- 7 months ago
John and Steve explore how the teachings of Neoplatonism and ancient mystery religions have resurfaced in modern charismatic movements, particularly the New Apostolic Reformation. They trace a theological lineage from esoteric figures like Plotinus and Valentinus to revivalists such as William Branham and Jane Leade, showing how beliefs in angelic intermediaries, spiritual perfection, and mystical portals distort core Christian doctrine. Throughout the discussion, they examine how these ideas shaped doctrines of personal revelation, divine authority, and supernatural empowerment—often replacing the Holy Spirit with unbiblical concepts.
The episode highlights how modern prophets, healers, and influencers draw from occult systems to claim divine status or command angelic beings. Branham’s pyramid theology, the Latter Rain’s esoteric symbolism, and the NAR’s obsession with angelic access are exposed as repackaged forms of ancient heresies. With clarity and historical depth, John and Steve demonstrate how these movements confuse emotional experience with biblical truth and how easily followers become trapped in a system where perfection comes not through Christ, but through secret knowledge and mystical encounter.
00:00 Introduction
02:00 “God Told Me”: The Modern Prophetic Crisis
06:00 Neoplatonism and Ancient Roots of Angelic Power
13:00 William Branham, the Pyramid of Giza, and Seven Dimensions
20:00 Valentinian Gnosticism and Bridal Mysticism
27:00 Spirit Guides and Channeling in Latter Rain Theology
34:00 The One, Divine Hierarchies, and the Redefinition of Sin
41:00 Spiritual Portals, Commanding Angels, and NAR Practices
50:00 Theurgy, Possession, and the Path to Perfection
57:00 Angel Merchandising, Restoration Theology, and Final Warnings
______________________
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
The episode highlights how modern prophets, healers, and influencers draw from occult systems to claim divine status or command angelic beings. Branham’s pyramid theology, the Latter Rain’s esoteric symbolism, and the NAR’s obsession with angelic access are exposed as repackaged forms of ancient heresies. With clarity and historical depth, John and Steve demonstrate how these movements confuse emotional experience with biblical truth and how easily followers become trapped in a system where perfection comes not through Christ, but through secret knowledge and mystical encounter.
00:00 Introduction
02:00 “God Told Me”: The Modern Prophetic Crisis
06:00 Neoplatonism and Ancient Roots of Angelic Power
13:00 William Branham, the Pyramid of Giza, and Seven Dimensions
20:00 Valentinian Gnosticism and Bridal Mysticism
27:00 Spirit Guides and Channeling in Latter Rain Theology
34:00 The One, Divine Hierarchies, and the Redefinition of Sin
41:00 Spiritual Portals, Commanding Angels, and NAR Practices
50:00 Theurgy, Possession, and the Path to Perfection
57:00 Angel Merchandising, Restoration Theology, and Final Warnings
______________________
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
00:00:00Transcription by CastingWords
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 at william-branham.org.
00:00:43And with me, I have my co-host and friend, Steve Montgomery, author of The Converging Apostasy and A Quick Outline of Hands-On Eschatology, A Matter of Timing and Agency.
00:00:54And together, we're examining the themes of apostasy in the New Apostolic Reformation and its history.
00:01:00Steve, it's good to be back and to talk all things apostasy.
00:01:04And I'm going through just skimming through some of the news today of the mess that is happening in Christianity right now.
00:01:11And it's very evident to see from the fruits that are displayed what this tree was made of.
00:01:16And I'm glad you're here to help me examine the tree.
00:01:19Yeah, John, there's always loads to talk about.
00:01:23You said you were seeing things this morning.
00:01:26Before getting ready for this podcast, I happened to look at Holly Pivok.
00:01:32I think that's how you pronounce her last name.
00:01:35And she has a podcast, has written several books about the NAR.
00:01:40And in her latest article, she says, one of the worst things to abuse and misuse Christianity is to unrightly say, God told me to someone.
00:01:54Or you can say it over the TV or in your book, the Lord has put it on my heart.
00:01:59And what it makes me think of is in the Old Testament, where God says he seems very unpleased.
00:02:09And he says, these prophets say, thus saith the Lord, when the Lord has not spoken.
00:02:17So you can see it's kind of a part, it's like an atom bomb that you're attempting to toss around when you use words like those.
00:02:24And I'm pretty hard pressed to think of any time that you can use those sorts of words and use them well.
00:02:32So the why I bring that up is because speaking on behalf of God or on behalf of Jesus or behalf of the Holy Spirit has somewhat of a connection to what I was preparing for for this podcast.
00:02:51And that is, oddly enough, Neoplatonism.
00:02:54So the impact that Neoplatonism has had on the esoteric world all the way back to very early days, and the way it sort of made its way, trickle-down effect to the NAR today, has a lot to do with perfection with the help of angels.
00:03:14And so if you're saying God told me or an angel told me or had a vision, which is fairly common in the NAR today, you're actually lining up with an older, more established, pretty much a cult kind of state of mind, which occurs when you're into Neoplatonism.
00:03:37So what is it?
00:03:38Well, a lot of ways to answer that, but just a very brief introduction is I found this, which I was unaware of at first, because even though it began in the third century, the word Neoplatonism comes from early 19th century European scholarship.
00:03:58So those that say, well, yeah, you know, started before the days of Christ, maybe there were some things leading up to it, but not really.
00:04:10Then Christian, Islamic, and Jewish philosophers have appropriated Neoplatonist thought.
00:04:20This is the reason for its broad influence that it's had over the years.
00:04:24And as I said, this influence can be felt even in the NAR today in some ways.
00:04:32You know, whenever I hear somebody come up to me and they'll say, God put it on my heart to tell you, or God told me to say this to you, my first thought is, okay, I'm going to shut off my thinking because they're voicing their opinion to me.
00:04:45And where it gets really weird, I know how this works because I have been in the movement.
00:04:51I know the feeling, once you put yourself into the same hype that the movement is generating, you start to think that everything that you do is righteously inspired.
00:05:03And so when you have an opinion about somebody, or especially if you have something that you think that they need to change their ways for, God puts it on your heart to change their ways.
00:05:15And what's really sad is it comes all the way down to just personality conflicts.
00:05:21You can have somebody whose personality type doesn't match yours.
00:05:25Well, God's going to put it on your heart to change them to conform to your personality.
00:05:29But no, man, that's not the way God does it.
00:05:32So in the end, what it is when somebody says this, they're filled with righteous indignation.
