Hero Worship in the Church: The Psychology of Idolatry | Unpacking KC Prophets | Bob Scott | 485 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John and Bob unpack the phenomenon of hero worship inside Christianity, tracing it from the ancient world to modern megachurch culture. They compare the charisma of today’s revivalists with mythological demigods and discuss how emotional euphoria, dopamine highs, and the hunger for significance can turn spiritual leadership into idolatry. Together they explore how Pentecostalism’s “man of God” model, stage personas, and the social-media influencer mindset have created a new kind of religion—one driven by power, performance, and addiction to admiration.  They also dig into the psychological mechanics behind revival culture: the cycle of emotional highs, the crash that follows, and how the congregation becomes addicted to the same sensations. Drawing parallels from William Branham to Mike Bickle and beyond, they reveal how both leaders and followers are trapped in the same system of hero worship that blurs the line between faith and self-exaltation.  00:00 Introduction   01:04 The Rise of Hero Worship in Christianity and Ancient Mythology   14:04 Pentecostal “Anointing” and the Man-of-God Worldview   22:07 Competition, Hysteria, and the Birth of Platform Prophets   31:01 Evangelical Models vs. Charismatic Hero Culture   38:04 Stage Persona, Identity Split, and the Addiction to the Crowd   45:09 Dopamine, Euphoria, and Why Leaders Fall   53:05 Exclusiveness, Discernment Failure, and Group Identity   1:00:05 Final Reflections on Hero Worship and the Future of the Church  ______________________ 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 Say They Blundered,

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

00:00:58House of Prayer. Bob, it's good to be back, and I'm thinking through your title, that

00:01:04long title of your book, and comparing that to what I want to talk about today, the hero

00:01:11worship that has developed in all of these movements.

00:01:15I'm studying all kinds of different histories, Christian histories, ancient mythologies, and

00:01:21what's weird is you go back in Christian history, and yes, you can see hero worship during the

00:01:27recent years, but you go way back, and it's quite different. There wasn't a lot of hero

00:01:32worship. There was only Jesus worship, and there were famous people, obviously, in Christianity,

00:01:38but they weren't so much revered and respected to the same level they are today.

00:01:43And my studies of ancient mythology, which fascinates me, study Hercules or any of the ancient gods

00:01:53and demigods, the human parts, the human elements of those mythologies, they were worshipped.

00:01:59And I struggle not to compare what we see today with the hero worship in Christianity to the

00:02:07ancient demigods, because if you take all of the symbolism out and just compare the two equally,

00:02:15there's not much different between the demigods and these so-called Christian apostles and prophets.

00:02:22Well, I mean, hero worship, obviously, is a historical phenomena that goes back to the beginning of

00:02:29time. And I think there's probably, over the course of time, what makes someone a hero,

00:02:40or why they're a hero, or all that has changed rather dramatically. In the early days of human

00:02:49civilization, it was basically the guy like Saul that was the head and shoulders over on everyone

00:02:55else and was the great warrior, right? Because survival, tribal survival, cultural survival was

00:03:03at the epitome of everybody's priorities, right? We just want to survive. So the guys that were the

00:03:10greatest warriors ended up being all the heroes, right? Because they're going to save us, they're going

00:03:17to protect us, they're going to do whatever. And so you see, amongst the agents, so many of the heroes

00:03:23are actually warriors, right? They're people that were conquerors or whatever. And of course,

00:03:28they were immortalized by statues, right? That was the way it was done. We're in a new world right now

00:03:35with social media. It's really changed the dynamic significantly of what's a hero, right? I mean,

00:03:44we have something in our lifetime that I don't know has ever been quite defined like it is now,

00:03:52which is called influencers. Like we got people making money and all they are as influencers,

00:04:00right? What are they, who are they influencing?

00:04:02Brian Smith Yeah, I looked through some of that and it's, you know, people on the comment

00:04:07feeds will sometimes say, John, you're just trying to be an influencer. Well, what is this? I don't know

00:04:12what this is. I'm just simply looking at history and comparing it to what I see today. And I would honor the

00:04:20title historian, but I don't know, I'm a makeshift historian, even at that. But I study the ancient

00:04:28religions and compare them to Christianity. And this idea of hero worship, what's funny is if you

00:04:36study the Apocrypha, you can see that even within Christianity, or I guess you would call it pseudo

00:04:42Christianity within the Apocrypha, figures like Moses, they started to go off into error and worship

00:04:49Moses and some of these traditions. And Moses was almost exalted to a divine being in some of them.

00:04:56But if you stay just within the Christian Bible and don't go outside of it, there is a strong

00:05:04drive not to worship the humans involved. You worship Yahweh, you worship Jesus. And so you see how,

00:05:11you can see how splinter groups of religions have turned into hero worship, but not the core of

00:05:17Christianity or Judaism.

00:05:18Darrell Bock You think that's possibly why in the

00:05:22Ten Commandments it talks about not making idols of stone? It seems like someone, whether that be God or

00:05:32someone figured out that humans have a tendency to need heroes, right? We need things to worship and we

00:05:40tend to migrate towards things that are tangible. I mean, you know, God's ethereal spirit, you can't

00:05:48see him, right? And so it's a bit vague. But in the ancient world, as we know, I mean, every culture

00:05:57had wooden idols, stone idols, some sort of tangible God or whatever that influenced that culture. So it's

00:06:07it's there. Like, it's always been there. It seems like it's innate. It's like we humans

00:06:11have this understanding that we're weak or we're frail. Like when we, you know, we compare ourselves

00:06:19to mother nature, there's not a whole lot, you know, that we can stand up against. I mean, we've made

00:06:25incredible technological advances over the last hundred years that have helped us mitigate

00:06:32the influence of nature, especially in the world of bacterias and viruses and things like that, which

00:06:37actually pillage the ancient world, you know. But yeah, there's always this thing, you know, that's

00:06:44innate in us humans that we want heroes. I mean, when I was a little guy, I was a football fanatic,

00:06:50right? So my whole life was worshiping. I wasn't really worshiping though, but it was like wanting to be

00:06:56Bart Starr or Paul Horning or one of the Green Bay Packers. I mean, we, you know, we're little boys. We live

00:07:03like that. We played in the backyard. We pretended we were those guys, right? We looked up to them,

00:07:08but they were sports athletes. You know, I didn't have the same thing, you know, when it came to movies.

00:07:17I didn't really, you know, I didn't have any movie idols. I didn't even, of course, when I was little,

00:07:21I didn't even have music idols, right? But the concept of, you know, so I, you know, this is kind of

00:07:28interesting. I was raised Roman Catholic. So in our culture growing up, it was fascinating because

00:07:37every immigrant family, whether it be German or Italian, it was an honor if one of the sons became

00:07:47a priest. And I remember as a little guy wanting to become a priest because I noticed that priest had

00:07:54special status, right? When they walked in, they were other. Like everyone, like they, it was like

00:08:02the Red Sea open, like the crowd just opened, like Father so-and-so would walk through and he got

00:08:07preferential treatment and all the ladies were waiting on him with food and whatever. So I kind of grew up in

00:08:15that world that religious leaders were revered. And so when it came to the evangelical world,

00:08:22um, um, you know, I saw the same thing, just a little different. It was expressed a little

00:08:30different, you know, my heroes were always Batman or Superman, usually Batman. So because Batman, he is

00:08:37this, he is the hero that doesn't really have any superpowers. He uses his mind. So Batman was always my

00:08:44favorite. Still is today. Yeah, because he was a tech nerd, right? He was a tech nerd. I've got,

00:08:48I've got my back computer. He has his back computer. Exactly. Yeah, he came up with ideas and inventions.

00:08:54Exactly. Yeah. So my heroes were like that, but I never really recognized that while we were in the

00:09:00movement, the hero worship that I did have was in the prophet. We would say our prophet and we would

00:09:06give undue reverence to the prophet. What's interesting is I encountered other cults. Even as a teenager,

00:09:13I would encounter people who had their prophets and they would talk about, and I would think,

00:09:18man, they're so crazy. Do they not realize that they're in a cult? And it's because I didn't

00:09:23revere their prophets in the same way that, that I revered mine and vice versa. They, they looked at me

00:09:29and they were trying to get me out of my cult to get them into their cult so I could serve their

00:09:34prophet. Right. But wouldn't you, I, it sees, you know, and I'm thinking out loud here, but it seems to me

00:09:40that sort of the hero worship culture is very heavily slanted towards the Pentecostal charismatic

00:09:48world. Um, you know, when I became a Christian in the evangelical world, that's how I came to faith.

00:09:57You know, the, if there was a hero, it was Billy Graham, but Billy Graham was so humble

00:10:02and self-effacing and not really somebody, you know, he wasn't sensational. Like he wasn't

00:10:08drawing attention to himself. And, um, some of my mentors knew him quite well. And all I heard was

00:10:18how humble he was. Like, I remember a group of them were telling me that they all, uh, were going to

00:10:26have a time of prayer with Billy. And of course they're all sitting in their chairs. And the next

00:10:31thing you know, he's on his hands and knees and they're all sitting there like, wait, this is Billy

00:10:36Graham. Like, what is he doing on his knees? Right. So, but there was that, right. But then

00:10:42when I came into the charismatic world, you know, into the Pentecostal world, it's suddenly

00:10:47it went from this, you know, even like in the Anabaptist world where they don't really have

00:10:52pastors, right. They have elders, but they don't have a lead, like this whole idea of a single figure

00:10:59that's leading a congregation who's other, who are leading a movement that they're on

00:11:06another plane. That, that was, I didn't find that in the evangelical world. Now, not to say

00:11:12they don't have their stars, you know what I mean? There was John MacArthur and, you know,

00:11:17you had Jerry Falwell and Pat Roberts and some of those guys. Right. But it seems like the whole

00:11:24idea of, of sort of heroes, you know, versus leaders. You know, it's that thought that really

00:11:32drove me down to looking into all of the mythologies. Right. Because I got to thinking about exactly

00:11:38what you said. It does seem to favor the Pentecostal charismatic movement and why. And as I'm looking

00:11:44at it, what's funny is that as I begin publishing content, some of the content would have crossover to

00:11:50different figures. So I'm publishing initially about William Branham, but then I would see,

00:11:54well, wait a minute, this other guy spawned off of Branham's ministry. Right. Let's talk about him.

00:11:59Well, I would get that cult following. And what's interesting about it is they had no idea who I

00:12:04am or why I'm doing what I do. So they, one of the comments that I made, they mistakenly thought

00:12:11that I was a hardcore Calvinist, which I'm not. And they said, you're just in the cult following of,

00:12:17and I'm not going to give the name, but they just picked some random Calvinist as my cult leader,

00:12:22because they're so indoctrinated to believe that you must follow something. And I've even had them

00:12:28say that in the comments. If you're not following our prophet, you know, put a blank for the prophet's

00:12:34name and just put one in there. If you're not following him, well, who is it that you're following?

00:12:38And I was just, I was confused by this statement. Well, why would I follow anybody? I just read the

00:12:44Bible, you know? But I learned over time, it has to do with the authoritarian model that was

00:12:52developed by Pentecostalism and some of the precursors to Pentecostalism. If you go beyond

00:13:00that authoritarian model where it is a, where it's a model where there is an equal balance of power and

00:13:07you have different leaders, no one can rise into a central figure. It's just impossible to create

00:13:14the hero worship model. But fast forward into Pentecostalism and you've got Dowie and all of

00:13:20the big names of people who just literally created the most destructive authoritarian models possible.

00:13:28The ones with the most destructive models had the bigger volumes of hero worship.

00:13:32Yeah. So let's unpack it a little bit because you're bringing up something that's been an

00:13:38observation. I haven't really tore it apart or unpacked it like we can in our conversation now,

00:13:48but I think you've got to go back to perspective or worldview. In other words, the why, why do

00:13:55Pentecostals fall into this trap? And I think part of it goes back to a default setting or a perspective

00:14:05which we've used the phrase, the man of God model, right? Pentecostals have this worldview that God's

00:14:14spirit rests on certain individuals, right? That uniquely gifts them and uniquely calls them

00:14:24to fulfill a purpose. And so therefore, they look for who's the spirit on, right? Like who has,

00:14:35and of course, you never hear the word in the evangelical world anointed, right? In the Pentecostal world,

00:14:43I remember as I got involved, it was always who's anointed, right? And I would listen to people

00:14:51talking like, oh, he's anointed or he's, you know, and I'm like, what does that mean? Like,

00:14:57what do you mean he's anointed, right? Because I'm thinking anointing is oil, like as a Catholic kid

00:15:03on Ash Wednesday or whatever, you got anointed, you know, the priest would put a little cross in,

00:15:09right? There was that anointing, but what is it? He is anointed, right? I thought you got anointed,

00:15:15you know what I mean? And so that really kind of twisted my brain around for a while because I

00:15:21couldn't understand what they were talking about. Then I began to realize, oh my gosh, these are

00:15:26people who they see as on another plane, like they're different from the rest of us. God has picked

00:15:34them out, right? He has chosen them amongst their peers to have this special purpose and he's given

00:15:43them special gifts and they're special. And so that whole idea of being special then gets reproduced

00:15:52across the whole spectrum of Pentecostalism where it appeals to all kinds of men in particular

00:16:00who want to be special, who are looking to be special, right? It's like almost like a little

00:16:09addiction, right? It literally goes after addicts. I mean, that mentality goes after people who are

00:16:17desperate to be significant, that are looking for significance, right?

00:16:20Well, there's another, so you're edging towards psychology, which also fascinates me in studying this

00:16:26because to have hero worship, you have to have a psychology mindset that is enabling that.

00:16:35Well, so think through this. I've thought long and hard about this because it's kind of funny if you

00:16:40think about it. Picture the old days before radios and TV. You had these guys who were intense

00:16:47revivalists and you've got this massive crowd. And the only way that you can address the entire crowd

00:16:54where they can hear you is you have to scream. You're screaming at the top of your lungs. Now, I'll be the

00:17:00first to admit I have Irish blood in me. And if I don't control it, I can have an Irish temper. I don't

00:17:07know if you've ever lost your temper, but think through the psychology of this. When you lose your temper and you

00:17:13raise your voice, your brain disconnects from your mouth. And so you start speaking with your brain

00:17:19disconnected. You say things that you regret later, but the higher the volume, the higher the

00:17:25pace that your voice is speaking, the more disconnected it becomes from your brain.

00:17:30So you have these men and women who are in these big tents and they're screaming at the top of their

00:17:35lungs. They're getting excited. The people are getting excited. There's a little bit of euphoria

00:17:40happening. Well, over time, what happens is, and I have seen preachers do this. So I speak some from

00:17:47experience with my temper, but I have watched this happen. As the minister is raising his voice and

00:17:54setting his pace faster and faster while speaking, his brain disconnects. And he starts repeating

00:17:59phrases. He starts saying things that he would probably never say and admitting things that he

00:18:05would probably never admit. They're drunk. Yeah. So in the non-charismatic world, this is just

00:18:13a person who is edging closer towards insanity. But in the Pentecostal world, this is actually what you

00:18:20call anointing. If your brain can disconnect from your mouth, that's God speaking, which is really

00:18:26interesting if you think about it, right? Right. So in the olden days, there is no microphones,

00:18:31loudspeakers. They're screaming. But now think about this. There came a point in time in which the

00:18:37microphone and the PA system was invented. It was now widespread. Ministers and revivalists were

00:18:43speaking with microphones. And there was no need to continue screaming. But that's what they grew up

00:18:50hearing. So mentally, they think they must scream. And so they continue that pace and that, you know,

00:18:56the voice. Well, there's a female prophetess out of Canada that I've known for years. And that's her

00:19:02whole MO, which is basically, you know, because in the old days, he used the word ecstatic, right?

00:19:11Like if you read some of the early Puritan or even, you know, the Shakers and the Quakers and some of

00:19:19the early precursors to Pentecostalism in America, they were talking about ecstasy, like ecstasy would

00:19:26fall on a person and then they would just start, they would get hysterical, right? They'd get super

00:19:32emotional, right? Well, there was a whole thinking in certain aspects of the charismatic world where

00:19:39that's what you do. It's like they kind of brought it all back again. And I watched it for years and

00:19:45just crazy stuff was said. Like I just, like you, I sat there and I watched and I went, anybody else

00:19:53who doesn't have this same worldview would walk in and go, this person has severe psychological

00:20:00problems. But the crowd was going crazy because they were told this was a God thing, right?

00:20:07So, but I saw something similar, not as extreme as ecstaticism. I've told you this story about in

00:20:14July of 89, I watched John Wimber give my permission to put Paul Kane, Bob Jones, and John Paul Jackson on

00:20:23the stage in Anaheim. And, you know, there are certain crowd dynamics that come into play, right?

00:20:32There's an energy, right? There's an energy that begins to happen. And there was such expectation

00:20:37because there had been rumors about the Kansas City prophets and whatever. And so, you know,

00:20:44they start in and, you know, the crowd is like responding to their kind of things they're saying. Well,

00:20:54what ends up happening is egos start getting involved, right? Between the three, because each one

00:21:00wants to be seen as the most anointed, the one with the most juice, right? Whatever. So then they

00:21:08start competing and nobody knows this is what's going on because nobody knows these people, right?

00:21:14They're just sitting in a chair looking. I know these guys intimately well. I'm going, oh my God,

00:21:20this is a three car collision here. And, and it just kept getting more hysterical and more hysterical

00:21:28and more hysterical until the point where things got just really extreme and the crowd just kept

00:21:34getting wilder and wilder. And the more, and the more the crowd got amped up, the more wilder the

00:21:41prophecies became and the more extreme and the bigger, right? And you're just watching all this and we get

00:21:47done. And, and Mike Pickle thinks, you know, that was so stunning and so amazing. We're on the verge of

00:21:55worldwide revival. Like he thinks this is just such an incredible moment. And I, we got into a big fight

00:22:03in the green room afterwards, you know, cause I said to him, I go, well, if you like P.T. Barnum in his

00:22:09three ring circus, I guess, you know, you're pretty, oh, he got so mad at me. But from my perspective

00:22:15watching it, it was just, I mean, I guess you could use the word flesh. It was flesh. Like it was a meat

00:22:22market flesh. Like it was just human ego everywhere. And yet it all got interpreted as being

00:22:29spiritual. And I'm like, okay, that's really interesting. You know, there's been a few,

00:22:35I was listening to a podcast, um, the other day, somebody had sent me something. And one of the

00:22:41questions that a lot of the younger generation are asking is not anybody have discernment? Like,

00:22:47how come we're not discerning any of this? Like we keep seeing all these heroes getting into trouble.

00:22:54Why? Why is nobody, where's the discernment? And so that's kind of interesting to me because there's

00:23:02just seems to be, we're so caught up in the show.

00:23:05That's another topic for another day. But in Branumism, discernment had no relevance to what

00:23:11other Christians call discernment. Discernment literally meant that you could guess a person's

00:23:16name and address on the stage. That's what they call it. Interesting. You know, what you're

00:23:21talking about though is, is actually what I'm building up to going back to Branum. So latter

00:23:26rain revival breaks out. It starts spreading throughout the United States and Canada. Branum's

00:23:32fame is overnight. He's just suddenly famous. And there's these big crowds like you're talking

00:23:36about. They see him on the platform. There's this euphoria that's happening. Well, he's screaming

00:23:43just like he has been trained to do in these audiences. Microphone in the very first recordings

00:23:49he had, they were the old wire recordings before there was even magnetic tape. So he's, he's

00:23:56like on the very cutting edge of technology and had spoken in large crowds before this.

00:24:01So he's, he's familiar with screaming. Now, after the latter rain revival breaks out, he loses

00:24:08his mental faculties. He actually had to go off of the field for a period of time. The Voice of

00:24:15Healing magazine, which eventually evolved into Christ for the Nations Institute, Voice of Healing

00:24:21movement. It was created initially to host information about Branum and his revivals. Then he loses his

00:24:30mental faculties. He goes off the field and they say, oh no, Branum's gone. But what do we do? We've got

00:24:35this movement and let's harness the money and power of this movement. So he started bringing

00:24:40in additional revivalists into the magazine. So the magazine began to be a conglomeration of

00:24:46different ministries, different heroes that were to be worshipped. But here's where it gets

00:24:51interesting. So Branum comes back on after a period of time, he's away. He's not quite fully

00:24:57sane, but some of the things he says are coherent. And if you listen to it, you're, you're kind of

00:25:03wondering what is, what is this that's coming out of his mouth? It doesn't really make sense,

00:25:06but it kind of sounds like the gospel. The hype and the energy of the crowd was such that they

00:25:12ignored all of the things that sounded insane, listened to the things that they thought were

00:25:17spiritual, and couldn't really separate the two. The insanity started to bleed over into what they

00:25:24claimed as a belief system. So literally as this is happening, you're starting to, you're starting to

00:25:30watch a hero develop who is, he's struggling mentally, and he openly admits this frequently.

00:25:37He says that, I think he said every seven years he was struggling with just deep, deep problems.

00:25:44He called it neurotic. He said, I'm a neurotic. But what he would say is, so was the Apostle Paul.

00:25:52The Apostle Paul was a neurotic and was Moses. And he would go through the line of heroes,

00:25:57biblical heroes. But where I'm heading with all of this is, there is so much hype in the crowd that

00:26:04whenever a hero starts to emerge, who is a hero, a self-proclaimed hero, the crowd begins to adopt

00:26:14that hero into their worship, because they believe this is the voice of God, the spoken word, this

00:26:21insanity that's coming out in this form of screaming. They believe that that is the message

00:26:26of the hour, or the message that's coming directly from God. And what they did over time is they began

00:26:33to literally replace the reading of their Bible with this new revelation. And so if you have a new

00:26:38revelation, the new revelation's coming from God. And that's where the ancient mythologies fascinated

00:26:44me, because essentially what you have created at that point is a demigod. It's a mediator between

00:26:50God and man.

00:26:51Yeah. Here's my observation. And this comes from somebody who was in the church planting world for

00:27:02good two decades, and just observing people. But the truth of it is, is that the Christian community

00:27:10and the people that go to church are desperate. And what I mean by that is, is that I, there's a common

00:27:18thread I see all across the Christian community, which is that people are desperate for intimacy with

00:27:25God. They want to have a relationship with God. They have issues, needs, problems, things in their

00:27:36lives, that they need what? Deliverance, right? They need somebody that's more powerful than they are

00:27:43to help them fix this problem, because they can't, right? It's beyond them. And so there's a, I mean,

00:27:51this is going to sound crazy to some people, but there, I always, one of the things I always feel

00:27:57when I'm at church, and this is just my soul, is there's this quiet desperation in the congregation,

00:28:04whether it be in the search for God, whether it be in the search for deliverance from something,

00:28:11mean and need, there's just this, there's this desperation, right? And so, and there's always this

00:28:19hope that somebody larger, bigger, more powerful is going to come and help, right? You know, it's what

00:28:24the Holy Spirit does, right? He, you know, he's a helper, right? He comes alongside. That's what his role is

00:28:31supposed to be. And so people are always looking for that. That's never changed. That's been the

00:28:38human condition since the beginning of time, where it gets a little bit tricky, is that there's a whole

00:28:45lot of people, like we talked about, you know, particularly men who, who want to be seen as

00:28:51special, right? And so I watched this with Mike, you know, Mike, I don't know if he was, it was

00:28:57cognitive or was intuitive or what it was, but he recognized there was this desperation.

00:29:06And what he did, which I saw happen over and over again by, it's a particular type of personality

00:29:14that does this, which is basically comes along, it says, listen, I know you're desperate, but guess

00:29:21what? I'm special. You know, God has uniquely called me. He's given me unique gifts, whatever,

00:29:30right? They position themselves. I don't want to say superior, but at least other, right? It's like,

00:29:37there's you guys, you know, the peons in the congregation, and there's those of us that have

00:29:43this anointing, this special calling, this special deliverance, right? And Mike's proposition,

00:29:50value proposition was to people was, was I'm special and I've got this purpose. If you are loyal

00:29:59to me and you sign up and become a part of my team, you can be special too, right? And God will

00:30:07deliver you from all this. And so it appealed to people's most basic fears, their most basic meat,

00:30:16right? In other words, it's, it's in a way as, as I grew older and began to understand what was going

00:30:22on, it all looks so right at the beginning. And then I realized, oh my gosh, it's like, we're just

00:30:28picking on people's most vulnerable places. Like we're, we're manipulating them, right? Into these,

00:30:36with these false claims and false promises and false, whatever, instead of getting out of the way

00:30:42and being a signpost on a road, pointing them to God, right? And saying, hey, let me help you.

00:30:49He's the one. It's like they became it. It's like they couldn't help themselves. They needed to be

00:30:55seen as the deliverer, right? They needed to be seen as the hero. And, and I see this over and over

00:31:02again. So there's not only a vulnerability in the congregation, there's a vulnerability

00:31:06vulnerability with some people that are very gifted, right? You know, I mean, my bickle in my

00:31:13view is probably, you know, one of the most persuasive human beings I've ever been around.

00:31:21I mean, there's just some people that are really good at this, right? Some of them turn out to be

00:31:26con men, right? They, they know how to, to manipulate it, you know, it in the worst ways, but then there's

00:31:33this sort of religion version of it where they, you know, they present themselves like this. And

00:31:39Mike was so persuasive. Now here's the one kind of telltale sign that is, you know, I tell people,

00:31:48you know, as you get older, you kind of figure this out. Who is Mike's audience primarily? Young

00:31:54people, people that had very little perspective, no knowledge, hadn't been through a lot, who were so

00:32:01vulnerable, right? And in a place in their life where they were ready to give him everything,

00:32:08right? And so, but again, the same thing happened with the Jesus people movement. You know how many

00:32:14people didn't go to college, didn't, right? Because there was this eminent move of God.

00:32:20And so that's what happened after the fall of IOP a couple years ago. Suddenly it was like this

00:32:27cold slap in the face and a wake up call to all these young people that were still there. Now

00:32:33there was a generation before them, right? Because it started in 2000. Well, that group was already in

00:32:39their thirties and had been through the disillusionment, right? And so they knew already,

00:32:45wait a minute, you know, you know, there's a whole lot here that's being told us that isn't really

00:32:51true. And if I, but it's the same thing, it keeps repeating itself, right? Go after the most naive,

00:32:58the most vulnerable. And that to me is a sure sign of, you know, of somebody that's a manipulator.

00:33:04Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of

00:33:09modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements

00:33:15into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's

00:33:22website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research

00:33:29of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,

00:33:36audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various

00:33:43people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support

00:33:49the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe

00:33:55to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham

00:34:00Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I don't know if you've ever managed people

00:34:05or not, but if you've ever managed somebody who is training other people, you can tell very quickly

00:34:12if they're going to be a good trainer or not, because the good trainers want to train others

00:34:17to be even better than themselves. Basically, they're a leader who's creating leaders. That's

00:34:24what a good trainer is. And you can tell very quickly, because you'll get some people on the

00:34:28job who are training other people, and they enjoy that messiah complex of training them and then

00:34:37them still being attached, whoever it is they're training. So when the person leaves, they want that

00:34:41link and that connection. In other words, they want to control the information and the power,

00:34:46and they want to be seen as the one who did the training. Well, what happens in this movement,

00:34:52whenever you've got all of these men and women who believe that they are the ones with the

00:34:58authority from God or the spiritual revelation, what happens is that messiah complex takes over,

00:35:04and they begin to think that it isn't just that the people who are under their authority or they're

00:35:11in their congregations are seeking God and finding God and they're creating new spiritual leaders for

00:35:17the next generation. They want that connection to them so that they can always have them come back

00:35:23for more information. Well, one thing that fascinated me about Mike's psyche is that whenever we had family

00:35:30get-togethers, Mike was like a fly on the wall. He was quiet, didn't hardly talk. The siblings were all

00:35:43kind of circling around. They were all looking for him to take a lead, and he didn't want to. He refused

00:35:51to take a leadership role within the siblings. But then we'd go from a family event to church,

00:36:02and he'd walk in, and he just sucked the air right out of the room. Everything was him. It was all about

00:36:09him, right? He just dominated. And I just always found that really fascinating. It's like you just went

00:36:16from, you know, totally passive to totally aggressive. Like it, you know, and it's like, wow, what just

00:36:25happened here? I mean, 20 minutes ago, you couldn't get anybody to, you know, get you say a word, and now

00:36:31you've got to dominate everything.

00:36:34On a very small scale, you can see this happening whenever somebody, somebody who's timid, who wouldn't

00:36:39otherwise say anything, get them angry in social media, and they start commenting on the comment

00:36:46feeds. You'll find these people who would never, ever speak out saying the most absurdly angry things.

00:36:52Well, there is this type of complex where whenever you are entering into your stage persona,

00:37:01you start to disconnect from your authentic self. And some people can't handle this. They start to build up

00:37:07up. As the stage persona begins to grow, they start to favor it because they feel empowered

00:37:15in that stage persona. While their authentic self is still maybe this timid, humble. Branham was this

00:37:20way. Everybody who knew Branham, they said he was the most timid, humble person. But get him on the

00:37:25platform and watch what happened. The power of God, right? Well, what happens is they have put all of

00:37:31their emotions and energy in the stage persona. And while in that stage persona, they think that they are

00:37:38Batman or Superman. They're filled with these power that they don't ordinarily have. Well, this leads to

00:37:45the Messiah complex. People start to think that they're more than a human. If they're in a Christian

00:37:51setting, they start to feel that they really are filled with God. And therefore, everything that they

00:37:56say is God speaking. I'm going to go down a little bit of a bunny trail here because one of the things

00:38:01that I noticed that was very similar between the music business and the ministry world was exactly

00:38:09what you're talking about, the stage persona. In the music world, it was very common, especially for

00:38:18the superstars to walk on that stage. And then something come over them. And they suddenly

00:38:26kick into this persona. And then for the next couple hours, they're caught, like the Pentecostals say,

00:38:33they're caught up. Well, they're caught up. They are in the moment. And what they're feeding

00:38:39off of is the energy in the crowd. And this person who could barely function is suddenly now this live

00:38:49dynamic persona that's singing and pouring their heart out and the crowds with them and whatever.

00:38:56Then they walk off the stage and they're wired, right? And they're wide awake at 3 a.m.

00:39:03They can't go to sleep. And that's when all the drugs and the alcohol, whatever, they come down.

00:39:08There's a coming down, right? Because it's like they're away from that energy. I watch the same

00:39:14thing in the ministry world. I watch that coming down. In fact, if you want to know the kind of

00:39:21dirty little secret, it's the coming down phrase where a lot of these preachers guys get in trouble.

00:39:27It's after the meeting. And what ends up happening is that moment that you're caught up in with the

00:39:35crowd and the euphoria leaves. And suddenly there you are. Just you. And you come face to face with who

00:39:44you really are, right? Because you know that what just happened on that stage was this other thing.

00:39:52And when you got to come back to you, it's like, God, well, I'm this feeble. And people get,

00:39:59they get depressed. They go down the rabbit hole. And so they seek out things to anesthetize that,

00:40:07whether that's sex, whether that's drugs, or that's alcohol, whatever it is. And so I watch this,

00:40:12that same dynamic. My point in all of this is, again, it gets down to this personality. These

00:40:18personalities are addicts. They're addicts. They're addicts to the attention, if that makes sense.

00:40:25Right? And that's true in the ministry world, just as much as it is. If you look at the athletes,

00:40:30a lot of these athletes will push themselves to extraordinary levels of physical achievement

00:40:37to get attention. It's about getting attention. I mean, what is the whole of social media, right?

00:40:44The whole world of social media, and I watch this all the time, this competition where people are

00:40:51climbing all over each other to have more likes, to have more followers, right? It's like,

00:41:02you see, I'm thinking to myself, wow, that's where we are as humans now? That my life

00:41:10is about being liked? It's like, wow.

00:41:14I'm glad I don't have that problem, because people come who have escaped cult,

00:41:18they learn everything that they need, and then they want nothing more to do with it.

00:41:22Yeah.

00:41:22So there's this high turnover rate.

00:41:24Yeah.

00:41:25So there's another aspect to this, though. I don't know if you've thought through this,

00:41:29but this is, again, I've studied psychology in ways that-

00:41:32Enough, yeah.

00:41:33Enough that people would be shocked at how much I've actually read, but there is an actual addiction.

00:41:39You're talking about the addicted to the crowd or whatever, but-

00:41:43Right.

00:41:44So charismatic movement.

00:41:46Well, it's the crowd, but they're addicted to the euphoria is what they're addicted to,

00:41:50the energy, right?

00:41:51Well, it goes deeper than that. So the charismatic movement,

00:41:55it got its name because people who speak, it usually favors people with charisma.

00:42:00People who can speak charismatically, that's why the name, the group got its name.

00:42:05But in that type of personality, there is a people, whenever they have this charisma,

00:42:15they actually become intoxicated by their own egos. What happens is, whenever they get into that

00:42:22speaking euphoria, they enter into that stage persona. They start to feel the crowd, they feel

00:42:27the emotions, like you're talking about the musicians.

00:42:29They get a serotonin buzz.

00:42:31It's actually, you know, it's serotonin, but it's also a heavy dopamine hit.

00:42:35Dopamine, there you go.

00:42:36They take a big dopamine hit, and that rush, it gives them such an intoxicated feeling.

00:42:42They feel like, literally, they're high, right?

00:42:44Right.

00:42:45Well, they get up onto that high, and they start to feel superpowers. They feel better than they

00:42:51normally do.

00:42:52Right.

00:42:52They start to believe that they're filled with God, because, hey, my body feels great when I'm

00:42:57doing this. But they're actually getting that dopamine hit. And what happens is, like you said,

00:43:03after you go off of this, you have a bit of withdrawal, because now all that dopamine's left

00:43:07your system, and you've got to turn to drugs, or alcohol, or sex, or whatever it is. That's why you

00:43:13see so many of these leaders falling like this.

00:43:15Yeah, that's right. That people don't understand it's what happens after. It's not before,

00:43:21it's after. And again, I've been doing this for 40 years plus, so I know all the stories. And it's

00:43:29always when they come off the road, or when they got it, right? It's the coming down. That's where

00:43:36they're so vulnerable, because that's where they have to deal with their broken humanity. And it's

00:43:43just hard to face that when you've just had this euphoric experience, where like you said,

00:43:48your body's, you know, your brain chemicals are all, you know, you know, basically injecting you with

00:43:55all this energy, right? And then it all gets defined as the spirit, right? And so I watched

00:44:03this with Paul Kane. I don't know if you've seen any of his videos, but he was a terrible preacher.

00:44:10He was, you know, he had heart issues, right? And so Mike had stick him on stage.

00:44:19And if I didn't give him notes or something, you know, that had formed to it, he just rambled,

00:44:26like incoherently, right? And then suddenly, like, he'd get to a certain point, and he would just kick in.

00:44:34And then it was like, he was a different person. He was just like, real articulate, right? And he was

00:44:39just go, go, go, go, go, right? And then, you know, everybody get all wired, and then he'd get off the

00:44:45stage, and he'd go back to being sort of this bumbling idiot again. And I was like, oh, that was

00:44:54weird, right? It was like somebody just slapped him, and he just kind of woke up, and then he

00:45:00woke up. It's like 10 minutes, and then he was done. Yeah. Right? So you'd sit there for an hour

00:45:05to get 10 minutes. Well, you get that dopamine hit, and you get on this high, and it engages

00:45:10something in your brain that he's obviously feeling. So what's interesting about this, and the point

00:45:15that I'm building up to, these leaders, they go through all of these things that we've mentioned.

00:45:20There's different psychological aspects. There's different techniques that were adopted from

00:45:25Pentecostalism, et cetera. All of this combined creates the hero worship of today. But what

00:45:31happens is, once they get up to that point where they're getting that dopamine hit, and they feel

00:45:37empowered, they feel high, they're on that high, right? Well, whenever they leave and they get off

00:45:43of that high, they want more, just like any addict. They are an addict to that dopamine hit. So when they

00:45:49want more, they have to have it. They have to get back up there. That's why when you see a leader

00:45:55fall to sexual immorality or whatever, they've got to get back because they are an addict.

00:46:01So here's where it gets really odd for me. The movement itself, I call it the carrot on the

00:46:08stick religion. They tell all of the followers, rank and file members, you too can do just like

00:46:13me. Come join the prayer center. Come do this. Come do that. And they're trying to give the idea that

00:46:20it's not hero worship. We're building a new legion of heroes. You're part of that new legion.

00:46:26But because they are so addicted to that dopamine hit, watch what happens if one of them, one of the

00:46:32people that they're leading were to rise up and say, hey, I'm ready. I want to take over the pulpit.

00:46:36There is no way in heck they're going to let them take over the pulpit.

00:46:40Yeah, that's true. Well, again, they don't want to share the ear in the room, right? It's like,

00:46:45you know, I saw that over and over again. It's kind of sad for me. This is kind of personal, but

00:46:55I've known Mike since I was 18 years old. And, you know, we've had hundreds

00:47:01of men that have joined us, you know, that joined us from, what was it, 1976 all the way up to when I

00:47:13ended up splitting with them, which was in 89. And, you know, there's not a single person

00:47:21from those 20 plus years that has a relationship with Mike or the other way around,

00:47:27which is really my, again, this is the sociologist, the psychologist like you. See, I look at that

00:47:35stuff and I go, wait a minute, what is going on here? Right? How is it? And you see this often,

00:47:43you know, and again, I'm going to make a wild statement, but I've seen enough firsthand that I

00:47:52kind of believe this, which is, I think almost every one of the mega church pastors are narcissists.

00:48:01It's like they are incredible once they walk through that door and stand on that stage,

00:48:10right? And the attention's all on them, but you get them off of that stage and their ability to relate

00:48:17to people as humans, as friends, as family. If it doesn't exist. And I don't know of a single

00:48:26friendship Mike has from all those years, not one. And it became real clear when my book came out,

00:48:33because a lot of them circled back with me, thanking me for writing it. But every one of them

00:48:38had the same experience, which was they got caught up in Mike's charisma, his dynamic personality,

00:48:46right? His words is whatever, sold everything, moved, joined him only then to realize they were

00:48:56just sort of a cog in his machine, right? They were a commodity in building his world. And that was such a

00:49:06disillusioning, painful experience for people to deal with, right? Many of them ended up leaving

00:49:14the ministry. They're like, I don't want any part of this, which was sad for me. You know,

00:49:19it's like the relational side of this is whatever. So that's to me, I mean, it's interesting because

00:49:26it's like, well, what's wrong with having heroes? Well, it depends. I think there's healthy heroes and

00:49:36unhealthy heroes. I think to your point, healthy heroes inspire you, right? In other words, they're

00:49:46there laying their lives and sacrificing for your benefit for you to get somewhere. The unhealthy ones

00:49:56are, it's all about me, right? And you can feel it. If you're halfway discerning, right?

00:50:04I, again, these are my soul, you know, now that I'm nearly seven years old, I kind of understand my

00:50:13soul a little bit better. But I can tell now who's sucking my soul and who's pouring into it. Just

00:50:22sitting in a chair in a church or in a pew, right? I can feel whether the guy that's preaching

00:50:29is sucking something for himself out of me. Like he's there feeding almost like a spiritual vampire,

00:50:37right? He's like sucking my energy, right? Versus somebody who is a true bond servant,

00:50:44who loves people and loves to see other people succeed, then they pour out, right? You can feel the

00:50:53difference. Unfortunately, there's not many mega church pastors that I know. In fact, I don't think,

00:51:00can't think of a single one I've ever met. Darrell Bock Well, there's a reason for that. And that's

00:51:04what I was building up to. The model that was created, and it goes back to something you said

00:51:10earlier, you don't find this much outside of Pentecostalism or charismatic movement.

00:51:14Yeah. The model was created such that the people come into the audiences, whether it's an auditorium

00:51:21or a convention or even just a simple church. They come in with the idea that they are coming

00:51:26to see something greater than a human on stage. Whether they want to admit it or not, that's what

00:51:31it is. And there is a concept in psychology, I can't remember the name, the exact name of the condition,

00:51:38but this basically is the same thing. There exists a narcissistic feedback loop.

00:51:45So an average person, and I have seen it just like you have, average person who has no intention to

00:51:50become this mindset, starts getting in front of a crowd. Basically, they're creating a performance.

00:51:57Darrell Bock Right.

00:51:57Darrell Bock And they're really excited. They're really proud of their work. They study the sermon,

00:52:01they get up and they watch the crowd react. Well, if the crowd reacts well, they get on this emotional

00:52:07high. The dopamine hit starts to kick in and they feel something. They don't know what it is. They

00:52:13don't understand the dopamine hit. Well, they go back and they want to recreate that. That was great.

00:52:18Darrell Bock Let's do that again. Well, it starts this cycle. The crowd is expecting it.

00:52:22The person who's giving the speech is wanting more. They want that hit again and go back, rinse and

00:52:29repeat, rinse and repeat. Well, eventually what happens over time is you could take a person who doesn't

00:52:35have narcissistic tendencies. Eventually, they will develop what looks exactly like narcissistic

00:52:41personality disorder. Darrell Bock Interesting. Yeah. Well, one thing that

00:52:44always fascinated me when I kind of crossed over to the Pentecostal world was people would say,

00:52:51you go to a meeting, right? God showed up, right? And their definition of God showed up was somebody

00:53:00spoke in tongues. There was some prophet, right? God showed up. And I'm thinking to myself, well,

00:53:05wait a minute. If God lives in us, like, isn't he there just because we're there?

00:53:13Darrell Bock Yeah. And that's exactly what I'm

00:53:15talking about, right? They're going to see something greater.

00:53:17Darrell Bock Yes. But then God showed up. And I'm thinking, well,

00:53:21wait a minute. The body of Christ is God in us. So, what do you mean he showed up? Like,

00:53:27he's already there. You know what I mean? But it was this, it's the mentality you're talking about.

00:53:34It's like, I realized, wait, they're going for the show, right? They're going, look, instead of

00:53:41looking for God in others, right? They're looking for the show. They want the circus. They want to see

00:53:49something extraordinary, something special, right? They want to go, wow. And I think that whole

00:53:58mentality makes us incredibly vulnerable, not only to get conned and used and abused, right? It also

00:54:08distorts us from what's really God. In some ways, it's like somebody's, you know, you hear this phrase,

00:54:15well, it's right in front of you. The reason you didn't see it, it's right in front of you.

00:54:20I feel that way often about the Pentecostal world. It's like, wait a minute. You keep going to these

00:54:26meetings looking for God, you know, and you're defining it as this supernatural thing. Well,

00:54:32he's right there. Just turn around and love the person next to you. Like, give him a hug. Say

00:54:37something kind. Like, why is that not as equally important as any of this other stuff, right? So

00:54:45we're so focused on the sensational and the cool thing to get another dopamine hit that we miss what's

00:54:53right in front of us, which is God. And I think that's where I think the church has got itself in

00:54:58trouble. And I think social media and sensationalism and all of this is just making it worse because now

00:55:06it's all about getting attention, right? Getting likes, getting, you know, and, and, and, you know,

00:55:14it's what I saw back, you know, to your point earlier, it's like you get a bunch of leaders on

00:55:20a stage and then they're outdoing each other, right? And so it's like every meeting, I have to

00:55:26come up with something new so that I can keep the crowd coming back, keep the buzz going. And it's,

00:55:32that's where they get into trouble then, right? That's where I see the prophetic guys

00:55:36start stretching stuff. And I see something that was a level one discernment turned into a level 10.

00:55:45I was, right? I mean, Mike did it. You know, Mike in 1976 walked me across the church parking lot

00:55:52telling me about this impression he had about how God wanted to impact Christianity.

00:55:5920, you know, 20 years later was he was taken to the third heavens and had an open revelation.

00:56:04I mean, I've seen this over and over again. If you were there in the beginning, you know,

00:56:10the humble beginnings and how something was just this simple thing. And, but that doesn't sell,

00:56:15right? It doesn't sell. And so it's, but again, I don't want to just, the thing I'm, I'm, I'm trying

00:56:24to be careful of here is it's, it's a both and problem. Meaning it's not just a leadership issue.

00:56:30It's a congregational problem. We're the ones that keep coming back wanting this stuff, right? We,

00:56:38we create the soil or the environment for these type of personalities to take advantage of us.

00:56:45Well, it's another podcast for another day, but that same dopamine hit that the minister gets on

00:56:49the platform, when the people come expecting this and they see the emotional high of the minister

00:56:54and they get caught up in that emotional high, they get the same hit. So what happens is as they're,

00:57:01as they get this high that they don't understand what is, they start to mistake that high for the

00:57:05spirit. And you'll find I've, I've even had numerous cult members tell me this ex cult members after

00:57:12they left, they say, yeah, I don't understand it, John. But when I was there, I really felt the spirit.

00:57:17I felt something. I know I did. Well, that's what they felt. They felt the dopamine hit. And I'm not

00:57:22saying that, you know, God wasn't in the presence at all times or whatever, but you have to understand

00:57:27that it's like you said, it is, it is this and the other. There are both things happening.

00:57:32Well, again, as a sociologist, I want to study human behavior. So guess what I was watching?

00:57:37Taylor Swift's Heirist tour. And the reason was because she was packing stadiums out just like all

00:57:44the preachers. It was a spiritual experience for most people. They were in a stadium with 70 to

00:57:5290,000 other people all singing together high, just on the moment, right? All this humanity

00:58:01congregated together, singing these songs. And people walked out of there just like Pentecostals,

00:58:09a revival meeting, right? I'm watching all this going, wait a minute,

00:58:13she's doing the same thing. God isn't even on the menu, right? And people are walking out with the

00:58:19same exact phrase out, you know what I mean? They're saying the same exact thing coming out

00:58:25of a Taylor Swift concert as they do any sort of revival meeting. I'm like, wow, that's kind of

00:58:32interesting. This is why my brain works. I'm like, right, two things, completely different worlds.

00:58:38Everybody's having the same experience, feeling the same thing, right? Only in this one, God's not

00:58:43even involved here.

00:58:44Darrell Bock Well, back in the days of the healing

00:58:46revivalists when the Beatles were touring, there was this point in time in which people were

00:58:52claiming to be healed after having attended a Beatles concert. The faith healers just went nuts.

00:58:58You can't say this. This was not God. We're the only place to have this. But what they're talking

00:59:03about, you know, people, as you get that dopamine hit, you do feel better. And if you have an

00:59:08ailment that is causing you pain, well, that dopamine hit's going to take away some of your

00:59:12pain. So, well, you just mentioned something that's another red flag, which is exclusiveness.

00:59:18Right. It's that thing. Wait, you can't do that. That's exclusively us. Like we have ownership

00:59:26that belongs to our tribe. You can't have that. Right. Which is, again, another thing that's so

00:59:32revealing about motive. It's like Jesus was over there giving everything away, feeding people,

00:59:39healing them. Right. He didn't care if you were a Samaritan or a Roman or whatever. Like he's just,

00:59:44you know, giving it away. And we're over there going, wait a minute. You can't do that. You're

00:59:49not part of us. Again, another sign that is this really God? It's like Jesus wouldn't act like this.

00:59:58Jesus wouldn't have this. So, again, you know, I have the take and give thing that goes in my

01:00:06spirit. Then the other one is the minute I see exclusiveness. Like you can feel it in the person

01:00:12that's preaching or whatever that somehow they're exclusive, they're unique. You know,

01:00:17they have something no one else has. I'm like, okay, I'm out of here. This is so dangerous.

01:00:24It is. And I think that's really the point I'm trying to make. If people would just stop and

01:00:29think about what's going on, how it doesn't resemble Christianity, but it does resemble

01:00:34the ancient mythologies. Why would you want to stay in this?

01:00:38But then it's like people, right? Then people start bragging. And you see, you saw this in your

01:00:44world, right? They start bragging that they're a part of this unique thing. Right? And so it's like

01:00:51in the same way the preachers fallen into the trap of arrogance, then the people in that group,

01:00:57I mean, it's what you're seeing right now with the Bickle family and some of the kind of the

01:01:03single fans in their world. Like, you know, they have the truth. They're loyal, right? It's them

01:01:09against the world, right? And there's an arrogance. And you saw it with Mike's sister belittling

01:01:15everyone, berating people. You're all idiots. You don't see. You're not, you don't have no insight,

01:01:23right? You don't know. I do. You see, I mean, it's just all these attitudes and motives that come

01:01:33out in these moments. And that's why, you know, I think discernment to me, and I think I've mentioned

01:01:38this before as we've talked, discernment to me is just understanding the nature of a thing.

01:01:45Right? Discerning its nature. And if you're wanting to start a, you know, an orchard,

01:01:55you need to make sure that you understand that that little twig there is actually an apple tree.

01:02:01That's its nature. It's going to produce apples. And I think one of the things that people sometimes

01:02:08with me, they'll say, well, you're so prophetic. You predicted where Mike would end up or where I,

01:02:14like, years ago. And I went, no, I'm discerning. I looked at the nature of this. And given that this

01:02:23is the nature, this is what's underneath, these things are in play. And if they don't get dealt

01:02:29with, this is where it's going to end up. You know, this is the nature of it, right? And so it's the same

01:02:37thing. It's like, you can see this coming a mile away. Now, the problem is, is it takes a little

01:02:43time and experience and getting burned and some heartache to kind of wise up and become more

01:02:50discerning. You know, discernment is sort of like perspective. You gain it looking in the rear view

01:02:56mirror of life. Or in some cases, like some of us, like with me, I just have a sick sense about things.

01:03:02And I don't even know in my head why. All I know is I get something inside me, it goes,

01:03:08ah, something's off here. And then it sends me down this bunny trail of research going, why

01:03:15am I so uncomfortable? And that's when I begin to uncover what's really going on.

01:03:21So it wasn't that if I had a spiritual revelation, it was in the intuition, something's wrong,

01:03:27wrong. But it's just by hard work and, and, and research that you end up getting to the bottom

01:03:34of why, why is this wrong? Right? So we, yeah, we were in a, in a very difficult situation. I'm kind

01:03:42of wondering what's going to happen, you know, with future generations and this whole hero thing,

01:03:47because truth be told, it's always been there, right? It's like, you see it from the beginning

01:03:52of time. Humans have this need or this want to, you know, to, to worship somebody greater

01:04:01than themselves.

01:04:03Well, it's like you gave the example with the Bickle family, where you have the worship

01:04:06of Zeus, you're going to have the Helen of Troy. So there's, there's so much more that

01:04:11I could say and go into. But I, like I said, I just wanted to get into this and think through

01:04:16it from an IHOP KC perspective, because it really matches for me what I see in the ancient

01:04:21mythologies, not Christianity.

01:04:24Well, Mike, I know he was, you know, whether it was as an athlete or whatever, it's like

01:04:29he always wanted to be the hero. Like he, I don't know if there's such a thing as hero

01:04:35syndrome, but if there is, he's certainly had it. But then of course I met a lot of guys

01:04:39like that in the ministry world that were at a certain level, right? They were all, had

01:04:45this drive. But again, they're, they're like spiritual vultures. They're feeding off of

01:04:52the adulation of the congregation or the crowd. That's what feeds it. And if that doesn't

01:04:59get met, right, there's either they'll come back the next week with something more sensational

01:05:06and manipulative, or they fall off the wagon and they get into an affair. It's kind of one

01:05:12or the other. It's like they're, it's no, I'm just sounds crazy, but it's true. It's

01:05:17like either they get their dopamine hit from preaching on Sunday, or they go get in trouble

01:05:24because as people know, you know, breaking the rules is a dopamine hit.

01:05:30There's a lot that I could say with that too, with in psychology, whenever a person gets

01:05:35into one of these emotional states, they have a hyper sex drive. So that's, you know, it's

01:05:40part of the problem. But anyway, thank you so much for doing this. This was been,

01:05:44it's been a lot of fun.

01:05:46Well, hopefully it's helpful. I mean, I know we're kind of processing this out loud. So people

01:05:50need to be very generous in their critique because we're just kind of talking it out as

01:05:56we go. It's not like we came with a, you know, a pre plan of, you know, of, you know, we're

01:06:02going to, you know, like we already have all the answers. We're just kind of giving our

01:06:08observations going. Here's what I've seen. And this is where I'm at. So it's a process

01:06:14to those who don't know our process. I literally called Bob up right before this. And I said,

01:06:18Hey, let's talk hero worship. Go exactly. So we're doing this as we go.

01:06:24Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the

01:06:27web. You can find us at William dash Branham.org for more about the dark side of the new apostolic

01:06:32reformation. You can read weaponize religion from Christian identity to the NAR available

01:06:37on Amazon, Kindle and audible.

01:07:08Yeah.

01:07:09Yeah.

01:07:14Yeah.

01:07:25Yeah.

01:07:30Yeah.

Hero Worship in the Church: The Psychology of Idolatry | Unpacking KC Prophets | Bob Scott | 485

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