From Darby to the NAR: Rapture Theology’s Viral Spread Through Prophets & Pulpits | Bob Scott

Name: From Darby to the NAR: Rapture Theology’s Viral Spread Through Prophets & Pulpits | Bob Scott | 445
Uploaded: 2025-10-16T13:04:16+00:00
Duration: 1 h 6 min 17 s
Channel: William Branham Historical Research

William Branham Historical Research

5 days ago

John and Bob trace the surprising modern origins of rapture theology, showing that it was unknown to the early church and only popularized in the 19th century through John Nelson Darby, the Scofield Bible, and the cultural upheaval of the U.S. Civil War. They explore how dispensationalism provided a foundation for this teaching and how political events and convenient theology kept reshaping it.

The conversation highlights the role of fortune-telling impulses, the Second Great Awakening, the camp-meeting movement, and even the influence of spiritualism on revival culture. John and Bob warn that rapture predictions often prey on fear and the human desire for secret knowledge, diverting believers from the simple call of Jesus to love God and neighbor.

00:00 Introduction
01:03 Where Did the Rapture Idea Come From?
03:00 Failed Prophecies and Modern Disappointments
06:38 Dispensationalism and the Scofield Bible
12:04 “Convenient Theology” and the Human Desire for Escape
15:14 Who Was John Nelson Darby?
20:48 How Dispensationalism Tried to Explain God’s “Changes”
24:00 Fortune-Telling, Fear, and the Roots of Rapture Thinking
25:35 The Civil War and the Spread of Dispensationalism
27:00 Restoration of Israel and the Parallel Theology
30:12 Why Dispensationalism Took Hold
33:04 Scofield’s Revisions and Political Influences
34:36 Revival, Renewal, and Convenient Doctrines
38:01 Darby, Finney, Smith, Miller, and the Burned-Over District
44:00 Cross-Pollination and the Printing Press
47:01 Restorationism and the Rise of Holiness Movements
50:17 Spiritualism, the NAR, and Fortune-Telling in Religion
54:12 Fear, Ego, and the Psychology of False Prophets
58:55 The Camp-Meeting Connection and the Cross-Pollination of Ideas
1:00:39 How to Recognize a Con in the Church
1:01:46 The Simplicity of Christ’s Teaching Versus Secret Knowledge
1:04:12 Final Warnings and Closing Thoughts

______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books

Category

📚

Learning

Transcript

Display full video transcript

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 the author of three books, The Latest is Some Say They

00:00:52Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, The Kansas City Prophets, and

00:00:57the International House of Prayer.

00:00:59Well, Bob, we have a very, for me, very exciting episode today.

00:01:04This is one of the subjects that, honestly, if we can fit this into one hour, we'll be

00:01:10doing good because I have so many things to say about the subject.

00:01:15We're talking about the rapture.

00:01:16And just to preface, for those who don't know who I am, I am the grandson of the pastor

00:01:23at Branham's Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, who was a doomsday prophet who taught

00:01:29rapture theology.

00:01:30And he was but one of many.

00:01:33And that is no claim to fame just because I was part of this, but I was part of a movement

00:01:39that developed the idea that along with restoration, there would also be a rapture.

00:01:46Usually this rapture comes before the tribulation in most of the sects, not all of them, but most

00:01:52of them.

00:01:53And the idea of the rapture, I was having this conversation, believe it or not, Bob, just

00:01:57two days ago with another person.

00:02:00We were talking about how the idea of a rapture, it's only about 200 years old, maybe a little

00:02:08bit, you know, 250, something like that.

00:02:10It's not that old.

00:02:11And if you look at the time span of human history and you find you can go back through all of

00:02:17the literature, I've actually read many of the ancient church fathers, nobody really

00:02:21talks about this until about 200 years ago.

00:02:24And what's funny is when you listen to the people who really don't know the history, they're

00:02:30just parroting whatever everyone else is saying, they say all of the early church fathers has

00:02:35believed this and you can find it right in the Bible.

00:02:38And what they ask you to do when they say this is read this first, but read in between

00:02:44these lines because you'll see rapture is right there between the lines of text that

00:02:48is written.

00:02:50Well, to be honest with you, I'm sort of glad you're here.

00:02:53You know, when I texted you about the subject, I wasn't sure you were going to reply because

00:02:58I thought maybe you'd taken the rapture elevator up already, you know, and the reason I'm teasing

00:03:04about that is I don't know how many are aware, but there was supposed to be a rapture on the

00:03:1123rd and 24th of September based on the most recent revelation from a self-proclaimed prophet

00:03:21out of South Africa who claimed that back in 2018.

00:03:26He had a revelation that September 23rd, 24th, 2025, the rapture would come.

00:03:37And there's been a few photographs out there of whole groups of people standing in various

00:03:44places around the world waiting to be taken up on the rapture elevator, but they were sorely

00:03:52disappointed.

00:03:53So on the one hand, I'm sorry they were so disappointed.

00:03:57And on the other hand, I'm glad my friend John is still around so we can have this conversation.

00:04:01And anyways, one thing that fascinates me is that this is one of those, I don't know, you

00:04:13could call it a theology.

00:04:14It's one of those teachings that is actually shared by both sides of the Protestant equation,

00:04:22but how they approach it is very different.

00:04:26And what I mean by that is, is on the charismatic Pentecostal side, their rapture predictions and

00:04:37all that are based on their perception of their revelatory skills, right?

00:04:43They have dreams, they have visions, God spoke to them, and of course, they've all been wrong

00:04:51for the last couple hundred years.

00:04:53On the evangelical side, which is the world that, how I came into the kingdom of God during

00:05:00the 1970s, you had the evangelicals who were exegeting it by their unpacking the book of

00:05:12Daniel, you know, Thessalonians, different scriptures.

00:05:16Probably in my lifetime, the guy that was probably the most prominent was Hal Lindsey's Late Great

00:05:25Planet Earth, right?

00:05:27That was such a huge book during the 70s, I believe it was.

00:05:35And what's interesting to me from the evangelical side is you had Dallas Theological Seminary.

00:05:45You know, I talk about Hal Lindsey, you have Chuck Smith, John Hagee, Charles Stanley, Chuck

00:05:51Swindoll, John MacArthur.

00:05:53I mean, some of these guys were the stalwarts of the evangelical side, and they were all very

00:06:00strong rapture proponents.

00:06:02But they got there based on unpacking, you know, the various, you know, scriptures.

00:06:09What do they all have in common?

00:06:12They might come at this from two completely different perspectives, but the one thing that

00:06:18they all have in common is they've all been wrong.

00:06:21Well, there's another thing they have in common.

00:06:23I don't know if you've thought through this.

00:06:25Like I said, I could talk for weeks.

00:06:27Oh, I'm sure you could.

00:06:28That's why I thought we'd have this conversation, because I knew you would have all kinds of interesting

00:06:33thoughts.

00:06:33Darrell Bock Yeah.

00:06:35So, in the world that I grew up in, dispensationalism was a strong theme, and you had towers of doctrine

00:06:44built on top of dispensationalism, which makes it interesting, because if you ever come to

00:06:49the realization that dispensationalism isn't quite biblical, every tower that's built upon

00:06:57it can't stand.

00:06:58Darrell Bock So, I was in the midst of deprogramming, trying

00:07:03to understand what was right with our theology, what was wrong, and I was watching these towers

00:07:08that were just shaking in my head, these towers of knowledge, and it all was because of this

00:07:13foundation.

00:07:14So, dispensationalism, for those who don't know, men and some women have taken the seven churches

00:07:24of Asia Minor.

00:07:25These were physical locations.

00:07:27Paul sent his letters to seven churches, for example.

00:07:31It is mentioned in the book of Revelation, but there was this notion that these churches

00:07:37were twofold.

00:07:39In one purpose, they were the physical locations, but were also to read anything to that church

00:07:45is actually written to a time period.

00:07:48And there are different views on what these time periods were.

00:07:52But you really have to lay that foundation, because every single thing that talks about

00:07:59the second coming of Christ in the Bible gives the reverse order of pre-tribulation rapture.

00:08:06You know, the tares are taken before the wheat, all of the parables, how will Christ's coming

00:08:10be?

00:08:11It defies everything that is built upon the foundation of theology for pre-tribulation rapture.

00:08:18But what they did was, because of these dispensations, you can read part of this, and you can twist

00:08:25it and morph it and make it fit both things, the wrong thing and the right thing.

00:08:29So, I was coming to terms with all of this, and I suddenly came on the history and knowledge

00:08:39of the Schofield Bible.

00:08:40If you understand the influence that that book had, politically, religiously, false doctrine,

00:08:49every single thing.

00:08:51So, Schofield Bible, for those who don't know, it's widely used among Pentecostals.

00:08:56This is one of the most popular Bibles.

00:08:58It is almost unanimously used among fundamentalists.

00:09:01And to some extent, there are some modern people who are not even part of the charismatic

00:09:06movement who prefer the Schofield Bible because it has the Bible text, and in between it, it

00:09:12has the notes that Schofield wrote, while in prison, for bigamy, for abandoning a wife

00:09:18and child, while sleeping with a mistress, this guy, he was a scoundrel, if you go look

00:09:24it up, and this was a good way to make money as a scoundrel.

00:09:28He figured this out, and he created seminaries and all kinds of things.

00:09:33Well, his scoundrelism aside, what it did was, there are many people, even still today, who

00:09:41are too lazy to study the Bible for themselves.

00:09:44Yeah, that's true.

00:09:45And he provided an easy way for study, because here's the Bible text that you're not going

00:09:50to study.

00:09:51Here's my Cliff Notes version of the text that you're reading on these pages.

00:09:55And people have trusted those Cliff Notes.

00:09:58Well, what is he doing?

00:09:59He's taking the dispensational ideas of Darby, putting it in the text in between the passages

00:10:06of the Bible.

00:10:08And so people read his notes, and they literally believe, falsely, that embedded in these chapters

00:10:15is dispensationalism, because that's what he's talking about, dispensationalism.

00:10:19So this idea spread throughout the United States and Canada, and he's also bringing in various

00:10:27political themes.

00:10:29Somewhere I did a study on the different revisions of the Schofield Bible as it aligned with the

00:10:36political themes in fundamentalist Christianity, and it's funny what words get changed.

00:10:41So what year do you know what year that Schofield Bible came out?

00:10:44I'd have to look it up.

00:10:46But where I was headed with this is John MacArthur was raised on a Schofield Bible.

00:10:51And you find many of these people.

00:10:53And I could be wrong.

00:10:55Somebody might correct me that.

00:10:57But it seems as though I remember MacArthur was – maybe he's not still using it before

00:11:03he died.

00:11:03But I think he was raised on it, if I remember correctly.

00:11:06Anyway, whether he was or not, many of the others who preach rapture theology, they have

00:11:13either some tie to the Schofield Bible, or they have been influenced by some aspect of

00:11:18dispensationalism.

00:11:20Well, here, I just looked it up.

00:11:21So the first version came out in 1909.

00:11:24And then there was a revised version in 1917.

00:11:32So this is pre-World War I.

00:11:35Or right during – and the reason I only bring up the historical stuff is a lot of events

00:11:42and things that happen have a – happen because of a bigger cultural dynamics in play.

00:11:49Well, one of the things I call the rapture and a few other things – I have a little

00:11:55Bob-ism, which is I – instead of covenant theology, I call it convenient theology.

00:12:02And where I came up with this term is, is that I have noticed across – because I'm such

00:12:11an avid church historian, I've noticed across the swath of the last couple thousand years

00:12:17of the church history how many convenient theologies there are that confirm our prejudices, confirm

00:12:30our wants, right, confirm what our ego – you know, they're kind of reaffirming, I mean,

00:12:37the whole prosperity gospel, you know what I mean?

00:12:40It's like, yeah, everybody wants to get rich, right?

00:12:42It's just – it's like there's all these theologies that are convenient.

00:12:47And one of them that has always intrigued me has been this whole rapture thing.

00:12:53And here's – you know, and I'm just kind of laying my cards out on the table here.

00:12:58But as somebody who's gone through terrible tragedy in their life and having to lose friends,

00:13:10you know, I lost 16 friends in a single massacre, you wrestle with this stuff because there's

00:13:18this kind of desire that we Christians have for God to deliver us out of our problems, right?

00:13:25We want us – we want him to deliver us out of our crises.

00:13:31And so the rapture, of course, is this convenient theology that rescues us during a time of

00:13:38tribulation, right?

00:13:41Well, here's the problem.

00:13:43Go back and look at – well, not only the last 2,000 years, but look back at human history.

00:13:47How many times has God rescued us and delivered us out of tribulation?

00:13:55I mean, the whole of the early church, right, was running for their lives, you know, with

00:14:03massive persecution, massive amounts of martyrs, right?

00:14:07I mean, all of that for the longest time.

00:14:11God didn't deliver these people, right?

00:14:14It's, you know, he didn't save the millions of people, you know, through world wars, conflicts.

00:14:23He doesn't rescue people from natural disasters.

00:14:27What he does, it seems to me, is gives us the grace to go through things.

00:14:34But I seldom find him delivering us from things.

00:14:38And that's what kind of is a red flag to me about a lot of these convenient theologies

00:14:46is they seem to appeal to what we want, you know, what we hope for.

00:14:51Like, yeah, I want to get rich.

00:14:52Okay, yes, God wants you to get rich.

00:14:55In fact, look at all these scriptures, right?

00:14:57Wait a minute.

00:14:58I don't want to go through a hard time.

00:15:00Like, I don't want to die for my faith.

00:15:02Okay, well, don't worry about it.

00:15:03You're going to catch the first elevator out in the rapture.

00:15:06God's going to take – right?

00:15:07There's all these very convenient theologies we come up with.

00:15:12So take me back a little bit because you mentioned the name Darby.

00:15:18And as far as I know, he's sort of the father of this whole rapture idea.

00:15:25So who was John Nelson Darby?

00:15:28He was the founder, I believe, of the Plymouth Brethren, which was in Dublin, Ireland.

00:15:38So he's not an American guy.

00:15:40He's an Irish dude.

00:15:42And he's in Dublin.

00:15:44And, you know, he, you know, obviously gets into his 30s, right?

00:15:52Because this whole thing starts emerging in the 1830s.

00:15:56And it really took a foothold here in the U.S.

00:16:01And it's kind of interesting because what I tend to do is kind of go back and look at, well, what was happening at that time in America?

00:16:12Like, why did this particular thing happen, right?

00:16:17I mean, you're talking about the 1830s, right?

00:16:21So you're after the Revolutionary War.

00:16:24You're kind of in that second generation now or third generation after the war.

00:16:30Americans are moving west, right?

00:16:33I know some of this because my grandmother, my dad's mother, comes from a revolutionary family.

00:16:41My grandmother's great-great-uncle was Benjamin Rush, who signed the Declaration.

00:16:49Her great-grandfather was James Brewer, who fought with, or John Brewer, who fought with Washington and New Jersey.

00:16:59They were, you know, they were the Dutch, you know, they were called Browers back then.

00:17:03They all came down the whole Aoha River.

00:17:06You know, we're in this expansion mode, right?

00:17:11Jefferson had bought the middle of the country in the early 1800s, right?

00:17:18So there's all this stuff.

00:17:20And what's also happening, which is really interesting to me, because, again, I'm tying this into a bigger cultural thing,

00:17:26this is when the whole concept of manifest destiny starts becoming a big thing in the United States, right?

00:17:34So it's kind of like, you know, we won this Revolutionary War.

00:17:39We won, you know, the Brits came back in 1812.

00:17:42We have that little skirmish.

00:17:43We win again.

00:17:44And now everybody's going west because we're going to expand, right?

00:17:48We're, you know, people are buying land, you know, trains.

00:17:52You know, the first locomotives are being developed.

00:17:54You know, there's all this, you know, it's sort of what he called, you know, the wild, wild west as we know it from the movies actually is a period after the Civil War, you know, into the early 1900s, right?

00:18:10It's a short little period.

00:18:11But in some ways, this was the precursor to the wild, wild west because everybody's going west, right?

00:18:18Cities like Cincinnati, which are funny now because nobody really thinks about Cincinnati, but Cincinnati at this particular time is huge, right?

00:18:27Because it's a major city on the Ohio River, which is how people are going west.

00:18:32They're taking barges down the Ohio River versus, you know, some are taking wagon trains, but most are coming down the river.

00:18:40And Cincinnati's right on the river.

00:18:42So what also happens, who was also prevalent at that time, Charles Finney, right?

00:18:47So it's like there's some interesting correlations going on right now, you know, at that same period of time.

00:18:55So suddenly Darby, who's over in Dublin and the UK, is kind of emerging.

00:19:02Now, you know who was a contemporary of Darby?

00:19:04Charles Spurgeon.

00:19:06So Spurgeon and Darby sort of clashed a bit, right?

00:19:10Because Spurgeon was old school and, you know, Darby kind of scared him.

00:19:16So there's the rapture thing, but to your point about dispensation, one of the big, again, because we're, you know, flipping back to this whole thing about convenient theology, here was a huge problem for most preachers.

00:19:31The God of the Old Testament, you know, the fire and brimstone God of the Old Testament, doesn't seem to match the God of the New Testament, who Jesus is saying, when you see me, you see the Father, right?

00:19:48It's like, what happened here?

00:19:50Like, these are two different people.

00:19:53And so one of the driving forces behind dispensationalism is we have to explain why things changed, right?

00:20:02How did we go, you know, from this very strict legal sort of view of faith, you know, where if you sin, you bring offerings, you bring money, you know, you do, you know, there's that kind of thing to the whole thing of grace and God's kindness and sacrificing on a cross, right?

00:20:21So that's a lot of what was driving the dispensationalist was, well, we got to explain this problem here, because these two things aren't matching up very well.

00:20:31So something changed, right?

00:20:32Okay, that's a dispensation.

00:20:34Well, then there's these other dispensationalists, right?

00:20:36So it was a way to explain some of the biblical confusion over the way God seemed to interact with humans.

00:20:45Darrell Bock You know, it's funny, because I was building up to – I was going to tell my thoughts on why it exists, and I was going to walk through some of that history.

00:20:58Well, you have walked through different paths of history to get to the same place, almost.

00:21:02Darrell Bock Yeah.

00:21:03Darrell Bock But share your story, because I think it's important.

00:21:05Darrell Bock Yeah.

00:21:06So, like I said, I've studied this to no end.

00:21:09Darrell Bock Right.

00:21:10Darrell Bock And I'm actually going to start before Darby.

00:21:12I'm going to start back in the Old Testament with fortune-telling.

00:21:15Darrell Bock Why fortune-telling, and why would God condemn it?

00:21:19Darrell Bock Uh-huh.

00:21:19Darrell Bock Everybody who is human wants to know how things are going to work out.

00:21:24Darrell Bock If you have a battle coming, you want to know who's going to win.

00:21:28Darrell Bock If you have a famine, you want to know, are we going to eat again?

00:21:31Darrell Bock Yeah, that's right.

00:21:32Darrell Bock No surprises.

00:21:33Darrell Bock No surprises.

00:21:34Darrell Bock We don't like surprises.

00:21:35Darrell Bock So fortune-telling is basically the idea that somebody that you can go to and usually give money to, or back then grains or whatever,

00:21:43can give you the ideas of your future.

00:21:47Darrell Bock Mm-hmm.

00:21:48Darrell Bock And it may be right.

00:21:49Darrell Bock It may be wrong.

00:21:49Darrell Bock I don't know.

00:21:50Darrell Bock There are people who say that the fortune-tellers maybe got it right in the Old Testament, and that's why it was so attractive.

00:21:55Darrell Bock I think it's more because of the human problem.

00:21:57Darrell Bock However, the end result is still the same.

00:22:01Darrell Bock And there are good sci-fi movies that kind of hint at this a little bit.

00:22:05Darrell Bock Knowing your future is not really that good of a thing.

00:22:10Darrell Bock If you know your future, it sways the current decisions that you make.

00:22:14Darrell Bock Right.

00:22:15Darrell Bock And so this is a really, really bad thing, and you can see why God would condemn it.

00:22:19Darrell Bock Fast forward to Jesus' time.

00:22:21Darrell Bock Jesus comes.

00:22:22Darrell Bock The Jews are being just persecuted to no end by all of these different invasion forces, right?

00:22:31Darrell Bock And they're looking for a conqueror, a military conqueror, to come and save them.

00:22:36Darrell Bock They're not looking for a guy who's going to die on a cross.

00:22:39Darrell Bock Yeah, that's true.

00:22:40Darrell Bock They're wanting to know the outcome of their future.

00:22:42Darrell Bock Jesus comes.

00:22:44Darrell Bock He dies.

00:22:45Darrell Bock Now take Paul.

00:22:47Darrell Bock Paul is starting to, you know, the early church is starting to form.

00:22:52Darrell Bock His idea of rapture theology is, these who are alive and still remain when Christ

00:22:59returns.

00:23:00Darrell Bock That's a Bible verse.

00:23:01Darrell Bock Yeah.

00:23:02Darrell Bock He was looking for Jesus to return while people were still alive, which is why

00:23:07there are some scholars who question the authenticity of Paul being the author of passages like Timothy

00:23:15where the entire church structure is being described.

00:23:18Darrell Bock If you're looking for Jesus to come right then, you don't need the structure,

00:23:23this vast structure that Timothy brings.

00:23:25Darrell Bock Right.

00:23:26Darrell Bock What happens is, over time, now you enter Gnosticism.

00:23:31Darrell Bock Like I said, I've studied this to the discussion of probably 50 podcasts.

00:23:35Darrell Bock Right.

00:23:36Darrell Bock Which basically is physical's evil and spiritual's

00:23:39good.

00:23:40Darrell Bock Yes, but what Gnosticism did, it brought from the ancient mystery cults the divine gnosis

00:23:48or the divine mystery and embedded this into Christianity.

00:23:53Darrell Bock That swayed the course of Christianity.

00:23:56Darrell Bock The mystery cult Christians just started to emerge.

00:24:00Darrell Bock Well, what is this?

00:24:01Darrell Bock This is really the same thing as fortune telling.

00:24:03Darrell Bock We know the mystery.

00:24:04Darrell Bock We know the outcome.

00:24:05Darrell Bock That's literally how it comes to be.

00:24:08Darrell Bock Darrell Bock Darrell Bock Darrell Bock There are some scholars or some historians who debate

00:24:14this.

00:24:15Darrell Bock If I remember correct, it was the Jesuits because at the same time the Jesuits had the futuristic

00:24:20ideas.

00:24:21Darrell Bock And though there's no historical evidence that Darby copied them, he is being

00:24:27influenced in an era when this is becoming popular in a location where it was.

00:24:33Darrell Bock Fast forward to the time period you're talking about.

00:24:36Darrell Bock All of the history that you just gave laid the groundwork for the – so here's

00:24:42the epicenter of when dispensationalism hit the United States.

00:24:46Darrell Bock It was during the Civil War when brothers fighting against brother, this whole

00:24:52idea of manifest destiny, it more closely resembled – the Wild West resembled like a Mad Max movie.

00:24:59Darrell Bock Right.

00:25:00Darrell Bock These people are going out here to die because there's no food.

00:25:03Darrell Bock There's nothing there.

00:25:04Darrell Bock They're scavengers, you know, whatever it is.

00:25:06Darrell Bock And so they're seeing this weird shift in the United States that they want

00:25:11to know how is this going to be.

00:25:13Darrell Bock Well Darby first starts visiting and holding lectures during the Civil War and

00:25:18this would have been very popular for people who want to know their future.

00:25:22Darrell Bock Yeah.

00:25:23Darrell Bock They want to know how things are going to end.

00:25:25Darrell Bock And if I'm not mistaken, it was at one of those lectures that Schofield first

00:25:31came in contact with Darbyism.

00:25:33Darrell Bock But regardless, Darbyism kind of spread throughout the United States.

00:25:37Darrell Bock This is very attractive to people who are watching their brothers and fathers

00:25:42and grandfathers die in a war.

00:25:44Darrell Bock They want to know how is it going to end.

00:25:46Darrell Bock And then the notion that we are now living in this turmoil, and it closely

00:25:52resembles what Jesus would have described whenever he was talking about the things that

00:25:58would come, the Great Tribulation, etc.

00:26:00Darrell Bock Well, they start painting the picture that this is the tribulation that is

00:26:04spoke of, so these dispensations may make sense actually.

00:26:09Darrell Bock Let's listen to this guy.

00:26:11Darrell Bock And the funny part about that is, I'm building up to that climax to say this,

00:26:15it was just one of many, many, many cases where something really, really bad happened in

00:26:22the world, and people thought, oh, this matches the Book of Revelation.

00:26:26Darrell Bock Yeah.

00:26:27Darrell Bock It's going to end soon, right?

00:26:28Darrell Bock Right.

00:26:29Darrell Bock But his epicenter was the United States Civil War, and that the rest of it is

00:26:33history.

00:26:34Darrell Bock Interesting.

00:26:35Darrell Bock Well, something that most people, or many people I should say, may not be aware

00:26:40of is there's a parallel theology that comes with the rapture and dispensationalism, which is the

00:26:51restoration of the nation of Israel, which is interesting because, again, it's one of these

00:26:57things that's so widely accepted in our modern church culture, and you're seeing it now with

00:27:07a lot of what's going on in the Middle East.

00:27:10Darrell Bock But again, people may not be aware of this.

00:27:13Darrell Bock Before 1830, nobody thought that, right?

00:27:17Darrell Bock Not even the Jews, by and large.

00:27:20Darrell Bock Now, there was always a remnant that remained in the Middle East, but after the

00:27:26Romans came in there in 70 AD and basically just destroyed the city, the remaining Jewish population

00:27:36all migrated around the Mediterranean into Rome.

00:27:39Darrell Bock One of the reasons that Paul ended up wanting to get to Rome was outside of Jerusalem,

00:27:46the largest epicenter of Jewish people was actually in Rome.

00:27:50Darrell Bock And why was that?

00:27:51Darrell Bock Because Jewish people were merchants, right?

00:27:53Darrell Bock And they knew that's where you could establish a business.

00:27:57Darrell Bock It's not any different than immigrants coming to New York, right?

00:28:00Darrell Bock It's like, you know, that's the epicenter.

00:28:02Darrell Bock That's the economic epicenter of the United States.

00:28:06Darrell Bock So let's go there and get rich and make a business.

00:28:10Darrell Bock But again, not even the Jewish people were thinking about returning to Israel.

00:28:19Darrell Bock They had long given up and became completely then later integrated into Europe.

00:28:26Darrell Bock I mean, this is way controversial, but I don't know if you know the name Art Katz,

00:28:34but Art Katz was, you know, a Jewish, Messianic Jewish teacher in the 70s and 80s.

00:28:44Darrell Bock And Art got himself in a ton of trouble,

00:28:49Darrell Bock Because he was of the perspective that Hitler was a person that got allowed to happen

00:28:59as a way of forcing the Jewish people back to Israel.

00:29:04Darrell Bock And of course that he was, you know, he was a lightning rod for controversy

00:29:09because of that, you know, because of that worldview.

00:29:14Darrell Bock You know, that was God's way of doing that.

00:29:18Darrell Bock So I remember all that very vividly during those years.

00:29:21Darrell Bock There was a large Jewish community here in Kansas City and a large Messianic Jewish thing.

00:29:28Darrell Bock So Art was in and out of Kansas City a lot.

00:29:30Darrell Bock And I remember a lot of debate about his worldview.

00:29:33Darrell Bock But again, you know, the whole idea of the restoration of Israel,

00:29:38Darrell Bock Which of course ended up happening on May 14th in 1948.

00:29:42Darrell Bock That actually happened.

00:29:43Darrell Bock You know, the nation was restored.

00:29:46Darrell Bock So that's, you know, that's kind of interesting as well.

00:29:49Darrell Bock But that's, again, that came out of that, that was a parallel kind of theology

00:29:55or worldview along with the rapture that were both rooted in what we're talking about here,

00:30:01Darrell Bock This dispensational worldview that God has different ways of dealing with humanity

00:30:07in different periods of time, like things change.

00:30:10Darrell Bock So are you a dispensationalist?

00:30:13Darrell Bock I certainly am not.

00:30:17Darrell Bock I've kind of come to the conclusion that it's a convenient way of trying to explain

00:30:23some things, but I don't think God's ever changed, you know.

00:30:26Darrell Bock I think humans and how they see God has changed, right?

00:30:30Darrell Bock I think the change, I don't think God's ever changed, but I think humans

00:30:34and their understanding of God or their view of God, I think humans may be dispensational.

00:30:39Darrell Bock I don't know that God is.

00:30:41Darrell Bock I heard a guy once, I was asking him how he viewed the rapture pre-tribulation

00:30:47or not, and he said, I'm a pan-millennialist.

00:30:50And I said, what's that?

00:30:51And he said, it'll all pan out in the end.

00:30:53Darrell Bock Wow.

00:30:54Darrell Bock There's very few things that, doctrinally, that I will openly on the podcast

00:31:01say that I'm for or against, because I let people make their own decisions.

00:31:04Darrell Bock The only thing that I will is this, because I'm so headstrong that this is one

00:31:09of the most destructive theologies to have ever entered the church.

00:31:12Darrell Bock I will openly say, no, I do not believe in dispensationalism, and the people

00:31:17who do, sadly, their children will suffer, because they will grow up with the same mindset that

00:31:23they have had every single thing that is in the Bible that can be read and interpreted

00:31:30very clearly by just reading the text, gets completely flipped on its head if you enter

00:31:35in dispensationalism.

00:31:36Darrell Bock Because you bring in the idea that this was written

00:31:39for a time ago, and it's written for us now, and I can make this thing say anything I want

00:31:44to say.

00:31:45Darrell Bock Right.

00:31:46Darrell Bock And that opens the door for scoundrels and cult leaders

00:31:49and who knows what all else.

00:31:50Darrell Bock Yeah, go ahead.

00:31:51Darrell Bock Yeah, go ahead.

00:31:52Darrell Bock So there is some interesting things.

00:31:56Schofield, the first revision, if I remember correctly, began right during the start of World

00:32:05War I, and I think it was published in 1917, but I think he began revising it.

00:32:10Darrell Bock I see.

00:32:11Darrell Bock If you go through, somewhere I did this study, I don't

00:32:14even know where my notes are on it, but if you go through and you read the end-of-day

00:32:20scenario that he paints with his original notes, which is based on Darby, then now learning

00:32:27that he has just watched the whole world start to war with each other, and he's listening

00:32:33to the politicians of who's the axis, who was it axis and ally, who are the good guys and

00:32:38who are the bad guys, and he's literally starting to paint with a wide-sweeping brush.

00:32:45These nations are the ones that are described here in this book.

00:32:49Darrell Bock Right.

00:32:50Darrell Bock And Israel comes into the picture.

00:32:52It's more clearly defined, obviously, after the nation of Israel is formed.

00:32:56Darrell Bock But there's a second revision in the 60s, I think, right after he saw all the

00:33:01civil rights stuff moving, the Christian identity stuff, and Israel is closely tied to this dispensationalist

00:33:09theology.

00:33:10Darrell Bock So you can see how as political world events start to change the political landscape,

00:33:17those who are painting this fortune teller's picture that he's painting, well, the fortune

00:33:23has just changed, so now you have to go change your notes on the text, which is another problem

00:33:28that I see with all of this.

00:33:30Darrell Bock Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression

00:33:34of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe

00:33:39movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

00:33:43Darrell Bock You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,

00:33:48William-Branham.org.

00:33:51Darrell Bock On the books page of the website, you can find

00:33:53the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and

00:34:00others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

00:34:05You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

00:34:11If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute

00:34:16button at the top.

00:34:18And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening

00:34:23to or watching.

00:34:24On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

00:34:28William Branham Something that's intrigued me, again, this is

00:34:31me being the historical, I just, I love history.

00:34:38I don't know why, it really, history, anthropology, archaeology, and sociology, all those ologies,

00:34:44you know, they really float my boat.

00:34:46But something that I've noticed is that, and the reason I noticed this is because I come

00:34:54from the planting of a church in 1982 that was focused on praying for revival, right?

00:35:02That was the, kind of the, one of the, you know, five major pillars of Kansas City Fellowship.

00:35:11You know, we were praying for revival.

00:35:13Well, and people, I actually had to do a message.

00:35:19This is interesting.

00:35:19I had to do a message in 1983, which I called The Glory and The Gory.

00:35:26And the reason was, is that Mike, who was so dynamic in his preaching and was so focused

00:35:36on revival, but presented revival almost in a way that it was the cure-all.

00:35:41Like when, when the Spirit of God comes, it's going to fix everything, right?

00:35:47It's like, and so I watched our whole congregation of people, you know, doing what we're talking

00:35:53about here, you know, basically, you know, almost in fantasy about the future that, you

00:36:00know, it's like, if we can pray hard enough, then the Holy Spirit's going to fall and everybody's

00:36:04going to change and the world's going to get all better and life's going to be hunky-dory,

00:36:08right?

00:36:09And that was sort of the, the default setting.

00:36:12And I watched it and I had these weird little moments where I'm by myself and I would get

00:36:19what I call these little downloads.

00:36:20And, and one of the things that I got this little sense, I go back and read Acts.

00:36:26So I go back and read the Acts of the Apostles.

00:36:28And I realized that every time there's a supernatural manifestation of the Holy Spirit through one of

00:36:36the apostles, there's a corresponding backlash from either the religious community, the, the

00:36:44business community, or the political community, right?

00:36:48In other words, the more Christianity gained influence with the masses, the more the three

00:36:56big power structures fought back.

00:36:59Well, guys got thrown in prison.

00:37:01Guys got beat up.

00:37:03Guys got mortared.

00:37:04Like it wasn't this sort of when the Holy Spirit comes and there's revival and 3000 people

00:37:10get saved, everything gets better.

00:37:12It actually almost got worse, right?

00:37:14It was, it, it, it became more of a conflict.

00:37:18So I gave this message called the glory and the glory.

00:37:20Well, what ends up happening after this move of the spirit, the last of the apostles, John

00:37:29dies somewhere around a hundred AD.

00:37:31Well, what happens from a hundred to like 300 AD for those 200 years, all these convenient

00:37:39theologies start emerging, right?

00:37:42To your point, you had, we had Gnosticism, you had Montanaism, you had Pelagiarism, Nestorianism,

00:37:49Monarchism, Monarchism, Arianism, you know, there's all these isms, you know, all these various

00:37:55things started emerging.

00:37:58Why do I bring this up?

00:37:59Let's now fast forward to the 1830s, right?

00:38:04During this time where Darby's getting his revelation.

00:38:09What was also happening here in the United States?

00:38:12Well, again, if you're a church historian, you know about the first great awakening, which

00:38:19was Jonathan Edwards, pre-revolutionary war, right?

00:38:22The Puritan churches had grown cold and Jonathan Edwards gives his sinners in the hands of an

00:38:28angry God message and it launches something.

00:38:32Well, between 1790 and 1840, we call that period the second great awakening, right?

00:38:40Like there's a spiritual renewal, there's a spiritual revival happening in America.

00:38:47So we're, what's happening during that time?

00:38:50Well, suddenly now it's the manifest destiny, right?

00:38:53Suddenly now, you know, we're the chosen nation, we're God's, you know, God's people and we have

00:39:00this manifest destiny, you know, and we're special.

00:39:04Which then, of course, the dark side of that, it allows us to then basically enslave and demean

00:39:17other races because manifest destiny was predominantly a white European justification for their dominance

00:39:26in our culture, right?

00:39:28So you got that going on.

00:39:30Well, so we're in the middle of, again, of another move of God.

00:39:34So you have Darby over there, who then, it makes its way over here.

00:39:39But what was also happening at this same time, and interestingly, this is all happening in

00:39:46one particular region of the United States, which is upstate New York, right?

00:39:52So at the very same time that Darby's dispensationalisms, rapture, restoration of Israel stuff's going

00:40:00on, you have Charles Finney in upstate New York doing his revivals, right?

00:40:05So he's going across Ithaca, you know, Syracuse, all these, you know, places up there.

00:40:13What's fascinating, just by the way, if that area after Finney got done was called the burned

00:40:21over district, and any preacher that tried to go in there for the next 50 years ran into

00:40:29a wall.

00:40:31And the reason was, is that Finney's whole MO was he beat everybody up.

00:40:36I mean, he drove them to repentance, right?

00:40:38He was, you know, using Jonathan Edwards, almost sinners in the hands of an angry God.

00:40:43So he beat up everybody.

00:40:45So everybody was so beat up at that particular point.

00:40:48But then at the same time, you know, between 1820 and 1830, what else is happening in upstate

00:40:56New York?

00:40:57Well, there's this dude, Joseph Smith, right?

00:41:00And Joseph Smith suddenly gets this revelation, right?

00:41:04So just like what happened in the early church, we suddenly have this spiritual awakening.

00:41:11We're getting all these really interesting guys who have revelation, right?

00:41:16They have revelation.

00:41:19And Smith gets this supposedly, has this interaction with Moroni, this, it sounds like an Italian

00:41:27angel.

00:41:29Moroni sounds Italian to me.

00:41:31But anyways, Moroni gives him these golden tablets, and we end up having the birth of Mormonism,

00:41:37which also what happens, just like the rest of the nation goes west, what do the Mormons

00:41:44do, they head west, and all the way across the country, they're getting beat up, right?

00:41:49To the point where, you know, Smith gets killed, bring him young, takes over.

00:41:54And then in one of the most bizarre moments of American history, the US government goes,

00:42:01man, you know, we got to get these people out of here.

00:42:04Let's give them the one place nobody wants, Utah.

00:42:07So they throw them into Utah, which now, by the way, has the most national parks, and

00:42:13is like the most beautiful place.

00:42:15But at that point in the 1830s, nobody wanted Utah, right?

00:42:20It was like, that was like, you know, getting banished, you know what I mean?

00:42:23You're banishing you to Utah.

00:42:26So the Mormons ended up with this gorgeous chunk of land and established themselves, right?

00:42:33What else is happening at the same time in upstate New York?

00:42:36So you got Finney going on, right?

00:42:39You got Joseph Smith.

00:42:40Well, then you got this guy, William Miller.

00:42:42Do you know anything about William Miller?

00:42:44Yeah, the Millerites.

00:42:46Yes, the Millerites, right?

00:42:47Which end up becoming what?

00:42:49Later, the Seventh-day Adventists.

00:42:51And what does Miller do?

00:42:53He predicts that in 1822, Miller predicts that Christ will return on or before 1843, right?

00:43:06So it's interesting how all of these things are either dovetailing or they're in parallel, right?

00:43:15During this same time period of a second great awakening.

00:43:20So in the middle of revival, in the middle of renewal, we're getting all these weird prophetic revelations, right?

00:43:30I just find that all really interesting.

00:43:32And I think it's an actual warning for all of us to really be careful here because there's, you know,

00:43:40and Jesus talked about the wheat and tares, right?

00:43:42It seems like that kind of principle, that good and evil, truth and untruth, right, falsehoods,

00:43:51all happen simultaneously in the same moment.

00:43:54There's a reason for that.

00:43:56Well, good.

00:43:57Unpack it.

00:43:58So take the New Apostolic Reformation today.

00:44:02What is the power of the New Apostolic Reformation?

00:44:05It's all of these apostolic networks.

00:44:07It is basically a financial pyramid scheme if you think about how it works.

00:44:12But you as a minister or evangelist can go to another church and you can sell your books.

00:44:16You can hold these conventions.

00:44:18People will go to the conventions.

00:44:20That network will spread it around and invite other people to your conventions.

00:44:23And it's multi-level marketing 101.

00:44:25It's basically what it is.

00:44:28But one of the problems it brings in the – so I grew up in the Branham circles.

00:44:33And in the Branham circles, we had the same thing but to a much smaller level.

00:44:37They would have these preachers that would wander from church to church and you'd invite them.

00:44:42And he would come preach in your church on Sunday.

00:44:44And then I would be attending after he had left and gone back home.

00:44:48And we'd hear the sermon about all the things he got wrong.

00:44:52But yet he would still be invited back the next time, which was odd.

00:44:57And if you think about that, so what about the things that he got wrong that that minister didn't catch?

00:45:04Well, the people assimilate that information and now they're learning from the things that aren't correct from the minister who's not even leading that church.

00:45:12Well, in AR, you have this cross-pollination that happens.

00:45:17You almost can't trace the source of a doctrine because all of these doctrines, it's like osmosis, man.

00:45:25They're just – they're forming among different groups at the same time, at the same exact – down to the same day sometimes.

00:45:32These guys come up with the same ideas.

00:45:35And to somebody who doesn't understand how all this works, you're thinking, oh, they must have called each other and said,

00:45:40we're going to now introduce this new doctrine.

00:45:43But it's not that.

00:45:45They have just, through cross-pollination of ideas, they're starting to learn.

00:45:49Well, what's happening in the 1800s that didn't happen in the 1700s?

00:45:53The printing press was so widely more used around the globe.

00:45:58And these religious scoundrels found that you can make a lot of money in religion.

00:46:03And especially if you have something in print form, people would view the print form with maybe not the same reverence as the Bible.

00:46:11But if you said spiritual things in it, they would put it just almost categorically with the Bible in their reading materials.

00:46:20So they're reading your ideas and this other guy's ideas and these other guys' ideas,

00:46:24while it's at the same time the leaders in all of these different movements are reading each other's ideas.

00:46:29So much like the New Apostolic Reformation today, back then this cross-pollination of ideas was spreading.

00:46:38And so you mentioned the Great Awakening.

00:46:41Second Great Awakening wasn't so much dispensationalist, but they had picked and chosen what parts of Darby and Schofield's theology that they wanted to build on.

00:46:51One of the ideas that really is structured upon dispensationalism and really only works with dispensationalism is restorationism.

00:47:01The church has fallen to an apostate condition, and Jesus is going to come back if we can restore the church to the proper state.

00:47:08That's one of the ideas that developed.

00:47:11Darrell Bock Holiness.

00:47:11Yeah, holiness.

00:47:12I mean, there are different versions of holiness, but that particular version is one of the most destructive.

00:47:18Fast forward to Mike Bickle.

00:47:20The entire movement as it developed into Joel's army, that entire movement is built on this restorationist structure.

00:47:27Well, just so people don't misunderstand us, we're not saying that a lot of good things weren't happening.

00:47:33What we're trying to describe is that be careful when you talk about revival, renewal, awakenings, and those kind of things, because there are two things happening at the same time.

00:47:46That's our point.

00:47:47There's a lot of really wonderful, good things happening, and a lot of people's lives are being transformed.

00:47:52But you have to be wise as a serpent, innocent as a dove, you have to be discerning, and you have to know what you believe, because there's all kinds of crazy things going on.

00:48:06As a matter of fact, I actually forgot the fifth piece.

00:48:08We had Darby, right?

00:48:10We got Finney.

00:48:12We got Joseph Smith.

00:48:13We got William Miller and his rapture.

00:48:16You know what the fifth one was?

00:48:18Spiritualism, which also happened where?

00:48:22Upstate New York.

00:48:24And some of you may be more familiar with Harry Houdini, right?

00:48:30That name is probably more known to people than spiritualism.

00:48:35But again, we're in this weird moment where God's moving, and we're into this metaphysical, as you were talking about, the foretelling, right?

00:48:49And in this case, you're able to talk to your ancestors, right?

00:48:53And people are trying to, and Houdini comes in, and he basically tries to unmask all these fraughts, right?

00:49:05But that was like a huge thing.

00:49:08And people don't realize that, I'm going to, this is going to be controversial for some conservatives out there,

00:49:16but Nancy Reagan had spiritualists and fortune tellers in the White House, right?

00:49:25You know, this is so interesting.

00:49:28Part of the reason I'm aware of some of what goes on is because, as you well know, I learned it from Paul Kane.

00:49:36A lot of these guys from the latter rain kind of movement, some of these prophetic people, had relationships with a lot of very high-profile, either movie stars, business people.

00:49:51I remember Paul telling me about his meeting with E.F. Hutton, who tried to buy him, you know what I mean?

00:49:57Like, these, people don't realize that sometimes the people in these positions of power aren't, they're, how do you want to say it?

00:50:08They're just as hungry for something spiritual and very vulnerable to these spiritualists and these fortune tellers.

00:50:16And Nancy would get all her little rich lady friends together, right, and all sit around and have their fortunes told, right?

00:50:25That's normal.

00:50:26Like, people don't realize that that's kind of a thing in those circles, and it's the same way today.

00:50:32There's a lot of crazy, it's not well-known publicly, but there's a lot of crazy spiritualism today that exists in these, the realm, you know, the elites, we'll call them, right?

00:50:45That top 1%.

00:50:46I'm convinced that you stole my notes and you're going through them piece by piece.

00:50:51I had conversations.

00:50:52They were syncopated.

00:50:53They were, like, on the same, you know, on the same wavelength.

00:50:56Yeah.

00:50:57I had conversations with Paul Cain, and when he described what he was doing for the United States government, it was very much, even at that point in time, I had not realized the depth of how far the fortune telling went in the movement.

00:51:10But what he's describing is fortune telling, even though – so, Nancy Reagan has the actual fortune tellers.

00:51:16Well, the presidents that had Paul Cain was also doing fortune telling, but from a religious fortune telling standpoint, which is still evil, you know, if you read the Bible.

00:51:28But it all comes back to, like, the climax I was building to, the spiritualist movement in the United States is mostly the backing for the nonsense that we see in the NAR today.

00:51:41And we have strong evidence that suggests – you can look it up on my website – Branham describes being in a spiritualist camp.

00:51:50He is describing an event that he says he goes into the camps of the spiritualists, and he sees the piano levitating, and it starts playing the jingle, shaven, and haircut, two bits.

00:52:01Well, if you know this is – dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, like in the Beverly Hillbillies.

00:52:06Well, that is – that was one of the features at Indiana's most prestigious spiritualist camps.

00:52:13I think it's called Camp Chesterfield.

00:52:15So, he's literally describing being at the most prestigious spiritualist camp in the United States.

00:52:21His mentor and clan leader, Roy Davis, when he started his revival in Jeffersonville, the one that attracted Branham to come to the movement,

00:52:30he was posing as a converted spiritualist who knew all the inner working through how the spiritualists work.

00:52:35Interesting. Very interesting.

00:52:36So, there's a spiritualist backbone to this.

00:52:39Fast forward to the NAR today, you've got the grave soaking.

00:52:42What is it?

00:52:43It's communication with the dead.

00:52:45It's this idea that these dead spirits can come help you in some way.

00:52:49It's all spiritualism 101.

00:52:51Well, the Africans, just FYI, sidebar, that's their whole religion.

00:52:56Animism, right?

00:52:57The worship of ancestors.

00:52:58I mean, people may not be aware of this unless you really get behind the scenes.

00:53:07Many Christian Africans go to church, to their Pentecostal or Catholic church on Sunday morning.

00:53:17But if you go home, they have all the little trinkets and things that they got from the local spiritualist,

00:53:25witch doctor or whatever you want to call them and have been talking to great-grandma, you know.

00:53:31If you watch the movie Black Panther, Black Panther actually brought all that animism into the movie because, what's his name,

00:53:43Enchalla or whatever, the Black Panther guy, he ends up going back and talking to his ancestors, right?

00:53:49That's, you know, that's a common thing on that continent, right?

00:53:54And there's this duality going on.

00:53:56But it's the same way.

00:53:57I guarantee almost everybody that's going to these spiritualists are also going to church on Sunday, right?

00:54:04But what it really, to me, again, I always look at it from a human perspective, okay?

00:54:10What's going on underneath there?

00:54:12And you see this desperation in humans to know, you know?

00:54:17And so I've asked myself often, why do I need to know, right?

00:54:21What's driving this, you know?

00:54:23And so this is me.

00:54:24I have this way of, like, peeling my own onion, you know what I mean?

00:54:29I just keep going in my own soul because it's like, is this driven by fear?

00:54:33In other words, is fear what's really going on here, the fear of the unknown?

00:54:38Because the unknown, there's a lot of fear, right?

00:54:41People want to feel secure.

00:54:43They want to feel like they know, like they understand what's coming.

00:54:47They can be ready for it.

00:54:49And when you don't know, you feel what?

00:54:52Vulnerable.

00:54:54So this, the reason I bring this up is we have an innate weakness for this stuff.

00:55:02In other words, people, one of the ways that con men operate is con men are probably the

00:55:09best psychologists and sociologists out there because they understand the human soul so well

00:55:15and all of its vulnerabilities.

00:55:17They prey on the very weaknesses that we all have.

00:55:22Now, they don't tell you that, right?

00:55:26They don't tell you that, but they're so good at reading the room and reading humans, right?

00:55:32And so they prey on your fears.

00:55:34And so I saw this, you know, not only throughout history, but then as I became introduced to the

00:55:43charismatic Pentecostal world for the first time in the late 70s, early 80s.

00:55:49And I saw this hunger in people, this desperation for propheticness, you know, to be told, right?

00:56:00You know, to have knowledge of the future.

00:56:02Now, on the one hand, I was touched by how, you know, it's like if somebody got a word from God, it was so affirming, right?

00:56:11It's like, oh, God sees me.

00:56:13So on the one hand, my compassion, my empathy for humanity was like, oh, this is so sweet.

00:56:18Gosh, this person got to hang on to this.

00:56:21Like, this is going to get them through rough times, right?

00:56:24And so there's half of me that's over here going, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:56:27This is so good for people just to get a word of encouragement, right?

00:56:31And then there's this other side where I'm watching where on these national, you know, regional, national, international world where people are being, you know, the future is being predicted.

00:56:44And it actually ends up having devastating consequences because none of it ever happens.

00:56:50And there's this profound disillusionment that sets it.

00:56:54So again, it's wheat and tares.

00:56:56It's highs and lows.

00:56:57It's these paradoxical dynamics happening in the same moment.

00:57:02And so, you know, I'm always tore up about all this stuff because I want to know.

00:57:07I mean, I'd like to know the future, too.

00:57:09I'm not above that, right?

00:57:12You know, it's like, you know, it's like Paul used to tell me all the time about, you know, I mean, the reason EF Hutton wanted so badly for him to be a part of his organization is because he wanted to make money.

00:57:25So some guys are driven by greed, right?

00:57:29Other guys are driven by pride.

00:57:31They want to be seen as the guy that knows.

00:57:34Right?

00:57:35So there's a lot of motivation that goes on behind the scenes.

00:57:39But what it does, though, is it's important that we understand we're all vulnerable to this.

00:57:46There's a vulnerability here.

00:57:48And it's not unique to our generation.

00:57:51It's not.

00:57:51This has been going on for thousands of years, right?

00:57:54You know, I grew up in this weird brandimism, spiritualism, nasty world.

00:58:00And one of the things, I picked up a lot of things, some of it good, some of it bad.

00:58:03One of the things I picked up is I actually can predict your future, Bob.

00:58:08And I'm going to grow old and I'm going to die.

00:58:11You're going to grow old.

00:58:11You beat me to it.

00:58:12You're going to grow old.

00:58:15Exactly.

00:58:16Wow.

00:58:16You're so profound, John.

00:58:18So there's one.

00:58:21I know we're running out of time.

00:58:22And like I said, I feel like I'm going to skim the surface.

00:58:24And we can revisit the surface.

00:58:25I just thought, given the fact that this just happened and everybody's still here, this would be a great topic for us.

00:58:32How did we get here to this point?

00:58:34You know, there's one other movement, though, that you haven't mentioned that was central to all of this.

00:58:43Like, this is the framework.

00:58:45This was the train track of which the whole thing rode.

00:58:49And that is the camp meeting, camp revival movement.

00:58:52Oh, okay, yeah.

00:58:53Which was a big deal.

00:58:54Because, so think of charismatics.

00:58:57Which was rural.

00:58:58It was rural.

00:58:59Think of charismatics.

00:59:00That were uneducated, right?

00:59:02Right, right.

00:59:02Think of charismatics and think of the Jesus people that charismania was built upon.

00:59:07Yeah, that's right.

00:59:08You had people coming together.

00:59:10Everybody's getting in the spirit.

00:59:11They're all talking.

00:59:12Some of them had almost no Bible knowledge whatsoever, while others did.

00:59:17And the histories, if you read them, they focus on the ones who had the good Bible knowledge.

00:59:22They don't tell you the plagues that was coming into this thing.

00:59:26But you had that cross-pollination of ideas is what I'm driving at.

00:59:30That really was the framework that it allowed and enabled all of this to spread.

00:59:36So, here's my warning to people.

00:59:39So, I got a couple things here we can close this up.

00:59:43If it's too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true.

00:59:47That's an old kind of saying, but it's true.

00:59:51Absolutely.

00:59:52If you're hearing what you want to hear, I can tell you already you are vulnerable, like highly vulnerable.

00:59:59Like if I was a con guy and I would look at you and go, that's my mark right there.

01:00:05And I watched it.

01:00:08You know, at my age now, I'm going to be 69 here in a little bit.

01:00:12I've been in this world for over, you know, what, 50 years.

01:00:16So, I've seen it all.

01:00:17I mean, and I see this over and over again where it's like we have a church culture in America where we go to hear what we want to hear.

01:00:28We don't go and hear what we need to hear.

01:00:33So, that makes us really vulnerable.

01:00:37The other thing I want to close with is, well, how do we live that, right?

01:00:41It's like, see, I think one of the things that makes this whole, I'm going to call it lust for secret knowledge, right?

01:00:51The Gnosticism, the secret knowledge.

01:00:54The thing that I find disconcerting about how powerful that is in our souls, this need, is that we lose touch with the simplicity of the teachings of Jesus.

01:01:11Because the truth of it is, is that Christianity is really very simple.

01:01:17And what seems to have happened is, is men with egos who need to be seen as intelligent or have secret knowledge or whatever have kind of made it way more complicated.

01:01:31And it's like, well, if you're, you have to be smart like me to really understand.

01:01:35Or you have to have a prophetic spirit to really see what I'm seeing, right?

01:01:41There's this elitism that's been brought in to the church world.

01:01:45Because when you get back to the teachings of Jesus, right, what do you see?

01:01:52You see, deal with your self-centeredness, deal with your ego, love your neighbors, and lay your life down for others, right?

01:02:01I think of the fact that people think, well, that's the New Testament.

01:02:04Well, go back and listen to Hosea, right?

01:02:07Who was really interesting.

01:02:08Hosea 6.6, right?

01:02:11One of my favorite Old Testament verses.

01:02:13I want your loyalty, not your sacrifices.

01:02:16I want you to know me.

01:02:17Don't give me burnt offerings.

01:02:18In other words, it's that same sort of thing again.

01:02:21You know, it's like, you know, we have this whole institution, you know, the Jewish faith that's got all, you know, that's built around sacrifices.

01:02:31God's got, I don't want your damn sacrifices.

01:02:34I want your heart.

01:02:35Go take care of the poor.

01:02:37You know, love your wife, love your kids, love your neighbor.

01:02:40It's really simple.

01:02:42And somehow I think what's happened is, is that I almost, I know it's going to sound weird, but it's almost like if there was a strategy of the kingdom of darkness to disempower the church.

01:02:54It's to get us distracted on all this other stuff, right?

01:02:58And get us away from the simplicity and the real power of laying your life down for others and loving others.

01:03:05I think that's where the real power is.

01:03:07I would agree.

01:03:08And there's one thing that I will add along with this.

01:03:11If you're wanting to avoid this scenario, if you can find them, find some psychology books on the mind of a con artist.

01:03:20But if not, you can find biographies of these people.

01:03:22If you learn how they think, which I have, and then go sit into some of the Christian churches, which I have, you sit there and you can pick up on the strategies that they're using and how it aligns with the con artists.

01:03:36And the moment I pick up on that, I completely shut off what the guy is saying and we go find a different church.

01:03:42I've been to actually quite a few different churches at this point.

01:03:46We, there are some.

01:03:47Well, the secret knowledge, right?

01:03:49Like we all want to feel like we got the inside scoop.

01:03:52I mean, that's such a vulnerability and they pry on that.

01:03:56Like, you know, I'm, I'm the guy with the secret knowledge, you know, come hang with me and you can be special too.

01:04:02You know, I mean, it's just, we're so vulnerable to that stuff.

01:04:05And so that's where you got, we got to guard our hearts to make sure that we still get sucked into all that.

01:04:11And our fears and our egos are really what's driving this and not the spirit of God.

01:04:17Yeah.

01:04:17People ask me, what church should you go to after you've left one of these things?

01:04:21And I, again, I never give the denomination because I don't want people to choose my, but I will say, don't go to one that has the con artist and behind the pulpit.

01:04:31You don't want this, but.

01:04:32Yeah.

01:04:33The guy telling you what you want to hear.

01:04:35That's the first place that I would just, red flag.

01:04:40Okay.

01:04:42Absolutely.

01:04:42Well, like I said, I could go for two hours.

01:04:44We'll stop.

01:04:45All right.

01:04:45If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

01:04:49You can find us at william-brannum.org.

01:04:51For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR.

01:04:58And for more about Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read Some Say They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International House of Prayer.

01:05:09All right.