Miracles, Manipulation, & the Myth of Faith Healing: Raising the Dead or Raising Hype? | Jed Hartley - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John and Jed explore one of the most sensitive and emotionally charged topics in Pentecostal and Charismatic circles—the world of fake miracles, resurrection claims, and manufactured hype. Starting with Bethel Church’s “Wake Up Olive” tragedy, they trace the long lineage of miracle stories from Smith Wigglesworth through William Branham to today’s New Apostolic Reformation leaders. Their discussion examines how sensationalized testimonies shape belief, manipulate emotions, and reinforce authoritarian control within high-demand religious groups.  Through deeply personal stories, including experiences from within Branhamism and IHOP, they unpack how false faith-healing narratives prey on trauma, obscure genuine spirituality, and keep followers trapped in fear of doubt. This conversation dives into the emotional cost of such beliefs—the shame, confusion, and psychological damage caused when “miracles” fail—and the deeper truth about where real faith should be placed.  00:00 Introduction 01:00 The Entertainment of Miracles and Manufactured Faith 04:00 The “Wake Up Olive” Tragedy at Bethel Church 13:00 Branham, Wigglesworth, and the Origins of Modern Miracle Claims 17:00 Faith Healing or Psychological Manipulation? 27:00 Deception, Fear, and the Evolution of Revival Gimmicks 30:00 Near-Death Experiences and the Myth of Pentecostal Exclusivity 35:00 Miracles Across Religions: Hindu and Buddhist Parallels 46:00 Theological Disconnection and Charlatanism in the NAR 56:00 Branham’s Tricks: Vibrating Hands and Purple Palms 1:00:00 When Healers Avoid Hospitals 1:02:00 Oral Roberts’ Failed Healing Hospital 1:05:00 Weaponizing “Faith” Against the Sick and Doubters 1:08:00 The True Cost of Miracle Culture ______________________ 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

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, Jed Hartley, son of

00:00:46a false prophet and former member of the International House of Prayer.

00:00:51Jed, this is a subject that I think is going to be very touchy for me, having grown up in

00:00:56a divine healing cult. I know that to some extent there is crossover, but my entire life

00:01:03was wrapped up on the idea that there can be a miracle, and we can see a miracle. In today's

00:01:09New Apostolic Reformation world, the miracles are quite different. In fact, they're more

00:01:15entertaining, I guess I would say, and not all of them real. But in the same way, not all of

00:01:21them were real for the latter rain, divine healing type religions. And when it really

00:01:26comes down to it, the prosperity gospel that exists today is literally an extension of the

00:01:32health prosperity from the Branhamism cult. And one of the things that really began to

00:01:39hit me after I left is the fact that there are so many, I don't know what you call it, generated

00:01:46miracles or faked miracles to produce the level of hype and excitement that people start to

00:01:55claim real miracles. And that's something that I think it's a little touchy subject, so

00:02:01we'll have to handle that delicately. But the thought that hit me, which hits almost everybody

00:02:07who's never been involved with this, is that if you have this person who can heal the masses

00:02:13and they're bringing tens of thousands of people into the cities and into the auditoriums and

00:02:19they've got these photographs, well, why doesn't that crowd just go to the local hospital and empty

00:02:23it? And the answer given by all of the faith healing cult members or to some extent, charismatics

00:02:31have this too. I've talked to charismatics. They don't do it because the argument is that

00:02:36the people in the hospital can't be emptied like this because they don't have faith. You have to have

00:02:41faith. And the problem that bothered me is where is that faith pointed? Because usually it's pointed

00:02:49at the minister who's on the platform instead of God. Because whenever I stop to really think about

00:02:56the consequences of that thought, that argument, well, what about all of the Christian people who

00:03:01are in the hospital? Would not they have the faith? Could not the healer go there? And then all the

00:03:06Christian people in the hospital just suddenly be healed and walk out. So I began to realize that

00:03:11number one, this is an entertainment type of faith. This is not a true faith in God. Number two, it is a

00:03:19faith that is targeting the persons on the platform, person or persons on the platform, not a faith that's

00:03:25actually in God. And number three, there is so much trickery that goes with it, which we'll get into

00:03:31some of that in the podcast. And again, I'll tread lightly because I don't want to offend anybody.

00:03:36But there are so many tricks going on that the average person who's not expecting it and not aware

00:03:43of the tricks, they look at this and they think this, wow, this is real amazing. This is real.

00:03:49So this is going to be a little bit difficult for me to talk through without, you know, divulging too

00:03:54much information, but fun at the same time, because it does fascinate me that this can even exist in

00:04:00today's world. Yeah, I one of the stories that pops into my head while you're talking, there was

00:04:05there was other ones that I was thinking of talking about today. But the one that popped in my head

00:04:10immediately was the wake up all of story. Do you? Did we talk about I know that I was just telling

00:04:18someone about this, but I didn't we didn't talk on this podcast about it. I don't think I don't think we

00:04:23did. I know I have talked about it with somebody, but not I don't think publicly yet. So I'll tell it

00:04:29quickly in case people are already familiar with the story. But there was a situation, I think this was

00:04:37in like 2013, 2014. Around that time, there was a couple at Bethel who had a baby and the baby's name

00:04:53was Olive. And there was complications during the birth or actually no, I think that it was the baby

00:05:00was only like two days old. And then there was a sudden, like, I don't know if it was sudden infant

00:05:07death syndrome, but something basically, very quickly, and suddenly the baby just was not responsive,

00:05:15and they took it to the hospital and it was pronounced dead. And these young parents

00:05:22were obviously devastated by the fact that their child had just suddenly I mean, that's something

00:05:30that like, genuinely is hard for is so traumatic that people wouldn't just not be able to comprehend

00:05:37that and accept that that happened. Because you obviously just went through the labor and all the

00:05:46pregnancy and everything and just for it to suddenly, for their child to suddenly pass away is near

00:05:53impossible for them to comprehend. And they are a part of Bethel. And what does Bethel preach? Well,

00:06:01Bethel preaches that people get raised from the dead all the time. You know, there was Smith Wigglesworth,

00:06:06who had had raised seven, eight people from the dead, or there was all of these sort of heroes of the

00:06:14faith where it was happening in Uganda and Afghanistan and these stories of like, okay, well, this is this

00:06:22is something that has happened. Maybe it doesn't happen very often in I haven't seen it, but I have heard

00:06:28of this. This is sort of the mentality that I imagine that the parents had because it was the mentality that

00:06:35I had around that same time or, or maybe a few years previously, where it was like, I absolutely

00:06:42believed that God does raise people from the dead. And I'd heard several testimonies of such. I'd never

00:06:48seen it with my own eyes, but like, I trusted the people who are up front who are proclaiming such

00:06:54things. And so, what was it? It was a matter of faith like that, that what is the thing that,

00:07:02that allows for someone to be raised from the dead, if you have enough faith that it's gonna,

00:07:09gonna happen. Like, if you have enough faith, you can move mountains. So, why not just raise this,

00:07:15this baby from the dead? And it clearly wasn't in God's plan to, to, for this baby to die. So,

00:07:22what happened is that the, the parents ended up actually posting on social media, um, about how

00:07:30their baby had died and how it was going to be a situation in which, um, she was going to be raised

00:07:40from the dead and her testimony would be a testimony of, of, of God's, um, divine power. And this was going

00:07:48to be a, um, huge sort of, uh, indication of revival that was going to come. And so,

00:07:57they started holding prayer meetings. And from what I understand is that the entire Bethel community,

00:08:03um, and especially the online community, because Bethel is primarily an online community. There's the

00:08:08in-person, but there are so many different churches, um, and, and church communities that are sort of

00:08:14in Bethel's hierarchy or, or, and people who pay attention to what's going on in Bethel. And so

00:08:21there was massive amounts of people who are following this and, um, who were posting online

00:08:27and praying. And, um, this, there was this sort of momentum that she was going to be healed. And

00:08:33the, the, I don't know if it was a hashtag, but people started using the phrase, wake up,

00:08:39all of, um, at the same time, um, both Benny, um, Benny Johnson and Heidi Baker, were talking about

00:08:48angels and waking angels. So there's the whole wakey, wakey thing going on where they were like,

00:08:55oh, awaking slumbering angels and in different places. So I think that they're, that terminology

00:09:02sort of like, um, um, clicked or, or hooked on to this, this situation in which it was like,

00:09:09use this waking, okay, wake up, all of, wake up, all of. And so I think three days go by and,

00:09:18and there was a post by the mother that it was like, this is the third day. This is the day,

00:09:24this is a good day for, for a resurrection. And then third day goes and passes and they are holding

00:09:31the baby. Basically they're keeping the baby in the morgue for several days. Um, and then eventually

00:09:38I think it gets to four or five days and eventually they have to accept the reality that their baby is

00:09:45not being raised from the dead and they have to go and do the funeral and everything like that. And

00:09:52from, from, from what I've read and, um, apparently Bethel was very, uh, like deleted posts about,

00:10:01um, about Olive and had it very quietly. They didn't announce it to their larger community.

00:10:08What had happened, it was sort of this like larger Bethel community, um, was paying attention

00:10:15to what was going on. And then all of a sudden radio silence, um, with it, there was, uh, I think that

00:10:21there was like an email released among like Bethel staff or like the direct Bethel community, but

00:10:27there was no sort of announcements and, um, nothing happened, you know? Um, and I, I have always just

00:10:35felt so terrible for the parents, um, in that situation because yes, I, I think that they've been

00:10:43criticized by people, um, like a lot of the secular world because this got some attention from like, um,

00:10:51the secular world and, and some news articles. And a lot of the news articles are like really

00:10:56critical of the parents, um, because why would you, you know, put your child and your dead child on

00:11:04social media like that and have this as a sort of gain social media following. And I genuinely do not

00:11:12think that that's what was happening. I think what was happening is there was a, there was parents who

00:11:20their child died and they could not come to terms with the fact that their child died and they lived

00:11:25in a community in which testimonies of people being raised from the dead were happening on a near

00:11:32day-to-day basis. And the only thing that the only ingredient that is needed in order to raise someone

00:11:41from the dead is faith. And so how much more of a public act of faith can you get by just like

00:11:48screaming from the rooftops and posting it all over social media? So I just feel,

00:11:56you know, there's a sense in which like there's self-deception that people believe you have to,

00:12:02you're accountable for the beliefs that you have. But at the same time, um,

00:12:07I just can't believe how heartbreaking of a situation, um, it was.

00:12:13So in my opinion, which you can hate me for it, I'm certain that there are people that will hate

00:12:18me for it. There is one other ingredient for somebody to be raised from the dead. And that

00:12:24is for somebody else to be either in on it or completely brainwashed to believe that it happened.

00:12:31And there's, so there's a reason why I say this. And again, I'm, I'm not trying to be offensive,

00:12:35but I know that there are people out there that are going to hate me. So I'm going to clarify it by

00:12:40this. Can God raise somebody from the dead? The Bible says that he can, can, has it ever stopped?

00:12:47I don't see anywhere in the Bible that says it has stopped. It has ceased. God cannot raise somebody

00:12:52from the dead. If you believe the Bible, you have to believe this. However, in these movements,

00:12:59Smith Wigglesworth included, there has yet to be one example, just one that is 100% proven to be the

00:13:07case. Every single one that I have examined, and I have examined quite a few of these, everyone has

00:13:14enough room for doubt that if it were given to the test in a court of law, the jury would question

00:13:21whether or not the person testifying was a con artist or not. Yeah, that's how this works. Smith

00:13:27Wigglesworth, he has all of these hundreds of miracles associated with his name. Go look up and try to

00:13:33find evidence of one of these. You can't find any of these. And then William Branham, he comes into this

00:13:41picture in 19, late 1940s. He is given Smith Wigglesworth's mantle back before they called it

00:13:48the passing of the mantle. He comes in and what does he do? Well, Smith Wigglesworth claims to raise

00:13:53the dead. William Branham needs to do the same thing. So he starts claiming that he raised the dead in

00:13:59Canada. And that is what really sparked the hype of the latter rain movement. Those two things.

00:14:06A, he's got the mantle of Smith Wigglesworth. B, this man has raised the dead. How can he not be

00:14:12the reincarnation or the spirit of or however you want to look at Smith Wigglesworth? The problem is

00:14:19this. The way this works, and you being as high up as you are, you probably will know exactly what I'm

00:14:25saying. You go to a revival. Somebody's near death. They have something wrong with them. God does heal

00:14:33them. And you say, he was at death's door. You go to the next city. And this guy, he was at death's

00:14:40door. Death was calling. Death was knocking at his door. And then you go to the next city. Well,

00:14:45the story kind of grows and evolves until somebody misunderstands what you say. And he, that guy was

00:14:52dead and he saved him. And they're not meaning that he was literally dead. They're meaning that

00:14:57he would have died. Well, then that rumor spreads. And by the time the rumor spreads, the rumor goes

00:15:02faster than the evangelist. And so the evangelist goes to the next city and he, as he gets off the

00:15:08train or gets off the bus or out of his car, he's, wow, tell us more about that person you raised from

00:15:14the dead back in the last city. Well, is he going to say, no, that never happened? Absolutely not.

00:15:20There's more money in believing he's raised from the dead. So he says, yeah, it was great.

00:15:25And the spirit of God came down and this, this brother was raised from the dead. And I can't say

00:15:31the chain of events that happened. All I can say is that Branham did make the claim. You can even find

00:15:36it on recording. And the newspaper articles, the newspaper journalists who were following this

00:15:41movement as it was growing, they got curious. Well, good Lord, if this guy raised somebody from the dead,

00:15:47the world should know that he raised somebody from the dead, right? So they're going back to my home

00:15:52of Jeffersonville. They write into the newspaper editors and newspaper editors are like, what?

00:15:59Absolutely. We've never, we've never heard this. It had something like that happen in the city. We

00:16:03would have heard it. And the actual claim, if you go look it up, Branham says, I saved him from the

00:16:09morgue. So they contact the morgue. There was never this person in the morgue. Like the whole thing was a

00:16:15lie, right? And you can, if you go to my website and you type in raised a man from the dead, you can

00:16:20read this chain of events. But in the end, what happened was he lied, but that didn't matter because

00:16:27he lied. The hype grew bigger than the evangelist. Right. And there is this weird thing, whether you

00:16:34are Christian or not, if you, if you get so positive in your way of thinking that you start to believe

00:16:40that your symptoms are decreasing, your positive outlook will make you feel better, whether you're

00:16:47better or not. Combine that with this positive confession thing. I'm confessing that I'm healed,

00:16:54yet at the same time, the way this works is you have to confess you're healed before you're healed or

00:16:59you don't get your healing. So I have this thing that's dreadfully wrong with me. I now have this

00:17:04positive outlook. I suddenly mentally, I feel better. I start claiming that I'm better and I'm

00:17:10claiming that I'm healed, even though I'm not healed. Well, the excitement of hearing somebody

00:17:15raised from the dead will boost the spirits of everybody in here. Those who are in the positive

00:17:20confession cults begin feeling better, whether they're better or not. The problem is they go back

00:17:26home. And whenever that hype leaves them, when that euphoria leaves them, they start to feel bad

00:17:31again. And this happened time and time again. The same group of journalists that were trying to

00:17:38figure out, did William Branham really do this? Are these people really getting healed?

00:17:43There's an article, I can't remember the name of the journal, but it is on the website.

00:17:49They go to a man named Alfred Pohl, and you can read his testimony online. And they're trying to find

00:17:55just one single person that's healed, just one, out of the masses of people. We're talking 10,

00:18:01thousands of people, hundreds of thousands from all across Canada and the US, right? Just one

00:18:07person, just one person that's healed. And Pohl said, I nearly, and this he's talking long after

00:18:14this, he says, I nearly left the faith because I had to look at each one of these reporters that

00:18:19came to me and said, not only are the people not healed, not only are they not raised from the dead,

00:18:27all of these things that were claimed. Many of them went home believing they were healed,

00:18:32confessing they were healed, and died. And then I, as a minister, had to explain to their loved ones

00:18:38how they were healed by God and yet still died. And he said, it really broke me.

00:18:44I have been, so here in Jeffersonville, there were also claims of people being raised from

00:18:51the dead. If you're in this movement that's divine healing and you don't have raised from

00:18:55the dead, it's not a real movement, man, because you're supposed to claim all of the things of

00:19:00the Bible. And a doctor pronounced them raised from the dead right there in the, right there in the

00:19:06service. The problem with it is, I have spoken since with other doctors and described all of the

00:19:13chain of events that happened in the meeting. Person fell down dead, a medical professional

00:19:19came, pronounced them dead, and then they raised up. The problem is, the way that they were examined

00:19:25is not actually proof of death, according to the experts that I have spoken with. And there are many

00:19:31things that cause exactly what we saw. One of which is, people get too hot in those suits and ties that

00:19:38you had to wear in the Pentecostal garb. And they're constantly standing, sitting, standing,

00:19:42sitting. Well, when you're standing, if you don't stand right, if your knees are locked, you can pass

00:19:47out. There's a number of things that can cause you to pass out, especially if you're kind of sick

00:19:52anyway, you know, you're coming for healing. And so the way that the pulse was taken, I said,

00:19:59you may not have even felt a pulse, but they could have still been alive. They could have just passed

00:20:03out and not had enough blood flow for the pulse. So it's not a medically, it's not a standard medical

00:20:10pronunciation of death. And it would have never passed. Had this person actually went back to

00:20:16whatever was his medical facility, and his other doctors that were working with him found out that

00:20:22he did this, he might have even lost his license, because this is not how you pronounce death.

00:20:27Although since it was not written on a certificate, it wasn't a official pronunciation of death anyway.

00:20:34All of this to say, I have yet, and I have looked at many, there are a number of proclaimed

00:20:41raising from the dead, from the beginning of the origins of Pentecostalism and its precursors,

00:20:48all the way through the latter reign, all the way to here in Jeffersonville. As I'm an adult in

00:20:55Jeffersonville, Indiana, you can find all of these. Not a single one can be proven. And there's enough

00:21:01argument that can be made in every case that I've looked at, that it's not just skepticism,

00:21:07it's just simply questioning whether or not this whole thing is true, whether or not these people

00:21:13are actually being truthful. And the question that I have is, how much of it, I don't believe that

00:21:19they're raised from the dead, how much of it is deception, versus how much of it is people in the

00:21:24cult mindset, who are just believing it because they're trying to find something to prove their faith?

00:21:29Yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head of how much it is just outright deception. And we can

00:21:37testify of the, like, I have firsthand experience of individuals who outright lied about more than

00:21:48just my own father, like many different individuals. I saw the sort of evolution of their stories, or

00:21:57sometimes they would tell stories that were so fantastical, that it clearly was not true. To

00:22:04begin with, I have a good story to tell you in a second here about that. But you know, like I have

00:22:10that I have a testimony to have like a, I think that I've shared a little bit of it before on this, but

00:22:17there was a young girl who was a part of the community that we're the school that I went to,

00:22:25she was a good friend of my little sister's, like, this is someone who was directly, like,

00:22:29who's sort of connected with, who had some sort of mysterious autoimmune disease that plagued her

00:22:36for her entire life. When she was just a child, you know, and a young teenager, she suffered that.

00:22:45And then she went to the Lakeland revival with, oh, what, what's his name? The tattooed...

00:22:52Todd Bentley.

00:22:53Todd Bentley. I was, I was thinking Todd White. They're all, they all got the same names.

00:22:58It's all Bobs and Todds and Mikes and anyway.

00:23:05The, she went to there and she got like miraculous, she had this miraculous healing experience. And like,

00:23:11she came back and she's like, I'm all better. I'm healed. And she did like, for like four months,

00:23:17she was acting way different. She was going to classes. She was able to sort of like function. And

00:23:24I was like, oh my goodness, this is a legitimate testimony of healing. And then I think it was only

00:23:30like six months after that, she, it, the autoimmune condition came back with a vengeance and she ended

00:23:38up dying. She passed away because of this. And so like, those were the testimonies that I have.

00:23:44That was, would have been the greatest testimony of faith that I had seen, but instead was a

00:23:51testimony of what we're talking about and sort of the wake up all of a situation where it's like,

00:23:55oh my goodness, no, these are really horrific testimonies, not positive testimonies.

00:23:59And one thought that I have, so you were talking about whether or not it ever happens. And I am with

00:24:07you a hundred percent. I agree. I do not think that this is, there has been a single instance of,

00:24:14of someone being raised from the dead. Now that's impossible to prove, you know, a single instance,

00:24:20at least in, in the Pentecostal movement or in the movement that I have been a part of,

00:24:27because if there was, there would have been so much fanfare about that, that I would have,

00:24:32you know, heard of it. And so none of these testimonies that I have ever heard, I do not

00:24:36believe in a single one of them is real. But even if it was, even if there was one in 10 million

00:24:45of these testimonies that actually are true, that someone was miraculously and divinely raised from the

00:24:53dead, building your faith off of that one in 10 million miracle is like building your retirement

00:25:06portfolio off of winning the lottery. You know, like this idea that you, one day you're going to

00:25:12win the lottery. It's like, it's not, we don't know if it does happen. It's miraculous to a point of

00:25:19like truly not being able to comprehend where the way Bethel or IHOP or Todd White, um, with, uh,

00:25:29um, kingdom now, or I can't remember what his ministry is called, but the way that they frame it

00:25:36is that it's there, it's accessible, it's right around the corner. And if you only have faith,

00:25:41it'll happen. Um, and that makes it seem like it is accessible, that it is something that if your

00:25:51two day old daughter dies, that it is responsible and, and, uh, the right thing to do to spend a week

00:26:02trying to raise her from the dead, because that is something that happens, even if you have, uh,

00:26:08a long shot on it. And I think that this just builds the world in which the whole community is

00:26:16looking for something that doesn't exist. And therefore, when you have charlatans come in and

00:26:24say, oh, well, here it happened. Everybody's ready to believe it. Everyone wants to believe the thing

00:26:30that is about to happen. And so all these charlatans come in and there's just this sort of, um, community

00:26:36that's ready to believe every single word they say. The deception is so complex to a people who

00:26:44are trained in a very black or white mindset that I even have to explain the deception of the

00:26:51deception before people can understand that there is even deception in the first place, which is really

00:26:57weird when you think about it. But understand this. So William Branham made these false claims.

00:27:04Now he's getting negative publicity. And this is early on in the latter rain revivals. This is

00:27:08probably the year 1949. I'd have to go back and verify the dates, but it's early. It's early on in

00:27:14the ministry. And what does he do? There is a manipulation technique that goes with almost every

00:27:22one of these destructive cults. And it goes, it preys upon the people's fear. And there are actually

00:27:28various techniques that you can do, but the fear is the bind that really makes it happen. If you can,

00:27:34make the person fear and then issue any manipulation technique, it is stuck in their heads because

00:27:40they're fearful. So he started claiming that there were people trying to expose his ministry,

00:27:47and they were sent by the evil spirit, right? So this guy comes in, and the way Branham did his

00:27:55gimmick, he had these, he called them prayer cards. And he would have the people write exactly what it is

00:28:01that he would declare was wrong with them, and he would discern that was wrong with them, he would

00:28:06say. And he's just, he's literally saying the things that they wrote on the back of their cards,

00:28:11right? Their name, their address, what's wrong with them. Those are the three things he always said.

00:28:16So he claimed that somebody came into the meetings and had written something incorrect on the card just

00:28:22to test him. Now, think about this. You've got this gimmick, this ministry where you're claiming

00:28:29somebody's raised from the dead and isn't. Now you've got people with a question, a hint in their

00:28:34mind, was this really real or not? And you've got enough people like me and you who would put that

00:28:39to the test, right? If I was there, that's the first thing I would do. I would write something to

00:28:44just see, is this real? Let's find out. That's the way that works, right? And so to put a stop to this,

00:28:50he said, and somebody wrote something incorrect on their card, and they were struck down dead on the

00:28:55platform. And you can go to my website, you can type in the man from Windsor, Windsor, Ontario. And

00:29:02you can see this, but he goes to one town and he tells them that the guy fell dead. He goes to another

00:29:08town, he told them that he ran screaming out of the building because the fear of God was in him.

00:29:13Another one, he says he died six weeks later, he died a month later. The story is so ever-changing

00:29:20that you can tell it was just pulled straight out of his butt. It is not a real story. So that is one

00:29:27area of deception. But there's another area of deception not many people think about. Whenever

00:29:33you're in this type of movement and you're claiming that God is raising people from the dead, all of this

00:29:38stuff, the claim, the actual claim, if you follow everything that they say out to its logical

00:29:44conclusion, is that we, as this group of charismatic Pentecostal, whatever is the movement, we have an

00:29:53exclusivity on this type of divine healing miracle. And the others outside of our faith do not. The

00:30:01Baptists don't. Surely the atheists don't. All of these, every single other group doesn't, right?

00:30:07So I had, I came in contact with this line of thinking and was a little bit shell-shocked because

00:30:14it warped, it changed my worldview. It really did. I had a friend who worked in the morgue.

00:30:20So this is a person who is witnessing actual people who are actually pronounced dead, who have

00:30:28actually gone through the test to see are they actually dead, right? And he is working directly with

00:30:35the hospitals. He's working with the families. And he is aware of events where people have the near

00:30:42death experiences. And so he, like, they're not raising out of the casket by no means, but he is

00:30:48working with hospitals where people are, their life signs have gone to zilch. They have no life

00:30:55signs whatsoever. Person has actually died. They, they have not yet been pronounced dead, I think,

00:31:02but they do come back to life and they tell about what they saw on the other side.

00:31:06Now, when you're in the Pentecostal charismatic type religions, this only can happen to us. This

00:31:12doesn't happen outside of us, but he's seeing Muslims. He's seeing Buddhists, atheists. Everybody

00:31:19is having the same types of experiences. And these are people who are literally being raised from the

00:31:25dead. Their life signs are not the existent and they come back from the dead. I know people who have

00:31:31done this. I know people who have actually died and came back. I have one friend that I think the number

00:31:38is like seven times he died and he is still alive today. He came back. Uh, those seven times were in

00:31:44the course of a week and it wasn't, it was one event that kind of spread out. But I, I know people

00:31:50who have done this. So this is a person who is working in a morgue, working with people. And he,

00:31:56he's aware of all of this. And he is an atheist because he, in his words, he watched this happen to

00:32:03so many different people of so many different faiths that he realized that the worldview he had,

00:32:09which was a Pentecostal worldview, we had no exclusivity on God. Can I even trust any of it?

00:32:17So, so this type of way of thinking actually led him to become an atheist. I have another friend who

00:32:22is a licensed medical professional who also is aware of near death experience. He's a Christian and he has

00:32:30seen these things and he has seen these things in Catholicism, which the Pentecostal world,

00:32:36the charismatic world would just roll over in their graves. No, this is not going to happen,

00:32:40but you don't have exclusivity to God. Yeah. Yeah. That's, this goes back to what I said earlier

00:32:46about emptying a hospital. The claim that is being made is we don't go to the hospitals as faith healers

00:32:52because they can't have enough faith. Right.

00:32:55In other words, it is the responsibility of the person sick to cure themselves. If you really

00:33:01follow it out to its logical conclusion, it's not God. Yeah. And it also comes down to their

00:33:07faith, which includes worldview and all of these other things. What they're really saying is there

00:33:12aren't enough Pentecostal people in this hospital for me to heal. Right.

00:33:16So therefore I didn't go to the hospital. But yet in the same hospital, you're seeing these people who

00:33:21are literally dying and coming back. The odd curious thing about this is, if you take the statistics

00:33:29on the people who have actually died and came back, who are in these hospitals, I would say a small

00:33:35number of them, when you compare all of the different varieties of faiths and religions and

00:33:40atheism or not, I would say the ones who are Pentecostal or charismatic are actually few in number

00:33:45compared to all of the others. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started

00:33:51or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic

00:33:57and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on

00:34:03William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website,

00:34:10you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon,

00:34:17and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find

00:34:23resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to

00:34:30contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

00:34:35And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to

00:34:41or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

00:34:47That is the other side of the shoe that people don't talk about, too, of like, okay, you've got to

00:34:53connect the miracle with the miracle workers, too, like, for it to be genuine. And I thought about

00:35:01this, too, when I was living in India, so when I was with YWAM, I was 18, 19 years old, and I went to live

00:35:12in India. And I remember hearing someone talk about Buddhist miracles. There was like a young Tibetan,

00:35:24but basically, he would have been our version of like a Christian agnostic or atheist, where he was

00:35:31like, he was heavily entrenched in Buddhism. And he wasn't really like a Buddhist believer,

00:35:39but he was, well, I shouldn't say atheist, but that's sort of like agnostic. Like, I don't,

00:35:44I don't know. This is the community I grew up in. So if anything is true, then it's this,

00:35:49but I don't even think that that's true. But anyway, I remember talking with him and he was

00:35:55talking about these different like priests, Buddhist priests who like levitated and did all

00:36:02of these things. And I remember being like, this is so ridiculous and like rolling my eyes. And then

00:36:08at some point I was, I was literally, I still can remember where I was at in, because there was this

00:36:15big long walk that we had to take up to the sort of apartment that we were staying. And I had been

00:36:22getting coffee with him at the sort of square, main square in the town we were in. And I remember,

00:36:31like I was talking with him and I didn't try to like diminish or belittle his belief. I was like,

00:36:36oh, okay. And I was like hearing his story, but on the inside, I was like, this is a bunch of

00:36:41baloney. And then I like was walking up and I was like, I literally am the son of a prophet.

00:36:47I remember seeing, like, I remember what I was seeing. Like, I remember where,

00:36:51because I had to stop and be like, it was one of those moments. Actually, ironically, in that moment,

00:36:57I was like, well, maybe I should take his, instead of being like, well, maybe my beliefs are ridiculous

00:37:04too. I was like, well, maybe I need to take his beliefs seriously too, because I take mine seriously.

00:37:12And I take the testimonies of what Bill Johnson says and what my dad says very seriously. So how can

00:37:19I not take his seriously too? And I, I do think that that's the, the tension that you have to get.

00:37:29Yeah. I think the miracle workers exist in the very specific world in which you isolate your

00:37:39community from all other sort of conversations with other, other genres of charlatans or faith

00:37:48healers, or, you know, it's, it's not, Christians aren't the only ones who have this sort of a very

00:37:54specific genre of, of, of charlatans. Um, so yeah, I, I think that that's, uh, I think it's fascinating to,

00:38:05to look at, like, there's, it's such a problematic belief system in the way that it, um, is lived out

00:38:14and the way that the consequences, like, it's not a free belief. You know, there's some beliefs that you

00:38:19can have that don't cost you anything. And if it's wrong, who cares? You know? Um, but

00:38:27having this sort of exclusive miracle worker that it is these heroes of faith, it's the Wigglesworth,

00:38:36it's the, um, Branham, it's the, um, Bob Jones and Paul Keynes and, um, these different prophets,

00:38:47these are the only divinely inspired. These are the only divinely anointed. Um, and it is only within

00:38:54our community and that we can find healing and prophecy and whatnot. Um, there's a cost to that.

00:39:02And maybe some people pay it less. Um, some people like the parents of all of pay it more where like

00:39:09their belief system cause, uh, an incredible amount of trauma in their own lives because of these like

00:39:17beliefs that they had adopted. So I, I, I, you know, I don't think that people, people view it as, um,

00:39:26but I just, I don't think that people come to terms with how costly that belief is.

00:39:33And okay. So, sorry, one, one, I, I want to tell this story too, because I, this was probably

00:39:40germane to what we were talking about a little bit previously, but, um, one thing that happened that was

00:39:46really funny was my father, um, about six years ago had a heart attack, um, or he had, um, heart

00:39:58failure. He, it wasn't a full on heart attack, but he had like an aortic valve that was, um,

00:40:05not opening. And so he, uh, went into heart failure. Um, and he was playing

00:40:11racquetball during the time. And there was two people he was playing with. One was my cousin.

00:40:17And one was this guy named Tommy, um, who is a IHOP enthusiast enthusiast, like to the core. I mean,

00:40:28one of those individuals who is like lives and dies according to the beliefs of the international

00:40:35house of prayer. So my dad drops to the ground and starts going purple, clearly having some sort

00:40:43of cardiac arrest. And my cousin runs out of the room to go call, um, the hospital and like even

00:40:51see within, I, I don't, I think that at like, um, a lot of times, uh, gyms have like a defibrillator

00:40:59there. Um, but they call, he, he calls like an ambulance. Um, and meanwhile, Tommy, um, goes and

00:41:07starts like proclaiming that my dad would, uh, be healed and like hits his chest, but not in like a

00:41:16trying to do any sort of, um, uh, uh, what's it called? Um, chest compressions or anything like that.

00:41:24He just was trying to like wiggles worth it where it's like, I'm going to strike the, the, um,

00:41:30sickness out of you. Um, and my dad told the story and I, I never really understood,

00:41:36I never really thought about how ironic it was, but my dad afterwards, because he was not fully

00:41:43unconscious during this time, he was sort of conscious and he was like trying to push Tommy

00:41:48away during this situation. And he was trying to like get him to go get help. And fortunately,

00:41:54my cousin did and the, uh, emergency team ended up getting him. Um, and he, and he was fine. He had

00:42:00to have open heart surgery later, um, to fix the valve. But I remember my dad talking about it and

00:42:07he was just so dismissive towards Tommy and just like, it was a joke. It was just like this guy's

00:42:14like hitting my pounding on my chest. I'm dying here. And this guy's pounding on my chest. And it's like,

00:42:20well, that's what you believe, man. Like that's the world that you're a part of. And I of course,

00:42:27didn't believe that. So when my dad told me and was treating this man who tried to

00:42:33raise him from the dead or, or, or save his life spiritually, when my dad was just so dismissive

00:42:39of it, I didn't think about how significant that is that like the leaders of the community,

00:42:45when they are in peril are not wanting, they're wanting to go to a hospital. They're not wanting

00:42:53to go to a faith healer. Um, and that makes all the sense in the world because they don't actually

00:43:00buy what they're selling. And later my dad has actually talked, um, a few times about how

00:43:11he died, how he was dead and, and how, um, he doesn't give credit to Tommy, but how he's like,

00:43:19oh, I was, I was near that. They actually said that I was dead for three minutes. And it's like,

00:43:23no one said that. No, you were having a heart attack. No one, you were never dead. You didn't

00:43:28even have a full heart attack. His heart was like still, uh, active during that entire time,

00:43:34but, um, he just wasn't getting like blood flow through. But anyway, it's just, it's so

00:43:44it's so one sided though. It's such a, it's such a, um, thing that people are selling. It's true.

00:43:52It's a story that people are selling. And like I said earlier, there is a cost to buying it.

00:43:58Not just the financial costs of, of, um, and devotion costs of like believing in these people,

00:44:04but the way that it actually affects how you interact with the world and how you live, um,

00:44:10your life, um, really matters. I remember with Jack Coe, there was, this was a thing too,

00:44:15where like Jack Coe was this faith healer and, um, he preached against going to hospitals.

00:44:23And eventually he had to go to the hospital because he was dying and he went to the hospital

00:44:29and died there. And the Coe's extended family blamed Jack Coe's wife for bringing him to the

00:44:38hospital because of, um, her lack of faith. Um, and of course, like maybe if he had gone to the

00:44:45hospital earlier, he could have survived. So it's sort of like, um, um, the, the belief system itself

00:44:52is, is really corrosive. And, um, I think in general, it sort of corrodes away at your view of

00:45:00the world, but then in times of crisis and the times of disaster, it renders you useless during those

00:45:08times because you are trying to call upon a power that just doesn't exist, or at least does not

00:45:17exist in the way that you think it does. There's something else that you said in there that I want

00:45:22to explore a bit because I've been thinking about this recently. The way that the movement claims

00:45:29ownership and exclusivity on God and miracles doesn't fit once you understand the world around you.

00:45:38And so in my field, in the IT field, I work with lots of different people of different religions

00:45:44and faiths and worldviews, et cetera. I've worked with Catholics and Buddhists and Hindus and,

00:45:51and many, many others, right? Well, if you talk to those people enough, who, the ones who are devout

00:45:56in their faith, you can tell very quickly the ones that have the, I don't know what you call this,

00:46:02but the equivalent to our Pentecostal hype and their, their type of religion. Like I know him,

00:46:08I know Hindus who have the same kind of miracles, right? Now, the interesting part of this is if

00:46:15you talk to people who are in the Pentecostal charismatic side, they will reject, outright

00:46:21reject the Hindu miracles. They'll say, but you can't prove this. If you go examine any one of these,

00:46:27you can't prove it. And they give you the criteria by which they examine the so-called false miracles.

00:46:33But by those same criteria, their own miracles would have failed. That's the interesting part.

00:46:38It's the circular reasoning. We're going to examine those because they're not our God,

00:46:44but we can't use that same criteria whenever our Pentecostal God is being tested.

00:46:49So, I came into contact of this world through a Hindu, interesting, I think I've mentioned this,

00:46:57maybe even to you, but this guy knew his Bible inside and out. I was a little bit surprised.

00:47:03He was a Hindu Christian. And I said to him, what does that mean, man? How can you be a Hindu Christian?

00:47:09And he said, oh, you can serve many gods. I just chose Christ as one of my gods. I just kind of let

00:47:18it go. This doesn't make sense to me, right? But we were in a coffee shop and he was on fire for

00:47:27Jesus. He was preaching to me. He was telling about the miracles. If you were to sit him next to a

00:47:33Pentecostal or charismatic, those two would have bonded immediately if they didn't know each other's

00:47:38worldviews, like they would have instantly, this guy is speaking our language, right?

00:47:43Right, right.

00:47:44And so, I'm sitting and I'm trying to take it all in and trying to understand and I'm still

00:47:48confused. How can you have Jesus and these other gods? And I want to say the other one was like

00:47:52the elephant God and I'm still like trying to wrap my head around this. This doesn't make sense to me,

00:47:58right? But the point I'm trying to make is you can be on fire for something and that something might be

00:48:06having the name Jesus. But does that really mean that it is even Christianity? I would not consider

00:48:12a person who's worshiping Jesus and worshiping an elephant. I would not really consider this a

00:48:18biblical Christian. That doesn't make sense to me, right? But it is oddly compatible with this type of

00:48:27faith. If you put your faith in the miracles and you don't know the worldview of the other people having

00:48:32the miracles, you are instantly compatible. They're one of you. They're one of our people,

00:48:37right? And yet that person is believing in the elephant God.

00:48:41David When I remember, I was at a bookstore in, this is in New Delhi, and there's a lot of English

00:48:55speakers in India. And so there was a lot of English books in there. And I remember I was

00:49:04thumbing through a few different ones. And I found one that basically it traced the genealogy or not,

00:49:10sorry, not the genealogy that like history of Christ and his life. And it said basically everything

00:49:17that's in the Bible or in the gospels happened. And then after he ascended, he actually came to

00:49:30India. It wasn't that he went to heaven, he went over to India before his sort of ascent. Or maybe

00:49:37it was in between or I can't remember exactly. But they basically had this whole like chronology

00:49:43of the time in which Jesus went and performed miracles in India. And I don't know if it was

00:49:51like, I didn't read a lot of it, because again, I was like, this is ridiculous. But so, I don't know

00:49:59if they tie it with a very specific historical figure that overlaps during that same period of

00:50:05time or something, but- Darrell Bock I want to say that this guy

00:50:08that I was talking to, I want to say he tried to tell me that same thing.

00:50:11David And I think that that's sort of the conventional

00:50:13being in a very specific sect that's going to be the view of Christianity is that Jesus was then

00:50:26sent to India. And it is bizarre. It is absurd. But the overlap between like, okay, but like this

00:50:41this person believes with full conviction, this thing that they're talking about, and I believe

00:50:47with full conviction, the things that I'm talking about, and a lot of what I believe, and frankly,

00:50:53like a lot of what the, specifically the latter rain stream of Pentecostalism is so different than

00:51:05like Orthodox Christianity. And because it is entirely, I mean, we have our own prophets, we have our own

00:51:13mythologies, we have our own readings of the Bible that is completely, the whole idea of like,

00:51:21the rapture and the tribulation is so extra biblical. I'm not saying, I know that there's people who are

00:51:28going to probably be upset by saying that, you know, because there can be some extra biblical stuff

00:51:33that is true. I'm not, I'm just saying, it's entirely like, disconnected, like in so far as I

00:51:41think that someone in the early, you know, 300 AD church, met this person in India, and met this

00:51:50person in Independence, Missouri, who talks about the Elijahs, and Branham, and Mike Bickle, and the

00:52:01end times that is happening in the final generation. I think both would feel just as foreign, because it's,

00:52:09it's built so much, we've allowed so many charlatans to come in to the community and tell their own

00:52:18miraculous stories that have to change your worldview. Like, and I think this goes back to

00:52:25just sort of tie it into these discussions of like, the raising people from the dead. If you have

00:52:34a leader, a religious leader of your community, talk about how he raised someone from the dead,

00:52:40you can't put that as like a side thing in your belief system. That is like a central aspect.

00:52:47So the same way that when I was talking to this Buddhist young man in India, his sort of like,

00:52:54faith was really centrally rotating around whether or not these Buddhist monks were able to like

00:53:05levitate and were able to like meditate without eating food or water for 40 days at a time like

00:53:13that. That was a really important part of his sort of spiritual beliefs or lack of belief was or was

00:53:20oriented around that. And so too, it is the case that individuals like me who grew up in a Pentecostal

00:53:27community, who grew up in a Lateran community, I really want to know, I need to know whether or

00:53:33not these people were lying about raising people from the dead, because that completely changes

00:53:40what I view about Christianity. And there's been people who have been upset with me

00:53:45because they're like, oh, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater when you're sort of

00:53:53rejecting at different times that what I've had beliefs of like rejecting Christianity as a whole.

00:54:00And I totally understand that. But my Christianity was always defined by these insane miracles that

00:54:07were being told to me. They were being defined by these insane prophecies that were being told to me.

00:54:13My very much my faith was like centrally like rotating around the idea of whether or not Pat Bickle

00:54:21was going to raise from the dead or he was going to be healed. And the paraplegic brother of Mike Bickle,

00:54:28what is he going to walk again? That was a central aspect of my faith. And we've allowed these charlatans

00:54:37to come in and make their own story and their own grift a part of the actual fundamentals of the belief system.

00:54:46And we're seeing the consequences of it. We're seeing people be abused and exploited by these con artists.

00:54:54And you're seeing people, young people like me and my generation who are leaving the faith entirely

00:55:01because of how much it has been corrupted by charlatans and by individuals who just come in

00:55:10and say whatever story they want and know that no one's going to speak up and say something against them

00:55:18because they don't want to get struck dead or they don't want William Branham to tell people that

00:55:24they were struck dead, you know, and they don't want that narrative around them.

00:55:29And and, you know, quite well, you might not get struck dead. You're definitely going to be extra excommunicated

00:55:36from the community. If your character is going to be attacked. I mean, we've of course seen it of if you

00:55:45speak up against these things, there's all sorts of consequences that you have to face.

00:55:51You know, I talked earlier about the gimmicks used to build the hype. And whenever you hear the New

00:55:58Apostolic Reformation, Reformation preachers talking about the faith healing movement, they seldom mentioned

00:56:05the gimmicks that were used. They'll just mention the miracles, but they won't go back to the gimmicks.

00:56:10And it's out there. You can you can research this and talk. You can find information about it. But

00:56:16one of the gimmicks was the person would hold their hand over the person who's being prayed for

00:56:22and vibrate their hand. Right. And anybody can do it. You just flex your muscle. You just watch me do

00:56:28it. It's it's an easy trick. I mean, you can do this kind of thing yourself, even if you're a kid.

00:56:34The vibrating hand was supposed to be detecting a miracle. And in the in the days gone by where

00:56:42people weren't just actively doing silly stuff like I just did, they probably didn't know that

00:56:46you could vibrate your own hand. They probably didn't know that flexing your muscle could cause

00:56:50a tremor. And so they see somebody on stage doing this. They're like, oh, wow, that's the power of God.

00:56:55But in today's world, many of the gimmicks that they use just wouldn't fly. You'd have kids walking

00:57:02up to the stage doing the same thing. Look, I'm a I'm a miracle worker, too, preacher. And I look back

00:57:08at some of these things and it's just it's incredible. One of them, though, and I've mentioned this before,

00:57:14but I've not gone too deep with it. One of the gimmicks Branham had this and I'm trying to remember,

00:57:21I think I saw another person that had it, but the hand the vibrating hand kind of caught on or Roberts

00:57:27did it. I think Jim Jones did it. There are different ones that did this Branham invented or

00:57:33came up with a new gimmick. And I think others were doing it, too, where the hand could change color.

00:57:39And that's actually that's actually a pretty good trick. How do you change the color of your hand?

00:57:44And there are it's it did become somewhat widespread enough that somewhere I found an article on this,

00:57:50but it's a trick that anybody can do. Whenever you cut your own circulation, if you squeeze your

00:57:56wrist long enough, you can watch your hand kind of turn reddish or purple. Yeah. Well, what you could

00:58:02do is have a rock up here in your underarm. You squeeze your underarm and it hits that main that main

00:58:08blood vessel and then your whole arm kind of changes color. Well, Branham was changing color,

00:58:14but there was he used that for actually a specific purpose. He still used the vibrating hand.

00:58:20But what he would do is if a person came through the line that had something that he knew

00:58:27they were going to die, he would do the discernment thing. And if his hand turned a

00:58:32certain color, they were beyond God's healing. Oh, you can find this in the newspapers that

00:58:38somewhere you can. I think you can even search my website on purple hands and find it. But

00:58:43what he's doing essentially is he is cutting his losses because anybody who goes home after being healed

00:58:51suddenly, you know, instantly the crowds would just turn away from him. But he had a gimmick that

00:58:57would cause them not to not to accuse him. They also had a pamphlet that they were handing out that

00:59:05if something entitled something to the effect, how to keep your healing or something like this,

00:59:09he and F.F. Bosworth did this because both he and Bosworth had public scandals regarding failed

00:59:17healings. Right. Both Branham and Bosworth. So they published this paper that said, basically,

00:59:21you go home and if you don't believe it's on your, it's your fault that you died sick. Right. So

00:59:28fast forward to today's world. One of the things I've not talked about this much, you and I talked a

00:59:34little bit before we recorded this, but, and I'm trying to think how cautiously to say this because

00:59:39of the parties involved, but there was a serious, serious life threatening situation with a family

00:59:47member and family was desperate to get help, desperate to get help. The person had a five

00:59:55percent chance of living, I believe. News of this kind of thing spreads if you're in a divine healing

01:00:01cult because now they're all kind of curious, is the power of God going to actually back up my faith?

01:00:06Right. Yeah.

01:00:07So news is spreading that this is happening. The family tried to contact the leaders of the Branham

01:00:15movement and they simply would not respond. Yeah. Now my family is pretty well connected to the

01:00:22Branham family. Like my grandfather sat on this, on the platform right next to the Branham sons. So it's

01:00:29not like we were some low level rank and file member that they just wouldn't respond to. But instantly,

01:00:36whenever the crisis came, they did not answer. They wouldn't pick up the phone and screening the

01:00:43calls. And I've thought about that moment a lot, especially of late because they had to have known

01:00:52that instantly the everybody who's in the cold is going to find out, well, oh my gosh, this is a

01:00:58healing that could have happened and didn't. I'm questioning the whole thing. I'm questioning,

01:01:03is this even real? And the way that you stop all of this is you simply don't participate.

01:01:10Right.

01:01:11And it goes back to the very same thing I said earlier. They don't go to the hospitals for that

01:01:16exact same reason. I don't care what they say. They may say that the hospital doesn't have enough

01:01:21faith. If you really understand the concept of what it is they're preaching and follow it to its

01:01:26logical conclusion, it's more about the minister than it is God. So if that minister was to hold his

01:01:31revival in the hospital, that hospital would be cleared. But it's for the same reason that they

01:01:38don't do this in these miracle working ministries, it's the same reason why the leaders of the cult

01:01:45wouldn't respond to my family. Oral Roberts, they built that entire medical facility

01:01:54on sort of a promise that people, that Oral Roberts and his son, I'm forgetting what Oral Roberts'

01:02:03son is named, but that they would come and they would heal people within the sort of,

01:02:10it would be the sort of merge of the medical field and the sort of divine healing. It was this sort of

01:02:19place in which we were going to both pray for you and we're going to do these healings for you.

01:02:24And people went and then, of course, they were like, well, where is Oral Roberts? Like, why am I not

01:02:30getting prayed for? And there was this whole lawsuit that was brought against them for deceiving sort of

01:02:38people into thinking that they were going to get prayed over. But of course, Oral Roberts couldn't

01:02:47do that. He couldn't do that because then the gig would be up. If you're going around and you're

01:02:53praying over each one of these individuals, you're going to have a lot of people who pass away in the

01:02:59hospital. And when it's in the hospital, like the hospital itself, people pass away. It's not

01:03:07pretending to have this faith healing power. You go to the hospital and it's like, we will do everything

01:03:13that we can for you. And then people pass away. But when there's this sort of authority, this sort of

01:03:20God anointed authority that is going on, you're going to lure a lot of people in. And this one

01:03:28particular, if I remember the lawsuit correctly, this woman was even like, had surgeries that she

01:03:34didn't necessarily want to have, but she felt like it was because she was being like spiritually

01:03:40manipulated to get these surgeries. And then, of course, that medical facility, they raised like

01:03:45millions of dollars for it. It was up for five years, and then now it's a business center.

01:03:52It was like entirely turned into this multi-megaplex business center instead of the medical facility.

01:03:59So they just dropped all ideas of this holy sort of union between the medical field and the mystical

01:04:08sort of Christianity, because it wasn't profitable, and it wasn't successful. It wasn't working.

01:04:17And instead, they turned it into office buildings. And I think that's just such a good representation

01:04:24of like, you got like subsidized office buildings by getting millions of people to donate millions of

01:04:33dollars, or hundreds of thousands of people to donate millions, literally like $20 million to this cause

01:04:40that ended up existing for only like four years, didn't really do anything, and then was turned into

01:04:46office space. Like, that's just so emblematic of this entire movement.

01:04:51And the last thing I'll bring up, and this one is also a little bit difficult for me,

01:04:56I'm diabetic. So this makes it a little bit challenging. But I have seen it not just in

01:05:03myself, but with members of the support groups. They like to weaponize it. So if you leave,

01:05:10and there's anything that could have had a miracle, you'll find the family members attacking the former

01:05:17members. You'll find the ministers from behind the pulpit attacking them. Look, they left, and they

01:05:22they could have been healed. I might not be diabetic if I'm still part of the cult. Yeah.

01:05:27And it's circular reasoning, because while you're in it, my father was diabetic, my grandfather,

01:05:33grandmother, my uncle, my grandmother, like it clearly runs in my family. Right. And then outside of my

01:05:39family, you can just go down the list of chronic diseases, you've got rehabilitating diseases, cripples,

01:05:47you've got there was a guy in a wheelchair that actually lived long after William Branham died,

01:05:53clinging to the hope that Branham gave him the false hope that one day he would say, quote,

01:05:58say the right thing, and rise up out of that wheelchair. And he died decades after Branham did

01:06:05still a wheelchair invalid, such a sad situation. But they had he left, the family would have attacked

01:06:12him and said, look, he could have he could have walked, he could have got out of it. But it's a

01:06:17circular reasoning, because if you look within these miracle ministries, there are so many people

01:06:22who are suffering. And in fact, if you compare the miracle ministries to the just typical mainstream

01:06:30churches, there's actually a larger number of people who have conditions in the miracle ministries,

01:06:36and that's what brought them there. That's literally the reason why they're there.

01:06:39Right. And yet they, many of them don't get healed. Yeah.

01:06:44And I know people are going to say, John doesn't believe in divine healing, all of this stuff. My

01:06:48father was healed in one of these ministries. My father was healed by William Branham. And my family

01:06:53has the evidence that, I said that wrong. My family was not, my father was not healed by William Branham.

01:07:00My father would have been healed by God while William Branham was on the platform, I should say.

01:07:05Okay. But they, I say that because that's embedded in my head. That's the way they say it.

01:07:10Yeah.

01:07:10They would say, he was healed by William Branham. How can you leave this? Your own father.

01:07:15Yeah.

01:07:15So, when you're in these types of ministries, it's all about the man on the platform. It's

01:07:19not about God. Yeah.

01:07:21And there's always a circular reasoning for why you must stay in it. And it makes it really difficult

01:07:29for people to leave. So, I'm glad my family was able to escape this and I hope others can

01:07:34leave this behind them.

01:07:36Yeah. Because I'm with you too of like, you could look and be like, oh, maybe this person got healed.

01:07:42I can look at my family and be like, all right, well, there is chronic issues of stress and anxiety

01:07:51and depression and mental health issues that like, had we not grown up in a cult community,

01:07:57I think that maybe we would not have those things. So, it was causing a lot, much more

01:08:05more physical trauma than it was ever healing or whether placebo effect or whether genuine,

01:08:14you know, miracles. The fruit of that tree was not health. And questioning that and telling people,

01:08:25hey, this is not, the fruit of this tree is not good health. We're seeing all of these sort of things.

01:08:31Then it came back to faith and lack of faith and lack of belief or being a cynic or a scoffer.

01:08:40And yeah, I'm glad to be out of that situation. I know we talk about this all the time,

01:08:46but every once in a while, I'm just like, wow, man. Because I think even now, I have a hard time

01:08:52going to the hospital or a good doctor in general, because like every health issue that I have,

01:08:58I could be eating better. I could be exercising more. I could be like, you know, for my own mental

01:09:04health, there could be things that I could be doing. And it's really, it's really hard for me.

01:09:10Like I sometimes want to not tell my own doctor the symptoms of some health issues that I'm struggling

01:09:19with, because I associate it with me not being healthy. And there's some truth to that of me,

01:09:27like there are healthier things that I could be doing, but there's, there's so much internalized

01:09:32shame having to do with my own health. That absolutely is tied up with the world that I grew

01:09:41up in. And me wanting to hide the fact that I was, was not feeling well or not, not doing well,

01:09:48because, um, because, um, I didn't want it to, um, um, betray that I was, that I was not faithful,

01:09:58or I was not doing X, Y, Z, or, you know, and, uh, so, uh, even, even now, 10 years after well-being

01:10:07out of the sort of community, I think that I still deal with some of the, the symptoms, uh,

01:10:12in that, that space. Well, this has been interesting and challenging all at the same

01:10:19time. I held back quite a bit. There's a lot that I have to say, but I'm still processing a

01:10:25lot of that myself and trying to find ways to say that don't offend people who are in that

01:10:30mindset, because there are good aspects of the mindset. And I grew up like, like I said,

01:10:36my own father was one person who can claim he was healed in this type of ministry. But at the same time,

01:10:42there's a lot of challenges that go with that healing that I, um, maybe one day I'll get into,

01:10:48but for today, this has been good enough. Thanks for doing this. My pleasure. Well,

01:10:53if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

01:10:56You can find us at william-brannum.org. For more about the dark side of the new apostolic

01:11:01reformation, you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon,

01:11:07Kindle and audible.

01:11:12And if you've followed our show, I'll be happy to hear about the other side.

01:11:13Want to know more about the same kind of mattress or how to make money?

01:11:21Please look forward to seeing what you want to see.

01:11:23You can find out the same kind of mattress that you would have to think,

01:11:24but you might want to be able to find out on the other side.

01:11:27It's a lot of mattress that you want to be able to find out on the inside of the new artist.

01:11:31You can find out on the outside, there's a lot of mattress that are all the way you want to find out on the inside of the master's life.

Miracles, Manipulation, & the Myth of Faith Healing: Raising the Dead or Raising Hype? | Jed Hartley

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended