John and Jed discuss the roots and dangers of Christian dominionism, tracing its evolution from early Pentecostalism to the Latter Rain movement, and finally into the modern New Apostolic Reformation. They explore how apocalyptic beliefs about escaping this world gave way to doctrines of earthly conquest and dominion, influenced by racial politics, Cold War nationalism, and Christian Identity teachings. John details how this transition was not just ideological but deeply political, as movements began targeting media, education, and government to assert control. They draw disturbing parallels between historical white nationalist strategies and today’s Seven Mountains theology, highlighting the repetition of history and its increasingly global impact.
The conversation exposes how seemingly spiritual teachings often mask authoritarian and exclusionary goals. Jed reflects on his own upbringing and the use of militaristic language in Christian songs and sermons, arguing that these narratives condition believers to accept conquest-oriented ideologies. Together, they dissect the contradictions between dominionism and the teachings of Jesus, noting how spiritual authority becomes a tool for manipulation and even violence. They reference specific examples—from anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda to tragic acts committed under serpent seed doctrines—showing how dangerous rhetoric can turn deadly. The episode ends with a warning: Christian dominionism is incompatible with democracy, and history proves that those who seek total control inevitably turn on each other.
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
00:00 Introduction
01:18 From Rapture to Dominion: A Shift in Pentecostal Mindset
04:10 The Latter Rain Movement and Civil Rights Backlash
07:00 The Seven Mountains Mandate and Its Origins
10:01 Brandhamism 2.0: Wax Museum Religion and the Militarization of Faith
12:24 Christian Identity and the Historical Roots of Dominionism
15:04 Supreme Kingdom and Segregationist Takeover of Institutions
17:04 Representation vs Dominion: Why the Distinction Matters
21:06 Global Spread of the Dominionist Cult Franchise
25:04 Invading Babylon: The Language of Spiritual Warfare
30:58 Biblical Contradictions to Kingdom Now Theology
34:00 International Prayer Networks and Covert Religious Strategy
37:01 Deflecting Criticism: The Slippery Nature of Dominionist Language
39:00 Serpent Seed Doctrine and Violent Outcomes
44:08 The Uganda Missions Controversy and IHOPKC’s Role
47:03 Militaristic Language and Its Real-World Consequences
50:00 Christian Dominionism vs Secular Democracy
52:03 Entertainment, Sin, and the Illusion of Moral Control
54:45 Gerald Winrod, Nazi Sympathizers, and Pentecostal Influence
57:07 Life Bible College, Wesley Swift, and the Spiritualization of Serpent See
The conversation exposes how seemingly spiritual teachings often mask authoritarian and exclusionary goals. Jed reflects on his own upbringing and the use of militaristic language in Christian songs and sermons, arguing that these narratives condition believers to accept conquest-oriented ideologies. Together, they dissect the contradictions between dominionism and the teachings of Jesus, noting how spiritual authority becomes a tool for manipulation and even violence. They reference specific examples—from anti-LGBTQ legislation in Uganda to tragic acts committed under serpent seed doctrines—showing how dangerous rhetoric can turn deadly. The episode ends with a warning: Christian dominionism is incompatible with democracy, and history proves that those who seek total control inevitably turn on each other.
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
00:00 Introduction
01:18 From Rapture to Dominion: A Shift in Pentecostal Mindset
04:10 The Latter Rain Movement and Civil Rights Backlash
07:00 The Seven Mountains Mandate and Its Origins
10:01 Brandhamism 2.0: Wax Museum Religion and the Militarization of Faith
12:24 Christian Identity and the Historical Roots of Dominionism
15:04 Supreme Kingdom and Segregationist Takeover of Institutions
17:04 Representation vs Dominion: Why the Distinction Matters
21:06 Global Spread of the Dominionist Cult Franchise
25:04 Invading Babylon: The Language of Spiritual Warfare
30:58 Biblical Contradictions to Kingdom Now Theology
34:00 International Prayer Networks and Covert Religious Strategy
37:01 Deflecting Criticism: The Slippery Nature of Dominionist Language
39:00 Serpent Seed Doctrine and Violent Outcomes
44:08 The Uganda Missions Controversy and IHOPKC’s Role
47:03 Militaristic Language and Its Real-World Consequences
50:00 Christian Dominionism vs Secular Democracy
52:03 Entertainment, Sin, and the Illusion of Moral Control
54:45 Gerald Winrod, Nazi Sympathizers, and Pentecostal Influence
57:07 Life Bible College, Wesley Swift, and the Spiritualization of Serpent See
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 and friend, Jed Hartley, son of
00:00:47a prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer.
00:00:51Jed, it's good to be back and to talk all things problematic in the world.
00:00:55We're stepping a little bit beyond IHOPKC, and now we're talking about more the New Apostolic
00:01:03Reformation flavor of Christianity.
00:01:06And I guess I should air quote Christianity because it really gets away from Christianity
00:01:13when you think about what we're about to talk about.
00:01:16But as Pentecostalism was transitioning into becoming the latter rain movement, there's
00:01:23this song that came to mind when you and I were discussing what we're talking about.
00:01:28And I can't remember the person who sang it or the songwriter, but it's basically, this
00:01:34world is not my home.
00:01:35I'm just passing through.
00:01:36We sang it in many of the churches that we grew up in.
00:01:40Some of the old-timers did.
00:01:42But there was this clear transition because as the fears of World War III started happening,
00:01:49everybody in the fundamentalist and Pentecostal and even some of the mainstream churches,
00:01:56they started this theme that this world is not my home.
00:01:59I'm just passing through.
00:02:00I'm going to be going to another kingdom, a far greater kingdom than this one.
00:02:03And this kingdom that exists will be gone.
00:02:07Many people subscribe to the rapture theology.
00:02:10You would be raptured before the coming impending doom.
00:02:14Not all, but some of the groups did.
00:02:17Our group did.
00:02:18We believed in a pre-tribulation rapture.
00:02:20But that theme was present.
00:02:22This world is not my home.
00:02:24This kingdom that we see is not mine.
00:02:27I'm just passing through.
00:02:28And then somewhere along the way, it began to shift.
00:02:31And I've been researching, trying to find and pinpoint exactly when that happened and why.
00:02:38It seems to coincide with the civil rights movement, ironically.
00:02:43Because ministers in the Lateran movement started proclaiming that we need to fix things right here and now.
00:02:51We need to step in.
00:02:52We need to involve ourselves in the government.
00:02:54There were ministers who were trying to involve themselves into the entertainment industry, especially the movie industry.
00:03:02I grew up just hating the I Love Lucy show.
00:03:08And not knowing why, man.
00:03:09Because in Branhamism and Lateran, that was the one that was most strongly condemned.
00:03:15And if you think about it.
00:03:16Really?
00:03:16Yes.
00:03:17And if you think about it, you have two people of not the same race who were in a sitcom together, married together.
