- 3 months ago
John and Bob explore the sweeping transformation of church life in America, focusing on how cultural shifts—particularly post–World War II—reshaped the spiritual landscape. They trace the move from rural to urban living and its influence on church models, highlighting the evolution from relational, community-driven gatherings to production-based, entertainment-centric services. With anecdotes from their personal journeys and ministry experiences, they describe how this shift has affected not only the church structure but also the behavior and identity of its leaders and members.
Their conversation spans a wide range of influences—from Amy Semple McPherson and John Alexander Dowie to the Jesus People Movement and the rise of megachurch culture—showing how spectacle and self-promotion became normalized. They also delve into theological implications, such as the meaning of the word “church” and its roots in the Greek word ecclesia, contrasting it with modern interpretations. The dialogue is both historical and deeply personal, examining how authenticity, vulnerability, and meaningful relationships are often displaced by celebrity personas and polished performances.
00:00 Introduction
01:04 The Boomer Generation and Cultural Shifts
02:57 Narcissism and the Rise of Self-Promotion
04:57 Church as Entertainment
06:52 From Rural to Urban Church Models
10:08 Orange County and the Urban Explosion
11:10 Early Revivalists and Narcissism in Rural Contexts
13:15 Amy Semple McPherson and Early Religious Showmanship
15:01 John Alexander Dowie and Priming Los Angeles
18:01 California’s Influence on Church and Culture
19:47 The Rise of West Coast Mega-Ministries
21:08 Contrasting Rural and Urban Life
24:16 World War II, Urgency, and Shifting Religious Tone
27:02 The GI Bill and Cultural Fragmentation
29:42 Early Church Models vs. Urban Production
31:43 Cult Leaders Targeting Rural Audiences
33:32 Dowie’s Urban Strategy at the Chicago World’s Fair
35:01 Elixirs, Medicine, and the Rise of Pentecostalism
37:00 How Church Became a Performance
38:16 Why Mainstream Church Can Feel Triggering
40:00 The Word “Church” and Its Strange Origins
42:55 The Assembly and Paul’s Intent
45:06 Religious Freedom and Cultural Participation
47:01 Barna Research, the “Dones,” and House Church Movement
51:05 Disconnect Between Stage Personas and Real Life
53:24 The Normalization of Performance in Worship
55:08 Tithing, Community, and Supporting the Needy
56:43 Communion and the Commercialization of Sacraments
57:27 Stage Persona vs. Private Reality in Ministry
59:27 Ernest Angley and the “Man of God” Phenomenon
1:00:53 Narcissism Rooted in Childhood Trauma
1:03:05 Good vs. Evil: The Danger of Binary Thinking
1:04:40 Dehumanizing the “Other” in Religious Context
1:06:07 Multiperspective Thinking and Reconciliation
1:08:14 Cult Mindset in Mainstream Culture
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kind
Their conversation spans a wide range of influences—from Amy Semple McPherson and John Alexander Dowie to the Jesus People Movement and the rise of megachurch culture—showing how spectacle and self-promotion became normalized. They also delve into theological implications, such as the meaning of the word “church” and its roots in the Greek word ecclesia, contrasting it with modern interpretations. The dialogue is both historical and deeply personal, examining how authenticity, vulnerability, and meaningful relationships are often displaced by celebrity personas and polished performances.
00:00 Introduction
01:04 The Boomer Generation and Cultural Shifts
02:57 Narcissism and the Rise of Self-Promotion
04:57 Church as Entertainment
06:52 From Rural to Urban Church Models
10:08 Orange County and the Urban Explosion
11:10 Early Revivalists and Narcissism in Rural Contexts
13:15 Amy Semple McPherson and Early Religious Showmanship
15:01 John Alexander Dowie and Priming Los Angeles
18:01 California’s Influence on Church and Culture
19:47 The Rise of West Coast Mega-Ministries
21:08 Contrasting Rural and Urban Life
24:16 World War II, Urgency, and Shifting Religious Tone
27:02 The GI Bill and Cultural Fragmentation
29:42 Early Church Models vs. Urban Production
31:43 Cult Leaders Targeting Rural Audiences
33:32 Dowie’s Urban Strategy at the Chicago World’s Fair
35:01 Elixirs, Medicine, and the Rise of Pentecostalism
37:00 How Church Became a Performance
38:16 Why Mainstream Church Can Feel Triggering
40:00 The Word “Church” and Its Strange Origins
42:55 The Assembly and Paul’s Intent
45:06 Religious Freedom and Cultural Participation
47:01 Barna Research, the “Dones,” and House Church Movement
51:05 Disconnect Between Stage Personas and Real Life
53:24 The Normalization of Performance in Worship
55:08 Tithing, Community, and Supporting the Needy
56:43 Communion and the Commercialization of Sacraments
57:27 Stage Persona vs. Private Reality in Ministry
59:27 Ernest Angley and the “Man of God” Phenomenon
1:00:53 Narcissism Rooted in Childhood Trauma
1:03:05 Good vs. Evil: The Danger of Binary Thinking
1:04:40 Dehumanizing the “Other” in Religious Context
1:06:07 Multiperspective Thinking and Reconciliation
1:08:14 Cult Mindset in Mainstream Culture
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kind
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, Bob Scott, former co-founder
00:00:47of the Kansas City Fellowship and author of three books, the latest of which is Some Said
00:00:52They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and
00:00:57the International House of Prayer.
00:01:00Bob, we were just talking right before we started about the family circus comics, of
00:01:06all things.
00:01:07Now, you start down this topic, and you're just dead focused on that topic, but I'm like
00:01:12Billy.
00:01:13I'm going all over the place with history and milestones, and I make it so hard.
00:01:18So we have, for the audience who doesn't know this, we've had three main points that we've
00:01:22tried to hit for who knows how many of the last episodes, and I keep pulling Bob onto other
00:01:28things.
00:01:29So I'm actually going to take a step back, and I'm going to let Bob lead this.
00:01:33I'm still going to probably do the thing like Billy and Family Circus, but he's going to keep
00:01:38reeling me back in.
00:01:40Well, we'll try.
00:01:40That's kind of like trying to put a saddle on a wild horse.
00:01:46It just doesn't work.
00:01:47But yeah, for those of you that may have just turned in now, we had started a discussion
00:01:55at least a month ago, maybe almost two months ago, about a dramatic cultural shift that's
00:02:06happened in our generation.
00:02:08Now, when I'm talking about our generation, I'm talking about the boomer generation, which
00:02:14starts in 1946 and sort of ends in 1964.
00:02:18Our generation is very unique in some of the dynamics that happened, and I think a lot of
00:02:29us are maybe very aware of it.
00:02:31Some of us, maybe not so much.
00:02:33But that shift, that cultural shift in America that really came into play in the 1960s has
00:02:44had a huge impact on church culture.
00:02:47The way we look at church, the way we do church, all of our concepts of church all got retooled,
00:02:58reshaped, reformatted, whatever, because of what I consider three huge shifts.
00:03:06So the first one we discussed was the culture of narcissism.
00:03:11And what we talked about was how in our parents' generation, what they call the greatest generation,
00:03:19the idea of self-promotion was not a thing.
00:03:22In fact, it was culturally frowned upon.
00:03:24You promoted a product, you promoted a service, you did not promote yourself.
00:03:32Your sense of self was based on your sacrifice to the whole.
00:03:39Hence, over 2 million young guys between the ages of 16 and 30 ran down to the recruiting
00:03:48stations when World War II started because they saw it as their civic duty to lay their lives
00:03:54down for the sake of the nation.
00:03:56That's a mindset that doesn't exist hardly anymore.
00:04:01I mean, there's still pockets of it.
00:04:03But by and large, what's happened to us is that we've adopted a whole culture of narcissism
00:04:10that's become so normal that we even have apps now like Instagram and TikTok where we just
00:04:19keep publishing all these videos that say, look at me, look at me, look at me, right?
