an episode entitled The Fracturing of the Latter Rain.
00:14:42And in that episode, we explained quite a bit about how the latter rain movement broke up
00:14:48into different factions starting in the 1950s.
00:14:51And if you want more details about how that breakup happened, you can go back and you
00:14:55can listen to those episodes, you know, in that time period.
00:14:58And the things we discussed starting in episode 32 are really the starting point for what we're
00:15:04going to talk about today.
00:15:05And one of the easiest ways to understand how the latter rain movement broke up and produced
00:15:11these competing factions is just to consider the elders at the Sharon Orphanage where the
00:15:16whole thing started.
00:15:17And John, I've tried to make a little diagram for this episode for the show, and I'll give
00:15:23a copy to you we can put up on the screen maybe for people to look at.
00:15:26But in a nutshell, the latter rain movement really took off at the Sharon Orphanage.
00:15:31That was the initial epicenter of it.
00:15:33The guys at Sharon Orphanage, they met William Branham in 1947.
00:15:38After they saw what he did, they decided they wanted to go home and do the same thing and
00:15:41be like him.
00:15:43He's the guy who sparked it.
00:15:44And they went home and by 1948, they have started the latter rain revival and they believe
00:15:49they are replicating what they saw William Branham doing.
00:15:54And during the first year of that revival, the Sharon Orphanage joined the Independent Assemblies
00:16:00of God.
00:16:00And the Independent Assemblies of God, really from the first and second year of the latter
00:16:05rain movement, they became the main central network of the early latter rain movement.
00:16:11I think that is very important to point out.
00:16:15And back then, William Branham was the most prominent and the most influential preacher
00:16:20in the Independent Assemblies of God.
00:16:22And he remained that way until his death.
00:16:24And if you'll remember back in our episodes when we talked about when the message really
00:16:28was born and so forth, the years right after William Branham's death, you'll remember
00:16:32that when William Branham died, the majority of the message churches back then actually were
00:16:37Independent Assemblies of God churches, John.
00:16:39You know, Earl Martin's church, Independent Assemblies of God, you know, you just kind
00:16:44of go down that list.
00:16:45A lot of the early churches back then were Independent Assemblies of God churches, okay?
00:16:50Quite a few of them were.
00:16:52Ed Biscoll came from the Independent Assemblies of God, for example.
00:16:55There's all kinds of different ones we could go down that came from Independent Assemblies
00:16:59of God.
00:17:00So the largest number of the early message churches came from Independent Assemblies of God.
00:17:04Well, you fast forward about five years after Sharon Orphanage joining Assemblies of God,
00:17:10and the Sharon Orphanage elders started to break up.
00:17:13And two of the elders were actually, two of the elders from Sharon Orphanage were actually
00:17:20from Ern Baxter's church.
00:17:22Ern Baxter, William Branham's right-hand man who had been touring with him those years.
00:17:25Because two of the people at those original Sharon Orphanage elders were from his church,
00:17:30and Ern Baxter had been visiting Sharon Orphanage quite a bit through those early years.
00:17:36And back right in that time, you'll remember, Ern Baxter and William Branham had a falling
00:17:41out.
00:17:42And when Ern Baxter and William Branham fell out, at that same time, Ern Baxter convinced
00:17:46one of the elders at Sharon Orphanage, his name was Jim Watt, convinced him to break away
00:17:51and go work with him.
00:17:53And when he broke away and they started working together, they moved out to the West Coast.
00:17:58Ern Baxter's church was in Vancouver.
00:18:00This man moved to Seattle and pastored a church in Seattle, Jim Watt.
00:18:05They started working together, and what they formed, John, was the nucleus that was gradually
00:18:10going to grow into the shepherding movement.
00:18:13So when Jim Watt came out to Seattle, he took over pastorship of the Broadway Tabernacle, which
00:18:18was also an independent assemblies of God church.
00:18:20And while he was there at that church, at the Independent Assemblies of God, Broadway Tabernacle
00:18:25in Seattle, Derek Prince comes back from Africa.
00:18:29He'd been a missionary in Africa, and he comes to Seattle, and he becomes pastor in that same
00:18:34church with Jim Watt.
00:18:35So he's pastoring a church alongside one of the original elders of the Sharon Orphanage,
00:18:39okay?
00:18:39At the same time, they're working with Derek Prince.
00:18:42And as this happens, John, they begin to pioneer what's going to turn into the shepherding
00:18:48movement.
00:18:49And the shepherding movement was based around the five-fold ministry beliefs that George
00:18:52Houghton had been pushing from Sharon Orphanage.
00:18:55And really, the whole basis of the shepherding movement was really about coming up with a workable
00:19:00way to implement the five-fold ministry.
00:19:03ministry, which the truth is, you know, that's the same thing that was happening in the message
00:19:06in those years, and quite a few other latter rain groups back in that same time frame.
00:19:11You know, one way to think about the different branches of the latter rain movement is, you
00:19:16can think each branch of the latter rain movement is a competing group of a five-fold tier.
00:19:22It's different.
00:19:23It's competing five-fold ministry structures is what it is.
00:19:26As the schisms happened, and the upper tiers split, they take off subordinate structures
00:19:35with them, and you end up with these schismed, independent five-fold ministry structures in
00:19:41a hierarchy, all pointing up, you know, to central apostles in each of these groups.
00:19:45And that's what each branch of the latter rain movement is that.
00:19:47It is just a breakaway group of the original five-fold structure that got established at
00:19:53the very beginning of the latter rain movement.
00:19:55And each branch is basically a competing five-fold ministry structure, John.
00:20:00I mean, that's what it is.
00:20:02And each branch had a little different formulation on what the manifested sons of God was.
00:20:07And in a lot of the cases, it was their different takes on manifested sons of God that even led
00:20:14to a lot of the schisms, right?
00:20:16And as those schisms happened, each branch tended to set up, you know, their own different top
00:20:22apostles and top prophets, and then their own independent subordinate five-fold ministry
00:20:27networks.
00:20:27And that was happening in the Sharon orphanage, or rather in the shepherding movement from
00:20:32very early on.
00:20:32That's what Earn Baxter and Jim Watt did when they left out of Sharon orphanage, John.
00:20:36They started to set up their new independent five-fold ministry structure, breaking away in
00:20:40their branch of the latter rain.
00:20:41And Derek Prince is one of the very first ministers who joined in that structure with
00:20:45them.
00:20:45And the shepherding movement became very, very big, very popular, and they did just a
00:20:53really big five-fold ministry network all over the United States, Canada, and to a lesser
00:20:58degree in the United Kingdom and Australia.
00:21:01And so that's what it was.
00:21:04And at the top of their structure was Earn Baxter.
00:21:09Again, Earn Baxter had been a close co-worker with William Branham.
00:21:11And Derek Prince had worked also with William Branham a number of times, too.
00:21:16Derek Prince, you know, did direct meetings with William Branham.
00:21:19They're on tape together, sharing the stage together, Aaron Baxter and Derek Prince.
00:21:23And Derek Prince also, you know, was involved in that.
00:21:26So then you also had a man named Don Basham and Bob Mumford.
00:21:30And those two men actually played a key role in recruiting a bunch of people from the Jesus
00:21:34movement, okay?
00:21:35We'll probably talk about them more in our next episode.
00:21:37And then last of all was a man named Charles Simpson.
00:21:42And so those are the guys, John, who are the top of the five-fold ministry structure of
00:21:50the shepherding movement.
00:21:51One thing that you said in there, I want to reemphasize it because I don't think enough
00:21:55people get it.
00:21:56Whenever religious historians look at all of this mess, they often fail to connect all of
00:22:02the dots and understand what caused this mess.
00:22:06How did it evolve into this?
00:22:07Because they look doctrinally at each individual group.
00:22:12And then when they're comparing the history behind it, when the doctrine is so significantly
00:22:17different, they'll say, well, this wasn't a stepping stone for this ministry.
00:22:22These are two different things.
00:22:24But what they're failing to understand is exactly what you said.
00:22:27This is a competition, not a collaboration.
00:22:31And all of these ministries, for example, so Mike Bickle.
00:22:36Mike Bickle was working with Paul Kane, who was Branham's protege.
00:22:40Mike Bickle has this one sect in the NAR.
00:22:43And in today's world, people can clearly understand that when you examine Bill Johnson, there are
00:22:49some similarities, but Bill Johnson is not Mike Bickle.
00:22:53They're two different theologies.
00:22:55However, they do share sometimes, share the platform together.
00:23:00There are some videos of this.
00:23:02So there is a collaboration, but yet also a competition.
00:23:05Because Mike Bickle is, you know, he trained his group to believe that he was the end of
00:23:10day's profit.
00:23:11That was the leadership.
00:23:12It was a competition.
00:23:14The interesting part of this competition, it would be interesting to look at the mindsets
00:23:21of these people, because while competing and saying that they are the elite chosen one,
00:23:27and in essence, they're saying the other ones who say that they are, are not the elite chosen
00:23:32ones.
00:23:33They're, while competing and collaborating, they don't really like each other that much.
00:23:38That's the funny part about all of this.
00:23:40When you go back into this history and you understand that the latter rain movement was
00:23:45much the same.
00:23:46You had all of these different competing people, each trying to say that their ministry was
00:23:52the next thing closest to God, while implying or suggesting that the other ones weren't.
00:23:57So where you end up with is, it took me years to understand that.
00:24:02And I would have people who were from prominent latter rain circles saying, no, William Branham
00:24:08was not a part of this at all.
00:24:10And they would go back to their history and they would talk about the doctrine, how it was
00:24:13significantly different, how Branham abandoned it.
00:24:16Everything they said was true.
00:24:18But what they failed to understand, people like you mentioned, A.W.
00:24:22Rasmussen, leader of the Independent Assemblies of God, big time latter rain guy, he was working
00:24:28closely with William Branham, and Branham called him, I think the word was, bosom friend.
00:24:34And same with Joseph Mattson-Bose, this was another key figure in latter rain.
00:24:38If not for those two, I doubt it would, latter rain would have spread as fast and as quickly
00:24:43as it did.
00:24:44So these are key figures, but you had other figures in latter rain that was completely separate
00:24:50and disconnected from Branham.
00:24:52And you have to understand that all these ministries are competing.
00:24:55And it isn't the doctrinal foundations that enable it.
00:25:01It is the key components of a cult that bind all of this together.
00:25:06You talked about the five-fold ministry.
00:25:08That's one thing that's shared because, hey, what better method could you have to take full
00:25:15control of your people as to say that there's this hierarchical tier where I'm at the top
00:25:22and you people who are in the rank and file members sitting in the congregation, you're
00:25:26at the very bottom.
00:25:27You're nothing to me.
00:25:28I am the elite.
00:25:29I'm the spiritual elite.
00:25:31That was the mindset of these guys.
00:25:32And when they had their competitions, what happened is it seemed to flush out all of the narcissists
00:25:40that were in the group because the narcissists are the ones that would rise to the top.
00:25:44They have the perfect structure to enable a narcissist to take over.
00:25:48And for that reason, many of them turned into a cult.
00:25:52So you have to look at the structure and the foundation.
00:25:55And also significant, everything that you said, I'm thinking we could talk entire podcasts
00:26:01off of.
00:26:01But when you really begin to understand that Derek Prince was working so closely with key
00:26:08figures directly from the Sharon Orphanage in the heat of latter rain, in a movement that
00:26:14William Branham was one of two catalysts that created.
00:26:18There is a strong connection there.
00:26:21And we'll get into it later.
00:26:23But Derek Prince, along with many others, they would say that they later denounced Branham
00:26:29because he went astray.
00:26:31Arne Baxter did the same thing.
00:26:33The problem is the way in which they do it, because they can't disavow everything that
00:26:39they built from Branham's foundation to create their ministries.
00:26:43So we've got an article, and maybe I'll throw it up on the screen, where Arne Baxter is talking
00:26:50about Branham.
00:26:52And he's saying things like the fruits of his ministry are not good.
00:26:56He went astray.
00:26:56They all say this.
00:26:57He went astray.
00:26:58But then he'll go back and he'll talk about the power of God that worked on the stage with
00:27:04Branham during his ministry, because that same foundation was used to create his own
00:27:09ministry and several hundreds, countless others.
00:27:13But Arne Baxter was one of the people who was on the stage when he witnessed Branham lying
00:27:18through his teeth about the power of his ministry and the deliverance that he had.
00:27:24And so we have, if you go back through our series of podcasts, you can go back and you
00:27:29can see examples where Arne Baxter was there.
00:27:32William Branham was lying about somebody being healed.
00:27:36In fact, some of the people died who Branham said, I healed them of this disease, and they
00:27:41died of the very thing that he healed them from.
00:27:43Arne Baxter was there.
00:27:44So he knew he was lying.
00:27:45But he can't disavow that because his entire platform that is making him millions of dollars,
00:27:53I don't know how rich the guy was.
00:27:54If you disavow that, you also disavow your ministry.
00:27:57And if you disavow your ministry, you disavow your income.
00:28:01Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern
00:28:07Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements
00:28:12into the new apostolic reformation?
00:28:14You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:28:22On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles
00:28:28Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio,
00:28:34and digital versions of each book.
00:28:36You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
00:28:42movements.
00:28:42If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute
00:28:48button at the top.
00:28:49And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
00:28:55to or watching.
00:28:56On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:29:00I do have a slight difference, you know, in the origins of this, because I don't personally
00:29:05think that William Branham created this ideology.
00:29:08I think he popularized it, but I don't I don't view him as the creator of the ideology, but
00:29:14he definitely popularized it and he introduced a lot of these people to it.
00:29:18Um, and, and, and you're, you're correct though, but William Branham is absolutely, William
00:29:24Branham and the message is absolutely critical to these people.
00:29:27You take Derek Prince.
00:29:29Okay, so Derek Prince, I'm going to talk about him quite a bit here.
00:29:35Um, he was a minister, um, who came from the United Kingdom.
00:29:39He went to, I guess, Eaton College, which is like the most famous, it's where all the
00:29:44kings and queens and royalty and Prince William and King Charles and all, that's where they
00:29:48all went to college, John.
00:29:49That's where he, that's where Derek Prince went to college, like the, the it school of
00:29:53the United Kingdom.
00:29:55And you just come out of there and you naturally, you just by default became, become important
00:30:01and famous, right?
00:30:02I mean, this just seems how it is from what I understand over there.
00:30:04It's kind of like Harvard times 10 in America, right?
00:30:07So he went to Eaton College and he ended up coming out of there and became a Church of
00:30:12God missionary, or rather a Church of England missionary working in East Africa, like in
00:30:17Kenya.
00:30:18And in Kenya is where it seems like that he came into contact with the latter rain movement
00:30:24at first, because at the same time that he was in Kenya, the assembly, the independent
00:30:29assemblies of God was also doing a big mission outreach in Kenya at that same time in the early
00:30:33fifties.
00:30:34In fact, they had, if you go back and you look, the British government had invited them
00:30:40in and they were doing revivals in the Mau Mau concentration camps to convert the Mau Mau
00:30:47rebels to latter rain Christianity, John.
00:30:50I mean, that's what was going on, honestly.
00:30:52And so somehow through that, Derek Prince seems to have come in contact with the latter rain
00:30:56guys.
00:30:56Well, he comes back to the United States and he gets pastorship first, a Broadway tabernacle
00:31:04in Seattle.
00:31:05What was that?
00:31:06That was an independent assemblies of God church, right?
00:31:08So clearly he's coming into independent assemblies of God.
00:31:12And you're right.
00:31:13I think a lot of people misdiagnosed this thing.
00:31:16The independent assemblies of God in the fifties was the largest main branch of the latter rain
00:31:21movement.
00:31:22And it remained that way into the sixties.
00:31:24The mainstream of the latter rain movement was the independent assemblies of God.
00:31:28And Sharon orphanage was inside a member of independent assemblies of God.
00:31:33I mean, it, and so was all the early, most of the early message churches.
00:31:38Okay.
00:31:38So that, that's, that's what you look at.
00:31:40And Derek Prince comes into independent assemblies of God.
00:31:43But he becomes pastor of Broadway tabernacle, starts working with Ern Baxter and Jim Watt,
00:31:49elder from Sharon orphanage.
00:31:51And yeah, he gets introduced to the full gospel businessmen and gets, starts getting invited
00:31:56to talk at the full cost gospel businessmen conferences.
00:31:59And I've, I've heard people say, Oh, see, he's just a full gospel businessman guy.
00:32:03That don't have nothing to do with the message.
00:32:05No, you silly people.
00:32:05The full gospel businessmen was, was, was a third of their board was the message cult.
00:32:11The message was, was a dominant faction of the full gospel businessmen.
00:32:16So, I mean, from Derek Prince is coming into this ideology.
00:32:21He is being popularized by this ideology.
00:32:24He's been given a church by this ideology.
00:32:26He's being invited by this ideology to preach at its conventions.
00:32:30Okay.
00:32:30Derek Prince comes in and he is, he is in this.
00:32:33And from early on, John, Derek Prince is, he adopts the core concepts of latter rain.
00:32:38He's teaching last day revival.
00:32:41He's teaching his version of manifested sons of God.
00:32:44He's preaching fivefold ministry.
00:32:46And, and here's the thing where I think where, again, if you've had only ever been in this ideology, you think, well, fivefold ministry is normal.
00:32:53It's from other places.
00:32:54No, fivefold ministry only comes from this ideology.
00:32:58Fivefold ministry does not exist outside of the latter rain movement and its branches.
00:33:04This is where it comes from.
00:33:05Okay.
00:33:06And, and a lot of the things that Derek Prince taught came directly from this ideology.
00:33:12And he taught a lot of it for his entire life.
00:33:16And, you know, when you get to the end of his life, Derek Prince, he died, I think, in 2004.
00:33:21In 1997, roughly, Derek Prince repudiated some of this stuff, John.
00:33:26He kind of repudiated it and said it wasn't, you know, it was, it was a mistake.
00:33:32The shepherding movement was a mistake.
00:33:34You know, the latter rain movement, he kind of rejected the latter rain movement.
00:33:38And so this is, these are the sort of things that give people like Derek Prince a complicated legacy.
00:33:43Okay.
00:33:43So for all but the last seven years of his life, six, six, seven years of his life, he taught this ideology.
00:33:52And then the last six, seven years of his life, most of which he's too old and sick to actually preach or do anything anymore.
00:33:59He suddenly doesn't believe in this anymore.
00:34:03Now, John, would you call that, and people like that, I feel like this is a guilty conscience, biting these people when they're on their deathbeds.
00:34:10Because they knew, I think they knew all along.
00:34:13Right?
00:34:13And there's a number of them.
00:34:14They get on their deathbed.
00:34:16And in the last year, the last point of their life, when they're terminally ill or what have you, they recant all this stuff and, you know, apologize for it.
00:34:25Derek Prince is one of the guys who did that.
00:34:27And, you know, people can have these deathbed conversions and all that.
00:34:32I think that's good.
00:34:32Right?
00:34:32And God bless Derek Prince, you know, if he got rid of all of this.
00:34:37But when I talk about these earlier phases of Derek Prince's ministry, when all these problematic things were happening, I feel like, based on what I understand and have read, I'm not saying anything Derek Prince didn't say himself.
00:34:50Like, he also said it was all bad.
00:34:53And so, what's going to happen, like, you're going to look in the comments of this and our future episodes, and you're going to find people saying, oh, no, Derek Prince is wonderful.
00:35:01Derek, don't tell me he's wonderful like that.
00:35:05Derek Prince himself said this was bad, right?
00:35:07And if you disagree with the things I'm going to, you know, continue to go on and say, I would encourage you to actually listen to Derek Prince himself when he said all this stuff was bad.
00:35:17Okay?
00:35:17So, like, you either respect Derek Prince and believe him when he said this was bad, or you don't, and you stay in the ideology that Derek Prince rejected at the end of his life.
00:35:26So, anyways, these guys have complicated legacies.
00:35:29And so, Derek Prince, like I mentioned, he came from Eaton College, he missioned in Kenya, he came to the United States, he took pastorship in an IOAG church in Seattle, he started working with elders of the Sharon Orphanage, he started working directly with William Branham, doing full gospel businessman conventions.
00:35:46And during the last years of William Branham's death, or the years around that death, and as things broke up, Derek Prince ended up in the branch of this ideology that produced the shepherding movement.
00:36:03And in practice, what they did is they set up a competing five-fold ministry structure to the message, right?
00:36:10They rejected, they rejected the apostles of the message, John.
00:36:14Right, right?
00:36:15Like, the message had its own apostles and prophets, they rejected that.
00:36:18They also rejected the apostles and prophets at the Sharon Orphanage branch, and they set up their own independent branch.
00:36:24And they had claimed back to the very original through Jim Watt.
00:36:28Okay, they could claim to be descended from the original branch through Jim Watt.
00:36:32And that's what they did at the very first.
00:36:34And so, like the early latter rain movement, the shepherding movement, they emphasized very deeply the concept of submission to the five-fold ministry as a requirement for perfection, or what they called it, maturity in their system.
00:36:46And in that system, the individuals have to submit to a spiritual authority figure for guidance and accountability, and really just guiding their lives.
00:36:57And in practice, what a lot of the people do who follow this five-fold ministry structure is they actually give the role of the Holy Spirit to the preachers.
00:37:06And the preachers usurp the role of the Holy Spirit.
00:37:08That's really, in a biblical sense, what's happening where it goes wrong here.
00:37:13The preachers take over the role of guiding people's lives rather than connecting them into personal walks with God, right?
00:37:20And so that's what they're doing.
00:37:22And after Derek Prince left Broadway Tabernacle, that church got taken over by Raymond Hawes, and it became the flagship church of the Assembly of the Body of Christ, which was one of the subunits of the shepherding movement.
00:37:37And they all got really radical, did a lot of crazy stuff there in the 1970s.
00:37:42You know, they were still getting arrested for raping kids up into the early 2020s, you know, in that branch of the movement.
00:37:50And you never hear anybody talk about that stuff.
00:37:52But that really is true.
00:37:54That's what happened.
00:37:55And so over time, the center of that movement, it moves from the Pacific Northwest, and it shifts into the American South.
00:38:02And that's when you see Ern Baxter and Derek Prince and all these guys end up kind of relocating into the American South, and they get the name the Fort Lauderdale Five.
00:38:12And there's just a lot of really bad problems happening in this movement as time goes on.
00:38:20Over time, they're getting more radical, more radical.
00:38:23There's more abuse.
00:38:24There's more abuse.
00:38:25And it's starting to draw attention from outsiders that there's bad things happening inside the shepherding movement.
00:38:32And that's exactly the point that I was driving at earlier.
00:38:35There are some very, very, very bad things that are in the structure and makeup of these groups, in the foundational elements of their ministries.
00:38:46And I agree with you.
00:38:49Whenever William Branham was working with many of these guys, I agree that it wasn't Branham that came up with many of these doctrines.
00:38:58However, the way that they interacted with Branham was in such a way where he was well-acknowledged as the leader of the revival.
00:39:08So he spoke with an authority to the members, including Derek Prince.
00:39:12If Derek Prince is working with these Latter Rain guys, I have to believe, based off of everything that I fully understand about their ministry,
00:39:20when you have two catalysts that make up your entire doctrinal foundation, William Branham and Franklin Hall,
00:39:27I have to believe that Derek Prince, at one point in time, viewed William Branham as an authority.
00:39:33So whatever Branham said, it stuck, even though Branham largely plagiarized other people.
00:39:38But then, like you said, you get into, now we're entering into the charismatic days, and William Branham's dead, the shepherding movement is forming.
00:39:48So many figures that emerged into today's New Apostolic Reformation or its direct influencing history was,
00:39:59you can't say that they were all in the shepherding movement, but there was such a heavy, heavy collaboration.
00:40:05John Wimber, I think I've published it, and I'll throw a cover of the article on the video version of this podcast,
00:40:13but John Wimber is working directly with these guys, and he's saying the militant language that's coming out of the shepherding movement
00:40:20in his speeches that are in the articles that are published by magazines like New Wine,
00:40:27which is a shepherding movement publication.
00:40:30He's using the same militant terms, the same, in a cult you would call it the loaded language.
00:40:36People like John Wimber are using the loaded language, which shows a deeper connection of influence
00:40:42than simply, here are two ministries, and they decided to hold an event together.
00:40:47It's deeper than that.
00:40:48When the loaded language is the same, there is a shared platform, there is a shared foundation for these guys.
00:40:54And yes, John Wimber later denied it, he renounced it, but there's a period of time whenever he's working with them,
00:41:01and he didn't denounce it.
00:41:03And, you know, Charles, if you were to suddenly discover that I robbed a bank and said,
00:41:09John's a bad guy, he robbed a bank, I disavowed John Collins, that's fine.
00:41:15But if you were with me in helping me rob that bank, you're still problematic, right?
00:41:20You're still guilty because you helped rob the bank.
00:41:23Well, all of these guys are working together.
00:41:25They're creating what became this massive new apostolic reformation.
00:41:29They're all the bank robbers.
00:41:31You are correct.
00:41:32You are correct there with Derek Prince.
00:41:36You know, William Branham was definitely the leader of this movement,
00:41:39and leader in the sense that he was the most influential, and people took their cue from him.
00:41:44Derek Prince could not have become popular in this movement without William Branham's blessing.
00:41:48Not possible.
00:41:49He could not have got invited to speak alongside William Branham as the keynote speaker without William Branham's blessing, right?
00:41:56That's just not how this movement works.
00:41:59Derek Prince had to get William Branham's blessing in order to share the stage with him.
00:42:03And it was sharing the stage with him.
00:42:05It was Derek Prince sharing the stage with William Branham that made him popular in this ideology.
00:42:09I mean, that's just the reality of the situation.
00:42:13And so Derek Prince, you know, he – I'll tell you another thing, too, about Derek Prince before we go just a little further.
00:42:22Derek Prince said – this was before he recanted – and all along, Derek Prince is doing this weird sort of stuff.
00:42:30This is before Derek Prince recanted all the Latter Rain stuff.
00:42:34Derek Prince said that William Branham had an evil spirit in him, John.
00:42:37He said that when they worked together, he discerned that William Branham had an evil spirit in him when they worked together.
00:42:44Kind of like Kenneth Hagin and some of these other guys did.
00:42:46And so right there, you just take that right there all by itself.
00:42:50Derek Prince knew William Branham had an evil spirit, yet he worked with him and didn't tell anybody that he knew he had an evil spirit.
00:42:58So right there, we can say Derek Prince, by his own admission, is a man of bad character, right?
00:43:04He knowingly worked with people he knew was evil, right?
00:43:09Right? I mean, by his own admission.
00:43:11And when you're in this ideology, right, you're like, oh, wow, Derek Prince had the gift of discernment and he knew this thing in advance.
00:43:19And you don't carry it out to, no, okay, he knew about it in advance.
00:43:23Therefore, that makes him a bad person for continuing to go along with it, right?
00:43:27Like, that's the next logical step for this stuff, right?
00:43:30Same with Kenneth Hagin. Same with all these people, right?
00:43:33Now, here's the thing.
00:43:34I don't believe for a minute that Derek Prince ever believed that had a discernment that William Branham had an evil spirit.
00:43:41That's something he had to come up with later years when the bad stuff about William Branham started to come out.
00:43:45He needed some way to excuse his behavior, and he said, oh, Gordon Lindsay and Kenneth Hagin, they made up these prophecies that they had before.
00:43:54I'm going to do that, too.
00:43:56I'm going to make up that I knew William Branham was a bad guy all along, right?
00:44:00And Derek Prince, that's probably, honestly, what Derek Prince did.
00:44:04And I have such a low opinion, John, of people who did that stuff.
00:44:07If they knew it was bad back then, if they really had a spiritual discernment that something was bad back then, and they didn't do anything about it, John, while me and you and our family was trapped in that doomsday cult, what does that say about them?
00:44:22It says something really bad about them.
00:44:24It really says something very bad about them.
00:44:26It says something very bad about Derek Prince.
00:44:28I'm glad he changed his mind at the end of his life, ladies and gentlemen.
00:44:30I really am.
00:44:31But it says something really bad about him that he knew things were wrong and he didn't do anything about it, by his own admission, okay?
00:44:38So the shepherding movement, John, as it got going, it produced a magazine called New Wine Magazine.
00:44:45And as you come up to, you know, the 60s, they start publishing that, and it becomes an important periodical message or a magazine of the early charismatic movement.
00:44:56But, you know, Derek Prince, Joseph Mattson-Bose, a lot of people like that were publishing in that magazine, right?
00:45:02They were still closely affiliated with the Independent Assemblies of God.
00:45:05Joseph Mattson-Bose, the superintendent of Independent Assemblies of God, was one of the main contributors to that magazine, John, in its very early days.
00:45:14And here's the thing.
00:45:16There was still connections to Christian identity happening in that time, which I know we've pointed out before.
00:45:21Eldon Purvis was another contributor to the early days of the New Wine Magazine.
00:45:26Who was Eldon Purvis?
00:45:27He was a homosexual Nazi in the Christian identity movement, publishing articles in New Wine Magazine, okay?
00:45:33I mean, the cross section was there.
00:45:37And we also know, you know, through eyewitness testimony that serpency teaching was being taught at Derek Prince's Broadway Tabernacle while he was there.
00:45:44Not by Derek Prince, but by other preachers.
00:45:45So, you know, they were not very far away from this, you know, from the radical fringe of this ideology, you know, from, you know, from the early days when Derek Prince first joined, still.
00:45:57But anyways, that happened, and as I mentioned already, the center of the shepherding movement kind of moved to the American South.
00:46:04They set up shop in Fort Lauderdale, the Fort Lauderdale Five.
00:46:07Earn Baxter actually ended up pastoring a church in Mobile, Alabama before it was all said and done, John.
00:46:12I don't know if I told you this.
00:46:14I have been to Earn Baxter's Mobile Church, John.
00:46:17I have.
00:46:17Back, it's probably been close to 30 years ago.
00:46:20I have actually went to that church in Mobile where Earn Baxter was.
00:46:24There's a message church very close to that, and we all went over to spy on him.
00:46:29We were to spy on Earn Baxter one service.
00:46:32Oh, boy, John, being in the message is a hoot, isn't it?
00:46:35So, yeah, we went over.
00:46:36Some people took me over there to spy on Earn Baxter one service while I was in Alabama, yeah.
00:46:40Yeah, and so I actually got to see Earn Baxter Church and Earn Baxter Preach.
00:46:44And, you know, when I was there, John, they're very similar to my branch of the message, I've got to say.
00:46:47I didn't observe a whole lot of difference from my branch of the message to what was going on there in that church.
00:46:53But the shepherding movement was large.
00:46:55It had an estimated 750 churches with maybe 150,000 members, primarily in North America, you know, during the 70s.
00:47:03And Derek Prince, and the reason I'm kind of focusing on Derek Prince here is because he was the most prominent influential preacher in the shepherding movement.
00:47:13He, more than any of the rest of them, took those ideas to the masses.
00:47:18He is more responsible for taking those ideas to the masses in the early days of the ideology of shepherding movement than anybody else.
00:47:26And he had the largest audience because he was a televangelist, John.
00:47:29He was one of the men who got one of the slots on the CBN network from Pat Robertson when CBN launched, which happened, you know, just the year or two after William Branham died.
00:47:40And so he is really, really taking that ideology far and wide in the years after, really right after William Branham died and up into the 70s.
00:47:51And scandals and reports of abuse and cult-like behavior in the shepherding movement ended up kind of being an embarrassment to Pat Robertson because, you know, he's on TV.
00:48:02And Pat Robertson is worried that the shepherding movement is starting to make the rest of the broader latter rain movement look bad, right?
00:48:09He's worried, oh, it's going to make us look bad because the people started acting like a cult pretty early on.
00:48:15And the way it started out was Pat Robertson encountered some shepherding movement followers somewhere at a conference, and he observed, these people are acting really strange.
00:48:28Even for the latter rain branches, these guys are acting very strange, you know, and doing weird stuff and submitting themselves in weird ways to their leaders.
00:48:39And so Pat Robertson is actually the guy who starts to try and confront the shepherding movement to get them to stop.
00:48:46And he initially, I think it's the year 1975, he publishes an open letter to the shepherding movement and to the other factions of the latter rain movement and basically denounces the shepherding movement.
00:49:00But that doesn't actually work in order to get them to shut down.
00:49:05And Derek Prince is actually the main guy who leads the charge to defend the shepherding movement to Pat Robertson.
00:49:12And you can find Derek Prince's letters on all this are out.
00:49:15And through all that, he's like whole hog defending fivefold ministry, defending all of these things that, you know, Pat Robertson had attacked in his open letter.
00:49:25And what ended up happening is Pat Robertson started tightening the screws on Derek Prince.
00:49:33He threatened to get Derek Prince blackballed from CBN.
00:49:36Hey, Derek Prince, I'm going to cut you off from your audience if you don't listen to me.
00:49:40This is what Pat Robertson literally is doing.
00:49:43And finally, Derek Prince leaves the shepherding movement.
00:49:48He does that in 1980.
00:49:50And here's the thing.
00:49:50When Derek Prince left the shepherding movement in 1980, he never made a public announcement.
00:49:57He never recanted the beliefs.
00:49:59He never said anything about the abuses going on.
00:50:03He just basically silently left and said, hey, guys, I'm moving on to a new phase of my ministry.
00:50:09And he never he just kind of he didn't disavow.
00:50:11He just quietly exited.
00:50:13And Pat Robertson let him keep being on TV, you know.
00:50:16And I think really, if you look at it, it I think it's safe to say Derek Prince left the shepherding movement, not because he had a genuine problem with its teachings or beliefs or practices.
00:50:29He left it because he didn't want to lose his televangelism slots on TV.
00:50:34That is really, I think, why he left the shepherding movement.
00:50:38And so the shepherding movement continued on without Derek Prince.
00:50:42But as you come up into the by, you know, the late 70s and the mid the early and mid 80s, the abuses happening, the shepherding movements, you know, are getting more and more light put on them.
00:50:52And finally, Bob Mumford and Don Basham start to back away from the movement, too, and and and admit, yeah, there's abuses going on here.
00:51:04And we we repent, we recant of the shepherding movement and they leave.
00:51:09Well, Derek Prince had already left a few years earlier, John, and he more or less gets out scot free.
00:51:13And but Don Basham and those guys, they're the ones who end up taking the fall, you know, several years later when it finally comes to light, all the stuff that, you know, had been going on.
00:51:23And they apologize for it and move on.
00:51:26Now, who never apologized?
00:51:27Ern Baxter.
00:51:28Ern Baxter never repented or recanted this thing once.
00:51:31No, he took it to the end of his life.
00:51:33But all the other guys left.
00:51:34And in Derek Prince, he never recanted the shepherding movement and stuff publicly until, like I said, about 1997.
00:51:42Just a few years before he died.
00:51:44And even though he left the shepherding movement, he continued to preach fivefold ministry.
00:51:48He continued to preach all, you know, the key distinctives of latter reign all the way up to the last years of his life on the outside of it.
00:51:56And a lot of people will this is I think this is what makes Derek Prince particularly dangerous is that a lot of people will say, oh, well, he left the shepherding movement.
00:52:06He's not dangerous.
00:52:06Oh, he recanted this stuff in 1997.
00:52:09He's not dangerous.
00:52:10But he is.
00:52:11Yes, he is.
00:52:12And he is because those teachings pervade his entire ministry.
00:52:17They're all across his ministry.
00:52:19And they're in the whole thing.
00:52:21He's teaching all of the key distinctives of latter reign all the way through, John.
00:52:27And he's teaching them.
00:52:28And people are accepting them.
00:52:30And he's just a massively responsible person for spreading this ideology.
00:52:37He's one of the most important and guilty people for having spread this ideology through his life.
00:52:43So, Derek Prince, you know, deathbed confession, whatever you call it, John Wimber, deathbed confession, whatever you want to call it.
00:52:51That's fine.
00:52:52I have no issues with these people for doing that.
00:52:55And they should do this.
00:52:56If they realize, hey, everything that I have preached and taught and did was incorrect because my foundation was incorrect.
00:53:03I have no issue with that whatsoever.
00:53:05But the people that come after this to hide that from your members in what is developing in, maybe it's not destructive cult yet.
00:53:15But when you start covering up your history, that's the makings of a destructive cult.
00:53:20You're covering up your past.
00:53:22And Dr. Stephen Hassan's bite model, this is the control of information, the eye in the bite model.
00:53:28So you can't do this.
00:53:29You can't cover up that past.
00:53:31But what is happening today is because these foundations, these false foundations were laid, people want to cover it up because, quite frankly, like you just said, there are ministries that would topple because of this.
00:53:45So Derek Prince, throughout his life, John, he taught fivefold ministry.
00:53:50He continued to promote that base, the same base authoritarian model that was the whole foundation of the shepherding movement.
00:53:56He taught that for his entire life, really, his entire ministry.
00:54:00He taught that from the early days of joining latter rain.
00:54:05In addition to that, Derek Prince is probably actually most famous, even though the fivefold ministry stuff was embedded all across it.
00:54:12He's most famous for his deliverance teachings, right?
00:54:14Like that really is the thing that most people think of him for is his deliverance stuff.
00:54:19And, John, I have – I mean, if you look at Derek Prince's deliverance teachings, they were – they are incredibly problematic.
00:54:29I mean, they are just about the worst flavor of the deliverance positive confession teachings of – that came out of that ideology.
00:54:38They're really bad stuff.
00:54:40He taught basically that literally anything that's wrong with you is pretty well demonic possession.
00:54:45And he taught that children are basically incapable of resisting demonic impression and that – I think in one quote he says, 90% of the things wrong with kids are demonic possession.
00:54:56And everything – a lot of the stuff he comes back to is it's always demonic possession.
00:55:01And he would instruct people on how to deal with demonic possession in their children, which usually resulted around strong discipline.
00:55:08You know, use your imagination, ladies and gentlemen, how you get a demon out of your kid.
00:55:12Like he's, you know, talking about all that stuff.
00:55:14John, he even taught that your babies would be – could be born – would be born demon-possessed if you were bitter while you were pregnant, right?
00:55:22Like he taught basically even that babies could be born demon-possessed.
00:55:26I mean, and he – the stuff he did was really, really out there stuff that he taught.
00:55:33You know, he wasn't just preaching simple, you know, believe on Jesus, be healed.
00:55:38Yes, you can be healed if you have faith.
00:55:39He wasn't teaching this stuff.
00:55:41I mean, he was – he was really teaching a lot of really ugly, horrendous stuff for a lot of his life and his deliverance practices.
00:55:49The exact same kind of stuff you see in these deliverance manuals where bitterness causes arthritis and diabetes is caused by a spirit of, you know, feeling rejected.
00:56:01You know, all of this weird stuff.
00:56:02That's the kind of stuff Derek Prince was teaching, and, you know, it harmed a lot of people.
00:56:09You know, he wasn't to Hobart Freeman levels where, you know, hundreds of people are dying left and right.
00:56:14But, yeah, I mean, a lot of people were very badly harmed, and his teachings are just tainted end-to-end with this stuff.
00:56:20And, you know, like I said, when he got towards the end of his life – and you'll hear people say this, that he repented, he recanted from these beliefs.
00:56:28But I'm going to ask – I'm going to ask all our listeners this, too.
00:56:32Can any of you actually find the recorded testimony or the written testimony where he rejected these beliefs?
00:56:42Can you actually find it?
00:56:44Because, John, I'm going to tell you what.
00:56:47I have looked, and I have looked, and I have looked, and I have looked.
00:56:51And I can find, John, I can find sources referencing it, okay, without footnotes, that are apparently quoting him.
00:57:00But I cannot find his actual written and recorded statement rejecting these beliefs, John.
00:57:07I cannot find that.
00:57:09Now, did he?
00:57:10I'm going to take everyone's word for it that he did.
00:57:12I can't find it.
00:57:14I can't find it anywhere.
00:57:16But I believe he did it.
00:57:18And I believe I can't find it anywhere is because people don't want us to find it if it does exist.
00:57:24And here's the other thing, too.
00:57:27If he repented from these beliefs and he didn't repent from them as loudly as he endorsed them in his life, did he really repent of them?
00:57:35Did he?
00:57:35I don't know.
00:57:36Maybe he didn't.
00:57:37So, you know, I'm right on the fence of whether he did or not.
00:57:39I know I'm making a pretty strong judgment here on Derek Prince, and I feel like you just got to.
00:57:44You know, you've got to just kind of be honest and make a pretty strong judgment here.
00:57:48I can't find that he ever repented of it, really.
00:57:51And even if he did, his ministry still has all these things published on his website today.
00:57:56All the core doctrines of the Lateran ministry, the Lateran teachings are published on Derek Prince Ministries' website today.
00:58:02They still are.
00:58:03And so if he did recant of these beliefs, whoever, you know, publishes all his ministry stuff today is pretty deceptive in having not retracted all of the stuff that he taught on the subjects, right?
00:58:14And so Derek Prince, very, very problematic preacher, and never really took responsibility for all of the harm and the abuse.
00:58:25And in his life, I mean, be clear, Derek Prince was involved in at least five cults, two of which he personally helped launch, and most of which had pretty horrendous sexual abuse of minors, tortures.
00:58:40Things happened, deaths, all kinds of stuff that happened, you know, among the fallouts of his group and that he was in.
00:58:48And so for me, John, I know I'm going to get probably massacred for this episode, John.
00:58:55I don't want anything to do with Derek Prince.
00:58:56I don't want anything to do with his teachings.
00:58:58I hope he really did repent at the end of his life.
00:59:00You know, I really hope he did.
00:59:01But he's not a safe, authoritative source we can trust or look to, nor are any of the people that he influenced and carry on the variations of his teachings.
00:59:10I don't want anything to do with that.
00:59:12And the funny part is, I've had people say that this group's not a cult or this other group's not a cult.
00:59:18In a normal Christian circle, if somebody did something, said something, taught something that you disagreed with, you would acknowledge him.
00:59:27You would acknowledge, yeah, the man's a Christian, I disagree with this, that, or the other.
00:59:31But you would just move on.
00:59:33You wouldn't care whether or not, especially if they're dead, you wouldn't, like, continue saying, we really respect this dead guy.
00:59:42In a normal Christian circle, you don't do this.
00:59:45But the problem is, and again, I can't label everybody who follows Derek Prince even as a cult.
00:59:51I can't say that they're a destructive cult, I should say.
00:59:54There is a cult following of Derek Prince, apparently, but I can't say that they're a destructive cult.
01:00:01But if you're a normal Christian, aren't you a follower of Jesus?
01:00:03Don't you say, don't you acknowledge, well, Jesus taught the things that I really, really hold my Christian values to?
01:00:10You don't go back to some dead human guy.
01:00:13And that's where this gets really interesting and weird.
01:00:16The dead human guys seem to have elevated themselves to a level and status that is far above any preacher.
01:00:22The pastor at my church, if he were to die, and then years later I'm telling people, well, we had this really good pastor at my church, and I follow his teachings.
01:00:34They're going to look at me like, I'm a freak, man.
01:00:37But the interesting part is in this movement, you don't think that way.
01:00:41You really, you're so beholden to the doctrines that are taught by certain individuals that you have to take a step back and say, what's wrong here?
01:00:50There's something wrong.
01:00:50What is it?
01:00:51You know, as we wrap up here today, John, we've had to talk about the shepherding movement because of what comes next.
01:00:58Because Derek Prince and these leaders of the shepherding movement, they are going to influence the group that we're about to talk about in our next episode.
01:01:06And they're going to be taking their version of Latter Rain move ideas and injecting it with certain people that we're going to mention in the next episode.
01:01:15Next episode, we're going to talk about Lonnie Frisbee.
01:01:17Next episode, we're going to talk about John Wimber.
01:01:19We're going to talk about the Jesus People movement.
01:01:21And they are infiltrating that movement early on and injecting these ideas with certain people.
01:01:27And they actually had direct confrontations like with Chuck Smith, John.
01:01:30I mean, Chuck Smith said Derek Prince was a false prophet.
01:01:33That's part of why he threw out Lonnie Frisbee.
01:01:35You know, we're going to talk through these things, okay?
01:01:37And it's important to understand where these people come from so we can show you how this ideology iterates and moves into its next phase.
01:01:49Awesome.
01:01:49Well, I look forward to going there.
01:01:50If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:01:55You can find us at william-branham.org and christiangospelchurch.org.
01:01:59For more about the history of William Branham and the healing revivals, you can read Come Out of Her My People.
01:02:05And for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:02:12Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:02:15Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:02:45Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:15Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:17Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:18Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:19Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:20Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:21Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:22Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:23Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:24Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:25Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:26Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:27Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:28Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:03:29Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.