00:05:37And I know I'm going to get hate mail for that one because there are people that truly, truly believe in these movements.
00:05:44And even people I've spoken with who have escaped these movements, they truly feel that God has spoken to them and God is using them as a prophetic voice.
00:05:53They won't use the term prophetic voice and they would be scared if you were to try to say it.
00:05:58But that's exactly what they're doing.
00:06:00The movement has indoctrinated them to think that every whim of their mind, every opinion, every thought, every feeling, that's God inspiring them to speak and do and act.
00:06:12And people are people, man.
00:06:14If I have a personality conflict, I may say, you know, that rubs me the wrong way.
00:06:19But I'm not going to say, God told me that you need to change to conform to fit my personality needs.
00:06:25Yeah, isn't that right?
00:06:26The previous thing that we did, which should be out by now, that people are listening to this, is kind of my personal story.
00:06:37And how many times, I was in a group, you know, that had to do with lettering influence and word of faith stuff.
00:06:44So, how many times I heard it either said directly or implied that God is speaking to my fellow member of this group and how manipulative that is.
00:06:57And I just think, you know, I'm not the judge of those people who say stuff like that.
00:07:03But I'm thinking, how will they stand before God and say, oh, yeah, I told everybody how it was on your behalf.
00:07:11Well, it's not a great idea.
00:07:14But as far as this early version of some of this stuff is Neo-Platonism.
00:07:21So, I was thinking, looking into some of the streams of thought that led into it.
00:07:26And so, these are going to be some areas, John, that I know you have looked at in the past.
00:07:32One was the Egyptian mystery schools or mystery religions, and they ranged from around 600 to 300 BC.
00:07:42So, they were kind of laying the groundwork for some of these ideas.
00:07:46Then, you know, being Neo-Platonism, it just goes to, it's not a surprise that Plato had a big influence on this.
00:07:54And so, Plato's writings would have been around 425 to 348 is what I found about him.
00:08:04And then you have the Chaldean oracles.
00:08:08Again, someone speaking or even a statue.
00:08:11John, you have some interesting stories about that.
00:08:13And so, you're getting messages from God or from one of the gods.
00:08:22And so, that's occurring in and around 200 BC.
00:08:26And then you have a very interesting fellow that I find it was hard to get a lot of information about him.
00:08:32But his name was Julian the Thurgist.
00:08:36And Thurgist is not part of his given name.
00:08:41But a Thurgist or a Thurgicy is the act of calling down the angels and then commanding them.
00:08:51And if anybody's heard that kind of talk in the NAR, well, they probably have heard that kind of talk.
00:08:57So, yeah, there's precursors to all that kind of business.
00:09:01And interestingly enough, this is something I've seen elsewhere.
00:09:06Julian, he supposedly was an initiate of the god of the so-called seven rays.
00:09:13So, let's look at a little bit of his legacy as a beginner of some of the Neoplatonist ideas.
00:09:23So, we can easily see his ideas in the occult or the esoteric world.
00:09:29And he's one of the big figs of the occult world would be Helena Blavatsky, writing in the late 1800s.
00:09:39So, on your third volume of The Secret Doctrine, which I do not recommend anybody to read it.
00:09:45It's really disgusting stuff.
00:09:47It swims around from this idea to that idea.
00:09:52It's not very well organized.
00:09:54But in that book, she talks about the seven primeval rays and defines them as angelic beings associated with the seven planets of the ancient world.
00:10:07You know, they didn't have the knowledge that we do nowadays.
00:10:10So, that's in the occult.
00:10:13Also in the occult world, in the 1920s through the 1940s, you get the writings of the so-called Christian esotericist Alice Bailey.
00:10:24And she also had things to say about these seven rays.
00:10:28She'd call them energies sometimes and that everybody is related to one of these seven rays or energies.
00:10:35But then somebody, I think I remember we talked about her at one point.
00:10:39She was actually part of a cult and it was called CUT, Church Universal and Triumphant.
00:10:48So, in about 1987, and she was definitely a New Age teacher and a cult leader, Elizabeth Clare Prophet began to talk about the sudden rays.
00:11:00Okay, that hops us over to the Christian world, which you would think is not really related to the occult world.
00:11:05So, the latter reign and Bill Britton influenced teacher David Ebal, who was also into Christian identity.
00:11:16I remember we talked about that.
00:11:18So, Ebal says the Jewish and Gentile tradition, plus the Bible, for good measure, shows that heaven is seven concentric rings or bands.
00:11:30Now, I don't have my notes to give a direct quote from him, but he said something similar to Britton, and that was that our goal, obviously, is the center.
00:11:43So, we're going through these seven rings or bands, and it really sounds like Kabbalah, which I already know that Britton and Ebal were into.
00:11:50And then, much more recently, we have a really mystifying thing, if you're talking about the NAR.
00:12:00This is on the Reawaken America tour, and the NAR-affiliated General Michael Flynn, of course, retired and expunged of all his wrongdoing by someone.
00:12:13And he prayed that we'd become instruments of the sevenfold rays and all of the archangels.
00:12:24That sounds somewhat out of place, but there you go.
00:12:27You know, talking about the seven rings, et cetera, there's different variations of this.
00:12:32I've studied this heavily because, well, in my last book, I was going through Christian identity, and I was digging into where did this mess come from?
00:12:41Why is it not just centralized to Branham?
00:12:44There's no way to say that he is the one who brought it forward, but he did popularize a lot of it.
00:12:49And there was this weird theory in Christian identity that the Great Pyramid of Giza was, in fact, a road map of time.
00:12:58And as they were digging up and the tunnel that goes down to the King Chamber, there was apparently there were imperfections in the path.
00:13:07And they would say this imperfection is whenever the stark market crashed and the Great Depression happened.
00:13:11And they would go through these different scenarios of what these building blocks of the pyramid meant, which is crazy, crazy stuff.
00:13:20But they would hold conventions.
00:13:21There would be hundreds of Christian ministers who were enthralled with itching ears who would come as some guy lectured on what the Great Pyramid of Giza meant.
00:13:31And over time, they began to think that it was a Bible of sorts.
00:13:36And that was predominantly the belief in the early years of the latter rain.
00:13:39Branham talks about it.
00:13:41He said the first Bible was written was the Zodiac, and the second one was the Great Pyramid of Giza.
00:13:46And then he would hold up his Bible and say the third one is this one we have here today.
00:13:50But what happened is they started evaluating different aspects of the pyramid, because if the pyramid is this great mystery, well, how does that relate to the afterlife?
00:14:04And so then they began, much like we talked about the people who are saying God spoke to me, God was speaking through them, trying to say that these building blocks in the pyramid meant different things.
00:14:15And one of them, Branham talks about how your body is made of cosmic light, which you and I know all of the occultish symbolism that go behind that.
00:14:26But he would say one of these days, this cosmic light in your body is going to come out of this body, and you're going to go to the first dimension, the second, the third, the fourth.
00:14:35You're going to go through ascending through all the dimensions, and eventually you'll end up in the seventh dimension, which is heaven.
00:14:43And he had various ways to describe this, and he says Jesus is sitting in the seventh dimension.
00:14:49Well, he also, he started drawing out on blackboards when he'd hold these presentations, and he would say that this is directly tied back to the Great Pyramid of Giza.
00:14:58And apparently, I've not been inside of it, so I don't know what it's like, but apparently there are somewhere seven steps going up into the King's Chamber.
00:15:08He would say these seven steps represent these seven dimensions.
00:15:12And he goes and he maps it all out mathematically, which is the funny part, because he claimed to be illiterate, but he somehow knew the higher math of the pyramids.
00:15:22But people just ate this up, and it started to spread, and you find even, I think I put a video out on it recently, at Morningstar.
00:15:32They had this great, I don't know what you call it, this great rally around Branham's ministry.
00:15:38They even had Branham's drawing of the pyramid and the seventh, I guess this was the seven church ages that they were listing out, but it goes into the form of a dimension, right?
00:15:49They say these ages are dimensions of time, and we're going to go through dimensions of space, you're going to be cosmic light.
00:15:55There's all kinds of weirdness, but in the end, it's all the occult.
00:15:59Yeah, that's very interesting, John.
00:16:01When I was getting prepared for this and thinking about Ebo and the seven heavens, I just, by chance, I ran into some things about Branham.
00:16:12And I didn't find what you're talking about to that extent, but certainly the ideas about, you know, the seven churches and all of his readings about Revelation.
00:16:28But a fifth thing that leads up to, or led up to Neoplatonism is someone that we've talked about quite a bit, and that is the Gnostic Valentinus, his disciples, and his views on angels.
00:16:44And this would have been coming around the year 150 AD.
00:16:50So, according to Valentinus, it's possible to draw angelic spirits down from heaven to be joined with you.
00:16:59Okay, again, thank the Gnar.
00:17:02We're not that far from what some of the guys say in that group.
00:17:06And this is why Valentinus told his followers, now this should sound very familiar.
00:17:12I've heard several podcasts that you've done that talk about this.
00:17:15Valentinus told his followers to, quote, allow the seed of light to take up its abode in your bridal chamber, receive your bridegroom, take him into you, and be taken by him.
00:17:31That could be like a broadcast, I mean, a podcast, or one or two or three, just on the wording he used there, and the way it relates to things we've seen in the Gnar and elsewhere.
00:17:42So, but you can follow this up a bit with one of Valentinus' disciples, Theodotus.
00:17:52He said that the angels had need of us so that they may enter into perfection, since without us it is not permitted to them.
00:18:02I believe I heard that from Wesley Swift, but just from tons of different sources, you'll hear that kind of talk, where without us, and they're quoting something from, or expounding upon something from Hebrews, that talks about without us they may not receive the promise.
00:18:23So, you know, but obviously this kind of interpretation is incorrect.
00:18:28So, this is kind of a duh question, but is the Gnar in this same esoteric tradition of calling down angels?
00:18:39The New Apostolic Reformation copied its financial strategies off of things that preexisted, the NAR, as we both know.
00:18:50And one of those strategies, I don't know if you've read through them, but if you read through the early editions of the magazine that Branham started,
00:18:58and eventually Gordon Lindsay took over, The Voice of Healing, and also study what led to the creation of that magazine, even predating this, you had all of these revivalists who came from town to town,
00:19:12and they're saying that they can heal with great miracles, and they're all trying to become greater than one another.
00:19:19There's this battle to become the biggest tent, which is a weird, weird thing if you think about it.
00:19:23But in the Battle of Tents, you had ministers who are claiming that they have greater miracles than the next guy.
00:19:31And if you go look in the newspapers, you can find this.
00:19:34They're saying, great signs and wonders, great miracles, he has a great healing ministry.
00:19:39Well, there came a point when you're flooded with these guys that are claiming the same thing.
00:19:44There's not something that really gives them an edge.
00:19:47They're all equals, and you can't have a battle for the tents unless some guy has the edge.
00:19:52Well, along comes, the earliest I've been able to find is Branham, but I'm certain there were others before him.
00:20:00Branham starts claiming that he had this angel that inspired his whole ministry, and an angel from heaven came down and told him this stuff.
00:20:07And it's crazy, man.
00:20:09If you have a newspapers.com subscription and just look what happened immediately after this, you had angels left and right.
00:20:15It was like God was sending floods of angels down to this healing ministry, and everybody's claiming, I had an angel.
00:20:24I, too, had an angel.
00:20:25Like Oprah, you, too, can have an angel.
00:20:27It gets crazy when you think about it.
00:20:31And then what happened is Branham kind of – there's a mental health issue that happened.
00:20:36There's some history behind that that we've only partially published.
00:20:40But around 1948 or maybe as early 1949, he goes off the scene, and nobody knows where he is.
00:20:47He's actually in a mental institution from what I have heard.
00:20:52But he goes off the scene.
00:20:53Gordon Lindsay takes over everything.
00:20:55And now without Branham, the key, the one who sparked all this revival movement, they start introducing new guys.
00:21:02Well, Branham had that edge, that angel, and so the others have to have some similar weirdness.
00:21:08So they all start claiming, I had an experience.
00:21:11I had an angel.
00:21:12I had this.
00:21:12I had that.
00:21:13The other.
00:21:13Then didn't any of them have two angels?
00:21:15That would have made them, you know, superior.
00:21:18They had two or three.
00:21:19Like, look, here they are.
00:21:20If you count Branham's different versions of his angel, in some instances, he says it's a clean-shaven guy.
00:21:27Another one looks like an Arab.
00:21:28Another one's white beard.
00:21:30His varying descriptions means he had, like, 20.
00:21:33I don't know how many he actually claimed.
00:21:37But what it is, they have, and this history is proven, too, they were tied to the Kardashian family, the ones who became entertainment giants, right?
00:21:48So they were creating an entertainment persona.
00:21:52I don't truly believe that they had angels, although some of them may have had some mental health issues and thought they did.
00:21:59But the fact that they're all claiming it, it turned into some other religion, because this isn't how God works.
00:22:06In the Bible, God sent his Holy Spirit.
00:22:08God did not send an angel down to make you conform to the beliefs of some random guy.
00:22:15Yeah, interesting stuff.
00:22:17And, of course, we're new in the esoteric world.
00:22:21There's angels all over the place.
00:22:23And so some of the streams of thought that were influenced by Neoplatonists, and they had plenty of angels in their pockets, was Kabbalah, which is a very big one in the occultic world.
00:22:37And why that's even pertinent to discussions about the Nara and about the Lateran is because some of the prophets who influenced Nara prophets, some of the Lateran prophets, actually dealt into the Kabbalah and received some of their ideas from that.
00:22:55So Neoplatonists influenced Kabbalah indirectly through their writings about daemons, and, you know, that's spelled D-A-E-M-O-N-S, or spirits.
00:23:06Now, to today's ears, or when you read the word, it looks like daemons, but at the time that these ideas were circulating, it meant something a little bit broader, not necessarily evil, but just an angel or spirit.
00:23:26So, but yeah, Neoplatonism influenced Kabbalah with their ideas about that.
00:23:30And then one of the other big figs of the occultic world, who also happened to be a huge influence on Jane Leed, who led up to the Lateran with her prophecies, that's Jacob Bohm.
00:23:46So Neoplatonism influenced Bohm indirectly by passing on to him elements of, here it comes, Valentinian mysticism.
00:23:56And so, yeah, Valentinian just pops up his head all over the place.
00:24:01Then we come to the 17th century prophetess, Jane Leed, and her influence on the Lateran prophets.
00:24:10Neoplatonism happens to have influenced Leed indirectly by her search for contact between humanity and angelic spirits, who she thought were acting as intermediaries.
00:24:25You know, the intermediaries, that's really the thing that drove me to try to understand what was really behind all of this mess.
00:24:35Because as much as I studied it, I would have liked to have said it's just entertainment and it's financially backed, and that's why they're all looking for money.
00:24:43But some of the men that I've examined outside of Branham, they were not really focused so much on the money.
00:24:50There's something else driving them.
00:24:51And what is it?
00:24:52And I, ironically, I had left the church and I was in, I had left the Branham cult and I was in one of the new churches.
00:25:01And they were focusing their sermons on teachings on the Holy Spirit.
00:25:07They got into basically lining up different Bible passages talking about the Holy Spirit and the dangers of people who are usurping the authority of the Holy Spirit.
00:25:17And that whole line of thinking got me to try to understand what were these guys doing if they were, if they were actually reading their Bibles, which many of them claimed that they were, and teaching from it.
00:25:30And they would all know that what they're essentially doing is usurping the power of the Holy Spirit with these angelic forms, these beings, these men randomly saying, thus saith the Lord, or some similar verbiage to try to say that God is speaking through them for whatever is the political agenda that they had, etc.
00:25:50And I began to thinking, well, what was driving it?
00:25:54What, what was causing them to try and even usurp the Holy Spirit in the first place?
00:25:59And that led me down all kinds of questions.
00:26:02Were they even Christian was one of the first ones that came to mind.
00:26:05But then I got to thinking about, so the spirit that they claim that they have, what was the spirit?
00:26:10Yeah, and this is kind of jumping ahead, but no reason not to, is when you talk about usurping the Holy Spirit.
00:26:19Well, it happens that one of the Lateran prophets, who is directly influenced by Jane Lead, who, as I've said, is directly influenced by Neoplatonism, and all of that comes out to be, his name is Royal Cronquist.
00:26:36And so, I very distinctly remember in some of his, he calls them epistles of the kingdom.
00:26:43So, he's speaking on behalf of Jesus.
00:26:47He says, watch for them.
00:26:50They will come.
00:26:51My perfect coming ones will lead you into all truth.
00:26:55Well, talk about not paying attention to what the Bible says.
00:26:59That's, it's very mystical what he's talking about, but it's, it's in direct opposition to Scripture.
00:27:08So, something, you know, I was looking at how to lay out some of this stuff.
00:27:13And so, maybe I would have said this at the beginning, but my next little part here is, who were the Neoplatonists?
00:27:20Not the ones influenced by them, but who were the actual ones?
00:27:23And a lot of people consider Plotinus to be the founder of Neoplatonism.
00:27:32And so, he was around from around 204 to 270 AD.
00:27:40He developed its main ideas about what they called the one, which is a facsimile of God, but not really.
00:27:48And also, something that really hung around in the esoteric world, but had inroads into Christianity.
00:27:57And that is, his ideas about the hierarchy of angelic beings.
00:28:02And, of course, if you look at Valentinus, you get a big earful of that kind of stuff, as you would for a lot of these guys.
00:28:10Then, the next fellow, he was a student of Plotinus, and his name was Porphyry.
00:28:18And he was around from about 234 to 305 AD.
00:28:24And he just helped to spread some of the Neoplatonic ideas and teachings.
00:28:29Then, one of the most important guys, turns out, and I found videos about him, teachings about him, and just all kinds of folks who were influenced by him.
00:28:41That is a fellow named Iamblichus.
00:28:45And he lived from around 245 to 325 AD.
00:28:50Now, the important thing about Iamblichus, when you think about esoteric teachings, is he shifted Neoplatonus from an internal work of the divine spirit to an evocation of angels external to the body.
00:29:09So, not just, okay, God is working, you know, this sort of God, the one is working on me internally to perfect me.
00:29:16And, no, he wants to connect to angelic beings that are not with you or within you.
00:29:25And so, his major work was called, which influenced a lot of folks in that kind of arena, was on the mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians.
00:29:37And in this work, he talked about the process of the spiritual restoration towards perfection.
00:29:44Then you get Proclus, and he was around the year 412 to 485 AD, and he was a Syrian Neoplatonist, and he actually said that Plato's writings were completely and divinely inspired.
00:30:02So, there you go with him.
00:30:04And he turns out to be something that ends up rearing its ugly head later in different versions of apostasy.
00:30:13He was a universalist, and he was supposedly initiated into the Egyptian mystery religions that promised this sort of perfection and immortality, like the Neoplatonists, the other ones did.
00:30:29And so, again, does the NAR have its own take on perfectionism?
00:30:34Have 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?
00:30:47You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:30:55On 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.
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00:31:33You know, you're talking about the One, and I want to pause there briefly, because whenever I left the cult, I started studying all different kind of things, neoplatonism being one of them.
00:31:46And it was interesting, because whenever you would find a belief set that was one of these mystery, divine mystery cults, or however you want to call them, they all had some similar belief, the One, the Sophia, the different versions of what they consider to be their supreme truth.
00:32:05And having been raised from birth in a mystery cult, you are somehow attracted to other mystery cults when you leave.
00:32:14And that's part of the reason that we have so many people that are re-victimized when they leave a cult.
00:32:18And so, early on in my research, I actually had to put it on pause, because I would study things like this, the One, and then I would start to frame in my mind what I remembered of the mystery of God, as it was being taught in my mystery cult, to what was being taught in this mystery cult.
00:32:36And interestingly enough, they fit like a glove, and so you're being taught falsely, a false version of Christianity in a mystery cult.
00:32:46When you leave, you get easily assimilated, because they're so compatible.
00:32:51But the way it was taught, you mentioned that the spiritual purification was necessary.
00:32:58Well, that's exactly how it was in Latter Rain.
00:33:00It wasn't what Christ did for you.
00:33:02It was how you could conform to the rules and become greater than the rest of the Christians, and therefore you would be the one to escape while the rest of the Christians burned as the earth was destroyed.
00:33:14That was the belief set.
00:33:15You had to have the spiritual purification.
00:33:18And you did not look for the Holy Spirit to make you pure.
00:33:21The ones who were in the most extreme cults, like Branham, there are many others.
00:33:27A. Allen did the same kind of thing.
00:33:29They tried to get you to focus on them and their stage persona as their means to give you this mystery that you didn't otherwise have.
00:33:38So as they're relaying the mystery religion, they're teaching you the one philosophy, but it's a different flavor of the one.
00:33:46It is neoplatism, but then if you dive all the way down to the theology itself, neoplatism had this other belief, which you may actually be heading there, but it taught that evil was essentially the complete absence of good.
00:34:06It wasn't described in biblical terms.
00:34:09It was like the yin and the yang.
00:34:11It was the Thor and the Loki.
00:34:13You had the absolute good and you had the absolute evil.
00:34:16It's an absence of good was evil.
00:34:19And that's the same kind of thing that the faith healers brought forward.
00:34:22They were teaching faith as their God, and they called it the gospel of divine healing.
00:34:28And so the absence of that, the absence of your faith in this minister was unbelief.
00:34:34And so one of the themes that came out of Branhamism was sin is unbelief.
00:34:39What is sin?
00:34:40It is unbelief.
00:34:41He continually said this to make the people feel like if they did not believe in his stage presence, that they were actually in sin.
00:34:49Fast forward to the NAR.
00:34:51This has developed into the you cannot question your leader mentality, because if you question your sinning, that's how this grew and evolved.
00:35:00But in its essence, it is neoplatism.
00:35:03It's the serving the one, and it's a completely different version of a religion than anything that's biblical.
00:35:09Yeah, that's right, John.
00:35:11And three themes that take this idea further are that were influenced by the neoplatonist Iamblichus come out really, really close to everything you're saying right there.
00:35:26And one of them, again, I've heard this from Wesley Swift and a lot of other folks.
00:35:32One of the ideas that was really influenced by Iamblichus was the idea of preexistent angelic sons of God that are divine and immortal.
00:35:44After they become incarnate, they are trying to make their ways back.
00:35:49They're destined to return to their source, known as the one.
00:35:54Then this is kind of my vernacular of what the one kind of comes out to be in a lot of the writings.
00:36:01It's not really God.
00:36:02It's more like seen as an impersonal divine conglomerate, an infinite blob of primordial angelic stuff.
00:36:12Okay, so the angelic realm, which they think is God, is more like this compacted version of all the spiritual elements.
00:36:23Valentinus would have called this the Pleroma, and that's where the aeons or the angelic beings resided.
00:36:31Okay, and then a really big idea that comes from Neoplatonism is the emanations from the one, and that occurs all over the place.
00:36:43And what they do is they attempt to break down this impersonal so-called God into more manageable components.
00:36:52So, when somebody says God must obey, I've heard that literally from a Nara prophet, there are rules, spiritual rules, and God must obey them.
00:37:03Well, they're kind of treating God in the same way that the Neoplatonists did, as he's been broken down to more comfortable, manageable components, which a lot of times has to do with the angels.
00:37:16And so, this becomes something like a divine disaggregation, and without listing all of them that occurred, the aeons of the Pleroma, Valentinus is one.
00:37:29The great chain of spiritual being of alchemists is one.
00:37:34In Kabbalah, they refer to Jacob's ladder.
00:37:37They like that analogy.
00:37:38And then you go to Alice Bailey and other New Age teachers, and often you hear the spiritual hierarchy.
00:37:46When you get into ladder-ranked prophets influenced by Jane Lee, they often refer to us as the great cloud of witnesses.
00:37:54And if you lay those side-by-side with what the Neoplatonists are talking about and what these other versions of the one are talking about, you really can't find too much difference.
00:38:07And that's why people have pointed that out, that those influenced by Jane Lee in the latter rain, they might as well be spiritual alchemists or Neoplatonists.
00:38:19And so, oddly enough, though, if you get down to the Gnar, I've been hearing this directly from Gnar folk, but also from people that are analyzing Gnar.
00:38:33And they start describing something that's actually also very occult-like, and that is spiritual portals.
00:38:41And I never get his last name right, but it's Francis Fregepon, I think.
00:38:47And so, he's written about the spiritual portal-like ways to get in contact with angelic beings.
00:38:57Todd Bentley, also, he's one of those guys who'd like to run his idea about a really tall angel, so he got one, too.
00:39:05And then you've got Jennifer LeClaire, who is teaching likewise.
00:39:11And then, literally, you get Alistair Crowley, talks about the same kind of stuff.
00:39:16Okay, so in all of these cases, God is either broken down into more manageable components that can be called down, communicated with, and commanded, or they actually take the next step, which is to channel or receive bodily these components.
00:39:38And this helps you achieve perfection.
00:39:41Every time I hear somebody talking about the spiritual portals, I always think about the Looney Tunes cartoon, where they've got the portable holes, and they throw the portable holes out, and some guy falls in it.
00:39:52Because that's about how it is.
00:39:53You don't know where you're going to go when you fall into the portable hole.
00:39:56With their spiritual channeling, you don't know what demon you're going to resurrect with one of these things.
00:40:02So it gets really weird and complicated, but in the end, you're right.
00:40:07They've basically taken this idea that they are in control of the gods.
00:40:13And whenever they say God, Branham said it, too.
00:40:16I'm certain many other Landerane guys did.
00:40:19But God is subject to your request when you're speaking.
00:40:23And this really comes from the manifested sons of God idea.
00:40:26They believe that they are more than human.
00:40:29They are miniature gods.
00:40:31And whenever they speak, they can command the Holy Spirit to do things.
00:40:34They can command Jesus or the Father to do things.
00:40:38And in some flavors of it, they obviously had the oneness God.
00:40:41But whatever it was that they were channeling, it wasn't God that was doing these things, if they were even being realistic.
00:40:49But in the end, once I started studying the ancient cultures and ancient mythologies, I began to realize that the way that they were acting actually goes back far beyond what Plato even would have experienced.
00:41:04They're acting in the ways in which the ancient kings and monarchs and pharaohs did, where they were the divine representation.
00:41:14They were literally the god in human form to their people.
00:41:17And people were being sacrificed to these gods.
00:41:21That's how bad and evil and ridiculous this is.
00:41:25And to think that in today's day and age, people would say that they have the power to command God, and then also try to pretend to be Christian and claim that this isn't heresy.
00:41:36In what world is that not heretical?
00:41:39Absolutely.
00:41:40It's pretty dumbfounding when you run into that.
00:41:42And it puts you in an unusual position because when you're with somebody who you assume is a Christian saying a Bible study, and they start bringing up some of this stuff, I mean, what's the proper thing to do?
00:41:57Do you rebuke them and set them straight?
00:42:00Do you unfollowship them, you know, like unlike them on the internet?
00:42:04I think you definitely pray for them.
00:42:08And there probably is a time to speak out about it, which you and I are doing right here.
00:42:15But there's a time when you really run face-to-face with folks that have ideas like this.
00:42:20And, well, Jesus said that do not worry ahead of time what you will say because the real Holy Spirit will put those words in your mind and your heart, and you'll speak those words.
00:42:33So, as always, I've got so much stuff here, John.
00:42:38I hope I get through it as quickly as I can because it just really fascinated me, especially how this stuff with Neoplatonists, like Iamblichus, has been filtered down to the day.
00:42:52So, five beliefs that are implied by Iamblichus, pantheism, the universe is broken, it must be made whole again so that God, a.k.a. the One, can once again be all and in all.
00:43:08Okay, so, yeah, you're going to fix God, make God great again is really what it boils down to.
00:43:14Then another idea that's implied is universal reconciliation, which I alluded to a bit earlier.
00:43:20Due to the influence of Neoplatonism to Jane Lee, the latter-ranked prophet, George Houghton, and others say that all will be saved eventually.
00:43:33This is, however, tempered by the removal clause, if you can put it that way, a.k.a. a sacred purge of the undeified, which I think you were talking about earlier.
00:43:44Another thing implied by all of this stuff from Neoplatonists, and I did hear you say something similar, the reconciliation of all opposites.
00:43:56This is just, you know, the occult world is replete with references to this sort of idea.
00:44:03And sometimes they spell it out for you, sometimes it lets you ponder, but I've seen this in writing, left and right, male and female, good and evil, heaven and earth, mortal and immortal, human and angelic, and literally with quite a few of the folks, Christ and Lucifer.
00:44:24So this reconciliation of all opposites is supposed to be something like Hegel's idea, you know, thesis, antithesis, joining together, producing something better than it was or greater.
00:44:38And then you have a very odd idea that's also implied by these teachings, that is the restoration of all.
00:44:46So restoration is a word you hear a lot, you know, when you're analyzing the Narn.
00:44:51But in these kinds of terms, this is to empty the spiritual realm of all so that they can be restored by reunion with their earthly partner.
00:45:03In other words, yeah, that goes back to the Gnostic idea of the spiritual beings that were separated and one of their halves went to be incarnated on earth, the other one is still residing in the heavenlies.
00:45:20And the consummation of all things at the end of time, they will be reunited and this will make perfection or completion.
00:45:28And this is actually the way to be made perfect with the help of angels that I was talking about at the beginning.
00:45:35So a big one comes in there, and that is theurgy.
00:45:39So what is theurgy?
00:45:41I didn't really write down my source, but this is from a scholar.
00:45:46The goal of theurgy is the deification of its participants.
00:45:51It is when spirits inhabit a human being for the perfection or to disclose mysteries.
00:45:59So we get down to Jane Leade again.
00:46:02Jane Leade, her mentor, John Portage, and this concept of theurgy.
00:46:08Leade said that we will have communion with the most holy beings who will willingly confer with us.
00:46:15They are watchers sent down from the heavens as ministering angels.
00:46:21I can see your fingers are twitching on that because, John, I know you've talked about that quite a bit.
00:46:27But it does get worse.
00:46:29Leade said that spirits of light who will enter the bodily vehicles of holy souls to make them all godified as Christ.
00:46:40This is the goal of theurgy.
00:46:41So, like the Neoplatonists beforehand, this guy, John Portage, said,
00:46:48all of the angels are derived from the one, and collectively they are the fullness of God.
00:46:55That's like Valentinus' Pleroma.
00:46:58Because all angels are aspects of God.
00:47:02Yeah, that's just right down the pike from Calaba and Valentinus.
00:47:10Now we get to more like our current-day folks, like the Nara Prophets, and here's a few of the big ones,
00:47:18Gwenshaw, Bill Hammond, Ian Carroll, and Cindy Jacobs, and also, again, like Alistair Crowley, who's a notorious Satanist.
00:47:30Portage believed that all people had one such spirit watching over them.
00:47:34I don't know if you're a fan of the Ghostbusters movies, the original ones back when they were good in the 80s.
00:47:42There was this notion that all of these demons were about to be released into the world,
00:47:48and they were trying to find ways to inhabit human bodies and escape and all of this stuff.
00:47:52If you really believe what all of these people are saying in these ministries,
00:47:58it's like they're playing out this real-life Ghostbusters kind of movie.
00:48:03But instead of wanting to be the good guys that are putting the demons back in their cages,
00:48:08these are the people wanting to release them into the world.
00:48:10So it gets really, really weird.
00:48:13Not many people know this, but in the Laterine movement and beyond,
00:48:20Branham was teaching people how he called his spirit guides.
00:48:24And not many people know this, because you can read, like, Charismania,
00:48:29what's that magazine called, Charisma magazine,
00:48:32you can read all of these things about Branham's visions.
00:48:35And when you read it, in the way that they have polished it
00:48:39and tried to remove all of the occult from what Branham taught,
00:48:43they make you believe that he had a vision from God as is described in the Bible.
00:48:49But that's not how Branham's visions came.
00:48:51Branham claimed that an angel is the one who revealed the vision to him.
00:48:56And he would always say,
00:48:57I have the angel on the platform with me, the angel does the healing, not me.
00:49:01It's the spirit guide that's with him.
00:49:03And in his Manifested Sons of God theology,
00:49:07he likened this spirit guide to what happened in the New Testament.
00:49:13But he changed the divinity of God to do so.
00:49:17He said that Jesus was constrained and could not do anything
00:49:21until the Father showed him a vision that he could do it.
00:49:25And if you follow all of his theology out to its logical conclusion,
00:49:28the way that he described God was these angelic beings,
00:49:32these watchers, these things you're talking about.
00:49:34So in his theology, literally, Jesus is having to have a divine angel coming down in the form from God,
00:49:42from the throne, and showing Jesus how to do things.
00:49:46Oh, by the way, in the same way that he is doing them on the platform, William Branham.
00:49:50And so they're calling down these demons from hell,
00:49:55if you really believe that they are doing what they say they do.
00:49:59When Branham was teaching all of these men how he was channeling,
00:50:03and he admits this on one single recording.
00:50:06We don't have access to his private meetings where he's teaching them.
00:50:09But in one single recording, he says that he chants.
00:50:13That's how he brings down and summons his demon.
00:50:15And it sounds so stupid thinking about it, but he says,
00:50:19and when I want to call down the spirit guide, he uses another word.
00:50:23He says, I start going, one plus one equals two.
00:50:25One, two plus two equals four.
00:50:27Two plus two.
00:50:28And he's getting in that rhythm and that beat.
00:50:31And what he's describing is chanting and channeling.
00:50:35And when you consider what this is, and if you know the occult,
00:50:39this is not how you call the Holy Spirit.
00:50:41This is how you summon a demon.
00:50:43And this is what would have all the Ghostbusters come with their machinery
00:50:48and put them back in the cage, man.
00:50:51Yeah, and I feel like it's very true that the folks that are teaching these things
00:50:57are thoroughly sliming their followers.
00:51:01And I think theology is one of the major ways they slime people.
00:51:07So, just to show some of the folks from the latter rain that were influenced by Jane Lee.
00:51:14Of course, she's 17th century mystic.
00:51:16Lateran is approximately 1948 and influencing still nonprofits of today.
00:51:24So, back to this fellow, Royal Cronquist.
00:51:27Well, this person who's done a lot of research and written her doctoral dissertation about the latter rain and related issues.
00:51:36She's an ex-NAR person, and her name is Dr. Bridget Jacobs.
00:51:41She told me that Jane Lee-influenced latter rain prophet Cronquist was essentially a neoplatonist.
00:51:49And I said, huh, that kind of perked up my ears.
00:51:52So, I said, well, let's see if that's true, because even though she's got a doctorate,
00:51:56I like to check things out for myself.
00:51:59Maybe I'll see something slightly different.
00:52:01So, here's what Cronquist said in one of his epistles from the kingdom.
00:52:07He said that all spirit beings were originally co-mingled and blended together as one,
00:52:15and he capitalizes one.
00:52:17Hmm.
00:52:18Yeah, it sounds kind of like that's a neoplatonist.
00:52:21As far as calling them down, he also, for perfection, which is where we kind of began this whole thing,
00:52:29he says we, that's capitalized we, the cloud of witnesses,
00:52:33will take up our, capitalized, abode and tabernacle within you.
00:52:38Now, the strange use of abode, pick up our abode, sounds really, really similar to not only Jane Lee,
00:52:47but all the way back to Valentinus, that part about the bridegroomed spirits
00:52:54and the bridal chamber where these spirits will take up their abode.
00:53:03Then, he says something really out and out that, yes, sounds like what you're describing about Branham.
00:53:10Cronquist says, we will fully incarnate ourselves within your souls and bodies.
00:53:17Why does he say that?
00:53:19He's apparently speaking to charismatic Christians who may not normally talk like this or think like this,
00:53:25but he's answering the question of how do we really become perfect?
00:53:32You know, there's so much about becoming sanctified, glorified, be likewise perfect as your father's perfect.
00:53:41And so, he says this is the path to perfection, is to call down somebody apparently in the cloud of witnesses
00:53:49and tell them to take abode and tabernacle within you.
00:53:53It's also a use of that Feast of Tabernacles that, you know, the latter rain, George Warnock wrote about as the third experience of God.
00:54:06You got born again, you got baptized in the Holy Spirit, and then something as yet has not occurred,
00:54:11which is perfection, is the Feast of Tabernacles.
00:54:15And this is what Cronquist and others have interpreted that to mean.
00:54:20So, here's another, or two, George Halton again.
00:54:24He says the perfection of all saints of the ages before depends on those who are now coming to perfection.
00:54:34Interesting.
00:54:34So, we talked about that once, about the great weight on people's shoulders.
00:54:42It's not really the take upon your shoulders, my yoke, for I am humble, and you will find peace for your souls.
00:54:53It's more like take upon the fate of all of the saints from previous years, including those alive today,
00:55:03that you are going to bring them into perfection to your—I usually think about that as like a symbiotic relationship
00:55:12where both sides are getting some sort of benefit from it.
00:55:16The folks on earth are getting their glorification, and likewise, the folks in this spiritual realm are gaining theirs at the same time.
00:55:28And so, another guy influenced by Leeds said,
00:55:30it is only through us, and that's all caps, we've seen that kind of stuff in tweets occasionally,
00:55:38it is only through us that the departed spirits from beyond the veil, that's like the way they talk,
00:55:45will be made perfect.
00:55:48And so, why does this even matter for today?
00:55:51Well, that brings us to the Gnar and theurgy.
00:55:54So, you mentioned the magazine Charisma.
00:56:00Well, Jennifer LeClaire is the senior editor of Charisma,
00:56:05and she recently wrote an article titled,
00:56:08What You Need to Know About Angelic Watchers.
00:56:12She says that angelic watchers are roaming the earth.
00:56:16Doesn't sound really like you'd want to meet one if they're roaming the earth,
00:56:21and they're waiting for an assignment.
00:56:25I think there was an early text in Lateran Writings,
00:56:28Angels on Assignment, something like that.
00:56:31But I would think if they're roaming the earth to get their assignments,
00:56:35from who?
00:56:36From me or you, John?
00:56:38I mean, let's, you know, somewhere somebody's got to get some sense about this stuff.
00:56:44So, but there's further issues related to this.
00:56:48Dutch Sheeps, another NARV-related guy, says,
00:56:52he says, he was told to take a team to Valley Forge
00:56:57because angels are in reserve there, and they need to be released.
00:57:03Paula White is Mr. Trump's senior advisor of White House Faith Office.
00:57:11She says, if you pay her $1,000, you will receive a personal angel.
00:57:16Now, on that one, I would really refer Mrs. White to Martin Luther.
00:57:28And one of the big reasons, he talked about the sale of indulgences.
00:57:33If that doesn't really ring a bell with the listeners,
00:57:36you can Google that, Martin Luther's sale of indulgences,
00:57:39and you'll see how strongly he felt about this,
00:57:43enough so that he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church.
00:57:48And, I mean, it's a long story, but to me, he's one of the heroes of the faith,
00:57:53even though he's not perfect by any means.
00:57:56But Mrs. White says she has had several angelic visitations from angels
00:58:02who have ministered to her.
00:58:04And she says, this is one of the ways that God speaks to us.
00:58:09So, that whole thing God told me,
00:58:12I don't know that I'd be waiting on an angel to appear and speak to me.
00:58:17Because, like you said, John, you can begin to make up stuff in your own head
00:58:21and assume, unrightly, that that's God speaking to you or the Spirit.
00:58:27Okay, back to Holly Pivick in June 9, 2022.
00:58:34She wrote a nice article, well done, called
00:58:37Nar Extremism, colon, Why Don't Leading Apostles Call It Out?
00:58:44And she says that this NAR leader, Carol,
00:58:48is not the only one who has promoted the practice of talking with dead believers
00:58:53or claiming to, quote, release and commission angels.
00:58:57According to Pivick, and she's very balanced.
00:59:02She doesn't come out and paint with a broad brush.
00:59:05She's a very balanced teacher.
00:59:08She says that this has actually become rather widespread.
00:59:12And what she talks about is that it's gone beyond the lines
00:59:16between charismatic Pentecostal on into denominational ideas of seeking the Lord
00:59:25through angels and waiting for their communications.
00:59:31So Carol says that God can communicate with us through those who have gone on before
00:59:38and are now living with Him.
00:59:39Bill Hammond, one of the favorites, of course, of all this kind of stuff,
00:59:45says that we must call the host of war angels to come and appoint themselves companions.
00:59:51Again, sounds very reminiscent of Valentinus and others.
00:59:57Those companions in the spiritual hierarchy.
01:00:02The elite must, according to Mr. Hammond, accept them.
01:00:07We do?
01:00:08Maybe I'm not one of the elite if I have to accept one of these angels
01:00:12and make them my companion.
01:00:15Oh, yeah, yeah.
01:00:15The companion word, that comes from Jane Lead.
01:00:18Directly?
01:00:19Indirectly?
01:00:19I don't know.
01:00:20And finally, Cindy Jacobs has this kind of question to tickle the ears of folks that read her books.
01:00:32She says, what do you think about God having a guardian angel assigned just for you?
01:00:37Well, the funny part about this is I can tell you how to achieve perfection
01:00:40in the way that these mystery cults can't, and I won't charge you $1,000 for it.
01:00:45But Jesus openly said the Bible, the law, and the prophets were summed up in these two things,
01:00:52love God above all else and love your neighbor as yourself.
01:00:56And you can walk through the New Testament, and you can see all these passages about putting on love,
01:01:02which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
01:01:04And if you love one another, God abides it in us, and his love is perfected in us.
01:01:09It's not about war.
01:01:10It's about love.
01:01:11And that's where you can see the real imbalance of this thing.
01:01:15They're teaching something that defies the laws of love.
01:01:19Yeah, John, it's very good to hear that positive conclusion.
01:01:25I have something here that I would call food for thought, and it wouldn't go against the positive applications of what you said.
01:01:33I express it pretty much in an if-then, and this is just speculation and take it for whatever.
01:01:42But the question really is, what are the implications of mixing perfection through contact with angels and universal restoration?
01:01:51It would seem they're sort of separate ideas, but if perfection comes through union with angels,
01:02:00and it is mixed with the idea of universal restoration, then what does it mean when Zane Leeds says that all apostatized souls,
01:02:11Lucifer and his angels, will descend to be restored through union with chosen vessels?
01:02:18Now, that's a big earful, but if you push pause and think about that, or, you know, late to this, like another promotion of my book,
01:02:30which John has already done very nicely, but I go into that a little bit more.
01:02:35It's a difficult question, and it's just at the level of implications.
01:02:43And to follow that up, if universal restoration is to convert the entire world, i.e. the billion,
01:02:51I was about to say the billion-dollar, billion-soul revival, something along those lines,
01:02:58and if this universal restoration is to happen before the literal individual return of the person, Jesus Christ,
01:03:10then whose kingdom would it be?
01:03:12Well, I can tell you what kingdom it sounds like, and it sounds an awful lot like one of these Ghostbusters movies.
01:03:18They're summoning all of these demons, and I just, I really want to get one of those things that shoots the beam of light,
01:03:24and whatever those things are called, I'm drawing a blank, but it's so absurd.
01:03:29What it becomes, you know, after you are able to deprogram from it and take a step back,
01:03:35it's like an adult version of a Dungeons & Dragons game.
01:03:38That's really all this is, and all of these adults got into the hype of it,
01:03:43and I'll admit it's fun to play a game, but whenever you're talking about this is in a church setting,
01:03:50when you're talking about playing games like this in church, it just, it has no place.
01:03:55It's not right, what the people are doing.
01:03:57So, thank you for helping expose the apostasy.
01:04:01You got it, John.
01:04:02Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:04:06You can find us at william-brannum.org.
01:04:09For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation,
01:04:12you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR,
01:04:16and for more about the Converging Apostasy, you can read the book The Converging Apostasy
01:04:21and also a quick outline of hands-on eschatology, A Matter of Timing and Agency.
01:04:26Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity, A Matter of Timing and Agency, A Matter of Timing and A Matter of Timing and Agency.
01:04:56Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity, A Matter of Timing and Agency, A Matter of Timing and Agency.
01:05:26Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity, A Matter of Timing and Agency, A Matter of Timing and leverage
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