00:04:27It's just this attention-seeking culture.
00:04:31That's completely infiltrated the church.
00:04:34It's become so ingrained as normal now that we don't even notice it.
00:04:39So we've got all kinds of people now in pulpits and on television and primarily on the internet
00:04:47all going, look at me, listen to me, look at me, right?
00:04:51And so we've become so normalized to that we don't even see the shift.
00:04:56The second thing we talked about was we've adopted a culture of entertainment.
00:05:01The reason, part of the reason that happened was in order for that to happen, technology
00:05:09had to come, right?
00:05:12In other words, our parents' generation listened to the radio.
00:05:16You couldn't really see anything.
00:05:18Once television came into play in the late 50s, by the 1960s, a whole new avenue's opened
00:05:25up.
00:05:25Then the internet opened up, right?
00:05:27And so now we've become very focused on being entertained.
00:05:33We love entertainment, right?
00:05:34We sit at home with ginormous screens on our wall, right?
00:05:40With our 260, 300 stations and movies.
00:05:47We have more options of entertainment in front of us than probably all the rest of human history
00:05:54in terms of just access to visual images, right?
00:06:00And that's, again, infiltrated the church world.
00:06:05So to the point where, in my view, church services have become entertainment, right?
00:06:15There's a whole strategy be how we're going to do the church service, which, of course,
00:06:21is we've got to have a cool band with cool music, right?
00:06:24We have to have cool effects, cool visuals, cool videos, you know, cool, everything has
00:06:31to be entertaining.
00:06:32We have to keep everybody excited and happy and thrilled, right?
00:06:35And that's become, again, so normal that we don't even realize what's happened to us.
00:06:45The third piece of this, which I'd love to discuss more today, is that there's been a
00:06:52significant shift from a rural church model, which is very relational, to an urban church
00:07:02model, which is very, I don't even know what you want, a production-oriented, right?
00:07:11And just to give you an idea here of the shift, if you went back and looked at the census in
00:07:18the 1800s, like this 1800, 94% of our population lived in the rural areas, 6% lived in the cities.
00:07:29A hundred years later, 60% of our population lived in the rural areas and 40% lived in the
00:07:38urban areas.
00:07:39You see this shift?
00:07:421940, you know, 44% rural, 57% urban, right?
00:07:52And then you see the shift.
00:07:53By 1980, there's only 25% of people living in the rural areas and 75% are living in the
00:08:02cities.
00:08:04Five years ago, it turned to 20% of people live in rural areas and 80%.
00:08:10So basically, in 200 years, there's been a complete flip from rural culture, right, to an urban
00:08:21culture, which has affected how we think, how we interact, our whole mindset.
00:08:28And of course, the church culture has to adapt.
00:08:31And so we've, you know, basically adopted this very urban mentality about a lot of things.
00:08:40You know, I remember 19, let's see, I started KCF with Mike in 1982.
00:08:52And I remember vividly as the church was growing, almost everybody that I talked to had grown
00:09:01up on a farm.
00:09:03It was really interesting, right?
00:09:05It's like, wow, you know, they all had farm stories, but we're in, you know, metropolitan
00:09:11Kansas City.
00:09:12And you begin to realize, even at that point, that we're just like one generation from this
00:09:19huge shift, right?
00:09:21In 1990, I relocated to Orange County.
00:09:26I had to go work, do some work, which I'm when we were in the vineyard, right?
00:09:30Now, think about this, when Disneyland, I think it was 57, 1957, when Walt Disney decided to
00:09:39build Disneyland, he built it 25 miles outside of the urban areas.
00:09:46It was in the middle of an orange grove, right?
00:09:49People laughed at him.
00:09:51Said, oh my God, it's like, what are you doing?
00:09:54Like, who's going to drive out there, right?
00:09:57Well, I live there.
00:09:59It's a massive city now.
00:10:01It's like, you know what I mean?
00:10:03It's like all that orange grove, you know?
00:10:06So, in 1950, in Orange County, there was 215,000 people living there, right?
00:10:13In 1980, 30 years later, there was 2 million people living there.
00:10:18It's such a crazy shift.
00:10:20And I don't think people realize and recognize how vastly different the church has become
00:10:26because they don't – a lot of people, you know, the younger crowd wasn't even alive
00:10:30back then.
00:10:30But a lot of people, as the shift is happening, it's happening so gradually that they kind
00:10:35of forget where they came from, you know what I mean?
00:10:38Yeah.
00:10:38The interesting part about this is I grew up with the same farm stories, and I was in
00:10:44churches that were in cities, but we were in a cult that was so destructive that they – it
00:10:50was like one step away from the Amish.
00:10:52They wanted to reject the change.
00:10:54Change they saw as evil, very much like the Amish.
00:10:58And they rejected – all of my older friends had farms or had grown up on farms, et cetera.
00:11:04But there's one thing that you said that I want to go back to.
00:11:08I forgot to bring this up in the past few episodes, but you're talking about how the
00:11:12change is significant with regards to the narcissism, how you – today's world, you
00:11:17promote yourself.
00:11:18That's just common.
00:11:20Think of the healing revivalists back then.
00:11:23Back in the 40s and 50s, even before that – I mean, you can go back as far back as you
00:11:28want to go in the papers – not many people recognize how vastly different they were from
00:11:32society, because in today's world, it's common to promote yourself.
00:11:37But back then, these guys were like freaks.
00:11:39And the churches who saw this, they saw it as blatant narcissism.
00:11:43And you can find newspaper articles where they're condemning this narcissist.
00:11:46They can't really put words to what they're seeing, which is interesting, because they
00:11:51haven't yet seen the world that we live in, where everybody's promoting themselves.
00:11:55All they know is, here's some bozo that instead of focus on God, they're focused on
00:11:59themselves, and they're drawing these massive crowds.
00:12:03Tens of thousands of people are coming to attend this.
00:12:06And where it ties into this episode – so you mentioned the shift from rural areas to
00:12:11metropolitan.
00:12:13Well, these guys were targeting rural areas back then.
00:12:16So they came into these areas where they're promoting themselves as the next thing to God,
00:12:22which is unusual for its time.
00:12:23And they're bringing – it's like a circus that comes in town.
00:12:28We've mentioned this in the past few episodes.
00:12:30What they're doing is they're showing a display of defying the society and the norms
00:12:35and standards of their era.
00:12:37And what's really odd, if you study that history into the shift into the urban areas today of
00:12:45the church, that defiance of the cultural norm has become almost a doctrine as they shift
00:12:52and come into the metropolitan areas.
00:12:54They want to defy the norms if you're in this type of religion.
00:12:58And those who are in mainstream churches or even non-mainstream but has some sort of a
00:13:03balance of power where they can't have a central figure, they look at all of this and they
00:13:08say, what is this mess?
00:13:10Just like they did back in the 40s and 50s.
00:13:12Well, someone that I'd be curious to hear your perspective on is Amy Semple McPherson
00:13:18because it's interesting to me because to our point, she's a bit of an anomaly when you
00:13:27look at where the church culture was because you didn't self-promote.
00:13:31And yet she, right, completely promoted herself, right?
00:13:37She developed a whole persona.
00:13:39So my question was always, why?
00:13:42It's just so unusual.
00:13:44Then it dawned on me, based on some conversations I'd had with Paul Kane about the interaction
00:13:50between the Latter Rain guys and Hollywood and all that, that when she was launching her
00:13:58ministry, you're in the early heyday of Hollywood, right?
00:14:03You know, people don't realize that the studios, right, which are just on the other side of
00:14:11the mountain range there or the Santa Monica Mountains, right?
00:14:14That whole area, which is not, you know, it was called the Valley, I guess, or whatever.
00:14:19That, you know, I lived in Tarzana.
00:14:22Tarzana was named Tarzana because Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of Tarzan, owned all that
00:14:28land, right?
00:14:28Lucille Ball owned land up there.
00:14:30It was all orange groves and, you know, nut farms and all that.
00:14:35It was all agriculture, right?
00:14:37But because of the fact there were, you know, like Lawrence of Arabia, you know, which the
00:14:42whole setting is Arabia.
00:14:44No, those were filmed in the sand dunes up there, right?
00:14:47I mean, it was like she was right there, you know, kind of, you know, modeling herself after
00:14:56a Clark Gable type or Greta Garber or any of these, you know, early Hollywood stars, right?
00:15:03So, in some ways, she just simply adopted the culture of Los Angeles.
00:15:09Absolutely.
00:15:10And right before her, a lot of people missed this.
00:15:13This is really actually one of the most fundamentally important elements of all of this history.
00:15:19Before Amy Semple McPherson, before the Azusa Street Revival, one of the first places that
00:15:26John Alexander Dowie landed and targeted was in that area.
00:15:30He first goes to San Francisco and he sets up his gimmick.
00:15:33And the way that he did his con was he would say, I have the satchel of testimonies of people
00:15:39who were healed back across the ocean and all of these people are healed, you too can
00:15:44be healed.
00:15:45And he would read these testimonies, testimony after testimony, which if you look at it, this
00:15:50is showmanship.
00:15:51That's what he was doing with showmanship.
00:15:53And pretty soon, people started to catch on.
00:15:56Wait a minute.
00:15:56Every single person he's healed is somewhere else.
00:15:59What about the people here?
00:16:01And so, once he burns out San Francisco, he goes to LA, he goes to Oakland, some various
00:16:06different places, well, he was well-received in the places until they caught on.
00:16:12But by the time that they caught on to his scam, he had already amassed so many converts
00:16:18that he had primed the region, basically, for this type of showmanship environment where
00:16:25you're coming to church, basically, to see a show.
00:16:28And that's what he had done.
00:16:30So he primed the area.
00:16:31And people like, you know, the Kardashian family, I've mentioned their ties to Ladder
00:16:36Reign, and they, one of the early sponsors of William.
00:16:39The North Sekarian and all that, yeah.
00:16:40Exactly.
00:16:40One of the first sponsors.
00:16:43The Armenian mob.
00:16:44The Armenian mob, right?
00:16:46Well, they're tied to all of this.
00:16:48And they're in the same area.
00:16:50Like you said, as Hollywood is developing, well, before it turned into what we, you know,
00:16:56the massive charismania thing we see today, they were priming this with all of the elements
00:17:02that they saw powerful to Hollywood.
00:17:04If you can take that and harness it and then apply it to religion and create a more entertaining
00:17:09form of religion, you can convert the world.
00:17:12That was the mentality.
00:17:14It's not necessarily a bad thing what they were trying to do.
00:17:17The difference is balance.
00:17:19Like I said, everything must be in balance.
00:17:21I've said this a few times in the podcast.
00:17:23It became so heavily balanced on the entertainment side that that carried forward.
00:17:29Now, apply that to what we see in the metropolitan versus urban areas.
00:17:33The same entertainment forms that worked in the rural areas do not work in the metro.
00:17:39So you start to see this shift in the church.
00:17:42Well, I mean, in a future episode, you and I are going to discuss an interesting phenomena
00:17:48that happened in the late 1800s in upstate New York, right?
00:17:53Where we had simultaneously like three or four major movements, all, you know, even cults
00:18:01all developing at the same time.
00:18:03Well, California is like the same thing, only, you know, a hundred years later, right?
00:18:09Because when you stop and think about it, what was the most influential state in the 1960s?
00:18:19Right?
00:18:20So we always go back, you know, people talk about the Summer of Love, 1968, San Francisco.
00:18:28I mean, you're a musician.
00:18:29You understand California was sort of the epicenter for creativity, right?
00:18:34I mean, all the big bands that we, you know, that we, we boomers love or, you know, so many
00:18:41of them are, you know, came up through California, right?
00:18:44What also came out of California in the 1960s on the church side, the Jesus People Movement,
00:18:51right?
00:18:52So it's interesting to me, the most influential cultural stuff is coming out of San Francisco.
00:18:59And then the most influential spiritual thing is coming out of Orange County, right?
00:19:07Which is Chuck Smith's Costa Mesa church.
00:19:11And for people who don't know, Chuck Smith was at one time, Paul Kane's business manager
00:19:16during the latter rain.
00:19:18So it's kind of funny.
00:19:19You've got a latter rain guy, Chuck Smith, right?
00:19:22Who's a horrible preacher, like not very good, not a dynamic guy at all, but there were,
00:19:29you know, he had Lonnie Frisbee, the weird Lonnie Frisbee in his church and that thing blew
00:19:33up, right?
00:19:34But think of all what was going on there, right?
00:19:37You had the Jesus People Movement.
00:19:38Well, what did the Jesus People Movement launch?
00:19:41Christian music industry, right?
00:19:44That only came out, that came out of the Jesus People Movement.
00:19:48The whole idea of TV broadcasting ministries, you know, Oral Roberts and Rex Hombart are kind
00:19:54of considered the pioneers on the Christian side.
00:19:58But then you got, you have Chuck Smith at Maranatha.
00:20:00You got John Wimber right out in Yorba Lynn with the Vineyard.
00:20:04You got Ralph Wilkerson at Melody Land.
00:20:07You got Jack Hayford, Four Square Church.
00:20:10You got Robert Shuler, Crystal Cathedral, Charles Swindell in Fullerton, which out of that, you
00:20:17know, Rick Warren, John MacArthur.
00:20:20You know, there were 70 Christian radio stations in California.
00:20:24This all happened at, you know, around the whole, the same time.
00:20:31There was just suddenly this explosion out of the West Coast that just literally went right
00:20:37across the whole country, right?
00:20:38That changed so much of our church culture, right?
00:20:44Darrell Bock Absolutely.
00:20:45And one of the things, going back to Amy Siffle McPherson, she almost set the standard
00:20:50for this.
00:20:51She had this massive, massive radio tower installed in Angela's Temple.
00:20:54I saw, I went there one time when I was out there.
00:20:57I was so curious about her.
00:20:59I went and visited the temple and they still have old crutches and things hanging on the
00:21:06wall, you know, but yeah.
00:21:08So, so the question then, you know, if we want to drill down kind of underneath this
00:21:12is like, what's the difference between urban and rural, you know, because we're talking
00:21:17about it as they're two different things.
00:21:18Well, I mean, I'm generalizing, of course, but, you know, urban life is vibrant and dynamic,
00:21:26right?
00:21:27Rural life is more serene and about close-knit families, right?
00:21:32You know, grandparents live with you, you know, grandparents die in your house, right?
00:21:39There's, there's history, there's connectedness to the past, right?
00:21:44Your, your life is, is, is, uh, your rhythms are based on, on the growing season, right?
00:21:52Your life is, you know, which takes time.
00:21:54Everything just takes time.
00:21:56And so people just aren't in a hurry in urban life.
00:22:00It's like, we're just like nutty squirrels in the fall trying to, you know, get ready
00:22:06for the winter and we're spastic everywhere.
00:22:07Right.
00:22:08And it's just like, this is crazy, right?
00:22:11Urban areas, they offer infrastructure, employment opportunities and access to services, right?
00:22:18Rural areas, uh, they provide a sense of community, lower cost living, right?
00:22:24Closeness to nature.
00:22:26So they're, they're so different, you know, urban communities are more diverse, cosmopolitan,
00:22:31sort of blending cultures and values, right?
00:22:34Rural current, uh, the rural, rural world, we're, I can't even say it.
00:22:39The rural world emphasizes traditional values, right?
00:22:44Family ties, local customs.
00:22:46In other words, rural culture is very connected.
00:22:50Urban culture is often very disconnected.
00:22:55And, um, it was never more apparent to me that when we moved to California in 1990, because
00:23:03I was so used to Kansas cities, even in our city, we still, you know, because people are
00:23:09only a generation away from the farm, it still has a lot of traditional values.
00:23:14And when you would, when people would come to your church from out of town or whatever,
00:23:18people were quick to say, Hey, you know, we're getting together, you know, we're having a
00:23:22family meal.
00:23:22Why don't you come?
00:23:23Right?
00:23:23People would invite you to their home, right?
00:23:27They would invite you into their life.
00:23:29I got out to California and I realized over a, after a year of every time I interacted with
00:23:37someone, I had to do it in a restaurant, but I had never been to anybody's house.
00:23:44I was like, wow, this is really wild, right?
00:23:49This is so wild.
00:23:50And then as I, you know, because I'm so curious, I started drilling down and asking questions
00:23:56and I sort of realized nobody was from there.
00:23:59It was a whole culture of transplants, right?
00:24:02Which is what cities are, right?
00:24:04And that happened only after World War II.
00:24:07Well, since they only, it took a quantum leap after World War II, this massive migration
00:24:13from the farms to the cities, right?
00:24:16And there's another interesting thing that should be injected here.
00:24:19So you're right, right after World War II, you start seeing this, this big shift and this
00:24:24change things, things change significantly in the culture of America after World War II.
00:24:29But what happened was in the years leading up to World War II and largely before World
00:24:37War I, like you said, they're all, most people, rural areas, urgency to a farmer is like,
00:24:44if something urgent, it might be five months.
00:24:47Five months from now is urgent, right?
00:24:49And that's the mentality.
00:24:51That's their mindset.
00:24:52And when you preach to somebody like this, it's an entirely different sermon than somebody who's
00:24:57on edge because they've got to run to the office, they've got to get onto the train,
00:25:01they've got to get onto –
00:25:01Got to stay on time, right?
00:25:03Keep at it.
00:25:04Keep marked.
00:25:05We have time limits.
00:25:06Yes.
00:25:06We've got to get these people out of here, in here and out of here, you know, in one
00:25:11hour and 15 minutes.
00:25:12So what you find is before World War I, you find cult leaders like Frank Sanford is a good
00:25:19example.
00:25:20He picks this doomsday date.
00:25:21He said, we're all going to go stand up on the rooftops and God's going to sweep us
00:25:25away.
00:25:26And interestingly, he is part of the reason why Pentecostalism exists, if you don't know
00:25:30that history.
00:25:31But he was a doomsday cult leader, and his urgency was simply, in a few months, this
00:25:36is going to happen.
00:25:36We're just going to be prepared.
00:25:38It's going to happen.
00:25:39And there wasn't really a strong sense of urgency.
00:25:42But when the latter rain hit, especially after everybody had just been hyper-focused on World
00:25:47War II, the urgency shifted to, Russia has a bomb with your city's name on it.
00:25:53You will die if you don't come into our religion.
00:25:57That's what they were doing.
00:25:58The shift in mindset, the urgency was an instant urgency.
00:26:02I remember I would listen to these recordings from Branham during the latter rain years over
00:26:07and over, and he would say things like, tomorrow might be the day.
00:26:12You might not live through the night.
00:26:14Come up here to this altar.
00:26:16He was doing forced altar calls.
00:26:18And he's literally planting the fear of destruction in their minds because of that urgency.
00:26:23If he had have had that same exact message back during the rural days, that urgency, like
00:26:28I said, urgent is five months.
00:26:30Well, is it going to happen?
00:26:32Nothing happens tonight, will you, Branham?
00:26:36Well, I remember.
00:26:37I grew up in Wisconsin and Milwaukee, and I remember people building bomb shelters.
00:26:42Remember that whole deal?
00:26:43It's like, you see this thing in people's backyards, and they're like digging a hole.
00:26:48Like, what are you doing?
00:26:49You know, foot-thick concrete walls and stock.
00:26:53And I was like, wow, this is crazy, you know?
00:26:56That's really crazy.
00:26:58Wow.
00:26:59Yeah, I think the other thing that kind of contributed to the shift, if it were, was the GI Bill.
00:27:08And I'll explain that to people they don't understand.
00:27:12So the nearly 3 million young guys that signed up for World War II were predominantly rural
00:27:21and not highly educated.
00:27:24The government comes along and says, hey, you've served four or eight years in the military.
00:27:29We are going to pay for your college education.
00:27:33So my dad and all my uncles, you know, they go to college, right?
00:27:37And they're taught, which was interesting, because what the business community did was adopted
00:27:43the military model, the military structure.
00:27:46All these guys fit in really well.
00:27:48It's like, yeah, yeah, president's a general, you know, lieutenant.
00:27:52And it was the same exact structure.
00:27:55You know, my dad would never, ever have challenged the president of his company.
00:28:01Like, that was just considered, like, you know, what do they call it?
00:28:05They can send you to the brig in the military for doing that, right?
00:28:08My dad.
00:28:09So it was interesting, because I was super rebellious and challenged everything, and my dad could
00:28:14not get his head around that.
00:28:16Asking why was just considered insulting, rebellious, blah, blah, blah, right?
00:28:23And I realized later why he thought that way is because he had been taught like that, right?
00:28:29So what happens then, after they finish college, what do they do?
00:28:33They pursue jobs.
00:28:35And where are those jobs?
00:28:37They're in the cities.
00:28:39So I watched my mom's family.
00:28:42My mom had five in her family, right?
00:28:45So they all grow up outside of Chicago together.
00:28:48They're a tight-knit family, very close, all, you know, kind of in proximity.
00:28:54And then after the war, after the GI Bill, they all scatter.
00:28:59They go, they're all, the five siblings are all over the country.
00:29:05So all my relatives were either in Pittsburgh or Florida or, you know, Milwaukee.
00:29:10You know, my dad and mom moved out of Chicago to order to Milwaukee to pursue a job, right?
00:29:15You know, and so that GI Bill kind of caused that rural cohesiveness, you know, that relational dynamic of rural life to sort of fragment.
00:29:28You know, it's like dropping a glass on the floor.
00:29:31Everybody's scattered.
00:29:33So that, you know, that became sort of the underlying thing in the church world.
00:29:41So where this goes, which is so interesting, because it kind of goes back to what we're talking about with entertainment, right?
00:29:46The urban culture, time is of essence, speed, you know, production and all that.
00:29:53What's always intrigued me is this verse in 1 Corinthians.
00:29:57It's in chapter 14, verse 26.
00:30:00This is interesting because this is the church model, right, in the early church, you know, the New Testament.
00:30:08And it says this, what then shall we say, brothers and sisters, when you come together, each of you, get this, each of you has a hymn, a song, right?
00:30:23Or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation.
00:30:29Everything must be done so that the church be built up.
00:30:33Well, what you see here is a whole model that's very rural.
00:30:38Right?
00:30:39It's very relational.
00:30:40There is no, you know, superstar on television ministry, you know, guy in a, you know, in a, you know, sitting in an auditorium that seats 10,000 people or the service is being blasted all over the globe.
00:30:57Right?
00:30:57You see this community of people who are expressing the gifts and talents God gives them individually as a whole.
00:31:13You're not seeing this sort of, you know, goat, you know, nobody's, you know, driving their, you know, their horse over to the, you know what I mean?
00:31:25I mean, it's a community thing.
00:31:26And I always go back to that and I look, gosh, it's like, that's so relational.
00:31:31That's so kind of this rural mentality again.
00:31:34Right?
00:31:34It's like, well, brother, so-and-so what, you know?
00:31:37And it would seem like we all had something to contribute, right?
00:31:42We didn't buy our ticket to go to the show.
00:31:45Have 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?
00:31:58Thank you very much.
00:32:28Thank you very much.
00:32:58Before this, before all of this was created, there were cult leaders, mostly in rural areas.
00:33:05Because they, if they were to go try to target the urbanites, it was a completely, there were two completely separate and differing cultures.
00:33:13If you are a cult leader and you're trying to target the urbanites, largely they would just boot you out of the city.
00:33:19But we don't need your nonsense, get out of here.
00:33:21So they would go target the rural areas and they could convince people because it was a completely different culture.
00:33:27John Alexander Dowie is the one who really defied this.
00:33:31But if you think about what he did, it was ingenious because he didn't actually defy the culture.
00:33:37He sets up in Chicago, Illinois, which is an urban city.
00:33:41And the way he does it is so ingenious.
00:33:44They had the Chicago World's Fair, I can't remember what year that was, 1890, I think it was, wherein all of these people from rural areas all over the United States are coming to see this World's Fair.
00:33:59Well, he sets up this booth right outside of the fair where as you walked by to get in, here's this guy who can heal you of all your diseases.
00:34:06And so people were just getting snagged.
00:34:09But he was snagging people who may have been from the rural areas, right?
00:34:14Right.
00:34:14And he grew this massive cult following in Chicago.
00:34:17And what happened when he did this was they booted him out.
00:34:21They said, we've had enough of your nonsense.
00:34:24And that's how Zion City came to be.
00:34:27He finally, after I can't remember how many hundreds of lawsuits that he had against him, he finally said, okay, I'm done with this.
00:34:33And he moves to a rural area.
00:34:35But that cultural shift changed with DAOI.
00:34:38What people don't realize is that or may not have thought this through is that modern medicine, like we know it, only develops again after World War II, right?
00:34:52I mean, we had penicillin and a few things like that.
00:34:56But 99% of all the medical discoveries, medicines, cures happen after World War II.
00:35:08Before that, what did you have?
00:35:11You had guys selling elixirs.
00:35:13Yes.
00:35:13So, you know, it sounds weird to us, but at the time, a John Alexander DAOI would have been normal.
00:35:22Like, that's what guys did.
00:35:24They had little horse and buggy trailers and they had some toxic, you know, and of course, as we know from some of them, they were basically selling cocaine in a liquid form, right?
00:35:34Yeah.
00:35:35And it's like, that was their secret sauce, it was cocaine.
00:35:40Well, and Charles Fox Parham, who was the father of modern Pentecostalism, he had invested in this elixir company that you could – you got this vial and you'd drop it onto rocks and it would turn, allegedly, ordinary rocks into gold from God.
00:35:56Oh, really?
00:35:57And he did this before he went on to, you know, found the apostolic faith or whatever it was.
00:36:04And he recognized that he had been scammed after he got into it, but he was one of the primary investors.
00:36:11And again, people have to sort of contextualize this.
00:36:14Our knowledge that we have, that we possess, most of us live in the urban areas, we – I mean, think about what we understand about the world and how people in the early 1900s understood the world.
00:36:34Like, they had such limited access to knowledge, right?
00:36:39So, people being fooled was easy to do, right?
00:36:44Because people were so ignorant.
00:36:48I mean, it's like they didn't know what they didn't know.
00:36:51That's become lesser of an issue these days, but it's still there, right?
00:36:58Other things I find interesting, you know, and this is a – you know, this gets down to this whole thing of what is church, right?
00:37:06It's like we – you know, we all, as I've said, if you're a parent with kids, what are you looking for?
00:37:15You're looking for the church that has the most fun kid programs, right?
00:37:19Yes.
00:37:19So, every – I mean, and I get it, right?
00:37:21I was one of those parents at one time.
00:37:23I mean, and, you know, your kids being educated and raised in the faith and all that's important to you, but you'd also – you know, you're battling Star Wars and, you know, all these entertainment movies and different things.
00:37:41And so, you know, the idea of a rural sort of slow-paced, you know, the old storybook, little – what do they used to call those?
00:37:51Velvet, you know, storyboards or whatever.
00:37:54No, it wasn't velvet.
00:37:54What was that?
00:37:55It was like the soft little figures they used to stick on a board, right?
00:37:59Well, urban kids, you just find that boring as heck, right?
00:38:03Yeah.
00:38:03So, well, the only churches that can afford to have a more dynamic children's ministry are the urban churches.
00:38:12Again, you see this shift.
00:38:15And so, I'm not necessarily saying that's evil or it's bad.
00:38:20I'm just saying it has a huge impact on our normal, our version of church, right?
00:38:28We just – you know, I hear all the time this phrase and I just – I have to bite my lip all the time.
00:38:35And it's this.
00:38:36We are a New Testament church.
00:38:39And I'm like, really?
00:38:43But people – I mean, somebody may have told them that or whatever, but I hear this repeated all the time.
00:38:49Oh, you got to come to our church.
00:38:50We're a New Testament church.
00:38:52I'm like, oh, really?
00:38:55You know, of course, if I want to be really – you know, I don't know what the word is, that little irritating younger sibling poke, I go, really?
00:39:03When was the last time somebody in your church was thrown in jail for their faith?
00:39:08I take it a step further.
00:39:09I say, are you willing to live into a communal lifestyle and share everything that you own with your other Christians?
00:39:15Exactly.
00:39:16And all that.
00:39:17But one of the things – you know, and maybe you've got some insight into this.
00:39:22One of the oddest things for me in Paul's writing about the New Testament church is the word he uses, right?
00:39:34In other words, people always assume because they see the word church in the Bible that it's got a Hebrew or Greek root.
00:39:44But the word church doesn't come from Hebrew or Greek.
00:39:48It comes – the actual word that Paul uses, which I find so fascinating, is ecclesia.
00:39:56Well, here's what makes this odd, is that ecclesia is a group of voters.
00:40:04In other words, it comes from the Greek culture.
00:40:07So, to explain this, in Athens, Greece, where you had democracy, you know, the foundation of democracy, the way it worked was they would all meet on top of this hill.
00:40:20Well, the men of voting age, right, that had – you know, they had to be of a certain age, and unfortunately, women really didn't get to vote even back then.
00:40:33But they voted.
00:40:34But the way they voted is they heard the argument, and they had two big pots, and everybody had a stone.
00:40:42And you either choose yea or nay, right?
00:40:45Yes or no.
00:40:47And that was how – but that group of voters was called the ecclesia.
00:40:53So, here Paul is describing the church, but he uses a Greek political word.
00:41:01Yeah.
00:41:01And it's always been a head-scratcher for me.
00:41:05Now, I understand he's writing to a Greek culture, so he's got to use references that they understand.
00:41:13But he uses a political reference, not a religious reference, right?
00:41:17So, then people go, well, where did the word church come from?
00:41:20Like, it's not in the – it's not the – this is the weirdest thing.
00:41:24I still – from a translation point of view, it's mind-boggling when you understand this story.
00:41:30But the translators didn't – they couldn't figure out which word to use.
00:41:38So, they didn't use a Greek or a Hebrew word.
00:41:40They picked an English word.
00:41:42Well, actually, it's German, right?
00:41:44They picked this other word, right?
00:41:47And so, what's interesting is I think what Paul was trying to say was the ecclesia didn't refer to a building, right?
00:41:55It referred to a group of people.
00:41:57Like, in other words, a community of people, right?
00:42:01So, I think the proper translation probably should be a congregation, an assembly, or a group, right?
00:42:14Instead, they picked this English word.
00:42:17It's so weird.
00:42:17But where I think it started with the King James in the 1611 version is when they decided
00:42:25to deviate and stick a Germanic English word into the translation.
00:42:33And you're like, what were they doing?
00:42:35Well, I'm no expert in Greek, but from my limited study, what I have learned is that one
00:42:40single word in the Greek language, it might take entire paragraphs for us to understand
00:42:46the complex meaning.
00:42:48And that meaning shifts depending on its usage.
00:42:50So, if you use it in one situation, it may differ from another.
00:42:55I think the word, in most cases that I have read, the word assembly fits the best.
00:43:00When he says, to the churches in this region, he's talking about to the local assemblies in
00:43:05this region, when he refers to the entire body of Christ, he's talking about the assemblies
00:43:10that have assembled, and it's more than just assembly.
00:43:15The political meaning actually fits, because it is an assembly for a purpose.
00:43:20It is an assembly for the purpose of furthering Christianity, in Paul's case.
00:43:24So, when he talks about the church universal, he's talking about all of the assemblies that
00:43:29have existed through time, and those assemblies had the purpose of spreading Christianity.
00:43:33But today, because that church, in our language, through countless sermons that don't understand
00:43:41what he was actually saying, they have overloaded the word to mean something entirely different
00:43:45than what Paul was even saying.
00:43:47Yeah, when you start drilling down and sort of unpacking this, it gets a little weird.
00:43:53And what I mean by that is the Dutch word for what got translated is kerk, right?
00:44:01The German word is kerk, with C-R-I-C-H-E.
00:44:06The Scots called it kerk, with an I.
00:44:09They all come from an old sort of Saxon word, which is kerkra, or whatever.
00:44:15Or they use another word that comes from another word, which is C-I-R-C-E, like Circe, right?
00:44:24It's all kind of...
00:44:25But here's what's odd about Circe.
00:44:30She was a goddess.
00:44:32And it's where we get the word circus from.
00:44:35Yeah.
00:44:37You see, this is the way this thing circles back around again.
00:44:41Like the root word that they're using for church is the same root word that later is called a circus.
00:44:51Circe, entertainment, right?
00:44:53The show, performance, all of this.
00:44:56Yeah.
00:44:57And that furthers my point.
00:44:59The words that were used, we have such hyper-focused sensitivity, I guess is the best way to say it, to other cultures and things outside of our norm.
00:45:09If you understand what Paul was saying in the letter to Romans, I've mentioned this a few times.
00:45:14He says, it doesn't matter, don't let anybody rebuke you or offend you because you're eating food that has been sacrificed to another god for entertaining yourself in a festival.
00:45:26He is literally saying, you can participate in these things.
00:45:30Don't go worship the gods, obviously.
00:45:32But you can participate in these and be free.
00:45:35You don't have to have somebody who's scorning you constantly.
00:45:38And the word assembly, the word church that he's using there, it's talking about the people.
00:45:44It's never, ever talking about the building.
00:45:47And this is a people who has been set free.
00:45:49They have been dedicated to Christ.
00:45:51And they can live in the world among the people who are of other cultures.
00:45:55And they can even participate in their celebrations, et cetera.
00:46:01I had recently – I've actually had two or three in the past month.
00:46:05And they would see some symbol or they would hear some phrase and they would say, oh, that came from Hinduism.
00:46:10That came from Wicca.
00:46:12Do you know that you're entertaining the demons, John?
00:46:15Well, in the book – in the letter to Romans, Paul is saying, you don't let people do this to you.
00:46:20Don't let them rebuke you.
00:46:22You can live free.
00:46:23You're not going to accidentally catch a demon.
00:46:25And the assembly is not the building.
00:46:27You don't have to – one of the first things that hit me really hard when I left the cult and I started going into churches,
00:46:35even in mainstream churches – I won't mention the denominations – they wanted to beat you over the head that you go every Sunday.
00:46:42And me, having just escaped a cult, I couldn't go every Sunday.
00:46:46I did for a while because they were beating me over the head.
00:46:49But the triggers that were setting off were explosive in my head.
00:46:53And I was actually doing more damage to myself than had I just stayed away for a bit.
00:46:57And they would misrepresent that word.
00:47:01And they would misrepresent all of the statements that are applying to this word.
00:47:06But Paul never intended this.
00:47:08It is – you are to be free.
00:47:10There is the passage, don't forsake yourself, the gathering for the reading of Scripture, the assembly for the reading of Scripture.
00:47:17But you have to understand, most people back then couldn't read.
00:47:20If they were going to hear the Scripture, they had to go to the assembly.
00:47:24So, in today's world, it's totally different.
00:47:26Well, to sort of bring this current, do you know who George Barna is?
00:47:31Mm-hmm.
00:47:32Yeah.
00:47:32So, George Barna, for you that don't know, is kind of probably the leading Christian culture sociologist.
00:47:40He just does so much research as to where we are now and shifts.
00:47:47So, I'm always – I just love reading his stuff because it kind of – you know, it's like – he's like a – I don't know.
00:47:54It's just things I'm interested in.
00:47:56But one of the things that he talked about, which is interesting, and I don't know if he was the one that came up with this phrase or he borrowed it.
00:48:06But the dynamism of the Jesus People Movement, the charismatic Pentecostal world that was launched, we'll say, in the 60s, right?
00:48:17You know, peaked in the 1980s was sort of the 80s and 90s was the heyday, is waning.
00:48:27And he calls our generation the duns is the word he uses.
00:48:34And the reason why he found this interesting is that our generation isn't going to church as much anymore.
00:48:41So, then the question was, well, where are they going?
00:48:46Have they forsaken the faith, right?
00:48:49In other words, you know, all these people that got saved in the 70s during the Jesus People Movement, where are they?
00:48:56Well, what he discovered was there were two places they were.
00:49:01One, a small percentage of them had actually migrated to the Orthodox churches.
00:49:08And I don't know if you have friends like this, but I have a number of friends that they went back to the Greek Orthodoxy, right?
00:49:15They wanted some form of stability, some sense of history with some mystery.
00:49:24And that's the Orthodox Church, you know, they're not afraid to say we don't know, right?
00:49:30But the vast majority of people our age that have left the church world actually meet in house churches.
00:49:42And it's not a house church.
00:49:46It's not a system, right?
00:49:47What happens is, and what's happening all over the country, is, you know, at our age, you know, we've got history.
00:49:54Like, I just had lunch with one of my friends whose son was in the same grade as my son and his daughter was in the same, you know, grade as my daughter back in the 90s.
00:50:05I mean, we grew up together, right?
00:50:07We've been friends for 40 years.
00:50:10We can have the most transparent, honest, you know, just connection because we've been through so much together, right?
00:50:21It's like we know the good and bad of each other, you know?
00:50:23We love each other despite ourselves.
00:50:27Well, people want that.
00:50:29They want that way more than they want the production, the show.
00:50:34And so what's happening is the younger families with kids are all running towards the entertainment centers.
00:50:41And our generation is left and we're all getting together because people go, you know what?
00:50:46Who are the, you know, five couples in our lives that, you know, we have this bond, this history, this connection, right?
00:50:54You know, who do we love, right?
00:50:55And they'll get, you know, five couples together and they just meet.
00:51:00Nothing official, no structure to it.
00:51:02They'll do a book together, you know, or they'll do what I was talking about in 1 Corinthians 14.
00:51:08They just get together and everybody shares.
00:51:10Oh, this happened to me.
00:51:12I was reading this and I felt like God showed me that, right?
00:51:15It's not, there's this move away from a central figure who's the star, right?
00:51:22The celebrity culture of the church world right now.
00:51:26They're just done with it.
00:51:27And that's why I think where Barna got the name is just everybody's done.
00:51:31Like I'm just done with the production.
00:51:33I'm done with the show.
00:51:35And I got to be honest, when I first read that a few years ago, I went, that's me.
00:51:40Like, I have a really hard time.
00:51:43I got friends that are constantly pulling me to their church, right?
00:51:47And every time I walk in, I just go, yuck, right?
00:51:52Because it's like, oh my God, this is like, I'm going to the show, you know?
00:51:58You know what I mean?
00:51:59And it's just all these, you know, I just feel so much underneath all these, you know,
00:52:05hidden agendas of look at me, look at me, look at me, you know what I mean?
00:52:09And it's all screaming at me.
00:52:12I'm like, I just can't do this anymore.
00:52:13Maybe, you know, maybe my PTSD or my nervous system has got to me.
00:52:19But it's like, it's just overwhelming noise.
00:52:24You know what I mean?
00:52:24It's like that static noise, you know what I mean?
00:52:27In my head, right?
00:52:29Where it's like when I go get together, like a bunch of guys, you know, in a few weeks,
00:52:34we're all going to go down to the lake together.
00:52:36Guys I've known for 40 years.
00:52:38That's church to me.
00:52:39That's what I want.
00:52:42You know, I grew up in a world where the people that I was with in church leadership
00:52:47and some who weren't, it was a show whenever they got to the stage,
00:52:52especially the ministers, they would get up.
00:52:54And who they were on stage was not who they were off stage.
00:52:58I watched the humblest of people.
00:53:01I won't give names.
00:53:02I would like to.
00:53:03But I watched the humblest of people who present themselves as this humble creature
00:53:07and then go home and in a two-minute conversation with somebody on customer support
00:53:12for only $2 would bring the person on the other end of the line to crying
00:53:18because they had just railed this person.
00:53:21That's the difference in mentality between these people.
00:53:23And it was a stage act.
00:53:25And then after I left this, I started to realize that it wasn't just them that was the stage act.
00:53:31We were all in this traditional thing.
00:53:33We got in this routine.
00:53:34We would go to church.
00:53:36We were all in a stage act, and we didn't even know it.
00:53:39And so I'm exploring this thought as I get into mainstream Christianity
00:53:43and attend a few different varieties of churches,
00:53:45and I see the same stage acts over and over again.
00:53:48It's normalized now, right?
00:53:51It's normalized, and it's not that I have a problem with it.
00:53:54Some people like that.
00:53:56I'm not a routine person like this, but some people like this.
00:53:59I've even had people frequently on the show who will mention how they need to support the institutional church
00:54:06and all of that.
00:54:06That's fine if you want to do that.
00:54:07But I will say this.
00:54:10That is not for everyone.
00:54:12And I am of the strong opinion that churches should be not involved in taxes
00:54:19in the way that the tax structures are today.
00:54:22They should not be given a free blanket check to go have tax-free benefits.
00:54:28If you knew the level of crime that goes into church because of this, you would run screaming.
00:54:33So I'm all for getting rid of that policy whatsoever.
00:54:38But look at the shift.
00:54:40So back as its rural area church, whenever people were contributing to the church,
00:54:47they were contributing to a community, especially in towns that only had one church.
00:54:52Everybody goes to the one church.
00:54:54Everybody, if sister so-and-so has no money and needs food,
00:54:59well, the whole church, the whole community is coming together for that one person.
00:55:02When it shifted to the metro, it changed significantly.
00:55:07One of the first things that I did once I saw how they all,
00:55:10especially the larger churches, they operate as a business,
00:55:13we stopped paying our tithes and offerings to the church
00:55:17and instead gave them to the less fortunate people
00:55:19so that they could have some sort of a life.
00:55:23I know mothers who, in fact, we've helped mothers who have children
00:55:27that they did not even have enough money to feed the children.
00:55:30And I would much rather give my tithes to this person than I would a building
00:55:35from which is already getting tax benefits, etc.
00:55:38Right.
00:55:40Wow.
00:55:41Well, I'll give you an example of something that's always kind of intrigued me.
00:55:46Communion.
00:55:47So we have this thing where we drink the wine and do bread.
00:55:53People, I don't know if they've ever stopped and thought about this.
00:55:57This was a meal.
00:55:58Like when this first happened, it's a bunch of friends having a Passover meal together.
00:56:05It's a long, drawn-out thing.
00:56:07I don't know if you've ever been to Passovers.
00:56:09I've been to tons of them.
00:56:10And there's stories being told.
00:56:13And it's your family.
00:56:14It's your relationship.
00:56:15The whole thing is relational.
00:56:18And it's historical.
00:56:20And it's a whole drawn-out thing.
00:56:21Right now, we've got the urban version.
00:56:24Yes.
00:56:24I went to this church the other day, and it's like a whole packet.
00:56:30Like it's like this produced little thing.
00:56:32You just peel it off.
00:56:34And one side's the wine, and then the other side's the little, you know,
00:56:38it looks like a nugget.
00:56:39You know what I mean?
00:56:40And you're just like, oh, my gosh.
00:56:42I mean, it's like there's a whole production now, right?
00:56:46And, you know, it's interesting because in the rural areas on Sunday,
00:56:51because people travel, what did they do?
00:56:54They would bring food.
00:56:56So you'd have church together, and it wouldn't last one hour,
00:57:02like getting everyone, right?
00:57:03It would go until it was done.
00:57:05And then we'd all eat together.
00:57:08And it's like that whole thing in time, right?
00:57:10It just slows down, and we focus on relationships.
00:57:14Something else, which I believe you know this because of your experience,
00:57:19one of the shockers for me as a young guy in the ministry coming up
00:57:24in the 1980s, which is a little frightening as I look back on it,
00:57:30but almost every single one of the megachurch pastor guys that I know
00:57:36who stood on a stage and were dynamic and projected a caring, relational,
00:57:46you know, they just, you know, this whole kind of vibe, right?
00:57:50And everybody's like, oh, pastor, he's so lovely and caring, right?
00:57:55And then I got to know these guys off the stage like you talk about.
00:57:59And I could care less.
00:58:03They are so emotionally disconnected, right?
00:58:07And it was freaky, you know?
00:58:09It's like they walk out of that curtain, and it's a whole persona that comes on them.
00:58:16I had to deal with this at KCF because Mike was one of those guys, right?
00:58:21I mean, he would get people to move, you know, sell their homes,
00:58:26move away from their families, give him thousands of dollars, right?
00:58:31And they all thought because of the lunch they had had or the dinner they'd had with him
00:58:37that they're coming to Kansas City to go on staff and be a part of the ministry.
00:58:42And then they'd get there, and he wouldn't even talk to them.
00:58:44And they're like, huh?
00:58:47Wait, this is not to say, wait, what had just happened here, right?
00:58:51I mean, I literally picked up so many broken people, sadly.
00:58:57I had to, I mean, to this day, you know, we've all kind of remained friends.
00:59:02But the disillusionment, you know, I can remember vividly, this is terrible.
00:59:08I can't even think about this, but I was at some pro-life thing with Melody Green
00:59:13and everybody out in Washington, D.C., and there's this massive crowd, right?
00:59:18And I hear these two voices, move out of the way for the man of God.
00:59:24Move out of the way for the man of God.
00:59:27I thought it was just like somebody was telling a joke or something, right?
00:59:32And I turn around, and there's these two huge guys that look like NFL linemen
00:59:36pushing the crowd out of the way so little Ernest Ainsley could walk.
00:59:41Oh, no.
00:59:44I just looked at that and went, oh, my God, what have I got myself into here?
00:59:49This is insane, right?
00:59:51But, again, you know, I'm the man of God.
00:59:54I mean, I'm different.
00:59:56You see what I mean?
00:59:57That, again, normalized.
01:00:00So, one of the, you know, and again, this is a whole other discussion for another day.
01:00:05But I've spent 40 years of my life in the sewer with all these guys.
01:00:08And the reason is, is there's a stage persona, and then there's their very broken lives in real life.
01:00:16With everything from mental illness to addictions to, you know, twisted things.
01:00:24And as I was sharing with my friends the other day, even with Mike and his situation, it all goes back to childhood, right?
01:00:33These are things, abuses, programming, things that happened in childhood that were never dealt with, right?
01:00:40Which actually ended up creating the narcissism, the sociopathy, the disconnectedness, which we all think is anointed.
01:00:50Yeah.
01:00:50Right?
01:00:52This is where this gets so wild to me.
01:00:54And I have such a hard time because I'm listening to people who are just drooling over these stage personas, these stars, you know, they're being entertained by.
01:01:05And I'm going, God, if you only knew.
01:01:07If you only knew.
01:01:09It's really sad.
01:01:09I have people often who send me friendly hate mail of rebukes about, I knew your grandfather.
01:01:18He was such a good man.
01:01:19He would be so ashamed of you.
01:01:21He's turning over in his grave.
01:01:22That kind of thing, you know?
01:01:23Right.
01:01:24And I love my grandfather.
01:01:26This is where it gets really hard for me.
01:01:28I loved my grandfather.
01:01:29I really thought he was a good man.
01:01:31I also know people whose lives he destroyed.
01:01:35That's right.
01:01:35And so I have to deal with this.
01:01:37I loved him as a human being.
01:01:38He was a flawed, ridiculously flawed human being who was leading a cult and was destroying lives.
01:01:47He was doing what he thought he knew best.
01:01:49And it's complicated as to whether that was intense of the heart or some other motivation.
01:01:54But I loved him as my grandfather.
01:01:56He ruined lives.
01:01:58But he had the stage persona where people did not see him as a person who is ruining their life.
01:02:04And they would devote their lives to him.
01:02:06I had people who were just – people would show up and just hand him $100 bills just in stacks at his house because they felt like they needed to support this humble man who has nothing.
01:02:17Had no idea how much money this man had.
01:02:19He was quite wealthy.
01:02:21But that's the difference.
01:02:22When they go on stage, they act one way.
01:02:25And whenever they go off stage, they're a different person.
01:02:27But don't you think – and this is a frustration for me, and I'll just lay it out there – I've always had this worldview that God's about diversity and harmony, that there's multiple things going on in any one situation.
01:02:41I get very frustrated because there's a sort of default setting in the church world that something is either good or it's evil.
01:02:52And I keep trying to explain to people, no, it's good and evil, right?
01:02:57The same person who can do really good can do really bad.
01:03:04And people just – they don't have a mindset for that, right?
01:03:07So if you say they did something evil, they get mad at you because they'll point out to what he did good.
01:03:13So one of the things I always remind people of is Ted Bundy.
01:03:18You know the name, Ted Bundy?
01:03:20Ted Bundy, yeah, Ted Bundy had a dynamic preacher's personality.
01:03:27Everywhere he went, everybody loved him, right?
01:03:30He got invited everywhere.
01:03:32He was all involved in politics.
01:03:34People wanted him to run for office.
01:03:35He had charisma.
01:03:38Well, he was slaughtering whatever he did, 20 women, right?
01:03:42The same guy who had this dynamic personality had this dark side.
01:03:48And I'm just saying I can – you know, I got in trouble with my book because the younger generation could only view Mike Bickle as good or evil.
01:04:01And I kept trying to explain to them over and over again, you don't understand.
01:04:07Mike's got a good heart.
01:04:08You know, like you were saying about your grandfather.
01:04:10He wants to do good.
01:04:12Mike does not sit there and go, how can I be evil and destroy people's lives, right?
01:04:17He's not sitting there like, you know, he's not trying to get away with something, right?
01:04:24He's just – but he's broken.
01:04:26He's very broken.
01:04:28Good people do bad things and bad people do good things.
01:04:35That's the reality of life.
01:04:37And so, one, I think it's intellectual laziness to just say good or evil, right?
01:04:45I think you're just being – because I think it's situational.
01:04:49It's like, what do they call it?
01:04:50Case by case, CBC, right?
01:04:52Every situation you have to evaluate, is this guy being driven by selfish ambition and greed, which is evil?
01:05:00Or is he being driven by love and caring for others, which is good, right?
01:05:04So, that's why I'm saying I always look at the nature of something to kind of get behind it.
01:05:10But it's really scary how many narcissists, sociopaths run big churches.
01:05:18And the final thought for me is the black and white mentality you mentioned.
01:05:23That is a cult indoctrinated mindset, this black and white mentality.
01:05:26Good or evil, yin or yang, however you want to look at it.
01:05:29But what's interesting about that is they train the people to dehumanize anyone who is outside of their religion.
01:05:38But what nobody really recognizes is in doing so, they also train you to dehumanize the leader.
01:05:45The leader is no longer human.
01:05:47He has become something that isn't.
01:05:49I call it the other.
01:05:50He's the other.
01:05:51He's become the other.
01:05:52Or she has become the other.
01:05:53Yeah, they're like in a different sphere, different realm, right?
01:05:56Yeah.
01:05:57We're all peons and they're other.
01:05:59Yeah, exactly.
01:06:01So many thoughts come to mind.
01:06:03Every time I talk to you, there's like a thousand things I want to say and we're limited to an hour.
01:06:08Well, so here's what we'll do the next time.
01:06:11Now, keep all those thoughts ruminating and then next time we'll do that.
01:06:16And then, of course, we've got our discussion about upstate New York still hanging out there, which I just find fascinating, you know?
01:06:23Absolutely.
01:06:24Well, I look forward to it.
01:06:26Thank you for doing this.
01:06:27No, thank you.
01:06:28I'm having fun.
01:06:29I was telling some friends the other day, he's the one guy that I've met in probably 30 years that actually I can have an honest, transparent conversation with who doesn't like freak out.
01:06:41I go, most of the church world is like navigating a minefield, right?
01:06:46It's just people like we were talking about, they're on or off, in or out, black or white, right?
01:06:51And so you just never know when you're stepping on a mine.
01:06:54And so I find myself just so cautious anymore to say anything because everybody gets triggered so easily, right?
01:07:03We get offended so easily.
01:07:04It's like the concept of sitting down and having different opinions and trying to put it all together just doesn't exist.
01:07:15See, this is where I'm different from most people.
01:07:17Most people go, if this is different from this, then they're opposed.
01:07:22I look at it, I go, if this is different from this, it might be another slice of the same piece, right?
01:07:31You see, and that mentality, so you have that like I do, and it's like, it's so frustrating to talk to people because they can't see that.
01:07:38They can't see that, like Paul, you know, the manifold wisdom of God, the many faceted wisdom of God.
01:07:46There's a lot of different ways to do things, right?
01:07:49There's a lot of different points of view.
01:07:52I mean, if you deal with, like I do, with racial reconciliation in Africa, you couldn't get more different points of view.
01:07:59But it was like, how do you reconcile that, see?
01:08:02And that's where my heart goes.
01:08:04It's like, how do I reconcile this?
01:08:06But you get people from a cult mentality, they're so rigid and dug in, they're not interested in reconciling anything.
01:08:14And the sad truth is that that cult mentality has spread into the mainstream, and that's where this gets interesting.
01:08:20Well, it's spread into our whole culture now, right?
01:08:22That's where cancel culture comes from.
01:08:24It's like, well, if you don't think like I do, you know, you're evil.
01:08:28I mean, I hear it on the news, and I'm just like, whoa, it's like, this is crazy.
01:08:35It is crazy, but that's why we're here, to untangle the crazy and make sense of it.
01:08:40Try to make Satan this out of insanity, huh?
01:08:43Absolutely.
01:08:44Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:08:48You can find us at william-brannum.org.
01:08:51For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:08:58And for more about Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read Some Said They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle,
01:09:05The Kansas City Prophets, and The International House of Prayer.
01:09:08We'll see you next time.
01:09:38We'll see you next time.
01:10:08We'll see you next time.
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