Secret History Behind Joel's Army and KCF | Bob Scott | Detangling IHOPKC | Podcast Episode 470 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John and Bob explore how a little-known thread of mid-20th-century Pentecostalism shaped modern dominionist movements. They uncover the role of William Branham, Roy Davis, Tommy Hicks, and political forces like Richard Nixon in transforming Joel’s prophecy into a militant vision of a supernaturally empowered youth army. The conversation exposes how the same ideas re-emerged in Kansas City, laying foundations for IHOPKC and the New Apostolic Reformation—alongside patterns of manipulation, exploitation, and spiritual authoritarianism.   00:00 Introduction 01:23 William Branham’s Rise from Obscurity 03:30 Early Pentecostal Connections and Smith Wigglesworth’s Prophecy 05:00 The Foursquare Church and the Birth of the Healing Revival 07:11 The Post-War Context and the Seeds of Joel’s Army 09:47 How Pentecostals Interpreted Joel 2 11:05 Patriotism and Dominion Theology After World War II 13:22 The Kansas City Fellowship and Bob Jones’ Arrival 15:56 Discovering the Roots of Prophetic Movements 18:50 Nixon’s Charge to Evangelists and the Weaponization of Faith 21:10 Tommy Hicks’s “Superhuman” Vision and the Global Mission 23:02 Communism, Spiritual Warfare, and the Birth of Dominionism 26:57 The Billion Soul Harvest: Old Ideas in New Wrapping 30:09 Convenient Prophecy and the Business of Revival 32:15 Tracing Joel’s Army Through the Latter Rain and Shepherding Movements 35:00 Youth Culture and the Jesus People Crossover 37:17 Chuck Smith, Paul Kane, and the Fusion of Movements 40:24 History Repeats: Gen Z and the New Conservative Wave 45:10 The Unholy Alliance of Prophets and Kings 50:06 From Branhamism to IHOPKC: Joel’s Army 2.0 53:08 Abuse and Exploitation in Pentecostal Revival Culture 55:02 The Cost of a Lost Generation: Locusts and Lost Years 58:00 Closing Reflections and Resources   ______________________ 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, Bob Scott, former co-founder

00:00:47of the Kansas City Fellowship and author of three books, the latest is Some Said They Blundered,

00:00:52Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Pickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and the International

00:00:57House of Prayer. Bob, it's good to be back, and you don't know this because you and I

00:01:03only connect, you know, every other week and sometimes every third week. I've been digging

00:01:09deeply into the origins of the latter rain movement and looking at the aftermath from many, many

00:01:18different angles in my research. And there's one topic that I want to get into with you.

00:01:23I've actually been saving this one for you, and it is surrounding the Joel's Army theme,

00:01:29the Manifest Sons of God. Whenever you are examining the New Apostolic Reformation from

00:01:35a modern sense, you look at this and you think, this is a brand new thing. These guys are coming

00:01:41up with these ideas, and they're purely evil men coming up with this theme to take control

00:01:49over the dominion, over the world, etc. But if you go back in history, things get a little

00:01:55bit, the water gets muddy. I'll just put it like that. And to share with you, to catch you

00:02:00up, and I'll give you more details as we go, but there are a few things that I have discovered

00:02:06in the research, all of which tie together, which paint a broader picture of the foundation

00:02:12that was being laid that Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Fellowship, and others built upon.

00:02:19And I want to give you some of that information of the foundation because I want to pick your

00:02:23brain about some of the details of the Kansas City Fellowship. So there's two things I'll

00:02:29start with, and I'll inject more as we go. But in the early years, William Branham was a

00:02:35no-name, pretend hillbilly from Jeffersonville, Indiana, which nobody's ever heard of. If not

00:02:43for Branham, this is just a spot on the map that you don't even stop at. You stop at Louisville,

00:02:48and then you keep going, right? It's nowhere. So one of the things that has plagued my mind

00:02:55is to try to find how did he rise into such instant fame? What happened that made this no-name

00:03:01hillbilly turn into who he was? And he was the foremost leader of the post-World War II healing

00:03:07revival. I knew that whenever I connected him to Roy Davis, who was the second-in-command

00:03:14of the Klan, I knew that that was probably an outlet. But there's more to it than that,

00:03:19as I find out. Through Davis's connections, there are multiple other spiderwebs of connections.

00:03:24Long story short, on the West Coast, and oddly, you can trace some of this lineage through the

00:03:35Oneness Pentecostal groups and through the Foursquare, which is Amy Semple McPherson's

00:03:39groups. There was this coming together of the idea that they wanted to birth a new revival. They

00:03:46wanted a new thing. And suddenly, there was this prophecy, and a man named Harry Morse's

00:03:54church, about William Branham essentially claiming that Branham was carrying the mantle of Smith

00:04:02Wigglesworth, which is really odd. And it's not long after that, I want to say just weeks after

00:04:07that, boom, he's instantly famous. Branham is claiming to raise the dead, which is fictitious,

00:04:13but he claimed it. And all of this to ride on the heels and the shirt tail of Smith Wigglesworth,

00:04:19apparently. So you have that history. Then to augment this, there's another thing which I've

00:04:25not really talked about a lot yet. I intend to explore this deeper. There was a video produced

00:04:33by leaders of the Foursquare sect called 20th Century Prophet, advertising William Branham as the

00:04:4020th Century Prophet. Interesting. Yeah. So the church that this was, I don't know if it was funded

00:04:48by, definitely promoted by, there was a man by the name Paul Kopp and his brother Leroy Kopp. And

00:04:56Leroy Kopp was out of Calvary Temple, I think it was, on Lake Street. Anyway, he holds this big revival.

00:05:07He's bringing in all of the Sharon Orphanage leaders, the heads. He's got George Houghton,

00:05:12Ern Houghton, Kirkpatrick. And from here would be birthed the explosion of what became the post-World

00:05:21War II healing revival. It's also from this church that Roy Davis, who was Branham's mentor,

00:05:28claimed to have connected William Branham to Congressman William Upshaw. And this miracle of

00:05:34Upshaw rising to walk after decades of being a, they claim was a wheelchair invalid. So right from

00:05:43this epicenter comes this new thing that emerges. Well, embedded in that new thing's theology back in

00:05:50the late 1940s was this concept of Joel's army. So it's not a new thing, but I wanted to talk to you

00:05:58more about Joel's army as it related to not even IHOP KC, but go back in your mind to the years of

00:06:05the Kansas City Fellowship. Let's talk through that a little bit.

00:06:08Well, back up for me for a second. And do you know what year, what year would you say was the

00:06:16coming out party for William Branham, where he went from, you know, basically obscurity to

00:06:22having this sort of national platform? Do you have a year or a time period?

00:06:28I do. And it gets interesting because he lies about the year and the time period.

00:06:34The first, there were a couple of attempts at creating a ministry. One of them was in 1945.

00:06:42And that history is erased. If you go read any biography, it doesn't exist. But in my files back

00:06:49in the room in the corner, I have an actual pamphlet from 1945 of his, I guess you call it the first

00:06:56one of the iterations of his healing ministry. He had multiple attempts at trying to create a stage

00:07:03persona and create a following. This was just one of them. But then in 1947, he explodes in fame. And

00:07:11all throughout the United States, through Canada, likely on the heels of this Smith Wigglesworth

00:07:16prophecy, this alleged Smith Wigglesworth prophecy, he goes all over touring. And he is suddenly

00:07:23overnight, he is instantly famous.

00:07:25Well, where's the Joel's army? So do you have a timeframe when the Joel's army sort of prophecy

00:07:32thing became a thing? Like, is it predate the lettering William Branham world? Or is it something

00:07:41that emerged? And the reason I'm asking this is, again, what was the soil? It's interesting

00:07:49to me, because what did we just come out of at that time, right? We just finished World War

00:07:56II. America was in this sort of euphoric state where we had defeated the forces of evil, right?

00:08:08You know, Germany, Japan, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We were sort of the dominant

00:08:14force. And it's interesting to me, because we're in this very patriotic kind of frame of mind post

00:08:23World War II. And then Joel's army shows up, right? And it's like, oh, yeah, right? It fits

00:08:30the cultural moment. Yes, we're going to have a spiritual army now that's going to conquer the world,

00:08:36right? So not only are we going to have a political system, you know, democracy, right? Because the

00:08:43battle became good versus evil. Evil was communism. Good was democracy. You know, the American, we went

00:08:51to war. So we get into the Cold War. But at the same time, there's suddenly this thing about Joel's

00:08:58army. And the Christians now are going to rise up and conquer. And I'm thinking, okay, this makes sense

00:09:05to me now because the culture was sort of primed already for this, right? It's just hand in, it fits

00:09:11hand in glove. Like people are, yeah, we're already there. We're just going to do the Christian version

00:09:15of this now. So as I understand the history, and somebody listening may correct me if I'm wrong,

00:09:20this is just what I've been able to piece together. Pentecostalism was looking at the prophecy of Joel

00:09:26because specifically the phrase, and I may get this wrong, I'd have to look it up for the exact

00:09:33verbiage, but something to the effect, in the last days, I'll pour my spirit upon all flesh, and

00:09:38your sons and daughters will prophesy, see visions, etc. That was a theme that was in Pentecostalism

00:09:46already. So they were already looking at Joel's prophecy. And they had been doing that since Azusa

00:09:52Street, right? But Pentecostalism was kind of dying out. And they needed something that would

00:09:59excite, reignite the fervor of Pentecostalism. They were really looking for something, which is

00:10:05probably the prophecy about Wigglesworth. That was probably some form of euphoria or excitement that

00:10:11they could create the hype over, right? But what happened was, once Israel became a nation,

00:10:18I can't find a direct source for Joel's army prophecy. It's as though we've talked about

00:10:25cross-pollination, right? Where these different ideas just kind of morph into one idea. You can find,

00:10:31what is it called? The Lateran's publication. The main publication was called The Lateran Evangel.

00:10:40And if I remember correctly, it was like 1949-ish. It's the earliest publication of Joel's army that's

00:10:48like an official documentation. But it pre-existed this in the movement. So all of these guys are

00:10:53talking about it. And they say, well, we're looking at the prophecy of Joel. What if Israel is this

00:10:58thing? And one thing leads to another. It morphs into this Joel's army doctrine.

00:11:04Well, what was the – is it Jimmy Hicks or Tommy Hicks or something in Argentina? There's some real

00:11:10famous Pentecostal kind of prophecy down there about an end-time revival that I've seen associated

00:11:21with that name. So that's what I'm curious if that was involved. But that was around that same time

00:11:27period. What's interesting though, because we've been talking about this in the context of NAR and some

00:11:34other things. But it's interesting how the spiritual dynamics dovetail with manifest destiny, patriotism,

00:11:46national – you know, nationalism, right? In other words, I would imagine the whole Joel's army thing

00:11:53probably got tied into a patriotic, you know, kind of dynamic. I mean, I think a lot of people

00:12:01probably associated the two because America was God's chosen nation, right? So there's God's chosen

00:12:09people, the Israelites, and there's God's chosen people, the church, and then, you know, there's

00:12:14this chosen army. The reason why this is all fascinating to me – so let me back up a little

00:12:20bit to your original question about KCF. Just so people can contextualize this, in 1982,

00:12:31when Mike and I launched KCF. I was 25 years old. I was raised Catholic, spent seven years of my life

00:12:41as an existentialist, and then got saved in an evangelical environment. I'd only been exposed

00:12:49to the charismatic Pentecostal world for a couple years. When we launched the church,

00:12:57I had a spiritual experience about how the church was going to be a prophetic church.

00:13:06But it was a complete – and I write about it in the book – it was a completely different focus

00:13:12than what ended up developing. And Bob Jones was the linchpin to the shift.

00:13:20I felt like God wanted us to be a prophetic church in the way we lived and interacted. Like,

00:13:28the propheticness wasn't about prophecies and words of knowledge and all that. It was about the church

00:13:37being a reflection of Jesus, that us, you know, speaking in the way that we lived and loved and

00:13:46cared for the poor and all that kind of stuff. When Bob showed up in March of 83,

00:13:53it caught both Mike and I completely off guard. Like, we'd never experienced this before. We'd

00:14:02been to a couple full gospel things, and it was a little hokey for us, you know what I mean?

00:14:08I felt it was more of a show, and there was some manipulation going on, so I never really had a

00:14:16good feel about it. And then this guy, Bob Jones, comes in who's unlike any other human being I have

00:14:23ever met in my life. And I am now 26 years old and still completely ignorant. So Bob was the first

00:14:32person to introduce us to the concept of Joel's army, right? So I'm so naive. I think this is original

00:14:41with Bob. Like, this is Bob's thing. Like, he's prophesying stuff that God showed him, right? I don't

00:14:50learn, honestly, until probably, let's, three years, four years. And it, I think we're now in

00:15:0286, 87, somewhere in that time frame, I started getting some checks in my spirit about things.

00:15:12I mean, I'd had them before, but they were screaming at me now, right? It was like,

00:15:16you know, they were little nudges, and then they went to, like, screaming at me. And so I was trying

00:15:23to figure out why I was so uncomfortable about a lot of things. And of course, as we've discussed,

00:15:30David Harrell's book, All Things Are Possible, was for me, walking over the threshold, as it were,

00:15:41of ignorance to discovering what the Pentecostal world really was, and where it had started,

00:15:47right? So this is where I first kind of get my introduction. And that's when I began to realize,

00:15:53oh my God, this stuff that Paul Kane now, who is, we've started to integrate with, this isn't original

00:16:01with these guys. They're just mimicking or repeating or aping something that's been there

00:16:07for 40 years. And that was kind of like, oh, because they never explained that, right? The way it was

00:16:14always presented to us was that this was their revelation, right? In other words, they never

00:16:21qualified it, quantified it, contextualized it, nothing. So I'm just always assuming it was them,

00:16:28like they had some sort of direct interaction with God, and he told them this. So that was a little

00:16:33bit of a shock to me that, oh my goodness, this is just a rerun. This is, right? We're rehashing

00:16:44something here. And that was, for me, I think from probably 86 to my final exit out of there in the fall

00:16:55of 89 was me struggling then with all of this. And I think, you know, the thing I've

00:17:03appreciated about our friendship is it's really nice to have a conversation with somebody who this

00:17:10had a kind of a front row seat, or at least a second row seat in some of this, who has actual facts,

00:17:18data, information, like you're helping me kind of process, even in our conversations, what this was,

00:17:26right? Because I didn't know. I wasn't a Pentecostal. So I had no idea where all this came from. But it had a huge

00:17:36impact, and it affected everything we did. It became a part of our DNA, our cultural, spiritual DNA as a church,

00:17:47right? Eventually, Mike ended up wanting to start a school, which he named Dominion, right? Because again,

00:17:55you know, it's all about, that was a combination of the Pentecostal world, and then Gary North, and

00:18:02Rush Dooney, and all of those guys, you know, and their whole concept of Dominionism, of Christians taking

00:18:11over and running the world, which, as we talked about previously, God help us, that happens before

00:18:19Jesus comes back, and he's actually running things. Like, if he comes back and sets up, you know, a

00:18:26millennial kingdom and rule and reign, great. I'm all for that, you know. But without him here, no thank you.

00:18:33I've seen enough. He cannot handle it. You know what I mean? Us trying to run the world is a little

00:18:42bit like that first driving lesson. Darrell Bock So you mentioned Tommy Hicks, and that's another

00:18:48aspect. There are so many different angles to look at this Manifest Sons of God, Joel's Army theme,

00:18:55that I've not even published a tenth of what is out there. And I'm talking about just the major ideas.

00:19:01You go into the spiderwebs and the rabbit holes, and there's, you could publish the rest of your

00:19:05life on it. But, so take this other piece of research that I've been working on. I have published

00:19:11some of this, not all, but 1954 was a strange year. In 1954, the full gospel businessman at the

00:19:20National Prayer Breakfast with Richard Nixon, who was vice president at that time, Nixon tells the men

00:19:27and women evangelists that communism has already came into America. Essentially, what he's saying,

00:19:36if you read between the lines, he's saying World War III is here. It's on our shores this time. But he

00:19:42says the battle is in our minds. The battle is not with weapons. It's in our minds. And he goes into

00:19:47examples of how this plays out. He gave charge to the evangelists that they needed to fight the battle.

00:19:54They need to step up. They are now the warriors. So, the point I'm trying to drive at, because this ties

00:20:01into the Tommy Hicks thing, what happened was this. You had people who are already kind of, the seeds

00:20:09were planted with this Joel's Army theme. It had not really become militant. And dominionist idea was, it was

00:20:17there, but it wasn't into the extremes that it became. And then Nixon tells everybody, we're in a battle.

00:20:22You need to fight. You need to do whatever it takes to convince the masses. And the whatever it takes

00:20:30is what scares me. Because there were people, and we've seen examples of this, where they're actually

00:20:34using techniques of mind control in their congregations to try to change all of this. So,

00:20:39they think they're fighting, fight fire with fire, that type of thing. So, Nixon gives this charge

00:20:46to the full gospel businessman. Branham starts working with a crazy figure, you can look him up,

00:20:55Baron William T. Frary von Blumberg, who is a director in the Fellowship Foundation. He becomes

00:21:03Branham's campaign manager. They go worldwide. They're taking this mission worldwide. Tommy Hicks,

00:21:09who is in, I thought it was Argentina. It was somewhere in, yeah. Yeah, it might be Argentina.

00:21:14Because I think it was tied in with Peron, the Perons or something.

00:21:18Yeah, exactly. So, he sees this vision of this giant figure laying across the continents. And

00:21:24he, this is where really, there are details that were added to Joel's army, one of which is they will

00:21:32become superhuman. Literally, they believe they will become superhuman. And that's part of his

00:21:37vision. Now, it may have existed prior to him doing it, but he popularized that idea.

00:21:42Interesting.

00:21:43And he would say, you know, the theme that came from his side was that these superhumans will do

00:21:50greater miracles than Jesus. They will defeat the spiritual opposition, and they'll subdue the

00:21:55nations. Those kind of themes were emanating from him. And it comes in the same exact year that all of

00:22:02this is taking place with the Fellowship Foundation, Nixon administration, all of this. Nixon would

00:22:08later use a Branham sect and literally fight a weaponized World War III, a covert World War III.

00:22:16You can look up Operation Condor, and you can find that history. But in South America, they're

00:22:20actually using a Branham compound to train the spy agencies, build weapons, etc.

00:22:27Well, I think, again, let's contextualize this for people. Communism is anti-God, right? In other words,

00:22:36it's a godless culture. And so the battle, right, at that time, what you're talking about, the context

00:22:44is democracy versus communism. Democracy, which the American version is a Christian version, right?

00:22:53It's God in America against this evil civilization that's godless communism. So it wasn't defined as

00:23:04a political battle. Nixon was defining it as a spiritual battle, right? The goodness of America

00:23:11against the evil of the Soviets and the Chinese, right? And so that's why he's recruiting the preachers,

00:23:22because he sees them as being the, you know, the ones that are to help promote this battle,

00:23:29which, of course, Joel's army fits in so nicely.

00:23:32Oh, absolutely.

00:23:33I mean,

00:23:33So now we don't have, you know, tanks and B-50, you know, or, you know, the planes that, you know,

00:23:39those B, whatever those were, those old, you know, dropping bombs. We now have a spiritual army

00:23:45that's American.

00:23:46Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So those themes, he's literally giving charge to the minister and

00:23:53empowering them. Because every minister that was empowered by, Branham is a clear example of this.

00:24:01You can look in Branham's transcripts, and he brags about Nixon giving him this charge.

00:24:05And the things that he introduced after this, it's just, it's kind of insane.

00:24:09Many of the prophecies that he introduced after Nixon were surrounding the themes of communism,

00:24:15and he claimed them decades prior to Nixon giving this charge. But there's no reference of him ever

00:24:21saying these prophecies or visions before this. So this created a clear shift where the leaders in

00:24:29the religious movements, evangelical Christianity by and large, could now, for the sake of a holy end,

00:24:38the ends justify the means, as we've been talking about. I can make up visions. I can make up

00:24:43spiritual things. I'm going to take dominion, spiritual dominion. So it doesn't matter how

00:24:47I get there. We're going to do guerrilla warfare in the minds of the people. That's literally what

00:24:52was being set up. Yeah. And I mean, this is an observation. We'll see if it plays out. I think

00:24:58we're there again, only this time, instead of democracy and communism, it's Christianity versus Islam.

00:25:04You know what I mean? So this is going to be a religious war. It's not political system. I mean,

00:25:09it sort of is because in the Islamic culture, the religion dominates the politics, but this is

00:25:16brewing. You know what I mean? This New York, this whole mayor thing that's happening there is in many

00:25:23ways, sort of a precursor of a bigger, a larger battle that's going on. And I think you're going to see

00:25:31this same fervor, Joel's army, some version of it, you know, fighting all of it. It's going to all

00:25:40going to keep hyping up again. You're going to see it ramping up is the word I'm thinking. You're

00:25:46going to see this thing ramp up over the next four or five years. And it's going to be, again,

00:25:52a battle to find between good and evil. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started

00:25:58or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic

00:26:04and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on

00:26:10William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the

00:26:17website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,

00:26:23John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

00:26:30You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those

00:26:35movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking

00:26:41the Contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video

00:26:47version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research,

00:26:52we want to thank you for your support. So after all of this charge from Nixon and these ministers

00:26:59start claiming divine revelations and prophecies about men lying across nations, etc., they went out

00:27:07to the nations, and now they tried to set up the scenario where they could claim dominion. So they're

00:27:14spreading the movements, the Pentecostalism enters into the different nations. It gets weird when you

00:27:21think of the military situations as happening, if you look at Colonia Dignidad and some of that research.

00:27:27But these men are establishing a worldwide footprint of Pentecostalism. What comes next ties also to the

00:27:34NAR. I think it is the year, I think it's just a few weeks after Nixon gives this speech. The Voice of Healing

00:27:42magazine published this crusade, which was like, they were advertising a billion souls crusade. So if you think of

00:27:49today's billion soul harvest, this is nothing new, that's exactly what they were doing then. And they're

00:27:55sending all of these men out to other nations, men and women out to these other nations, trying to do

00:28:00this billion soul harvest, which you know, and I know, if you're trying to forcibly convert a billion

00:28:06people, you're not doing much better than the Spanish Inquisition. This, this doesn't really work with

00:28:13Christians. So that theme was established. And I'm curious, whenever it came all the way into IHOP KC,

00:28:21did the billion soul harvest themes, were they there?

00:28:25No, it's something, just sidebar here. It's interesting what you're, you're talking about

00:28:29with Tommy Hicks and all that, because, you know, I've got a long and deep relationship with the nation

00:28:36of Zimbabwe, and she walks on water there. And the reason is, is 20 years ago, she prophesied about

00:28:43how Zimbabwe was going to change Africa. In reality, Zimbabwe is one of the most corrupt countries in the

00:28:51world. It's also one of the most oppressive countries, you know, whatever. Now that that I'm not saying that

00:28:57God can't move, because the generation that's super corrupt is on their last legs, they're all

00:29:04in their 80s, and they'll die off, and we'll see what happens. But I'm saying it's the same sort of

00:29:10concept again, with these evangelists and preachers, which is they keep telling these nations what they

00:29:17want to hear, or the people in these nations what they want to hear. You know, we talked about,

00:29:22I think it was in one of our previous sessions about convenient theology. Well, we also have

00:29:29convenient prophecy. You know, one of the ways that you make money in the ministry is by telling

00:29:37people what they want to hear. That's how you get invited back, right? So Cindy Jacobs, when she goes to

00:29:45Zimbabwe, there's people there in the system that are very wealthy. And of course, she always gets

00:29:54lots of money, right? Because she's telling them exactly what they want to hear, even though these

00:29:59people can barely feed themselves. So yeah, nothing's changed, has it? It's the same. I mean, one of the

00:30:07things, I mean, I'm laughing here, because I'm older than you, but I never understood the concept of

00:30:14grumpy old men when I was younger, right? And now I think I kind of understand what a grumpy old man

00:30:19is. A grumpy old man is a guy who's lived long enough to see the same crap, sorry for the swear word,

00:30:26over and over and over repeating itself, while people get caught up into it and get abused, right?

00:30:32It makes you grumpy. It's like, I get irritated now. It's like, I see things happening out there in

00:30:41the ministry world, and I get grumpy. And I'm always going, God, you got to help me here.

00:30:47Because I really got a bad attitude right now, because I know there's really good things out

00:30:52there. But the thing that seems to get the press, the thing that is all over the internet, is all the

00:30:57bad stuff. And the good stuff, where I have all kinds of people that have wonderful stories of being

00:31:05healed and helped in the church world, but you don't hear that stuff. You just hear all these horrible

00:31:10stories about all these leaders that basically, you know, tickle people's ears.

00:31:16Yeah, absolutely. And it's augmented the grumpy old man syndrome. I have it, and I don't know how

00:31:25much older you are than me, probably not much.

00:31:27Well, I'm going to be 69 in January.

00:31:29Okay, you're a little bit older.

00:31:31Yes, I am.

00:31:32But those of us who enjoy history and actually study and learn history, we have it all the more

00:31:38because we see it repeating again and again and again. And the grumpy old man syndrome that hit me

00:31:44first was I was watching. So this Joel's Army theme, I've seen multiple people claim divine

00:31:50revelation on this. They say, oh, I have this vision and Joel's Army, all of yada, yada, yada.

00:31:56And to the audience listening who hasn't studied history, they're like, oh, wow, this is a new

00:32:01thing. Oh, my gosh. I've never heard of this. This is the greatest thing ever.

00:32:05That was me in 1983. Wow, this is cool.

00:32:09But if you study the timeline, so as I mentioned, 1947, healing revival is birthed. You have,

00:32:17I guess you could call this the proto-Joel's Army. This is before it really takes shape and form.

00:32:22Then the excitement of the revival comes, 1948, Lateran revival. Ideas start to come together,

00:32:29and this cross-pollination of ideas is really what births it. Again, I think it's 1949 is the

00:32:36first time in print. But there's another backbone to this, the Feast of Tabernacles. You almost can't

00:32:43mention Joel's Army without this book from Warnock, who was, if I remember correctly,

00:32:48Earn Baxter's, the head of the, one of the heads of the shepherding movement and Branham's

00:32:53partner in the revival. Baxter had a secretary, George Warnock, who heard all this doctrine and

00:33:01put it into a book. Many people falsely claim that he came up with this idea. No, this came long before

00:33:07him. He just basically bundled it up and publicized it. So in that, there were themes of dominion. I can't

00:33:16remember the exact verbiage, but something to the effect, the church will rule and reign. And he's

00:33:20using Bible quotes to do it. So you have this slight twist of dominionism. When that gets published,

00:33:28now you have this fertile ground where people in the movement are reading it, and they're thinking,

00:33:33oh, well, what other dominionist ideas can I bring to the table? And cross-pollination happens,

00:33:38Nixon happens, and then, you know, this giant Tommy Hicks prophecy, all of this weird stuff,

00:33:46now go up into the 1960s. When the shepherding movement took form, now you have Baxter, who's

00:33:53tied to all of this. And the idea that God is restoring control, and specifically authoritarian

00:34:03control, because of the shepherding movement, there were weird themes of government being

00:34:07established. And I don't know that they came out right and said it. I'm still digging through all

00:34:12the shepherding publications. But the idea of government enters into this Joel's Army thing.

00:34:19If you were to go back into the 1940s, late 1940s, these people aren't thinking government,

00:34:24because my kingdom is not of this world. But now when you're thinking dominion, control,

00:34:29this cross-pollination of ideas, that turns into, now we're going to go after the governments.

00:34:36So whenever you mention all of the nations that are excited about this, if those same nations knew

00:34:42that this would eventually turn into, we want to go after your government, I don't think that they

00:34:46would have anything to do with it. Hey, question for you that just popped into my mind in this

00:34:54conversation. In Kansas City, the Joel's Army was specifically framed in the context of young

00:35:04people, right? It wasn't everyone. It was this army of young people. Is that consistent, or was that

00:35:14unique to Kansas City?

00:35:16So that was actually the next word that was going to come out of my mouth.

00:35:20Okay. We're tracking then.

00:35:23Well, think of the history. So you have the Pentecostal movement, the Lateran movement,

00:35:29the shepherding movement. Then you have the Jesus people.

00:35:32Well, that's where I'm going with this, because wouldn't the late 60s, early 70s,

00:35:39Chuck Smith, Costa Mesa, wouldn't this fit that kind of world? I mean, their perception of what was

00:35:47going to happen. Was that it? Well, think of what's happening here. So I've been trying to

00:35:52unpack this, and I'm fighting an uphill battle, because history has not been written correctly.

00:35:57And I get a lot of people who attack, and they say, no, that never happened. Chuck Smith was not

00:36:01part of this. So you had the Jesus people movement.

00:36:04Well, he was Paul Kane's business manager, so he was a part of it, and he was very involved in the

00:36:09early days of the Lateran thing. So...

00:36:12Absolutely. And he was in the Foursquare Church, which is all part of this. There's

00:36:15so much history with him. Yeah, he's tied to this. Yeah.

00:36:18Absolutely. But think of that. So you've got literally Branham's campaign manager who's

00:36:24working with the shepherding movement, a person who's big into Lateran, working with Paul Kane

00:36:29and the Jesus people movement. These two started to work together, and we have evidence of this.

00:36:35And John Wimber is the one, whenever, when the shepherding movement was imploding,

00:36:40because they had been exposed as authoritarianism, John Wimber starts fighting with other big names

00:36:47to fight for unity. Bring all this together, right? So there was this cross-pollination of

00:36:52ideas that is happening. Youth people on one side, authoritarian control on the other.

00:36:57Let's bring them together. Now, does that mean Smith was an authoritarian? Not necessarily.

00:37:03But this cross-pollination of ideas, it's like a, you know, it's a Heinz 57 type religion.

00:37:09You get whatever is being fed from the other sides. And youth culture, as you said, I was actually

00:37:16going to ask you how deep that went. Youth culture became a theme, and you start to see,

00:37:22like, youth with a mission emerges. Right.

00:37:25Even that is not new. Campus Crusade for Christ.

00:37:28Campus Crusade for Christ. But see, even that is not new. You already had it with Billy Graham's group,

00:37:34some other various groups. But see, what you didn't have with Billy Graham's group was the themes of

00:37:41dominion, of authoritarian control, all of these things that are emerging that wasn't packed into

00:37:47the youth culture, but now it's exploding.

00:37:50So was the Jesus – this is what I'm trying to figure out here. I'm trying to connect the dots here.

00:37:54Did the latter rain guys see the Jesus people movement as the potential fulfillment of Joel's army?

00:38:01Think back to the latter rain revival, when its inception was happening, Branham was sweeping

00:38:06through Canada, all of this hype. Who were the people who were the main focus at that time?

00:38:13It was the youth in the Sharon orphanage. And there's a reason for this that not many people

00:38:19have thought about. In Joel, the chapter of Joel that Pentecostalism focused on, Joel 2,

00:38:24your young men, your sons and daughters will prophesy, see visions. It's the sons' daughters.

00:38:31And there are phrases, if you keep reading that passage, it talks about they'll run up the walls,

00:38:36they'll climb into the houses like a thief. They're talking about a very agile young people.

00:38:41So they're focusing on what is a young army. Whenever the latter rain movement kind of died out,

00:38:47they wanted, number one, like you said, the vultures saw the potential for money, and it was

00:38:54dying out. We want to do this again. So you had, on one side, you had vultures. On the other side,

00:39:00you had people that really believed the theology. Well, where are the young people now? They're all

00:39:04old. And so what happened is Wagner in the 2000s, he started bringing in the idea that we need to

00:39:11change the culture. It has changed and morphed into, today it's nationalism, but you go through

00:39:17the, you know, through the 90s and 2000s, it turns into, we need to change the culture. The battle of the

00:39:22minds is now a battle of the culture. This charge from Nixon has actually shifted with the government

00:39:28changes and the political landscape. But it all comes back to this. They wanted a youth culture.

00:39:36They wanted a group of people who would see visions and prophesy. They wanted to

00:39:41establish this thing that was Joel's army, and it wasn't adults. So the people who are in today's

00:39:47world, New Apostolic Reformation, who don't even understand the theology, they're looking at the

00:39:52elderly. They're looking at people who are, you know, God's general figures. This is Joel's army.

00:39:58He's the general. But that's not the original that all of this was built on. It was the youth.

00:40:04So I'm soon starting, I don't know if it comes up before this or after, but there is a lady who escaped

00:40:10YWAM, who's going to be talking about the mental battles that she fought in that culture. I wanted

00:40:17to talk to you about the youth before I got too deep with her, because there's so much more to

00:40:22explore. So the other reason I'm asking is, as a historian and sociologist, it's very clear to me,

00:40:29we are there again, meaning that if you study what's going on, and I guess Turning Point USA would

00:40:38sort of be a good example of what I'm talking about is, is that history, as I've said before,

00:40:48moves like a drunk man coming out of a bar at 2 a.m. It zigzags as every generation reacts to the one

00:40:56in front of it. So the grant, you know, we're my generation, it's the, my grandkids, right? That

00:41:05generation now, the Gen Z, are turning out to be incredibly conservative. They are, we know this,

00:41:14again, if you're in the consulting world, in the business world, I was there when the millennials hit

00:41:19the workforce, right? And the poor World War II generation, who were all the CEOs were completely

00:41:28and utterly confused, because they'd never seen this sort of mentality that these millennials had

00:41:35when they went into the workforce, right? This sense of entitlement, you know, wanting to come in at

00:41:40six-figure salaries and, you know, CEO or C-level things. And you're like, wait a minute,

00:41:46you just got out of college, right? So I was there with all my consulting buddies trying

00:41:51to deal with this. Well, their children now are having a reaction to them. And so there's this

00:42:01hunger now for traditional merits, a hunger now for traditional values. There's this move, right?

00:42:08Now, all these religious leaders would like to take credit for that. And I am laughing because it's

00:42:15like, this has nothing to do with any religious leader. This is just humans, human dynamics and

00:42:22the way God's, you know, built it into our DNA. We're having a reaction. Now, where's that going to

00:42:30go? And who's going to take advantage of it? Well, Charlie Kirk was way ahead of the curve. Like he saw

00:42:36this coming 10 years ago, right? So he jumped on this. And of course, it just exploded on him.

00:42:42Where it's going to go in the future, well, I'm pretty sure humans are involved. So it's going

00:42:48to get screwed up. That's my prediction. It doesn't take a profit. It just takes somebody

00:42:54that's a little older and a little bit more experienced to know that humans are involved.

00:42:59So therefore, we have this lust for status and stuff. Money and egos are going to end up fragmenting

00:43:08a lot of it. And it'll end up, you know, being a lot of different groups, you know, as everybody

00:43:13tries to be Charlie, right? But despite all of this brokenness in the humans, God ends up

00:43:21using it in his own way. And so we're there again. That's why this Joel's army thing is actually kind

00:43:29of relevant because there's a lot of people right now, even though they're not saying it because it's

00:43:34a very more evangelical than it is Pentecostal, it's the same mentality again. We're raising up an

00:43:42army of young people that's going to transform America, right? And it's all based on a Judeo-Christian

00:43:49biblical worldview. So we're there again, just not using all the little terminologies. Now, I'm sure

00:43:57there's people in the movement that do use it because it's, you know, it's a pretty inclusive group

00:44:03and there are Pentecostals there, but you don't hear the terms thrown around like we did in the

00:44:0880s when we had Jerry Falwell, you know, Pat Robertson, the moral majority, you know, we're

00:44:16going to take the presidency, right? That was like out there. Like we didn't hide it back then, but it

00:44:22was all driven, you know, by this underlying Joel's army, you know, we're going to take over the culture

00:44:31sort of thing. So again, for people that are out there that are seeing all, there's nothing new

00:44:36under the sun, right? This, this goes all the way back of how the, we got a Holy Roman Emperor

00:44:42Charlemagne way back in the, you know, you know, like, you know, um, 20 or 1500 years ago, right?

00:44:50This keeps repeating itself again because it's what people want to hear. And, and, and we keep

00:44:57repeating it and repeating it and it all really sounds good on the front end. And it always ends

00:45:02up fragmenting on the back end because humans get involved and screw it up. So the reason I bring

00:45:09it up is because, um, Bob Jones had been basically a loose cannon in Kansas city. He had, you know,

00:45:22he had come out of the, you know, having this, you know, got struck by lightning, having had some

00:45:31mental issues, you know, had been put into a psychiatric hospital. And then suddenly now there's

00:45:39all these kind of wild and crazy things going through his brain, right? Which is actually,

00:45:45if you study people struck by lightning, this is actually not unusual. This happens a lot. He got

00:45:51rewired. You know, he got, you know, instead of 220 through 110, he got about 10,000. I mean,

00:45:59he seriously got jolted and it rewired him and he was trying to figure it out. So I have a little

00:46:04bit of compassion because it's like, it wasn't like he asked for this. You know what I mean? It

00:46:10happened to him. So he's running around Kansas city. And, um, and of course he doesn't last very long

00:46:19because he's just not a relational guy. He does not know how to sit down and have a conversation

00:46:27like we're having. He's constantly got to be telling you what God told him, what God showed him,

00:46:33whatever, right? He's never one of you. He's, he's always other, right? He's always in this other

00:46:41place. So for somebody that doesn't have a grid for that, you just look at him and go, he's a crazy

00:46:47old man. Like he's a nutcase, right? The problem with us was, is there were some things that he said

00:46:54and things that happened that kind of got our attention. And it's like, okay. But his whole

00:46:59thing was, I've been looking for this group of young people, Joel's army. That's why I'm asking

00:47:07about the young people thing. Cause he qualified it as Joel's army is young people. And there's a whole

00:47:13church of young people. And so he saw us as this is my place. Like these are the people that, well,

00:47:22I didn't know until talking to other people in Kansas city that he had tried this and other places.

00:47:28It's just that the pastors of those churches didn't have the dynamism, the charisma and the

00:47:36strength of personality like Mike did, you know, you know, Mike's very, very talented individual

00:47:43with a strong personality that can gather people. So Bob and, you know, Mike were, you know, they were

00:47:51a duel. And again, if you go back and you look at biblical history, right? If it's always prophets

00:47:56and Kings, there's this, that's a whole conversation. We could have some time about the relationships

00:48:02between the prophets and the Kings. There's always been a relationship between the church and

00:48:08government always. And when it was the monarchy, it was the monarchs needed the blessing of the

00:48:17religious leaders, right? To reaffirm that they were God's choice. Right. And so the political

00:48:24leaders had a vested interest in making sure that the church leaders were taken care of.

00:48:29And so there, what I call through history, it's just my little way of defining, but I call it the

00:48:35unholy alliance. That unholy alliance has been going on for a long time. You just reiterated it

00:48:41a few minutes ago with Nixon and religious leaders. Right. And I was laughing was I was

00:48:46inside. I was laughing as you were talking. It's like, Oh my God, if I even heard this a thousand

00:48:51times, right. And seen it over and over again, it's the same kind of thing. And you're seeing it again

00:48:57now, right. It's, it's in the current white house. It's the same way. It's like bringing together,

00:49:02you know, the religious leaders, you have it on the right and people on the left have it too,

00:49:08right. With the black churches in America. I mean, all of these guys, you know, that, you know,

00:49:15that are involved in, well, the left is sort of split right now between those that are just

00:49:21anti-God. Right. And then this whole base of people that come from, you know, the church world,

00:49:28which are, you know, the Hispanics are very Catholic, you know, the black community is very

00:49:34Pentecostal. So those are very tied in to that side of the equation. So this is this whole battle.

00:49:43Again, for me, I sort of sit in the stands with my popcorn and watch the game.

00:49:47Darrell Bock I would agree. Yeah. But you know, part of the reason I wanted to do this and you

00:49:53went there, I wanted to make sure that you went there and not me because I didn't want to, I did

00:49:57not want to sway the conversation. I stepped in it then. You have stepped in it. So I've talked about

00:50:03how IHOPKC, after the Kansas City Fellowship, what it developed into was basically Branhamism 2.0.

00:50:10It really was. And if you understand what they were trying to achieve in Kansas City, you had Bob Jones,

00:50:16who's full of Branhamism, understands Branhamism, understands Joel's army. You had Paul Kane,

00:50:22who is literally Branham's protege. The young men were going to suddenly rise up and dream dreams and

00:50:29all of the miracles that's involved with the between the line statements in that passage of Joel.

00:50:35They were trying to recreate this. And I understand that ideology. And I have sympathy for everyone

00:50:42involved. I actually have sympathy for not only the youth, but for the leadership involved with this.

00:50:48Some of the leadership involved, from my own experience, there were youth who grew up to be

00:50:53leaders. So some of the leaders may have even been exposed to this as a child. I have compassion for

00:51:00it. I really do feel sorry for them.

00:51:02Well, one of the most horrific stories for me, as someone who's done a lot of counseling to ministry

00:51:09guys, was hearing Augustine Acala's story. And for those who don't know, Augustine was the guy who

00:51:17prophesied to Mike in St. Louis that God was going to put him on another path. I had never met Augustine.

00:51:27And so I was taking Mike's rendition of the story from his perspective. So you can imagine in 1983,

00:51:40when Augustine shows up at church, and there's a five foot two effeminate human being who is so broken

00:51:52that my head is just spinning. And I'm going, this is that, you know, I had in my head, right,

00:52:02based on my tradition of the story, created this image of this really prophetic voice like Elijah,

00:52:09you know what I mean? Somebody that was, and I got this effeminate little mousy guy who, by the way,

00:52:17was a spitting image of Lonnie Frisbee for those who don't know Lonnie. Anyways, long story,

00:52:22short, as I tend to do, you cannot drive 10 ton trucks over one ton bridges, meaning you're never

00:52:30going to get people to tell you their story until they trust you. So it took me a couple years to get

00:52:37Augustine to trust me. And finally, one day he told me his story, which was, he was a very dynamic

00:52:49little kid who could get up and preach, which is a big thing, as you know, in the Pentecostal world,

00:52:56child evangelist. There's all movie Marjo put out back in the seventies about his story. Long story short,

00:53:03like so many of these other guys, the Pentecostal world was filled with business managers.

00:53:11And that's what they call themselves business managers. Chuck Smith was a business manager for

00:53:19Paul Kane. Well, these two guys who went to Augustine's parents and said, Hey, this kid's

00:53:26gifted. We can take him on the road. He's anointed, right? And convinced his parents to turn him over

00:53:32to them, which they proceeded then over the next few years to sexually abuse him the whole time.

00:53:40So they're going from church to church, making money, teaching him how to manipulate people

00:53:46with his gift while they're raping him. Now that's really gross, but I just want people to understand

00:53:53that there's a sewer. There are so many dark secrets I know out there. There's such brokenness

00:54:05and what makes me nervous just to be frank with everyone is Joel's army scares me because it's the

00:54:13most vulnerable group other than little children and children's church, right? The group that's so

00:54:21vulnerable that they always go after is that 18 to 30 year old group, the Joel's army. So it's like

00:54:28this weird spiritual prophetic space that all of these people that are wannabes kind of flood into

00:54:39because it's an easy group to control and manipulate. And so I, you know, I get red flags

00:54:46about Joel's army to be quite honest with you. And it's only based on, you know, 40 plus years of

00:54:55living in this world and seeing what happens. And so I, you know, you know, whether, you know,

00:55:03you know, a group of young people end up somehow becoming Joel's army, you know, history, the future

00:55:10will, will tell all that. I'm just saying, it's just, again, convenient theology

00:55:15that people want to hear that in the long run has been used to manipulate people.

00:55:23And your friend with, I have a lot of experience with the YWAM world. So your friend's going to,

00:55:30or your lady that's going to come out, it's going to tell stories because it's all about manipulation

00:55:35and control, right? And people sacrificing everything they had. The reason, just FYI,

00:55:43I want to, I've spent the last, you know, a couple of years after the book came out

00:55:48doing a ton of counseling. And there's a lot of really angry people out there.

00:55:55And the reason is, is they gave their best years in their mind to Mike Bickle.

00:56:00They gave, you know, anywhere from a decade, some of them 20 years, they sacrificed careers,

00:56:09they sacrificed relationships, they sacrificed all kinds. And YWAM was the same way.

00:56:17And there's a lot of people that hit 40 and go, what did I just do? And they spend the 40 to 50

00:56:24trying to reclaim their lives and go back to college and try to, right? But, you know,

00:56:32in some ways they're just too late. And that happened with Keith Green's outfit, you know,

00:56:40down in Lindale, Texas. It happened with a lot of the, you know, Jesus people thing. And again,

00:56:48the other thing that drove that was the eminent return of Jesus, right? So Joel's army, it was the

00:56:56thing that drove me nuts. It was not only young people, Joel's army, it was all eminent, right?

00:57:05Every year Bob Jones got up and this was the year the revival was going to break out and Joel's army

00:57:11was going to emerge. So that was 1983 and we're in 2025 and it never, it's never happened, not even

00:57:21close. And that's the same culture I grew up in. It's, it's any day now, it's any minute now, you are

00:57:27getting ready to see the fulfillment of this thing that never ever comes. So it's a carrot, the spiritual

00:57:33carrot, right? Yeah, exactly. It's always right there and you never quite get there. And so I just feel

00:57:40bad, you know, I know there's a lot of people that listen to the podcast that have come out of these

00:57:45kind of situations and my heart really goes out to you because it's, whew, it's, it's, that's a hard

00:57:52reality check to face. And, you know, there's just years, you know, it's sort of funny because

00:57:59Joel's army turned out to be a locust. Yeah. That ate the best, or some of the best years of your

00:58:06life, right? It's just a paradox there, right? I, I, I never understand it. Once I was able to

00:58:13read the Bible for myself and understand, wait a minute, the locusts aren't the good guys in the

00:58:17story. It's so crazy. So there's been a lot of locusts that have ate and eaten away some of the

00:58:25prime years of people's lives that were driven there by religious leaders. Yeah, it is so sad.

00:58:32Nice. Thank you so much for doing this. Okay. Well, you've enjoyed our show and you want more

00:58:38information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at william-branham.org. For more

00:58:42about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion

00:58:47from Christian Identity to the NAR. And for more about Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read Some Say

00:58:53They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets,

00:58:58and the International House of Prayer.

00:59:00Thank you so much for listening to The International House of Prayer and the International House of Prayer.

00:59:28The International House of Prayer and the International House of Prayer and the International House of Prayer.

Secret History Behind Joel's Army and KCF | Bob Scott | Detangling IHOPKC | Podcast Episode 470

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended