- 15 hours ago
John and Chino explore the dramatic rise of megachurch culture and how American consumerism reshaped faith into a spectacle. They compare intimate home-based congregations with today’s oversized entertainment venues, asking whether the push for bigness has come at the cost of discipleship, accountability, and authentic community. With humor and candor, they share personal experiences from cult exits to high-tech worship environments that feel more like sci-fi productions than spiritual gatherings.
They also dig into the historical roots behind the phenomenon—from the early revivalists to the strategic church-growth movement—and expose how power, money, and celebrity have created a modern cult of personality. This conversation challenges listeners to consider what truly defines a healthy church and whether the biggest churches might be obscuring the smallest, most essential aspects of faith.
00:00 Introduction
03:17 From Small-Town Churches to Mega Sanctuaries
04:34 Hobart Freeman and the “Prophecy Sermon” Mindset
09:00 What Defines a Mega Church?
13:02 America’s Obsession with Bigness
17:23 The “Mega Closet” Story and Cultural Parallels
19:01 Early Mega Churches: Cadle Tabernacle & Angelus Temple
22:22 Joel Osteen and the Evangelical Business Model
24:14 Why People Choose Big Churches
28:43 Anonymity and the Appeal of the Crowd
33:01 Church as Networking Hub
36:04 Mad Max in the Thunderdome: The Spectacle of Worship
38:41 Spiritual Abuse and the Safety of Numbers
41:03 Money, Buildings, and Misplaced Priorities
43:07 Hobart Freeman’s Growth and Power
45:03 Home-Church Roots in Acts
47:00 Julie Roys and the Return to Small Church
50:14 The Mission Drift of Mega Churches
53:01 Church-Growth Movement & Dominionism
54:25 Power, Ego, and Corruption in Leadership
59:03 The Cult of Personality and Hero Worship
1:03:01 Why Small Churches Matter
1:04:00 The Russian “Cult of Personality” Parallel
1:05:25 Final Reflections on Mega Churches
______________________
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
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– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
They also dig into the historical roots behind the phenomenon—from the early revivalists to the strategic church-growth movement—and expose how power, money, and celebrity have created a modern cult of personality. This conversation challenges listeners to consider what truly defines a healthy church and whether the biggest churches might be obscuring the smallest, most essential aspects of faith.
00:00 Introduction
03:17 From Small-Town Churches to Mega Sanctuaries
04:34 Hobart Freeman and the “Prophecy Sermon” Mindset
09:00 What Defines a Mega Church?
13:02 America’s Obsession with Bigness
17:23 The “Mega Closet” Story and Cultural Parallels
19:01 Early Mega Churches: Cadle Tabernacle & Angelus Temple
22:22 Joel Osteen and the Evangelical Business Model
24:14 Why People Choose Big Churches
28:43 Anonymity and the Appeal of the Crowd
33:01 Church as Networking Hub
36:04 Mad Max in the Thunderdome: The Spectacle of Worship
38:41 Spiritual Abuse and the Safety of Numbers
41:03 Money, Buildings, and Misplaced Priorities
43:07 Hobart Freeman’s Growth and Power
45:03 Home-Church Roots in Acts
47:00 Julie Roys and the Return to Small Church
50:14 The Mission Drift of Mega Churches
53:01 Church-Growth Movement & Dominionism
54:25 Power, Ego, and Corruption in Leadership
59:03 The Cult of Personality and Hero Worship
1:03:01 Why Small Churches Matter
1:04:00 The Russian “Cult of Personality” Parallel
1:05:25 Final Reflections on Mega Churches
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:30Hello, 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, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross,
00:00:47pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Cheno D. Ross YouTube channel.
00:00:53Cheno, it's good to be back and today to step on a whole lot of toes.
00:00:57You and I talked about this a few times in the past, and we talked about it just before
00:01:03the podcast, but this idea of going to these massive, massive churches, you know, growing
00:01:10up in this Branham religion that I escaped, the churches were somewhat of an isolationist
00:01:17mindset.
00:01:17You know, they weren't fully secluded, but you didn't find too many bring a friend days
00:01:23at the church, and so the churches were kind of small, and I'll never forget, I was going
00:01:29up this one mountain in the Ozarks to this old Branham church, and the people were so
00:01:35backwards that as they were paving that road up the Ozark mountains, there was a tree right
00:01:40in the middle of the road, and rather than move the tree or cut the tree down, they actually
00:01:46paved the road around it, and you got to the top of a hill, there was this little church
00:01:50up there with a handful of people in it.
00:01:53And I went to another church that was literally in a Boy Scouts clubhouse, this little tiny
00:01:59building, concrete block building.
00:02:02We all sat in the same folding chairs that the Boy Scouts did.
00:02:05So, that's the mindset that I grew up in, and then to leave this and go out into the
00:02:12world of denominations, it's totally different.
00:02:15The churches, a lot of them have, you know, a lot of them are bigger, more plush.
00:02:20I remember, you know, sitting in my grandfather's church at the Branham Tabernacle, these really
00:02:24hard seats.
00:02:26I remember back before there was any cushion in them, and you compare that to the modern,
00:02:31it almost feels like recliners in the churches today.
00:02:33It's just, it's a world of difference, right?
00:02:36I try to take it all in and try to, you know, try to understand it, and it's difficult for
00:02:42me to understand.
00:02:44But today, I'm interested more, I think, to listen to you, just to hear some of your
00:02:49opinion than I am to talk about it.
00:02:52But needless to say, I am aligned with you.
00:02:55I do not really agree with these massive churches.
00:02:58I'm not a fan.
00:02:59I'll say it like that.
00:03:00I realize that there's a place, and there are some people that get help, but if you're
00:03:04in a massive church, there's just so many things that you're missing.
00:03:08And I have a lot to think through and a lot to talk about, but I am glad to talk about
00:03:14this with you today.
00:03:15So let's talk about megachurches.
00:03:19Well, I don't know that you'll do that much listening, John.
00:03:21You're as much a speaker as I am.
00:03:23You always have plenty of thoughts that come to your mind and plenty of contributions to make.
00:03:28You know, the last few weeks, without even trying, somehow we have been on a little bit
00:03:34of a roll as I looked at Hobart Freeman's life and ministry and looked at some really
00:03:41odd ways, and we played clips earlier that demonstrated this, saying how Hobart came
00:03:47up with his messages.
00:03:49So that was one of the things we looked at.
00:03:50How does your pastor come up with his sermon?
00:03:52And for Hobart, it was, you know, either preparation versus inspiration, and he always
00:03:59chose inspiration over preparation, you know, as those clips would say.
00:04:03He said that God had told him back in 1967, if you ever need a message, just sit down and
00:04:09I'll prophesy it through you.
00:04:12And so he would prophesy to himself.
00:04:15I mean, I literally shake my head at the foolishness and childishness of this.
00:04:22Then he would write it down, and then that would be a sermon, and he would go preach that
00:04:27to the people.
00:04:28And I've often said, when you hear the sermon, you can definitely tell that came by prophecy
00:04:34and not by any kind of preparation in the Bible.
00:04:36But I think ministers like Hobart, they look, they're reading their Bible, but they're reading
00:04:44their Bible as though they're still living in a biblical day.
00:04:50And I mean, we're not, as far as the canon of Scripture is concerned, is closed.
00:04:55And they see how Moses got the Ten Commandments, well, he just went up on the top of a mountain,
00:05:00and God, with his own finger, wrote him in a tablet of stone, and he brought it back down.
00:05:04And how Isaiah and Jeremiah, they got their message by inspiration, and how the Apostle
00:05:10Paul, he said, I didn't get any of my stuff from any man, I got it by direct revelation,
00:05:16you know, in Galatians 1.
00:05:18So ministers think, that's how I'm supposed to get my message, it's just by some kind of
00:05:23divine inspiration.
00:05:25And that's really not the way this works.
00:05:27And another thing then we looked at was, well, if that's how your minister gets his sermon,
00:05:33then how do you pick your minister?
00:05:36What are you looking for in a pastor?
00:05:40And let's just be honest, if a pastor is going to preach messages by prophecy that he got on
00:05:46Wednesday, you know, I could do without that, no thanks.
00:05:50I got plenty of prophecies I need to be understanding, and they're written in the Old and the New Testament.
00:05:55That'll keep me busy for my lifetime, figuring out those prophecies.
00:06:01And, you know, I remembered that in seeking a particular pastor, how do you go about,
00:06:09you know, what are your qualifications, conditions in your mind as a Christian person for a minister?
00:06:15One of my adult children and his spouse were without a church and wanting to go and looking at different types of ministers.
00:06:28And, you know, they ended up not where they really wanted to go,
00:06:32but they ended up at a little out in the middle of nowhere, as far as I know, country Baptist church.
00:06:41And the pastor of this Baptist church, they actually stayed there for a couple of years.
00:06:49And it did not teach all of the doctrine that they were looking for, that they believed in or were interested in.
00:06:56But the important thing about this church was that pastor.
00:07:01It was just he was a no-name guy.
00:07:05No one would ever know him.
00:07:07And sometimes I think those are the diamond in the rough.
00:07:12When he came to preach, he preached expository sermons.
00:07:19He would take a passage or take a chapter, even take a book of the Bible.
00:07:24And he would, you know, to the best of his ability, patiently work his way through it.
00:07:30So, in other words, he was not trying to entertain the people.
00:07:33He was trying to educate the people on what God's word said.
00:07:36And, you know, my kids got a lot out of that.
00:07:40They didn't agree with all of it, but they got a lot out of it.
00:07:42And they appreciated the fact that this minister was trying to shepherd the flock
00:07:48and actually have something to feed them and to offer them come church service.
00:07:54And also, he was just a humble person.
00:07:58It wasn't all about him.
00:07:59He, if they had a church work day, he was just as involved out on the church lawn,
00:08:05picking up limbs as was everyone else.
00:08:08So, they got to see a minister who's no glorious six-figure person,
00:08:16but who was a real human being who really cared about the people.
00:08:20And, you know, they stayed there for several years.
00:08:22So, what I want to come to today is we passed this pastor's sermon.
00:08:30We're through the pastor himself.
00:08:33Now, what about the church?
00:08:36So, what type of church?
00:08:39And I am particularly, John, thinking of a size.
00:08:43What size church is out there today?
00:08:48And what size church are people looking for?
00:08:52And by size, I mean that.
00:08:54Numbers, bigness.
00:08:56And, you know, in every church, you're going to have some good people and some bad people.
00:09:03I don't care if it's 20 or 200.
00:09:05In every church, you're going to have some good, some bad.
00:09:08If you've got 20, let's hope that 18 are good and maybe two are peripheral members.
00:09:12In every big church, you're going to have lots of good people and you're going to have lots of bad people.
00:09:17When you come to a megachurch, I'm talking about a church in the thousands,
00:09:22then this principle of there are going to be some good and some bad is just multiplied.
00:09:27And is that not the new American phenomenon?
00:09:33I don't even know when it began, but it is a big deal today.
00:09:37And that is the so-called megachurch, where we're talking about members in the thousands.
00:09:46Faith Assembly, at its height, had as many as 2,400 people.
00:09:53I don't know if you call that a megachurch by today's standards, but 1980, that was a really big church.
00:10:00And what do we have out there today?
00:10:02But there are 5,000, 10,000, probably some churches as many as 20,000.
00:10:09I don't know how many people are at Joel Osteen's church in Texas, but I'm sure it's way up there in thousands and thousands.
00:10:18And I just wonder, have the people who are attending these churches mentally processed, what all is involved?
00:10:30What is it that's leading them to that?
00:10:33I think our own culture is just obsessed with bigness.
00:10:38You take from when I was a kid, a single serving portion of a soft drink was in a glass bottle.
00:10:48We didn't get it very often, and it was six and a half fluid ounces.
00:10:52We lived in Mississippi.
00:10:54We'd go visit my father's parents, so my grandparents, who lived in Indiana, in Vincennes, in southern Indiana.
00:11:02And every time on the way up there, we'd make the trip.
00:11:04We'd stop at this little gas station.
00:11:06We'd go into the vending machines and spend, I don't know what it was, in a quarter and get a pack of crackers.
00:11:11And then the whole treat of the trip was to put money in a machine and get a glass Coke bottle, six and a half fluid ounces.
00:11:23That was our soft drink, and we were glad to have it.
00:11:26Well, today, that wouldn't even make the fizz on the top of these jumbo 32, 64-ounce soft drinks.
00:11:35Our whole culture is just obsessed with bigness.
00:11:38Somehow, bigger is better.
00:11:41That's just the way it is.
00:11:43The bigger home, the bigger car, the bigger income, the bigger everything, that numbers, we judge success by numbers.
00:11:52And as a result, people just covet that.
00:11:56So instead of, you know, having a normal church, whatever that is, and everybody's estimation of 50 people, 100 people, 200 people, you know, we're not satisfied with that.
00:12:08We go to this mega church with thousands of people.
00:12:14You don't have a worship leader, which is what all the other smaller churches have.
00:12:20You have a worship team.
00:12:23You have a team of people up there, and they fill up the entire stage, and that's what it is.
00:12:32You know, it is definitely a stage, and it seems to be a lot of performance.
00:12:37And, you know, I'm a part of American culture, too, although I'll say up front, and I may offend people,
00:12:42but I just have zero interest in mega churches and theologically, personally, zero tolerance for them.
00:12:51I do think they probably do more harm than good, more damage than good.
00:12:56But I'm a part of the same American culture where everything is big.
00:13:01You know, our homes are bigger.
00:13:03Our bank accounts are bigger.
00:13:05Everything is bigger.
00:13:08Let me tell you an interesting story, completely off the subject, has nothing to do with church or God or religion or the Bible.
00:13:16But speaking of bigness, you know, John, that I also own a high-end custom cabinet company, and that's what we do.
00:13:24We make custom cabinetry.
00:13:25So I have a client that we've just signed a contract to do business for, and we're going to work for her towards the end of this year or early next year.
00:13:35And I got her through a mutual friend.
00:13:37The builder of the addition she put on her home is a fishing guide, and, you know, that's one of my other businesses.
00:13:44I'm a charter boat captain.
00:13:45As a matter of fact, this friend of mine that got me this job is actually guiding, I think, as we speak.
00:13:51It's this time of year, so I'm sure he is up on Lake Erie doing charter trips for walleye, walleye fishing up on Lake Erie.
00:13:59So he had worked for this lady.
00:14:02This lady was looking for a particular person to do this project for her, and my friend says,
00:14:09I've got a friend who's a perfect, perfect guy for you.
00:14:12So here's the story.
00:14:13This lady, she lives in southern Kentucky.
00:14:16She lives on a 500-acre farm.
00:14:18That's a big farm.
00:14:19She built a big, beautiful new house just a couple of years ago, a three-story detached garage that looks like a house.
00:14:29When you pull up to it, you have to go around the back to pull into it.
00:14:32And once she lived in her house for a couple of years, she realized that her master closet, and she's not married.
00:14:40She lives there alone.
00:14:41Her master closet is not quite big enough.
00:14:45And I've been in her master closet, and I did not stretch a tape on it, but maybe it's, I don't know, 10 feet by 12 feet, 10 feet by 15 feet.
00:14:56You know what our closets looked like back in the 1960s and 70s.
00:15:00You know, you could barely get a couple of jackets in there.
00:15:03So she's got, you know, a decent-sized closet.
00:15:05It's not big enough.
00:15:07So she hired my friend to come and put an addition on her home.
00:15:14And the addition on her home measures 24 feet by 26 feet.
00:15:18And it's nothing but a master closet.
00:15:22And so I met her a few weeks ago, went down there to look at the job, bid the job.
00:15:29We got the job.
00:15:30We've got a signed contract.
00:15:32And now we have a room 24 feet by 26 feet, nine-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, plus a 12-foot island, granite countertops.
00:15:46This is a master closet.
00:15:48You talk about bigness.
00:15:50You talk about mega churches.
00:15:51This is a mega closet.
00:15:53Now, as I met the lady, went through the house, snaked my way through the kitchen, down the hallway, through the laundry room,
00:16:01through the existing master closet into the current one, I told her, or actually I asked her,
00:16:08what's your plan on getting anything in that room?
00:16:13You saw all those turns we made.
00:16:15You know, cabinets can't bend.
00:16:17Neither can granite countertops.
00:16:19What are your thoughts about getting cabinets in there?
00:16:22Oh, we didn't think about that.
00:16:24I said, well, that's one of the things I do on every job.
00:16:27How are we going to get these monster cabinets in there?
00:16:30We've got to take a window out, back a truck up to it, through the landscaping.
00:16:35They have a tree planted right in front of the window.
00:16:38She said, I will just move the tree.
00:16:40This lady has plenty of money.
00:16:41She said, we'll just move the tree.
00:16:43You can unload the cabinets.
00:16:44We'll put the tree back.
00:16:46She has 10 floor to ceiling, nine foot ceiling, lazy Susans to hold her shoes.
00:16:53So this is every woman's dream closet, you know, but you've got to have money to fill it up, too.
00:17:01And I think she does.
00:17:03So, yeah, it's a society of bigness.
00:17:07Everything, we want to supersize everything.
00:17:10So we've become supersized Americans with supersized health issue problems and supersized health industry and health care problems because everything is so big.
00:17:24So here's what we want to talk about today, John, a little bit about mega churches.
00:17:29You know, my first YouTube channel got taken down by the cult.
00:17:32I think I've told you about this.
00:17:34I lost the entire channel, lost pretty much everything that I'd done.
00:17:38And I was debating, do I even put it back up?
00:17:42What do I do?
00:17:42Do I start a new channel?
00:17:43And I can't remember how the idea came, but basically I started working with Naomi Wright of Be Emboldened.
00:17:51And we decided we were going to do a podcast together, and I did it in my closet.
00:17:58I wish that I was recording in that closet now so that you could compare it to what you're describing.
00:18:04It was so small.
00:18:05I was hitting my head on the back of the, it was a curved ceiling.
00:18:09I'm hitting my head on the back of it, hitting the wall behind me as I was talking if I ever leaned back.
00:18:15I can barely fit in this thing.
00:18:17And I was, at the time, I was restoring an old boat.
00:18:21And I had taken a lot of the upholstery out of that boat and got me some soundproof insulation.
00:18:27So in this tiny, tiny closet, I stapled soundproof insulation around it.
00:18:32Anyway, I made this little tiny thing, and I was just kind of crouched in it.
00:18:37That's how big this closet was.
00:18:39And if you compare that closet to the one that you just described, it's like describing the churches that I went to in the cult compared to the ones that I went to after the cult.
00:18:50It's a little bit crazy.
00:18:52When I left this Branham organization, I started to try to piece together not just what they did to my head, but everything.
00:19:00I was interested in learning everything.
00:19:03And I began studying all of the churches, and I started going to different churches, and some of them small, some of them big.
00:19:11One of them, the people called the nickname Six Flags Over Jesus.
00:19:16I went to that one, and it was one of the lists that I wanted to try out.
00:19:21And, you know, I think as I began to go through this, I began to get curious about just the churches themselves, the buildings.
00:19:29Why in the world am I in this big building that they call Six Flags Over Jesus because it's so massive?
00:19:35And I started studying the histories, I think like Charles Spurgeon, for example.
00:19:43I think his church was one of the more massive ones of the time, but it was like 5,000 people.
00:19:48It's nothing compared to what we have today.
00:19:51That was a good-sized church for its era.
00:19:53But if you fast-forward into the revivalist days, you had people like Billy Sunday who was packing out 10,000 to 20,000 people in some of his revivals.
00:20:04Now, that wasn't a church.
00:20:05That was like in tents or arenas.
00:20:08But that's a lot of people, right?
00:20:10William Branham worked with F.F. Bosworth, and Bosworth was a faith healer.
00:20:15He was packing out, I think I read, I think it was up to 16,000 people that were in some of the meetings he was attending.
00:20:24But he also attended the, or held revivals in the Cato Tabernacle in Indianapolis,
00:20:30which by some accounts is the first true, real megachurch.
00:20:35It predated Amy Simple McPherson's Angeles Temple by a few years.
00:20:40And it was planted in, you know, Indiana.
00:20:43There's some history there.
00:20:45If you studied, it's a little bit weird.
00:20:47I talk about it in a couple of my books.
00:20:49But there's some real sketchy details as to how this guy, E. Howard Cato, no-name shoe cobbler from Chicago, who worked in a casino.
00:20:59And suddenly he got this massive amount of money and planted this massive, I think it was 10,000-seat church called the Cato Tabernacle.
00:21:10And if you study that history, especially if you study D.C. Stevenson, who's notorious in the Klan, all of the human cannibalism, the prostitution,
00:21:20all the weird things that were tied to that church is a little bit weird.
00:21:25It was the Klan headquarters.
00:21:27And Cato Tabernacle, E. Howard Cato was a person who was connected to Branham.
00:21:33Branham was working with him.
00:21:34And Branham says he was close friends when he was pastoring a church in Milltown, Indiana.
00:21:40And so it's a weird history.
00:21:43It's a rabbit trail if you want to go down it.
00:21:45But then Amy Semple McPherson, who was also in an organization, the Foursquare Gospel, which was deeply connected to Branhamism.
00:21:54She predated Branhamism.
00:21:56But Branham, whenever they held the 50th anniversary at her Angelus Temple, the 50th anniversary of modern Pentecostalism, or the Azusa Street Revival,
00:22:08Branham was one of the keynote speakers at that church.
00:22:11So you start looking at this, and you compare E. Howard Cato to the Angelus Temple.
00:22:16And then now you've got all the way up to Joel Osteen and his massive megachurch.
00:22:22Joel Osteen's church is, I don't know if it is, the biggest, but it's one of the biggest in the world.
00:22:28And his father, John Osteen, was part of this Branham revival movement.
00:22:33He was, I've got newspaper articles on the website.
00:22:35You can see him.
00:22:37He's preaching at the Branham Headquarter Church in Shreveport.
00:22:42Actually, the Voice of Healing headquarters, but at that time it was Branham's organization, if I understand the history correctly.
00:22:48But he is, you know, he's planning this church that would become John Osteen's church.
00:22:54His church would not have existed if not for the full gospel businessmen who were sponsoring Branham and Osteen and all of these guys.
00:23:03I mean, it was the funding entity behind creating these megachurches.
00:23:08So, you know, if you study this and you study this network and understand that they're all kind of tied together in this weird history, it raises so many questions.
00:23:20And the biggest one that I have is, what does, what on earth does all of this really have to do with religion or Christianity?
00:23:28You're talking about from the Klan to the entertainment, filling seats.
00:23:33None of that really has anything to do with Christianity.
00:23:36Yes, it's just big American business.
00:23:40It's known as the evangelical complex now.
00:23:44So if you, John, or I, or any of our listeners, if you're driving down the street, you're driving down Willow Street in town and you see two churches, which one are you going to go in?
00:23:55And one of them is in a little nondescript building and it's, you know, got 15 cars parked outside and you drive another mile down the street and there is a stadium, a coliseum, you know, with parking attendance and security.
00:24:10And I mean, it, it is a mega church.
00:24:13What would you choose, what would you choose, the little church or the big church if they're sitting side by side?
00:24:22And, and they are those big churches, such as the one you referred to earlier that I have attended a few times, Six Flags Over Jesus in, in Louisville, Kentucky.
00:24:33And there are other Six Flags Over Jesus in other states and cities, but that one's not far from where I live and not far from where you live.
00:24:42And I mean, that's a, that's a good nickname for a church like that.
00:24:48It has other churches in that neighborhood that are small that people obviously go to.
00:24:53So which one would you choose?
00:24:55I think people have different reasons for choosing big.
00:25:01And it seems to me that one of the reasons is, again, it goes back to our culture that people interpret bigness as goodness, that they interpret bigger is better.
00:25:15They interpret numbers with success.
00:25:19I mean, you have had success in the numerical sense, whether you have success in God's eyes or in people's lives, those are probably different standards and they're different criteria by which you would measure that.
00:25:33But as far as just American big business, the evangelical institutional complex, you've definitely hit a home run if you've got a five or 10,000 member church.
00:25:44And so I think some people choose big, they choose these churches because they want to be with a winner.
00:25:53You know, who wants to be with the loser next door there that has 15 cars in the parking lot?
00:26:00You know, isn't that just kind of the way we're wired as Americans?
00:26:04Our mind tells us that guy with the 15 cars, he's a loser.
00:26:08But this guy with the fleet of luxury automobiles and the staff that surrounds and insulates him at the big church next door, he's a winner.
00:26:19I mean, we want to hang out with whatever the end thing is.
00:26:23We want to hang out with what's happening.
00:26:25We want to hang out with the winner.
00:26:27But I think that our whole mindset is probably not very healthy if that's the way that we think.
00:26:34If we think that, by definition, bigness is better, well, we definitely have missed the boat on that.
00:26:43The Bible would have a whole lot to say about bigness and betterness that they're not necessarily equated at all.
00:26:52As a matter of fact, I would say not always, but more times than not, that's probably not where you're going to find better wherever you find big.
00:27:04It's very well possible that the guy next door with 15 cars in the parking lot, it's very possible that he's a better pastor, that he's a better preacher, that he's a better leader.
00:27:18I mean, how can you, you just cannot automatically say because this guy has 15,000 church members, that makes him somehow better or more worthy of being followed.
00:27:29That is strictly a numbers game, and a numbers game is just not a valid game to play.
00:27:37So I would challenge people to think about why they're choosing a church.
00:27:42As I gave the illustration earlier with a couple of my kids, there were, I'm sure, bigger churches around, but they chose a smaller church for a variety of reasons.
00:27:53But one of them had to do with that leader up there.
00:27:57Is he going to be someone who opens God's word and does to the best of his ability with whatever his training and background and schooling and knowledge and experience are?
00:28:07Is he going to try to feed us the word of God?
00:28:10And that is exactly what that man did.
00:28:12I've never met the man, don't know him at all, but I trust my kids' opinion.
00:28:17And they said, you know, Dad, he was a great minister.
00:28:20He's just a Baptist country minister.
00:28:22But would they choose him and going to church there over the pastor at Six Flags Over Jesus?
00:28:29A hundred times out of a hundred they would because they know we just stand a better chance of really being fed God's word and being cared about by the church leadership.
00:28:40So that's one reason.
00:28:42Here's another reason that I think people choose a big church.
00:28:47And this could have some validity to it, as maybe we will investigate and dive into.
00:28:55And that is the fact that a big church, and people really need to think through this, a big church affords anonymity to people.
00:29:06You know, if you are a shy person by nature, you probably would rather go to a church where the microscope is not going to be on you because you're one of a dozen, where when you're one of 12,000, you can literally disappear.
00:29:28You can blend right into the woodwork and no one will even know you're there.
00:29:32So it's a great church for shy people.
00:29:35It's a great church for, I think, people who want a dose of God.
00:29:40They just want a spoonful of religion.
00:29:41But they don't want to have to get involved and participate and anything be dependent upon them.
00:29:49If you're in a little small group of people, if you're in a small group, because it's small, everyone depends on everyone else.
00:29:56If you're in a big group, as long as we have a few big dogs, they'll just run the program for everyone.
00:30:04So a big church offers the anonymity that shy people are looking for, and there are just shy people out there.
00:30:15I'm not one of them.
00:30:16I don't think you're one of them.
00:30:17You tell me that you are, but I don't believe that.
00:30:21I'm not a shy person.
00:30:22I don't want to go into a mega church and be able to just blend in.
00:30:27I want to know the people, and I want to know what's going on there.
00:30:31But I've also wondered this, John, and you would probably know more about this particular topic than I would know.
00:30:37I wonder, you know, I hate to just paint with it too broad of a brush, and it's something that's just never wise to do and say every single mega church is wrong.
00:30:49I probably could say that, but the other statement is, you should never, ever go to a mega church.
00:30:57That might be painting with too broad of a brush, because I have wondered about people who have escaped some of these cult backgrounds.
00:31:09And I think these people go through a period of their life, and maybe they go through it for the rest of their life,
00:31:14but at least a short period of time where they don't want to be inspected weekly by the pastor and other members.
00:31:23They're trying to get their feet back on the ground of what is church?
00:31:28What is the Bible?
00:31:29What is God?
00:31:30They've come out of something where they were manipulated and massaged and managed by the pastor and by the church
00:31:38and by the church leadership to get them to believe this and don't go there and don't do that, and this is what you must do.
00:31:46And, you know, guess what?
00:31:47If you just go into a big mega church, you just disappear.
00:31:50Nobody even knows you're there.
00:31:52So you get to experience maybe some, I don't know, I haven't ever done this, so I'm not speaking out of experience.
00:32:00I'm speaking out of, I suppose this probably could be true and has been true in people's lives,
00:32:08that they could go into a big church and disappear for a period of time as they try to sort out what their background was
00:32:19and where they want to go from this point forward.
00:32:23But again, let's paint the picture of the little church and the big church side by side.
00:32:28One you're going to have to be a part of, the other you don't.
00:32:34Which of the two are you going to choose and why are you going to make that choice?
00:32:40Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism
00:32:47transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?
00:32:53You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:33:01On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley,
00:33:07Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:33:15You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
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00:33:39I'll never forget, as I was trying out different churches, I was also running my business.
00:33:44I was doing executive-level consulting.
00:33:46So I'm meeting with some of the more elite people in Louisville.
00:33:51And I met this one guy.
00:33:52I'd known him for years, actually.
00:33:54But we were sitting down talking, and he could tell that I was, you know, going through some stuff.
00:34:00It was written all over my face, and he asked me.
00:34:02So I explained some of the cult stuff that I was doing.
00:34:05He says, well, you ought to try out my church.
00:34:07I go to, and he named one of the churches.
00:34:09I'm not going to give the name.
00:34:11And I sat there.
00:34:13First, I was scratching my head.
00:34:14Why on earth does this guy go into church?
00:34:17This is, he does not seem like a church-going person.
00:34:21I'll just say it like that.
00:34:24And it's fine.
00:34:25You know, I'm glad he went.
00:34:26But when he named the church, it was one of the larger churches that you can attend in this area.
00:34:32And he was, the way that he described it, he was going because there were other people in his business circles that were going to that same church.
00:34:42And so I began to piece together that going to church for the average person is just a community.
00:34:49Going to church for an executive-level, very wealthy man, it's more than that.
00:34:56It is a way to connect with other businessmen.
00:34:58And yes, I'm not going to say that it's bad that they're going to church, but I have to question the reasons why they're going to church.
00:35:06And so I went to the church, and I'll just say like this, it wasn't for me.
00:35:12And I went to this one church, and there was, as I sat down in the seating, there was like at the basketball games.
00:35:22They've got those big TVs, you know, like hanging in a cube in the middle of the auditorium.
00:35:27So you're sitting down in the stadium seating.
00:35:30You can see the, in the distance, you can see the platform where the preacher speaks.
00:35:35And then here's the preacher, well, on this massive screen, I caught myself just watching the screen more than I was the speaker who's in the distance beyond this cube.
00:35:46And, you know, what he said was good, but I just, I couldn't do it, man.
00:35:51It felt like I was in a sci-fi movie.
00:35:53And then the irony is, after I left this and I went to another church, thinking about the sci-fi movie, I go to one, and it's like, you know, I sat down in the stadium seating, and the pastor came out onto the stage, and it was a hologram.
00:36:11And I'm thinking, oh my gosh, man, now I'm in a real sci-fi movie.
00:36:16It's a hologram.
00:36:17And why on earth am I sitting here listening to a hologram?
00:36:21It was like I had left Mad Max from the Thunderdome, and I went to this other one.
00:36:26But anyway, all this to say, there's a wide variety of churches.
00:36:30Some of the big ones are not for me.
00:36:32I do not like sitting in a place that reminds me of Mad Max in the Thunderdome.
00:36:36I'll just say it like that.
00:36:38But there are, you mentioned people who go because it's a good place to hide in a crowd.
00:36:45There's two things that come to mind.
00:36:47The first one is, almost every one of these churches that I've mentioned along this way, I'm being careful because I know former members that go there specifically so that they can blend into the crowd.
00:36:59They won't be spiritual abused because they're just a number.
00:37:02That's all they are is a number.
00:37:04And they do get a lot out of it.
00:37:07I'm not going to say that they don't because they'll tell me, you know, the things that they've learned and they're excited.
00:37:13They say that there is a community there.
00:37:15I guess I just wasn't there enough to experience it.
00:37:18And how do you do it when there's 10,000, 20,000 people there?
00:37:22I don't know.
00:37:23But they do enjoy it.
00:37:25So I'll say it like that.
00:37:26But on the flip side of that, the spiritual abuse is so widespread that I have attended some of the smaller churches, not wanting to go to Mad Max's Thunderdome over Jesus.
00:37:39And the minister wanted to just really get into my business.
00:37:45And I had left a cult, man.
00:37:47I had left a church where that was the way it was.
00:37:50They were all about your business.
00:37:52And now I go to this.
00:37:54I'm not going to mention the denomination.
00:37:55But the ministers just, they even preached how if you neglect to let them get into your business, you're avoiding the spirit of God.
00:38:05And I'm sitting there thinking, no, man, you are not the spirit of God.
00:38:10And long story short, I ended up leaving that one.
00:38:13But there are people who, like you say, they do blend into it because there is a – you go to one of these massive churches, there's this feeling of safety.
00:38:26It's like a safety blanket because you're sitting there in a crowd.
00:38:29You don't know the person next to you.
00:38:31You may have never even seen the person on the other side.
00:38:34And there's a security blanket in knowing that you're not going to be spiritually abused.
00:38:38And yet, look on the news at the people who are being spiritually abused and even physically abused in these megachurches.
00:38:46It blows your mind.
00:38:48Yeah, well, that's why I hated to paint with too broad of a brush.
00:38:51I'm sure there are people that go there and get something out of it.
00:38:54And for those very reasons, what I'd say is I hate, John, that they have to feel like because I've been abused, I need to go to a big church so I can hide and not be abused.
00:39:05I mean, if that's why they're there, the very reason that they're there shows me the trauma that they have come out of in their past life.
00:39:15Or they wouldn't even be in a big church, and we could say hiding out in a big church.
00:39:22But, yeah, I just think that the big churches, there are so many problems.
00:39:27As you were just explaining with your Mad Max diagrams, the church loses focus of its mission.
00:39:38I mean, hasn't it just become a big business run like any other corporation where the bottom line is crucial?
00:39:49They have church accountants, they have church attorneys, they have church personnel.
00:39:57My wife and I, when we drive by these, and not just megachurches, let's beat up some of the denominational churches for a few minutes too.
00:40:09Big denominational churches that might have, well, big by their standards, might be 400 or 500 people.
00:40:16But I look at this cathedral that they're in, and my wife and I both, we just shake our head, and I say, I'm 100% opposed to that.
00:40:30Do you know how much money, how many assets are sitting there just in the real estate of that church?
00:40:38Whether it's a megachurch that literally has built a football stadium or a coliseum, or whether it's a big denominational church that has pillars and steeples to heaven and stained glass window and imported marble from Italy.
00:40:58And I shake my head and say, this is not what church is supposed to be like.
00:41:03This is not the Christianity that I read about when I open my Bible.
00:41:07If you've got that kind of money, spend it on something that's eternal.
00:41:13You know, invest it in the lives of people, invest it in the help of missionaries in foreign fields.
00:41:20Do something worthwhile.
00:41:22But they pour all of this money into these enormous buildings, and they're so proud of that.
00:41:29And so who is going to put up a pole barn and call it church?
00:41:36You know, it's embarrassing.
00:41:38We can't attract people.
00:41:41Well, see, what are we back to?
00:41:42We're back to how many people can we attract?
00:41:46We're back to playing the numbers game here.
00:41:48Let's build a complex, a structure that's attractive so we can get people to pull in here off the highway and attend our church.
00:42:00If you had a church of 500, why couldn't you put up a very modest building at minimal expense?
00:42:08You know, that's what I would be all about, that seats the people comfortably, that has heating and air conditioning.
00:42:16You know, I'm not going to go third world on you here.
00:42:19We're in America.
00:42:20Let's try to be comfortable where the people have a chair that they can sit in.
00:42:24They don't do that because I know I have talked to people overseas.
00:42:28They'll walk for miles and sit on the floor and listen for hours to a guy preach.
00:42:33Well, you can't get away with that here in the United States.
00:42:36We live in a totally different environment.
00:42:39But if I was a part of a church, and I know, so you've got several hundred people, there is a pretty good amount of money coming into that church.
00:42:48I don't want it spent on the church building, you know, and I don't want the minister to have all of those hundreds of thousands of dollars either.
00:42:55I want him to be paid sufficiently and adequately, and then let's do something good for God's kingdom with this extra money that we have.
00:43:04So, you know, looking back on Dr. Freeman, since this is the topic that I have been on with him for, with you for a long time, he started just as a home church, John.
00:43:16Just a small home church, met in his own living room, and met in his living room for a number of years.
00:43:22But he felt that he had this end time message, and I know he was just itching to grow it, and to get out, and to get bigger.
00:43:33And maybe every minister in that situation has aspirations for bigness or something.
00:43:42I don't know.
00:43:43I don't think all of them do.
00:43:44I know some who don't have that aspiration, but he did begin to grow and got bigger and bigger and bigger and ended up with several thousand people in his own church.
00:43:56And so these big churches you and I have just talked about where they have thousands of people, and you said, well, I guess there's some kind of community there, but I'm not exactly for sure what it is.
00:44:08I'll tell you exactly what they do.
00:44:10Do you know what they do?
00:44:10They recognize.
00:44:12They recognize something isn't right.
00:44:15They recognize we're too big for our britches, and we're too big to really serve the people.
00:44:19And so you know what they do?
00:44:21Then they start little home groups.
00:44:23And you have these little, the church divides up during the week.
00:44:26Depending on where you live in the city, you have a little Bible study, a little Bible group that might have 50 people in it, and you meet in brother so-and-so's house or in sister so-and-so's house.
00:44:37And what that tells me is that there is a recognition that there's something wrong with this bigness program because they realize we can't have this intimacy we need with these people, so we're going to have during the week our own little cell groups or our own little home groups.
00:44:59And if it's flashing in somebody's mind that, hey, wait a minute now, on the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people were saved.
00:45:07Well, that's true, but you need to carefully read the first two chapters in Acts.
00:45:12There were 3,000 people that were converted, but there was no building that held 3,000 people.
00:45:18If you read the end of Acts 2, it said that they went from house to house, breaking their bread.
00:45:24They did eat their food with gladness and singleness of heart, and God was adding to the church daily such as should be saved.
00:45:31There were the 11 apostles, the new replacement apostle, Matthias, and there were 108 other people in that upper room.
00:45:42There were 120 people in that upper room who were all filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
00:45:50Peter wasn't the only one out there preaching.
00:45:53Luke is just giving us a bare-bones outline of what happened on that day.
00:45:58There's not 3,000 people standing right in front of Peter that could even hear what he's saying.
00:46:04All of those people in the upper room were a part of what was happening on the day of Pentecost.
00:46:09So, yeah, there were 3,000 people that ended up getting converted, but then where did they go after that?
00:46:19They went to what the New Testament talks about.
00:46:21Believe it or not, they went to home churches.
00:46:24Paul in 1 Corinthians 16, Paul again in Romans 16, I believe, talks about the church in the homes of certain of the early disciples.
00:46:37And you find that reference on a half a dozen different occasions there in the New Testament epistles.
00:46:45People were a part of a home church.
00:46:47And I know people say, well, that was back then.
00:46:49Well, now we are today.
00:46:52I don't know, John.
00:46:55There is a woman.
00:46:58I'm sure you know her.
00:47:00And I'll tell this little story because she's told it herself.
00:47:02And I just think I have a lot of respect for her because of the story she told her.
00:47:08She's an investigative journalist who does her own podcast called The Roy's Report.
00:47:15And her name is Julie Roy's.
00:47:18And if you do a little study of Julie Roy's background, she's actually I think she was educated at Wheaton College.
00:47:26She worked for Moody Bible Institute radio program, I think.
00:47:32You know, she's trained in her field in investigative journalism.
00:47:35She's got some degrees.
00:47:36She's a smart lady.
00:47:38She knows what she's doing.
00:47:40She's done a lot of podcasts.
00:47:42She did podcasts.
00:47:44She was doing some investigative journalism working for Moody Press when she found out some things about people at Moody Bible Institute.
00:47:53And when she shared that, you know, she lost her job.
00:47:59And so then she said, well, I think this is just what my calling is.
00:48:02I'm just going to keep digging and see what I can find in all of these mega churches and mega ministries.
00:48:07And she's actually done a fantastic job.
00:48:10The point I wanted to make about Julie Roy's is I'm pretty sure that she comes from a vineyard background.
00:48:18So she comes from this charismatic Pentecostal background, was a part of a vineyard church.
00:48:25And, you know, the vineyard movement, we haven't talked about it, but you've talked about it with other hosts, John.
00:48:31The vineyard movement is, you know, a John Wimber, a California, a big movement.
00:48:36And it's been all spread all over the United States and around the world.
00:48:40And I'm fairly certain that Julie Roy's was a part of the vineyard movement.
00:48:45So she was in a vineyard church of I don't know how many people.
00:48:50But I do know this, that she got out of that.
00:48:53And the latest that I heard her say, she is a part of, you know what, a home church in northern Illinois.
00:49:00So here's a big personality, quote unquote, who wants to try to do things as biblically as possible and decided, you know, I don't want to be a part of this thing that is big anymore.
00:49:15As I open my New Testament, I read, you know, greet Aquila and Priscilla and the church in their home.
00:49:24And that's what we read.
00:49:25We read it in Colossians 4.
00:49:26We read it in Philemon.
00:49:27We read it in 2 Timothy 3.
00:49:30There are at least a half a dozen different passages in the New Testament that help us understand, yeah, there might have been 3,000 people converted on this day and 5,000 converted on this day.
00:49:43But they did not join a 5,000 member church.
00:49:47They were all broken up all over Jerusalem and eventually all over the Mediterranean world.
00:49:53And guess where they met?
00:49:55They met in the homes of other believers.
00:49:58And what do you think that does to the bottom line financially?
00:50:02You don't have any investment in some mega complex or building because you're meeting in someone's home, in a fellow Christian's home.
00:50:12So I think one of the big, one of the first, one of the biggest problems of the mega churches is they just lost, they've lost the total idea of what the mission of the church is and they are simply pattering themselves after bigness.
00:50:29And you almost can't have a big mega church discussion without involving C. Peter Wagner and the church growth movement because that's really where this is coming from.
00:50:40Yes, there were large churches, Amy Semple McPherson, but we're talking, you know, that was, what, 5,000 when that church opened.
00:50:49Consider 5,000 compared to 100,000.
00:50:52I don't know what the number is.
00:50:54Joel Osteen's church, look at the crowd and you can tell that there's a lot of people, whatever the number is.
00:50:59And Wagner and Wimber, part of the church growth movement, they wanted to spread the idea that we need to convert the masses.
00:51:08We need to do it quickly.
00:51:09We need to get a lot of people.
00:51:10And they started using entertainment to bring the people in.
00:51:14One of the forms of entertainment was worship music, which we've talked about in other podcast series that I'm doing.
00:51:20So you had this initiative to grow the church.
00:51:22But when I began studying this, part of the reason why it fascinated me and I wanted to go down that direction is because I had also studied the Spanish Inquisition and watched what happened whenever you tried to forcibly convert a whole mass of people.
00:51:39What you end up with is not Christianity.
00:51:41You can say that, yes, they called it Christianity, but that's not really what it was.
00:51:46And I have to sometimes wonder when I look at the church growth movement, what is it?
00:51:50Because, you know, yes, there were some Christians that are converted.
00:51:54I've talked to a few who they say that was their conversion point.
00:51:58They don't agree with everything that they saw.
00:52:00But then I've talked to others who they were like, you know, I was just a number in a crowd.
00:52:05I was happy in that crowd, but I can't say that it was really a Christian crowd.
00:52:10And they're now in other churches.
00:52:12So for me, the question was just why does this exist?
00:52:16Why were they doing it?
00:52:18What is the initiative?
00:52:19And every trace of history that I go down, every thread of history, when you end up at the very end of it, there's always money at the end of it.
00:52:30And I don't get this.
00:52:31Why, if it's Christianity, why are you after money?
00:52:34What is the reason behind that?
00:52:36Now, in the church growth movement, it is a complicated, it's a study that you can't really sum up in one podcast.
00:52:43But money is required for the community.
00:52:46You have to build a community.
00:52:48It's literally you're operating a church like a business.
00:52:51That's the church growth movement.
00:52:53You have to.
00:52:54But then once you build the community, you have to have all of the supplies that you have to support your community.
00:53:00And essentially, these things become much like little cities.
00:53:05And the people who are in it are a community of the city within a city, which also reminds me of John Alexander Dowie's Zion City within Chicago until it overgrew and now it's Zion City, Illinois.
00:53:18I have to wonder if it's not that same mission.
00:53:21Are they trying to create their own culture and cities?
00:53:24And then you look at what it developed into, the New Apostolic Reformation.
00:53:29Now you've got dominionism.
00:53:31You've got this idea that you want to go conquer the governments and change our culture to meet your religious standards, some of which are good, not all of which are good.
00:53:40And I look at the mission, and like you said, this is not the same mission that Paul had.
00:53:47It is a mission, but it's not the same one that Paul had.
00:53:50You know, you're right, John, because you've got a curious mind.
00:53:53You've asked yourself questions.
00:53:54You know, why and from where did this come?
00:53:59And Dr. Freeman didn't go down all of these paths, but if his church had been 3,000 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 instead of 2, he wouldn't have objected.
00:54:14They would have just built a bigger building, and he would have railed even harder.
00:54:19I mean, what does this bigness and power do to the people in top leadership?
00:54:23What do you think that does to the psyche of a man, a man who was preaching to a dozen people in his living room?
00:54:31What do you think it does to the psyche of any human being, not just Hobart, William Branham or Oral Roberts or T.L. Osborne or Joel Osteen or Stephen Furtick or Robert Morris or any of these guys who have these monster megachurches?
00:54:45What do you think that power and that bigness does to those men in top leadership?
00:54:53I mean, it cannot help but go to their head.
00:54:58You don't ever find any of them saying, and so this should be proved positive right here.
00:55:03Look, 2,000, that's enough.
00:55:05We're going to draw a cutoff line.
00:55:07No more people can join the church.
00:55:10We'll start a separate church, and this guy can pastor that.
00:55:13You know, 2,000 is enough for me or 500 is enough for me or 200 is enough for me.
00:55:19Have you ever heard any minister draw the line and say no?
00:55:22No, they don't do that.
00:55:24Well, they don't do that now.
00:55:26I do know if people would study some of the churches in the Reformation era in Geneva, Switzerland, they were very concerned about the shepherding of the people once they were converted from Roman Catholicism, and they didn't want to just have another Rome, another giant church.
00:55:43I know over years, Presbyterianism and Lutheranism kind of became all of that, but not in those early days.
00:55:50So in Geneva, Switzerland, which was a stronghold for the Reformation, for people who were leaving Roman Catholicism and converting to Christianity, it was a stronghold in a good sense.
00:56:08And so they just capped the number at 50.
00:56:11Every local group would have 50 members, and then we would put a leader over that.
00:56:17There were men who were writers and theologians and the apologists of the Reformation who were very well-known, who went down in history like Melanchthon and Calvin and John Knox and Martin Luther, but none of them were pastors of 10,000-member churches.
00:56:38They became famous, especially later, because of their writings, not because they had some huge megachurch.
00:56:45So I don't know.
00:56:49I just don't ever—I never heard Hobart being willing to dial things back.
00:56:55I actually heard him say earlier in his ministry, and we won't take time to play that now because we've got plenty to say without that.
00:57:03But when he was small, he only had 250 people at the Glory Barn, he said, it's wrong for a church to get big.
00:57:09And he said, you know, we should never grow 10 times this size.
00:57:14You know, if we were going to get big, we'll just split the church up and have multiple churches.
00:57:20Did they ever do that?
00:57:22No, because once you start down that path, you just can hardly resist the draw and the pull of the power that it gives you.
00:57:32So these leaders of these big churches, John, are just surrounded by, you know, yes-men.
00:57:39Hobart was surrounded by 40 or so word ministers, quote-unquote.
00:57:44You couldn't get through to him.
00:57:46Those ministers were there as any of the entourage around ministry in a big church to protect the brand,
00:57:55to protect the image of the church, to make sure you can't get to and get through to him.
00:58:01You have a complaint against the minister, good luck.
00:58:05You know, you'll lose every time.
00:58:07Nowadays, the only way people have been able to win against people like Robert Morris, you know,
00:58:14who's been, I think, tried and convicted and sentenced,
00:58:17the only way you can win is, you know, with audio tapes and with documentation.
00:58:22Prior to documentation, it's just your word against big, powerful leader,
00:58:27and you'll lose every single time.
00:58:29You don't stand a chance.
00:58:31Because of cell phones and videotapes and emails,
00:58:35people now can be held accountable for some of the stuff that they have done.
00:58:40But I'm afraid that the big groups,
00:58:44because of the power of the man in charge,
00:58:51soon become what I call, and I didn't come up with it,
00:58:55the cult of personality.
00:58:56I don't know who first coined that, but it's a great term,
00:59:00the cult of personality.
00:59:02Whenever you have a charismatic, small c,
00:59:07persuasive leader, a dynamic leader who has personality,
00:59:14personality, or who has something there to offer,
00:59:19then you're going to have a cult of personality,
00:59:22and you're going to have people attracted to that.
00:59:26This person thinks that they are,
00:59:29we've talked about this before, John,
00:59:31they think they're more important than they really are.
00:59:35And, you know, I'd be the first to tell everyone,
00:59:39you know, if you ever, for a moment,
00:59:42as Hobart did, we played clips of his,
00:59:44and we know Branham thought he was more than he was,
00:59:47if you ever, for a moment, think that you are,
00:59:50I don't know, the fulfillment of some Bible verse,
00:59:55or some Bible prophecy, if you, if I,
00:59:58if you think you are the fulfillment
01:00:00of some Bible prophecy,
01:00:02you need to sniff some smelling salt,
01:00:05and wake up, and come back into reality,
01:00:07and realize none of us are that important,
01:00:10that any of us are the fulfillment
01:00:12of any Bible prophecy.
01:00:15We say that, John, and laugh about it.
01:00:17But people like Hobart, they are so into themselves,
01:00:22the more the following increases,
01:00:26the more legalistic they become.
01:00:28The more legalistic, the more control they have.
01:00:31The more control they have,
01:00:33the more power they have,
01:00:35the more power they have,
01:00:37the more they feel like,
01:00:38there's no way I could have all of this power,
01:00:41unless I am a really, really, really
01:00:44significant and important person.
01:00:46So significant that maybe Malachi prophesied about me,
01:00:53or maybe the Apostle John wrote a verse about me,
01:00:57and I am gonna be the fulfillment
01:00:59of this in the last days.
01:01:01You know, just get over yourself.
01:01:03Come back into reality.
01:01:04Get your feet back on the ground.
01:01:06You know, none of us are that important.
01:01:10So here is another problem, I would say, John.
01:01:12And it's just the fact that the power
01:01:15is going to corrupt the leadership at the very top,
01:01:19and this leadership is more interested in themselves
01:01:24than in the people.
01:01:26And because we've got 5,000, 10,000, 20,000,
01:01:30the whole analogy that the Bible uses
01:01:34of the shepherd and the sheep,
01:01:36Paul uses the body, the human body,
01:01:41as an analogy for the local body
01:01:43in 1 Corinthians chapter 10,
01:01:45where you have an arm, an eye, an ear, a tongue.
01:01:48Paul said, if everyone were the tongue,
01:01:49words, a hearing, and vice versa.
01:01:51If you've got 20,000 people,
01:01:54you have totally lost that analogy
01:01:57of the intricacies and the interworking
01:02:00of the human body and therefore
01:02:02the members of the body of Christ
01:02:05in a local church.
01:02:07I am a huge believer,
01:02:09if you cannot tell, obviously,
01:02:11of a small local church.
01:02:13And as soon as you say,
01:02:15as soon as you define with a number
01:02:18what small is,
01:02:19then you've created your own definition.
01:02:22You know, small is small and big is big.
01:02:26I don't think you can possibly shepherd
01:02:29a large group,
01:02:31not the way the Bible intends for us to do it.
01:02:33And I don't think you can really
01:02:35experience the Christian life
01:02:39as God means for you to experience it
01:02:42if you're in a big church.
01:02:44But I think both of those things
01:02:45can be fulfilled in a small group.
01:02:48In a small group, guess what?
01:02:49You know, you've got to interact.
01:02:51You don't have to be
01:02:52the most loquacious in the group.
01:02:55You can be at the shy end of the spectrum.
01:02:58But if you're in a good,
01:03:00small, local church,
01:03:03then you have a leader
01:03:04who cares about your soul.
01:03:07He's not there for the money,
01:03:09obviously, because there's not enough people there
01:03:11for him to be there for the money.
01:03:14He cares about your soul
01:03:16and you're with a group of people.
01:03:18If they're good people,
01:03:19you're with a group of people who love you.
01:03:21You love them.
01:03:22And you're all there
01:03:23for each other's benefit.
01:03:25You know, away with all of these programs
01:03:28and this nonsense
01:03:29and this mega madness out there.
01:03:32And I would encourage people
01:03:34to return to the New Testament pattern,
01:03:36which is a pattern of the church in the home.
01:03:38For me, I have a hard time going to a large church like this
01:03:42because it becomes, without question,
01:03:46a cult of personality.
01:03:48There is not a way that you can have this many people
01:03:50and not have it turned into a cult of personality.
01:03:54It just doesn't happen.
01:03:56And that term, interestingly,
01:03:58comes from our usage of the term,
01:04:00I should say,
01:04:01comes from Russia.
01:04:02It was in a famous speech
01:04:05where Khrushchev was denouncing Joseph Stalin
01:04:08for two things.
01:04:10Think about this.
01:04:11He condemned Stalin for the excessive,
01:04:14he condemned the excessive glorification of Stalin
01:04:17as a near infallible figure.
01:04:20And look what you have in these mega churches.
01:04:23Almost every one of them,
01:04:24once it goes to a certain size,
01:04:26the minister is infallible,
01:04:28you have to trust everything he says.
01:04:30It's just a mess.
01:04:31The second thing is he criticized the propaganda
01:04:34and the, I don't know what you call it,
01:04:37hero worship.
01:04:38That phrase, cult of personality,
01:04:41came from a term that,
01:04:43it meant hero worship before this, basically.
01:04:46But Khrushchev, basically in his speech,
01:04:49the secret speech,
01:04:50he condemned the leadership
01:04:52and he said it became an authoritarian style leadership
01:04:55and created authoritarian style systems.
01:04:58So if you take just those two things
01:05:01and then think about these massive churches,
01:05:04I have to say Khrushchev just would not approve.
01:05:08So I'll end with that.
01:05:10That's about all I have to say about that.
01:05:13But this is interesting.
01:05:15I could talk about the history of it for hours
01:05:16and I guess I'll stop there.
01:05:18But it's crazy.
01:05:21I can't believe people fall for this.
01:05:22Yeah, me neither, John.
01:05:24I just think there's not any scriptural warrant
01:05:27for their existence.
01:05:28And I think inherent in their very bigness
01:05:31are just too many problems
01:05:33that cannot possibly be overcome.
01:05:36You know, people that are a part of a big church say,
01:05:38yeah, but, you know,
01:05:40we have a million dollar budget for mission
01:05:42so we can do good.
01:05:44But, you know,
01:05:45you're going to have the same amount of money
01:05:47if you split that church up a thousand ways as you do.
01:05:50You still have the same number of people.
01:05:52You'll still have the same amount of money.
01:05:54It's just it's not all invested
01:05:56in one mega church and mega minister.
01:05:59I have never in my life
01:06:02been a part of a big church, thankfully.
01:06:04The churches, John,
01:06:05that I have pastored in different places
01:06:07have always been small
01:06:08and I've always thoroughly loved
01:06:11every single moment of it.
01:06:14You get to know the people
01:06:15and no, you can't,
01:06:17as you said earlier here,
01:06:19you went to one small church
01:06:20and that minister wants to know everything about you.
01:06:23No, that's not his job.
01:06:25You know, you go to a small church
01:06:26and if you want to reveal something
01:06:27to the people or the minister,
01:06:28you reveal it.
01:06:29If you don't, you don't.
01:06:30That's your own business
01:06:31and that's the way it should be
01:06:32in a small church.
01:06:34But you get to have someone
01:06:35who cares for your soul
01:06:36and you get to have someone
01:06:38that you get to know.
01:06:39None of us know these big guys.
01:06:40We have no idea
01:06:41what they're doing behind closed doors,
01:06:43not at all.
01:06:45You get to know the guy
01:06:46if you live with the guy
01:06:47and live around the guy
01:06:48and you get to know the other people
01:06:49that are in the church as well.
01:06:51So I'm a big believer
01:06:52in the New Testament church
01:06:54in the home.
01:06:56And the only thing I have left to say
01:06:57is it's a mess.
01:06:59I'm not going to condemn it
01:07:00because like I said,
01:07:01I know people who are in these things,
01:07:03even the ones that I made the most fun of.
01:07:06I know people who are in it
01:07:07who are getting very good help.
01:07:09They have escaped a cult
01:07:10and they're getting good help
01:07:11from the churches.
01:07:12So I'm not going to go too far
01:07:14with my condemnation.
01:07:16And I really don't have any condemnation
01:07:18other than,
01:07:19this is weird, man.
01:07:20Why would you want
01:07:21Mad Max's Thunderdome
01:07:23for your church?
01:07:24I agree.
01:07:25That's all I've got to say.
01:07:27So anyway,
01:07:28if you've enjoyed our show
01:07:29and you want more information,
01:07:30you can check us out on the web.
01:07:31You can find us
01:07:32at william-brannum.org.
01:07:34For more about the dark side
01:07:35of the New Apostolic Reformation,
01:07:37you can read Weaponized Religion
01:07:38from Christian Identity to the NAR,
01:07:40available on Amazon,
01:07:42Kindle,
01:07:43and Audible.
01:07:43And I'll see you next time,
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