00:03:26So, obviously, they're going to harshly condemn this, right?
00:03:29And I go back through all of the different things that were taught.
00:03:32It all seems to be in some way, shape, or form related to the politics of the era.
00:03:38And those politics have shifted and changed.
00:03:40In today's world, we have new politics and new, the greatest sins.
00:03:45I'm not going to name them.
00:03:46We'll have people send me hate mail.
00:03:48But there are sins that are mentioned today in today's political Christianity that weren't mentioned back then because they weren't the primary focus.
00:03:58And the ones mentioned back in the 50s and 60s aren't the ones that they condemn today because now many people have adopted those.
00:04:06And they're no longer sins, which is interesting.
00:04:08But, anyway, we're talking about dominionism.
00:04:12And I have a lot to say because I grew up in this weird, stagnant limbo.
00:04:19We were in a state of limbo of the 50s and 60s.
00:04:22So, I was in the world is not my home mindset.
00:04:25And Paul Kane and others who developed all of this nonsense from Branhamism, they kind of evolved into this world is our home.
00:04:34By golly, we're going to take dominion over it.
00:04:37We're going to bring the wrath of our church against the world.
00:04:43And you grew up in that world.
00:04:44So, I'm very interested to get into this.
00:04:46Yeah, it was funny when you were talking about the, this is not my world and I'm just passing through.
00:04:53You know, obviously, you and I have talked about the dangers of preparing and planning and orienting your life around the end of the world.
00:05:04And how that can be obviously very problematic of being like, not taking serious the time that you have on Earth today.
00:05:14But as you were talking about it, I was also like, well, I don't, I don't mind and I resonate more with some of that mentality.
00:05:22Now, let's take out the end time apocalyptic mentality that's fused along to it where I'm just waiting for the rapture.
00:05:30But this idea of like, what matters in life is this sort of supernatural, it's the kingdom in heaven.
00:05:39And it's like, for me, that mentality would be like, my job here on Earth is to love well and do well unto others so that I can store up treasures in heaven or whatever.
00:05:49But this idea that like, anti-materialistic, anti-wealth accumulation on Earth and it's sort of just this like, like the old Stoics, very Stoic of like, refusing the temptations and pleasures of the world because there is the greater supernatural significance of the great beyond and what will happen after we pass away.
00:06:19And just like, and just like, the things of the Earth don't matter as much like I resonate with some of those some some virtues in there.
00:06:28I'm like, okay, like, that that actually hits a positive association with me.
00:06:34And then when you were talking, I was like, oh, it's because, yeah, because it flipped.
00:06:39It was that was not the world that I grew up in.
00:06:41Of course, we were still worried about the end times and about Jesus coming back.
00:06:47But it's like, let us grab everything that we can before it was very materialistic.
00:06:54It's very growing in power, growing in dominion, growing in authority within the world that you're in.
00:07:03And like we talked about it in our last session of the like whole seven mountains mandate, which we referenced it before.
00:07:12But like specifically, there's this idea that there are seven spheres of influence.
00:07:19And this is talked about in several different ways.
00:07:22But sometimes they're called mountains.
00:07:23Sometimes they're called molehills.
00:07:25Sometimes they're called spheres.
00:07:27We as Christians need to take dominion.
00:07:32Oh, and take domain over those.
00:07:34And in it, I think it alludes like, of course, it this is something that has happened in like the 1960s or 1950s, 1940s and on, like started growing.
00:07:45Um, but, um, you know, in conjunction with the civil rights movement, I totally could see how it got, uh, reignited.
00:07:53Um, I mean, it also is just a lot of American Christianity since the beginning of like the, the, um, pioneer days, like the manifest destiny, the idea that like, this is the land that God has given us.
00:08:06And we shall take it, um, and conquer the wild, despite there being native populations already living in some of, some of these territories.
00:08:16And, um, despite, you know, like, which excuse things like the trail of tears and, and some horrific atrocities that happened.
00:08:25Um, I, I think that this has been an undercurrent of American Christianity since, you know, even before America was the United States of America, um, this has been a big theme.
00:08:38And I think that we're seeing a huge resurgence of it, of this being like, we're not called to be passive, you know, individuals who are waiting for the Lord to return.
00:08:49We are called to be active, um, pioneers or active soldiers.
00:08:54And you use a lot of militaristic language.
00:08:57Like, yeah, the, the, when you talk about the song that you listened to growing up, the one that I listened to growing up was, of course, uh, I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery.
00:09:11I may never something to something, but I'm in the Lord's army.
00:09:16Um, yes, you know, like the, the militaristic sort of like children's songs that we did that were a part of like Christian dominionism that's, you, you know, you don't really think as all that problematic.
00:09:32But then now that we're seeing it, I think it really is becoming quite problematic of where it's like, well, yeah.
00:09:42And that's where I think that we just need to start talking about like, what is dominionism actually?
00:09:46What does it mean to take dominion, um, in the United States in these spheres of influence?
00:09:53It's so funny listening to you talk and Bob Scott talk and others who I'm in contact with, because you'll say something and it will just explode a million thoughts in my head.
00:10:05So what you grew up in was Branhamism 2.0, even though there are things like this that are drastically different, the place of the kingdom, where the kingdom is, that's kind of a big difference.
00:10:16If you think about it, but my grandfather, after William Branham died and my grandfather seized control of the tabernacle, weird history there that Charles and I go through.
00:10:27But when my grandfather took over control, he created it in such a way, the services, that it became much like a wax museum.
00:10:37The people who returned to the tabernacle, you saw a bunch of people in the pews and they were singing, praising God, whatever.
00:10:44But the structure of the service, which was very, very set in stone, was exactly what William Branham had, right down to the songs they sang.
00:10:52I mean, it was statically a repeat of what Branham had in that church for years and years until my grandfather died.
00:11:02And every single Sunday, even whenever I was somewhat too young to remember, I'm told they still did, they sang that exact song, I'm in the Lord's Army.
00:11:13And there are others.
00:11:14When I was talking to Brantley, he was going through some of the things that he did and sang.
00:11:19And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me, man.
00:11:20They really recreated Branhamism.
00:11:23But they didn't recreate the kingdom.
00:11:26And when I started working with Brantley, before you and I spun this off, I had been deep into my research with – I may have published it before, Brantley, I can't remember.
00:11:37But I had been deep into my research for my Christian identity book.
00:11:41I had discovered that basically this entire thing came from Christian identity.
00:11:46And what is Christian identity?
00:11:48I had to even learn that.
00:11:49I had no idea.
00:11:50I just – when I hear that term, I think of the rednecks wearing the rebel flags with their guns, you know, carrying downtown, all the weird stuff that goes with it.
00:12:01But it's much deeper than that.
00:12:03And like you say, it's deeply rooted in – to be an American, part of this is it's Christian nationalism.
00:12:11So there's this Christian nationalism aspect to it.
00:12:14But even deeper than that, the history of the movement's influence, the Christian identity's influence on Pentecostalism, latter rain, charismania, and beyond, it's astounding.
00:12:29And the moment in which I – I had never heard of the seven mountains, and I heard somebody just use that term.
00:12:36I started looking to – I'm thinking, you've got to be kidding me, man.
00:12:40This is a complete repeat of what happened in the 40s, what happened again in the 60s.
00:12:45And I started just documenting that.
00:12:47And we spun off another series with John McKinnon, where we're talking about weaponized religion.
00:12:55And in the early years, as the Klan was kind of falling into disarray, there was this movement that developed called the Supreme Kingdom.
00:13:03And think of the similarities between this and the seven mountains.
00:13:07They wanted to fight against the government because the government was allowing desegregation of school systems and was not permitting them to keep black and white children separate.
00:13:20And they were fighting against the Catholics.
00:13:23They did not like the Catholics, the Jews, or mixed races.
00:13:27So, they rose in opposition to the government, also started rising up against the school systems.
00:13:36And one of their first initiatives was to go through and fire a bunch of teachers in Georgia.
00:13:41So, they're taking over the mountains of government, over the mountains of education.
00:13:45They then tried to enter the film industry because the film industry was basically taking everything that the Klan stood against and making it appear to be more common, which is exactly the argument being made by the NAR.
00:14:02So, the Klan started creating film companies, and they started producing propaganda films.
00:14:08Oh, right.
00:14:08And they played these all throughout the churches.
00:14:12Yeah.
00:14:12The Birth of a Nation, I think.
00:14:14The Birth of a Nation is one that actually sparked the Klan.
00:14:17But after that, the Klan themselves started producing videos, and they were playing these videos in churches.
00:14:23So, you've got the mountains of entertainment, the mountains of family.
00:14:28They were having picnics.
00:14:29You had the mountains of government.
00:14:31Basically, everything that is in the NAR-7 mountain mandate, they were doing back – that started probably the late 1920s.
00:14:40But then it became really focused, hyper-focused, after the Scopes Monkey Trial.
00:14:48And I documented some of that history.
00:14:50They really got into the education sphere.
00:14:53But what happened was – I can't remember the guy's name, but the main ally that they had in Washington, when he died, there was a Christian identity religious figure who's tied very closely to Branhamism and everything Branham stood for, tied very closely to the Fuller Theological Seminary.
00:15:13They started holding these big conventions, talking about how Christian fundamentalism needed to fight the education system.
00:15:24And that went nationwide.
00:15:26They're holding all of these conferences and groups.
00:15:28Anyway, this developed into this weird history.
00:15:30And once I discovered this, and at the same time I'm researching IHOPKC, I'm starting to see elements of that transition through Branhamism – Branham didn't invent this, it was before him – through Branhamism into IHOPKC.
00:15:46And suddenly, my mind was blown.
00:15:49Like, how did this survive, and how does nobody recognize that this history is just repeating itself over and over again?
00:15:57Yeah, absolutely.
00:15:58And I think that that's where it starts becoming a little eerie, too, of when you see iterations of what it's looked like in the past and clear arms and extensions of the KKK and of very xenophobic and racist ideologies that were spread.
00:16:18You know, I know that when I talk about the Seven Mountains mandate and all of this, in the past, I've raised red flags about it when I was still sort of halfway in or even fully involved in the YWAM and the Bethel and IHOP communities.
00:16:41And people would downplay the sort of danger of it.
00:16:48They would downplay that it's not something that is a danger to other – it's more just like this is – we want to make sure that we are properly represented in all of these areas of society.
00:17:04And I think that this is a really good distinction.
00:17:07There's a huge difference between representation and dominion.
00:17:10And it is very explicitly clear that this group and this movement is for the latter, not the former.
00:17:19It's not about representation of Christian ideology as properly represented in media and all these different things.
00:17:27Representation is great.
00:17:28Representation is great.
00:17:28You want to know that, like, people who are similar to me, who think like me, are in government so that they're thinking about me.
00:17:36You know, like, I totally understand this idea of wanting to have your government, your entertainment industry, your religion, you know, the media, education, all kind of represent and accept you and your political, religious, racial opinion and identity.
00:17:56Like, that is – that makes sense.
00:17:58Dominion is that you want your ideology to be the only thing that's represented.
00:18:04It's not – it's exclusive representation.
00:18:08And it makes it impossible for other individuals who are Catholic, you know, or who are Jewish or, you know, God forbid, believe, you know, are Muslim than, you know, for other individuals who are a part of different traditions to also be represented in these communities.
00:18:28It's like, that's the problem.
00:18:30And so, when you see integration happening, you see this outpouring of dominionism because what is happening?
00:18:41Oh, people of different racial groups are suddenly being represented in education that was previously exclusively only for white Christian Anglo-Saxon Protestants, you know?
00:18:54And I think that that's happening now, too, is there's a lot of, like – maybe it isn't as explicitly, like, racially motivated.
00:19:07Well, I say that.
00:19:08Maybe it's not.
00:19:09I personally, like, I don't know.
00:19:11If you spend any time on Twitter and you read a lot of, like, the Christian dominionists on Twitter, like, maybe we should just start believing them.
00:19:19This is something that, like, talking to other individuals where it's like, no, it's not racially motivated.
00:19:24It's not racist.
00:19:25It's not this.
00:19:26Maybe we should just believe the people who are speaking on Twitter and, like, they're not just joking around.
00:19:32Like, I teach a lot of young middle school students and I do tutoring and stuff like that.
00:19:40And there is a – even in – I live in California.
00:19:43There is a definitive shift towards, like, real sexism and xenophobia in young adult males right now.
00:19:53And they are kind of championing and echoing some of the stuff that they're finding on Twitter and just on social media in general that is, like, really painting villains of everyone who is not within the domain of their kind of religion.
00:20:15And it's funny because that looks differently.
00:20:19Like, you'll have different versions of dominionism based on, like, the identity of the individual.
00:20:25Obviously, the one that we've been most familiar with is the sort of Pentecostal, white Pentecostal seeds of dominionism.
00:20:34But, like – so, internationally, this is happening in other places.
00:20:39Like, these same New Apostolic Reformation and latter reign beliefs and movements are happening in all over the globe.
00:20:49And in different places, it'll be – you know, the taking dominion, it doesn't have to look the same every single time.
00:21:00Like, it can be a different people group who is kind of, like, taking over that sort of, like, religious nationalism.
00:21:08And you see the same – I think we've – I've mentioned before the, like, cult franchise and how the latter reign is really just, like –
00:21:18It gave the blueprint of how to create your own cult in your own city and with your own sort of –
00:21:26Take a few of their belief systems, replace them with yours, you know, have a little bit of that, a little bit of this.
00:21:33Use Christianity as the, like, backbone of it.
00:21:37But as you said at the very beginning of this, like, is it even Christianity anymore?
00:21:41Not really.
00:21:42It's just, like, this is the cult franchise.
00:21:46And it's happening in the United States.
00:21:48It's happening internationally as well.
00:21:52There's, like, specific – I remember talking with someone who was a German journalist.
00:21:59And she was asking me questions about Bill Johnson.
00:22:04And she was asking me about Bob Jones.
00:22:07And who was it?
00:22:09There was one other person who had gone out to Germany.
00:22:14I can't remember who it was.
00:22:16It might have been Paul Kane.
00:22:17But she was asking me – she was, like, there is this sort of Christian nationalism that is, like, reigniting in Germany.
00:22:27And its roots are – and she started mentioning the people that I know and I'm familiar with.
00:22:33Like, she was, like, oh, we've heard tell of, like, Bob Jones here in Germany.
00:22:39And it's really weird.
00:22:41Oh, I think Branham himself might have even traveled to Germany and asked questions about – she was asking questions.
00:22:48I think it was.
00:22:49Maybe even it was about Branham.
00:22:51But this sort of Latter Rain movement was, like, is popping up in other places in the world.
00:23:00And it all has this sort of militaristic, dominionistic, let's take – let's not get representation in all seven spheres of society.
00:23:13Let's take control of all seven spheres of society.
00:23:17Yeah, it was Branham and it was Paul Kane.
00:23:19Yeah, that makes sense.
00:23:20Yeah, and she – and it was shocking to me that she also knew who Bob Jones was.
00:23:26And, you know, because he's this podunk prophet of the hills who came from North Carolina and was kind of crazy and didn't have this sort of international presence, I would think.
00:23:41And I don't even know if he traveled to Germany or not, but she's talking – she's, like, telling me more about, yeah, Branham, Paul Kane, Bob Jones.
00:23:50And she had heard of my dad and all of this, and I was just, like, it's crazy that it's spreading.
00:23:58So, it makes sense when you think of it in that sort of cult franchise thing of, like, if you have a people group who is wanting to take dominion over their sort of society and they're feeling the, like, invading forces of other external sort of individuals, this sort of xenophobic mentality of, like, I don't want other people who look different and act different and believe different than me.
00:24:26And I want to make sure that my group is the only group that gets a say on what happens in my world.
00:24:33The formula that was cooked up by Branham and others – obviously, he wasn't the only one who did it – of the whole latter rain movement provides a pretty nice formula to take what is the dominant Western religion and retool it to be something that is used to gain dominion and control over your world.
00:25:01And, like, they're not being subtle about it.
00:25:04I don't know why this isn't talked about more, but, like, Bill Johnson and Lance Wallnau wrote a book that was literally titled Invading Babylon, The Seven Mountain Mandate.
00:25:17And it's not just, you know, it's not just, you know, it's not just, like, a goal, it's a mandate.
00:25:23It's, like, God has given this as a command to us that we must invade Babylon.
00:25:30And the word Babylon was used in very, very loaded ways to speak about secular women or, you know, like, or the way that I have heard the term Babylon used to, like, be really prejudicial against different individuals.
00:25:53So, you know, it's not even being subtle.
00:25:57It's not like, hmm, we're going to – it's not like the Catholic mission where it's, like, let's go establish a presence in all across the world, but we're going to, like, do it with hospitals.
00:26:11And, you know, we're going to have, like, schools and hospitals that we create all across the world.
00:26:18It's, like, no, let's let – we're going to invade and we're going to, like, culturally take dominion over these spheres.
00:26:26And, like, I don't think that it wouldn't be – I think that it could easily turn to actual violence if – I mean, if that's what – if that's what happened, that would not be – it would not be crazy if – to look back and be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26:43But they were stirring up actual, like, warmongering rhetoric.
00:26:48I don't know why that's not talked about more.
00:26:51Have 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?
00:27:04You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:27:11On 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.
00:27:25You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
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00:27:50Whenever I was in the Branham cult, I was an oddity, because I am one of the people who read my Bible.
00:27:57And I read it often and frequently, and not just like some people do.
00:28:01They'll take the—you've seen these programs where you read a Bible passage each day, and you can read the Bible in so many days.
00:28:08I didn't do that.
00:28:09They're books, man.
00:28:10I read them like books.
00:28:11Right.
00:28:11Like if I went to a library and checked out a book, I would read it like this.
00:28:14So I knew the Bible.
00:28:16However, through the mind control, it made it difficult because there were certain things that when I would read it, my head would just glaze over.
00:28:25And I would totally miss that I'm living in something that this passage is actually condemning.
00:28:31Yeah.
00:28:31So I just kind of, through the mind control, I missed a lot of things.
00:28:35But then after I left and we started attending Christian churches, I found myself still being an oddity because I read my Bible.
00:28:44And I was a little surprised to learn just how few Christians actually read the thing.
00:28:51And, you know, it was mind-boggling for me.
00:28:53If you're a Christian and this is your worldview and this is the book that has the roadmap to the kingdom, why are you not reading the book with the roadmap, right?
00:29:01But then I became even more surprised once I realized what was built on top of Branhamism, this whole kingdom theology.
00:29:13As soon as I understood what it was and why it existed and how Branham played a role in creating it through Christian identity, of course, I was even more surprised.
00:29:24Because instantly, whenever I came across the Seven Mountain Mandate and Dominionism, I've talked about the kingdom now.
00:29:33And I got into a little bit of a debate and some heat because of John Wimber's The Kingdom versus The Kingdom Now theology.
00:29:41See, in my head, whenever I see this, they're both so far off of the base of what the Bible is talking about.
00:29:48I put them into the same bucket.
00:29:50So, even though, yes, they are slightly different, they're still the same kind of thing.
00:29:55You're taking the kingdom and you're moving it to a different place.
00:29:58It's not what the Bible says.
00:30:00And as I'm reading through some of the theologies of, like you said, Bill Johnson and some of the others, my head instantly goes to all these Bible passages that I remember.
00:30:11What is it?
00:30:12In 1 John, there's a passage that Jesus says,
00:30:15My kingdom's not of this world.
00:30:17If it were, my servants would die fighting for me.
00:30:20And you've got the biggest scene of all where Satan takes Jesus up on the mountain and the great temptation.
00:30:28And he says, look at all these kingdoms of the world.
00:30:30And Jesus said, you can have it.
00:30:32It's not mine.
00:30:33This is mine's mine's a different kingdom than this, Satan.
00:30:36And I mean, I could go on and on.
00:30:39There are passages in Luke where it says that the kingdom of God is within you.
00:30:44It's not of this place.
00:30:45And I mean, you can go on and on and on.
00:30:48Every description of the kingdom is not what we have today.
00:30:51But that's what these leaders were proclaiming.
00:30:54And at the same time, as I'm starting to research and understand what Christian identity was and how destructive it was and dangerous it was and militant it was.
00:31:06This is what created the Aryan nations and these neo-Nazi groups.
00:31:11This is the same theology that was ironically prevalent during latter reign and some of the latter reign ministries, but then kind of went underground in the 60s and came out in all kinds of domestic terrorism and different organizations.
00:31:26But they were teaching that the enemy was rising up to take over the United States.
00:31:32We need to arm ourselves.
00:31:34We need to fight it.
00:31:35And that enemy is Babylon.
00:31:37It was called Mystery Babylon.
00:31:39And so the moment I heard, I can't remember exactly who it was.
00:31:44I think it was Bill Johnson, but it was one of these guys.
00:31:47They're teaching their dominionism theology and they get into the Mystery Babylon.
00:31:52And I'm like, oh my gosh, man, were they listening to the neo-Nazis or these other groups?
00:31:57I don't know.
00:31:58So, but as I'm thinking through it, like you said, there are, it is a destructive theology in the hands of very destructive men, many of which are cults.
00:32:10And if I apply what happened to me in Branhamism, Branhamism wasn't physically militant.
00:32:18Like we didn't carry, well, some groups did, but in the main sect, we didn't carry the weapons and we didn't do all the weird nonsense.
00:32:26But I was manipulated and programmed such that when I would read a Bible passage, the very thing that is condemning everything that I'm in, in this religion, my mind is glazed over and I just can't, like I can't see it.
00:32:42It's like it's unclear to me.
00:32:43Think of the groups now that are teaching this dominion theology and that's their focus.
00:32:49The government is our focus, the government of today, the foreign nations.
00:32:53And as I'm doing that research, I'm also researching the shift between Branhamism to IHOPKC through Paul Cain and others.
00:33:04When Branham was in Germany, he was touring, ironically, with a homosexual group of men, which is another story for another day, even though he taught against homosexuality.
00:33:19One of the men was the German Baron Frere von Blumberg, the adopted cousin of Wernher von Blumberg, who was Hitler's minister of defense.
00:33:33Okay.
00:33:33So, this is a significant character.
00:33:36He was also a director, I think he was a director, in Bob Jones University.
00:33:43So, he's deeply tied to fundamentalism.
00:33:46At the same time, he is the German Baron in Bob Jones.
00:33:51He is also one of the international directors of the Fellowship International before it became named the Fellowship.
00:33:59And we've heard that – we've talked some, I think, about the national prayer breakfast and how they're influencing politicians in Washington.
00:34:07What we haven't talked about is that many people mistake this for an American agenda, and it isn't.
00:34:13But, Wernher von Blumberg, well, Frere T. von Blumberg, his mission was to establish these similar prayer breakfasts with other national governments worldwide.
00:34:26So much so that the CIA got involved trying to figure out, what is this?
00:34:31Is this Christianity?
00:34:32And so, he, who is sponsoring all these latter-in guys and their revivals and paying for it and setting up prayer breakfasts in other countries, they finally honed in on him specifically.
00:34:46Because here's a man who's in this fundamentalist religion who, as he's traveling and conducting all of these things with people like Paul Cain, with people like William Branham, he's having male escorts in and out of his hotels.
00:35:00And the CIA is like, wait a minute, if this is a Christian man running Christian operations, why is he so openly homosexual?
00:35:09They all condemn it.
00:35:10So, they started investigating him.
00:35:12I've even got some of that documentation on the website.
00:35:16And come to find out, they cornered him on that exactly and asked, is this a religious institution?
00:35:22He says, no, this is not Christian.
00:35:25This is welcoming of all religions or something to that effect.
00:35:28So, he's setting up these, I don't know what you call them, but they're prayer breakfasts.
00:35:33They're under the disguise of Christianity, but they're not Christianity.
00:35:38And its sole purpose, if you think about what that is, its sole purpose is not just national dominionism in the United States.
00:35:46They're talking about a global purge of what exists worldwide.
00:35:51And these are the same group of men that are preaching the mystery Babylon theology, Christian identity, all of the negative things in the 60s that literally brought the race riots.
00:36:03They're now doing it under covert operations in Christianity.
00:36:07And I think that, so, I'm sure that we're going to get some kickback, or I could imagine, maybe we won't, but kickback from our previous one where we were kind of talking about YWAM and how they were adopting some of the same language and styles and strategies of the Hitler Youth Program.
00:36:28And I think this is sort of the similar, like, look at where these things originate.
00:36:35And I think that there will be this sort of defense of, okay, it's not really like that.
00:36:42You know, like, it's, you know, you're making, it's, um, straw man sort of arguments of like, this is, this is the boogeyman putting Christian, um, YWAM next to big boogeyman stuff or, or the national prayer breakfast.
00:37:00And then having it a part of like Nazism is, is like, you know, feels very sensational.
00:37:07But I don't think, I think that what I'm trying to argue and what I agree with you with, and I don't, I don't know if this is exactly, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but like, I think the whole alarm that I'm trying to raise with this is that the rhetoric and the language and the history of that rhetoric and language is so dangerous, is so, um, destructive.
00:37:33And is it being always used?
00:37:36Is everyone who is using this rhetoric wanting the extermination of, of, uh, people groups who don't fall in line with their ideology?
00:37:46No, not necessarily.
00:37:47Um, is it being used for that?
00:37:50Explicitly, yes.
00:37:51And I think that this is a big thing too, with, um, you talk about like the, there, knowing what the, is being explicitly said and what is being said behind the scenes, like there are two different things.
00:38:05And so, um, when you talk explicitly and use this sort of seven mountains rhetoric and this dominionist rhetoric of like, let's establish, um, dominion in all of these arenas, like that's explicitly what's being said.
00:38:21Well, then behind the scenes, um, there was, there are horrific, like I've seen a lot of the, um, I have seen, uh, rehashing of, of some of the more, um, horrific ideas, um, that was like within Branism, um, like the serpent seed, um, uh, belief.
00:38:47The idea, some iteration that like, there is that, that demons and, um, have, have put their seed into the world.
00:39:01Like the serpent slept with Eve, what there's different, there's different theories and different threads of what it looks like of, but basically like that Cain and his descendants are, are that of, of, um, demonic sort of like
00:39:17heritage and, and, and I've seen, um, so there was this one individual who was, uh, in, he was associated with Bethel and I'm not going to tell the whole story and I'm going to try to tell it in a way that some of, I don't get us, um, in trouble with the censors, but, um, there was just this really horrific story that people can look up about, um, a man who, uh, just kind of went off the edge.
00:39:45He believed that, um, he believed that, um, his, uh, children had been infected by the like demon serpent seed and it, and it kind of crossed over with, um, both sort of these, these serpent seed, um, beliefs and the serpent DNA.
00:40:04Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where it's this sort of like, there's an underground race of people who are controlling and, you know, uh, Hillary Clinton secretly, uh, uh, a lizard person or something like that. Um, I mean, people really are starting to believe these things and people are, are sharing these things and it's not violent until it is violent, you know?
00:40:25And this individual obviously dealt with mental illness and stuff, but he ended up killing both of his, uh, children because he became obsessed with this idea that they had been infected with this serpent, um, DNA.
00:40:43And he, um, um, was closely affiliated with Bethel. Um, and I know this because I, for a period of time, I was traveling with my dad and right after this had happened, this man's best friend was like staying with my dad and I.
00:41:03Um, and he was talking about some of the things that had happened and was dealing with alcoholism and was like losing his own family and stuff. Like he was in a, a real bad place. And it was honestly quite scary living with this individual and because his, his best friend had just gone off the deep end. And so I'm getting some of this.
00:41:26And until this day, I don't know if there's many people who have linked the violence that this individual committed to some of the rhetoric of like the latter rain movement besides me, because I was like, Oh, Hey, hang on. I, I see these two, two different things that when people are like, Oh, he just went crazy. It's like, okay. Yeah. But what, what beliefs did he go crazy about?
00:41:52What was the, you know, gateway into these sort of insane stuff? And I'm, I'm not making the argument that everyone who believes these things will go insane and kill their children. Like that's obviously very intense. Um, but I don't think that we, like, I certainly did not realize how violent and dangerous the rhetoric that I believed in was.
00:42:17And you can see it like that. It, it, you know, the, the branching off of the latter rain movement, you have the, um, like largest suicide cult in human history with, um, people's temple. Yeah. Where you, they use a lot of the same rhetoric and stuff to get to a place where you have this huge suicide cult. And so, you know, to know it, how dangerous some in proximity, a lot of these beliefs are.
00:42:45And then you see behind the scenes, some of the dangerous, uh, abuse that was going on at the international house of prayer and just the way that, um, sexual abuse was happening and was rampant within, um, that world. Um, you start being like, Hey, maybe, maybe it isn't crazy to think that this, these really dangerous adjacent beliefs could cause some really dangerous actual violence.
00:43:12Um, and the one, another example of this would be, um, there was a documentary that came out in, I think it was 2013 or so. That's called God loves Uganda. Have you, do you know about this?
00:43:27Okay. So there, there, there, there was this documentary about basically to give, give a broad summary. It followed sort of Christian missionaries in Uganda, along with like Christians in Uganda who were wanting to establish some, um, really, uh, well, the, the, the, the people in Uganda were trying to establish, uh, legislation against, um, homosexual, like making,
00:43:57making homosexual activity in Uganda criminal and punishable, um, in various different, like extreme ways. And so it was the sort of like, it was a secular, uh, documentary that was kind of raising a red flag. And it was very postured and positioned to be like, there are these Christian missionaries coming over being anti, you know, being homophobic, anti LGBTQ, um, in their rhetoric and saying,
00:44:27you know, homosexuality is a sin and preaching against the dangers of homosexuality. And that was then being adopted into some more like violence. Um, okay, this is going to be criminalized. And there was going to be, there's a lot of concern of like witch hunt stuff of people, you know, accusing others of being gay when they aren't or, you know, not. And, um,
00:44:53just the scare, like, that's when the rubber hits the road of like, it is a belief system. And then suddenly it becomes a violent belief system where now you have a state enforcing the religious beliefs of a group of individuals, um, to punish those who believe and have a different identity. Um, what's crazy is that the missions group that they follow is from the international house of prayer.
00:45:19I know some of the kids, like it was my age. It was, it was the same dominion. Like I went to dominion Christian school with some of these different, um, young students. Like I could have very well be on, been on this missions trip, but I, I wasn't. Um, but like, I, I still know that my, a friend of mine Truman was like, I remember him being in the movie and, uh, in the documentary.
00:45:46And I remember also, this was one of the first instances where people raised a lot of red flags about the international house of prayer. And I heard from the sort of inside defense. Like I heard how we kind of defended ourselves against this, um, attack.
00:46:05And, or what was presumed to be attack. And it was like, basically the whole thing was like, yes, we, we don't believe, we believe that homosexuality is sin. We believe that, you know, you may not be able to enter into the kingdom of heaven if you are homosexual, but like, we are firmly against violence against these things. And like, this is just because, you know, it's not our fault, basically.
00:46:31Like we are trying to spread the good news of Jesus. Like, it's not our fault. Like we're against this bill that is coming up. Um, and like on one end, like I get where we were coming from, where, where I remember John O'Hall wrote an opinion piece about this.
00:46:48And he was like, we're painted as these, I hop is painted as these huge villains when it's like, this is not what we're trying to do. And it's like, um, but it kind of is like, that's kind of what is happening, right? Like that. And again, it's this sort of like, the, the beliefs themselves provide avenues for violence.
00:47:12And so we're bringing these beliefs and sure, maybe if you ask most people in the missions movement, whether or not they want to see this bill enacted and like, want to see, um, you know, people who are homosexual be put in prison for life. Um, they would say, no, oh, that's too extreme.
00:47:32But like the rhetoric that they are packaging, um, provides an avenue for it. And before people get up in arms about that, it's like, well, if you don't want militaristic action, do not have militaristic language.
00:47:50Like it's pretty straightforward. Like if you want to say, that's not what we're preaching. Don't call it invasions. Don't call it like Lord's army stuff. Don't call it, you know, um, don't have all of this very militaristic language around sin and the whole Joel's army rhetoric.
00:48:08Like I was raised being called a part of Joel's army. The young students who went during to, as a part of this missions group were among the Joel's army generation. If you don't want to be accused of militaristic and violent action, then you cannot be propagating militaristic language.
00:48:34Like it's, I don't know how we continue to play this, play this sort of carousel game of having individuals being like, oh, that's not us. We're innocent. This is just, this is sort of my, and it's actually the left is not tolerant of, uh, like I can't believe they're not tolerant of our beliefs. And it's like, yeah, they're not tolerant of militaristic language against it. Like that there's no, you can't have those things.
00:49:02They don't exist. And that's the whole point of dominionism. Like Christian dominionism in the United States is incompatible with secular democracy. It's like fundamentally incompatible. And there's a lot of commission Christian dominionists who would agree with this exactly what I'm saying.
00:49:19They would be like, yeah, he's right. So therefore get rid of secular democracy. You know, the whole idea is that the whole, we need to establish a presence in the world in which we have dominion over all of these spheres of society.
00:49:37That is inherently oppositional to the idea of like every voice ought to be represented in democracy, regardless of like religion, race, creed, nationality, like that people should be able to have a say on what their government is doing and how they are governed and what their society looks like.
00:49:59That is proportional to, you know, that is proportional to, you know, the population of the democracy. Like that's, that's just the inherent principle of democracy and Christian dominionism is incompatible with it.
00:50:12And yet we have probably a good portion of our Senate and our, who are, you know, the, the, a lot of Trump's cabinet are in the new apostolic reformation veins who are like explicitly trying to establish this Christian dominionism.
00:50:35And I don't, I frankly don't think it's talked about enough. I don't think that I don't, people are like, ah, the media will hyper sensationalize it and they will, you know, make it a bigger deal than it is. I don't think they're making a big enough deal of it. Quite frankly, I don't want to, I don't want to raise, um, you know, fear mongering about this, but I need, I think that people need to be like, let's take it serious.
00:51:05Let's take serious. The words that are being spoken. When Bill Johnson and Lance Wallnau say, let's invade Babylon and establish dominion over all seven spheres of society. Let's take them seriously. That let's believe that their intention is to invade all of these different spheres of society.
00:51:24You know, my mind is somewhat blown. I wish we'd had this conversation while I was writing my book. As I was writing this book, Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
00:51:35I actually, I focused an entire chapter dedicated to the man who believed his children had serpents DNA, because I can tell you exactly where that came from and why and why he killed them and the whole, it's, it's a sad story.
00:51:49What I didn't have was, I did not know that that was connected to Bethel, which is, that would have been fascinating for this book. But everything that you have said, if people knew the actual history of what this is, and why it is, I mean, for one thing, if people understood what they're preaching, they wouldn't even want it.
00:52:11So one of the notions is, we need to conquer the entertainment industry. And I've had, I had a lengthy conversation with a guy who was going to have me on his podcast until like the very next week.
00:52:27And I had a person on my podcast who, in the past, I think he was homosexual. I can't remember how it all was. But anyway, he wasn't even talking about it. Like he just mentioned, I was at that time homosexual. And I was in, who was it? The guy, Robert's Learden. He was in Robert's Learden's church.
00:52:49And he started talking about, you know, Learden's came out as, you know, as a homosexual. So he was, he was talking about that. Well, the guy wouldn't let me on his podcast. He says, you should have strongly condemned this man who was on your podcast. Like, sorry, I don't even want to be doing anything with you.
00:53:06But the politicized version of Christianity, the reason why they want to conquer the entertainment industry is because now entertainment is showing and portraying homosexuals in a common setting. So they're in like sitcoms, right? And they say, this is sin, and we can't let sin come into our homes through the television. And the common person just eats it up. But what about the murder mysteries?
00:53:34I love a good murder mystery. That's sin. That's probably, you know, I'll probably get kicked back for saying this, but that's a little bit worse, right? You're actually, you're actually killing somebody. And the irony is they have so hypercharged this issue and politicized it, that people actually think the homosexuality is worse than the murder. But they're showing the same thing. So am I allowing murder in my home? Am I allowing to commonplace murder? No.
00:54:03If they were to adopt everything that they're pushing, where the preachers can dictate what's on the television screens, and they start, what if some guy gets on a rampant preaching spree against the murder mysteries? Well, now you take off a whole genre of television, right?
00:54:21And you can go right down the line. There's all kinds of different sins that you can take off. Every villain is a sinner. So you take villains out where you've got no balance between the good and evil in the show, and there's no suspense, man. It's like, do you guys even know what this would be like if you adopted this?
00:54:42But the interesting part is, like you said, the serpent's DNA. People don't realize where this came from. So earlier, I mentioned that there was a Christian identity figure who was deeply tied to Branhamism and tied to all of this. His name was Gerald Burton Wynrod.
00:54:58And I go through this in the book. He was one of the most notorious Christian identity figures. He went to Germany, had counsel with Hitler. I think it was Hitler. But he comes back. He goes to Germany, a poor man. He comes back, and he suddenly got more money than he knows what to do with, instantly, just from his trip to Germany.
00:55:20And there's a lot of questions about what happened there. He got so much money that he was funded, and he started holding these big conventions, these Christian identity conventions. And in the conventions, he was selling this racist, anti-Semitic book called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the number one Jewish propaganda book in world history. This guy was peddling this.
00:55:45And Charles Fuller, the head of the Fuller Theological Seminary, was his partner in this, and they were all over the nation, right? Well, Amy Semple McPherson's church, which is one of the big ones in Pentecostalism, the Sunday after the Night of the Broken Glass in Germany, when all of the Jewish homes, businesses, everything was raided, and Nazis were being called out in the United States, that Sunday, she brings this guy into her apartment.
00:56:15This guy in the pulpit. This guy is nicknamed the Kansas Hitler, the Jayhawk Nazi, and apparently, I don't have their curriculum, so I can't say with certainty, but if you look at what happened next, it's very clear that Life Bible College started teaching the ideas, because you have very, very notorious Christian identity figures coming out of this.
00:56:38And they start invading American Christianity for everything from Pentecostalists to Baptists and beyond.
00:56:45Gordon Lindsay, who was William Branham's campaign manager, he founded Christ for the Nations, he started holding – he was the keynote speaker in multiple of these racist conventions, Christian identity conventions.
00:56:58Chuck Smith came out of Life Bible College. I mean, there's so many people that come out of this, and you can't say that each one continued and went rogue, but there were some very notorious ones, like Wesley Swift, who came out of Life Bible College, and he's working to also spread the mystery Babylon theology. He's getting very militant. They actually took up arms in California under him. So all of this is tied to the same thing.
00:57:27Brannham starts teaching Wesley Swift's Christian identity doctrine, Serpent Seed. He rebranded it.
00:57:34And then what happened is, when the government stepped in and they started rising in opposition to all of the people who were fighting against civil rights, this all went underground.
00:57:47And Brannham started teaching that it wasn't a blood lineage, even though Eve mated with the serpent to produce cane.
00:57:56He started teaching that it became, over time, a spiritual lineage. And so people were publicly teaching that it was a spiritual serpent seed, while behind the scenes, Branham is telling – I can't remember who, it's on my website – but he's telling people that the child that was birthed between the sexual union between Eve and the serpent was black as the ace of spades.
00:58:22And when he gives the lineage of the lineage of the history of that bloodline, he traces it through the dark-skinned people in Africa.
00:58:29So it is a very racist, racist doctrine.
00:58:34Yeah, yeah.
00:58:35But what happened was, as it became spiritualized, people couldn't put into words, well, what does that mean? If it started out as an actual blood union, and then later in history, world history became a spiritual thing, how does that transition – and there was no word for it, because common people didn't understand DNA.
00:58:56Once they began to understand DNA, they started, oh, it's the serpent's DNA. That's how this has survived throughout this time. And that's what – that's literally what led to the QAnon nonsense.
00:59:08And there was this movement called Q Evangelicals that we're teaching QAnon in evangelical settings.
00:59:15I mean, this is a big, big deal. I document it through the book. It's way more than I can talk about here.
00:59:21But everything that we're talking about, this dominion, this control, none of it matches the Bible.
00:59:27If you just simply go back and do – go to Google, go to like BibleGateway.com, do a search for kingdom and read everything that it says, it actually condemns these preachers for what they're saying.
00:59:40Yeah.
00:59:41And then you read through it and you're like, oh, wait a minute. They have the Bible. They're preaching from it. They have to know that what they're preaching is actually anti-biblical.
00:59:49So then it raises for me the real question. If every single minister who's teaching this, like Bill Johnson, they have the same access to the same tools that I have.
00:59:59They're reading the same Bible I have. And they can read that what they're preaching is actually against what the Bible is saying.
01:00:07The question in my mind is, are they even Christian? And I can't answer that, but I can tell you what it looks like.
01:00:14Well, the problem, John, is that you are not being led by the Holy Spirit and they're being led by the Holy Spirit. So that's the issue.
01:00:23Because the Bible, you know, once you have the Holy Spirit telling you what it means, then – I've thought about this many different times of like – and I try to bring this up to individuals who are, you know, especially in the charismatic world where I'm like, you know,
01:00:43you know, if you just read the Bible, a lot of your core beliefs are not even in there.
01:00:51I mean, they're in there in so far as like people have found ways to – like the rapture is a good example of this.
01:00:58You know, there's talk in some of the revelations and John – I can't remember what passage, but like there will be two people in the field and one will be gone or something.
01:01:10And it – you know, a straightforward reading of that is like a poetic description of like an apocalyptic sort of war or not even apocalyptic,
01:01:18but just this sort of, you know, people suddenly – it happening sudden and there being a very large sweeping of, you know, how war often does is like it just kind of cascades and quickly – like that's the most obvious sort of literal reading of it.
01:01:36But then people have built that into this entire very specific view of like dispensationalism and rapture, you know, tribulation stuff.
01:01:48And it's like if you gave ChatGPT, you know, infinite amount of time to – or some – let's just say some AI was reading this and deriving even in conjunction with non-canonical early texts.
01:02:05And it's like, read all of this about what do you think that these could be and it was like not using the interpretation of like common contemporary scholars.
01:02:17Would it come up with that?
01:02:19And it's like, no, of course not.
01:02:20It would never derive that sort of like here's the logical reading of what is explicitly written in the text, even if it had some like, you know, context and translations and all this sort of stuff because that's just – it's not what's in the text.
01:02:38It's not there.
01:02:39It's providing – basically the Bible is just used and Christian religion is used as a framework to then adopt all of these beliefs that are – and this goes back to our boundaries conversation, the invisible boundaries conversation that we had several weeks ago where it's just – when you put your finger on it, it suddenly disappears and becomes something different.
01:03:05And it's all of these different – and it's all of these different – you know, you can never have accountability.
01:03:10And the same thing with the like God Loves Uganda documentary, John O'Hall can be like, no, this wasn't us.
01:03:17This isn't what we preached because like that's not what we explicitly said.
01:03:21And it's like nowhere is it ever explicitly said anything because it all is so loose and so, you know, guided – oops – guided by the Holy Spirit where, you know, it gives this sort of carte blanche to maneuver as long as you have the like social and political and religious authority to be one of the individuals
01:03:47who is – who is – has the capacity to hear the Holy Spirit and that you are one of the voices of the Holy Spirit, which of course then leads to prophets and you're like, oh, okay.
01:04:01It starts coming together.
01:04:03It starts making a lot more sense when you're like, oh, I see how this really is just a system that gives a group of two or three or maybe just one individuals the ability to create their own little mini cults with total conviction
01:04:22and bring a lot of people in and be prophets who say, this is what I saw, thus saith the Lord within their own little domain and have their own little sandcastle of people who are worshiping, you know, the venerate – like the altar, which is – spoiler alert – you know, like I was talking with someone the other day about how I was like sacrificed –
01:04:44and me and me and my family were very much sacrificed on the altar of my father's faith and – spoiler alert – the altar was built unto the veneration of himself.
01:04:55Like it wasn't – it wasn't that I was even like – my dad was a monk and priest who like dedicated himself to the cloth and the furthering of the Christian religion.
01:05:05It was just very much – when he had whims and he had dreams and he liked this, then that was what the Lord was telling him.
01:05:14Like, but then, you know, the secular panic of like, this thing is not okay, this thing is not okay, this movie is not okay, you know, I Love Lucy is not okay for whatever reason.
01:05:23But then he watches Mission Impossible and he's like, this is so much fun.
01:05:28And despite it having all sorts of content that is problematic, he was like, no, this is great.
01:05:34The Lord is actually speaking to me through Mission Impossible.
01:05:39And it's just this weird sort of no – yeah, nebulous thing, which leads to – this is my final thought.
01:05:51With this whole Christian dominionism thing, this whole campaign of establishing dominion in all these different spheres of society,
01:06:01the idea is that you get a strong foothold where you become and your identity and your group becomes the individuals who like completely take over and control the government and the media and all this sort of stuff.
01:06:17Well, what happens next?
01:06:19This is my question.
01:06:20Like, what is this utopia where the Christian individuals or the Christian Pentecostal, evangelical, whatever, establish complete dominion over the United States?
01:06:32What does it look like?
01:06:33Spoiler alert, they all fight each other because that's exactly what happened in all of these cult – like, we left these cult communities because it was abusive to the members of the cult.
01:06:44So, it wasn't because, you know, of what we saw was happening to other individuals.
01:06:50I mean, that's true, too.
01:06:51Like, I feel compassion for what's happening in Uganda and, like, the sort of cascading effect of, like, these beliefs and how it affects other individuals.
01:07:01But fundamentally, I left Christian dominionism because it was a horrible place for me, you know, because it didn't have space for even the individuals who it's supposed to be taking dominion for.
01:07:17And this was 100% happened.
01:07:20Say we are living in some Christian nationalist utopic world where the Christian nationals have all taken authority and domain over the United States.
01:07:29Well, guess what?
01:07:30The group of individuals who believe that it is, you know, illegal or not illegal, sinful to have stringed instruments are going to start having fights with the groups who think it's this and that.
01:07:43Because every time more dominion is exerted, more specific control is exerted because the idea is that they just want to have control over everyone.
01:07:56And you can't do that.
01:07:57Like, you will have infighting.
01:07:59You will have these sort of conflict between churches and within the churches, and that's already what's happening.
01:08:08There is no utopia there, even in their wildest dreams.
01:08:12Well, the irony of all of that is, what would happen if they were to pull it off, which I don't think they ever will, but if they were, and to join into this union where they're controlling the governments like they're wanting to do, where the apostles have real power over presidencies, etc., what it might spin off would be a Catholic Reformation.
01:08:34Because what they set up is exactly what caused the Protestant Reformation, right?
01:08:39So they're going in this weird cycle where now they've returned back to what the Catholics were doing.
01:08:43And think of all the similarities we have now between what Martin Luther left and what is in the New Apostolic Reformation.
01:08:49It's mind-boggling, but that's another podcast for another day.
01:08:55So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:08:59You can find us at william-branum.org.
01:09:01For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:09Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:09:11Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:09:41Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:10:11Weaponized Religion, From Christian типа thirty-five centenario.
01:10:14Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR.