- 2 days ago
John welcomes Daniel Bright to discuss his near involvement with Youth With A Mission and the cultural, theological, and economic realities he observed from within Norway’s YWAM-influenced church networks. Together they explore revival culture, The SEND, 24/7 prayer movements, and the subtle pressures placed on young adults to go “all in” for missions without long-term financial planning.
The conversation moves from charismatic history and linguistic authority to branding, cultural superiority, and the often-overlooked economic consequences facing former missionaries in their 30s. Through humor, historical analogies, and even Tolkien, Daniel reflects on work, stability, and what healthy Christian maturity actually looks like after the mission trip ends.
00:00 Introduction
01:12 Daniel Bright’s Background And Near Miss With YWAM
04:41 YWAM In Norway, Kona, And The Youth Pipeline
07:04 No Pension, No Mortgage, No Exit Plan
10:02 Hawaii, Lovebombing, And The Mission Experience
13:21 Lessianism, Tongues, And Charismatic Performance
20:00 The Send, Prayer Culture, And Going “All In”
24:41 The Financial Cost Of YWAM And Lost Retirement Years
30:27 Beer, Monasteries, And Why Stability Matters
35:50 What Youth With A Mission Was Supposed To Be
39:28 Americanization, English Prestige, And Theological Confusion
44:00 Exporting Pentecostal Culture Across Borders
51:25 Why The Gospel Should Be Clear And Understandable
56:42 Final Advice: The Shire, Home, And Ordinary Faithfulness
______________________
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
The conversation moves from charismatic history and linguistic authority to branding, cultural superiority, and the often-overlooked economic consequences facing former missionaries in their 30s. Through humor, historical analogies, and even Tolkien, Daniel reflects on work, stability, and what healthy Christian maturity actually looks like after the mission trip ends.
00:00 Introduction
01:12 Daniel Bright’s Background And Near Miss With YWAM
04:41 YWAM In Norway, Kona, And The Youth Pipeline
07:04 No Pension, No Mortgage, No Exit Plan
10:02 Hawaii, Lovebombing, And The Mission Experience
13:21 Lessianism, Tongues, And Charismatic Performance
20:00 The Send, Prayer Culture, And Going “All In”
24:41 The Financial Cost Of YWAM And Lost Retirement Years
30:27 Beer, Monasteries, And Why Stability Matters
35:50 What Youth With A Mission Was Supposed To Be
39:28 Americanization, English Prestige, And Theological Confusion
44:00 Exporting Pentecostal Culture Across Borders
51:25 Why The Gospel Should Be Clear And Understandable
56:42 Final Advice: The Shire, Home, And Ordinary Faithfulness
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:31Hello, 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 at william-branham.org.
00:00:42And with me, I have my very special guest, Daniel Bright, nearly former member of YWAM.
00:00:47Daniel, it's good to have you on and to discuss how you were nearly a member of YWAM.
00:00:53There's so much.
00:00:54I was reading through email this morning before you got on, just trying to familiarize myself with the story.
00:01:00And, oh, my gosh, so many things that we could talk about.
00:01:03I don't know that we can constrict it to one podcast, but I'm going to try.
00:01:07Maybe if you could just start to introduce yourself and let everybody know a little bit about yourself.
00:01:12Yeah, I am nearly in YWAM.
00:01:14I grew up in East London, and I was in a family of six.
00:01:18We were homeschooled, not for religious or ideological reasons.
00:01:20We just didn't really want to have to get out of bed before eight.
00:01:23So we followed some American curriculum sunlight.
00:01:26We went to a local Church of England church.
00:01:28It was a three-minute walk away.
00:01:30And so my upbringing was within that kind of triangle of being told that I was a liberal Anglican who
00:01:37didn't believe in Calvinism from the Baptists over there.
00:01:40And then I was being told I was a cessationist because I didn't believe in speaking tongues by the hyper
00:01:44-charismatics there.
00:01:45And then the third option was the liberals saying I was a conservative Calvinist.
00:01:50So we had all those kind of three things going up.
00:01:53So I suppose I could write a book called Being a Christian at Church because that is where I went
00:01:57through a lot of apologetics and defense.
00:01:59That was the first sort of 20 or so years of my life.
00:02:03And my links or almost links with the YWAM date to 2016.
00:02:07I emigrated to Norway there with my wife who's Norwegian.
00:02:10She was from a Lutheran background up north.
00:02:13And so from Anglicanism and Lutheranism, we chose the local free Lutheran church because the national Lutheran church in Norway
00:02:21is a bit of a dice roll with a very large minus five modifier to that result.
00:02:26For most of the local state Lutheran churches, we correspond, I think, to the situation in the U.S. for
00:02:32the Lutheran churches.
00:02:33Not reliably biblical churches which you'd want to go to.
00:02:37So very quickly at the church we went to, which is a great church.
00:02:42Many of them are listening.
00:02:43We don't have any issues with them.
00:02:46It was replanted by an ex-YWAM in the early 80s.
00:02:52The church we went to was about six or seven.
00:02:55Sorry, the church we go to back in the early 80s was six or seven people left, three faithful believers.
00:03:00And they said, we're going to fold, but we're going to dig out the basement in our church and then
00:03:04we're going to just ask anyone, just come in and take it over.
00:03:06We don't mind.
00:03:07So they reached out to the local YWAM base and an ex-YWAMer said, yeah, I'll replant it.
00:03:13So he and his family of five children, very faithful, still at the church.
00:03:17They gave it a go.
00:03:18And since then, it's been it's been really good.
00:03:20So it's kind of an ex-YWAM church or a church of YWAMers who have been doing it from the
00:03:26early 80s.
00:03:27And funny enough, this church has all the makings of an excellent cult podcast.
00:03:32It's the re-founder of the church, if you will.
00:03:36His children are still there.
00:03:38One of them is on staff.
00:03:39One of them is married.
00:03:40One of the elders who was also there in the 80s.
00:03:42Oh, I can see where this is going.
00:03:44But it actually turned all right.
00:03:45I still do one to one Bible studies with the son of the pastor who restarted the church in the
00:03:5080s.
00:03:51So you can you can kind of auto type the direction this church went in in the 80s, 90s.
00:03:57Really, it's what it's exposed to.
00:03:58A lot of people in the 90s went along to the Toronto Blessing.
00:04:01They're quite involved in that.
00:04:03And a very particular Norwegian scandal involved in the mid 2000s around their attitude to counselling,
00:04:10which is very untranslated.
00:04:13I wasn't really sure what that was.
00:04:14So I came in on the scene in 2016 after the church, the local YWAM base.
00:04:19I say the church and the YWAM base.
00:04:21They're more or less one and the same.
00:04:22The YWAM base had planted a school, a very good school, private school, just up the road.
00:04:27So pretty much all of the children in the church went to that school.
00:04:30Again, sounds a little bit cult-like, but it actually worked out all right.
00:04:34Because they were in Norway.
00:04:35They're in a school in Norway.
00:04:36You know, Norway's not very receptive grounds for the cult.
00:04:41When we got there in 2016, everyone of my generation, I'm 37, 90% of the people of my generation
00:04:47had all done YWAM.
00:04:49But they've done it locally in Norway about 10, 15 years ago.
00:04:54But what I've seen happening now, this is a 90% YWAM church.
00:04:58What I've seen now is that a lot of the people, a lot younger than me, 19, 20, they're all
00:05:03going to Hawaii, Kona base Hawaii, which I think several of your guests have spoken about.
00:05:08And I joke to them, my friends, it's astonishing how many young people God called to Hawaii.
00:05:17I'm sure there are many better places God could call you to when you're 19.
00:05:21Hawaii has been a strong tendency.
00:05:23So there they've been exposed to people who had gone to Bethel and, you know, International School of Hogwarts Ministry.
00:05:32I always think of the Harry Potter theme tune from thinking of Bethel.
00:05:36Ten points to Bethel door.
00:05:39That's what a lot of people are exposed to and are exposed to increasingly.
00:05:45There's two guys at my church who've got a podcast and a lot of their guests have been to the
00:05:51Kona base Hawaii.
00:05:52So the situation in my church was ex-YWAMers who were going to the YWAM bases in Norway.
00:05:58But now a situation is a lot of the children of those ex-YWAMers are going by default to the
00:06:06US and to a base in Montana.
00:06:08I think someone else might have spoken about, which is a problem, because what tends to happen is, as I
00:06:15said to you in Nima,
00:06:16a YWAM stands for young women after men, youth without any money, youth wanting a marriage.
00:06:21And I have a deep respect for a 19, 20-year-old who says, I'm essentially doing this as Christian
00:06:29dating for six months.
00:06:30Thumbs up from me.
00:06:32Do you DTS, do you discipleship training school for six months?
00:06:35You meet your wife, you shouldn't really be dating anyway, but you do date and you end up getting married.
00:06:39And I've got a lot of respect for that.
00:06:41And then they get out and they get on with their real life, so they get a job.
00:06:45The negative side of what I'm seeing is really theological.
00:06:50I mean, the charismatic aside, there's not sort of mass fake healings going on in my church.
00:06:55What is happening is that men, and mainly men in their late 20s, early 30s, suddenly go, oh my goodness,
00:07:05hang on a second.
00:07:06I need to settle down.
00:07:07I need a job.
00:07:08You've talked about this loads in all the episodes.
00:07:11They don't get pensions contributions.
00:07:14They haven't got a mortgage on the go.
00:07:15There's no insurance because they've been volunteering the whole time with YWAM.
00:07:19That's not a problem that's unique to YWAM.
00:07:21The Jehovah Witnesses have this going on as well.
00:07:25And so they hit sort of 35, and the content of their newsletters, their prayer newsletters, changes from pray for
00:07:32us to go to Bhutan, to Ukraine, to do this and that.
00:07:35And suddenly their newsletter is, can you help us get a car?
00:07:38Can you help us get a mortgage?
00:07:39And I'm like, hang on a second.
00:07:41You guys want what I have.
00:07:44You want the comfortable middle-class lifestyle, and there's nothing wrong with that.
00:07:49I don't think that's the be-all and the end-all of the Christian life.
00:07:51But the point is, these guys who are telling me, go in all in for Jesus, ascend, give everything to
00:07:56him.
00:07:56But when you're 35, what you really want is a mortgage, and suddenly God is calling you back to your
00:08:03home country when your children approach 16, 17, because they need to get their education sorted out.
00:08:08These are not bad things to do.
00:08:10And so a lot of people are, in that sense, maturing from YWAM in Norway.
00:08:16But they just need to be clear at their sort of revival meetings, you know, the send.
00:08:21They say, go all in for Jesus when you're 22.
00:08:23I'm sure.
00:08:24You can do many funny things when you're 22.
00:08:26But just be aware that the culture, the system, the strategy we have at my church, which I don't criticize,
00:08:32is that you settle down, get a job,
00:08:35play in the middle-class lifestyle that you lied you didn't want.
00:08:38You do want it when you're 35.
00:08:41So in terms of the general charismatic, charismania, all of the William Brandon stuff, there has been a fair amount
00:08:48of that as well locally in my town.
00:08:51There was a church nearby us where a lot of people were at YWAM as well.
00:08:54There's five good churches in the town.
00:08:56They had someone saying, we're going to build this new building, we're going to buy a plot of land, and
00:09:01it's going to be great.
00:09:02And a group of people in the church said, hang on a second, I don't think it's going to work
00:09:05very well, and it would take a miracle, an act of God for this to go well.
00:09:09They said, oh, they said it's a miracle, an act of God, no, no, no, we didn't say that was
00:09:13going to happen.
00:09:15It would take a miracle for this to work.
00:09:17The building project didn't work, and that church ended up causing a lot of people to lose their mortgages and
00:09:22their life savings for this failed building project.
00:09:26So that was the situation with Philadelphia in Harmar.
00:09:31There haven't been the rather, sadly, standard large-scale sex scandals going on in my hometown.
00:09:39It's largely been financial-related, and a lot of people just burning out and having given so much to the
00:09:44organization in terms of time, monetary money, because they don't have any, and then reaching their 30s and just not
00:09:51really knowing what to do next with their life.
00:09:55So that's what I've experienced almost being in YWAM.
00:10:01Well, I have to admit, I have a really heavy screening process, so when people send me information, I dive
00:10:07deeply, and the moment I hit the point where you're talking about Stewie, which half of our audience probably has
00:10:13no idea who is.
00:10:14It's kind of funny.
00:10:15The moment I hit that, I'm like, okay, I've got to have this guy on so we can talk about
00:10:18Stewie.
00:10:20Crazy, crazy funny, but your humor in there.
00:10:23Actually, it was the humor that I picked up on because that will resonate with the audience.
00:10:27But the humor was so targeted and directed at things that really need to be talked about.
00:10:33Youth wanting a marriage.
00:10:35I think I've actually heard that phrase from somebody else.
00:10:37But the way that they push people to make relationships that are cohesive to the church, for me, I mean,
00:10:47this is going to happen in any church, right?
00:10:49But if you do it in Hawaii, there's no way you're going to forget this memory.
00:10:54And if you just happen to take your mate in Hawaii, there's no way either one of you are going
00:10:58to forget this memory.
00:10:59Now that is associated with the church, and you're creating this strategy where you're literally – it's like love bombing
00:11:08the people to keep them in, rather than an actual mission to help people.
00:11:11I mean, who are you going to help in Hawaii, right?
00:11:14Yeah.
00:11:15I'm like, the whole thing just doesn't make sense to me.
00:11:19But here's what I have as a problem with that.
00:11:23I don't really have a problem with a church giving kids experience.
00:11:27I actually think that's a good thing.
00:11:28So in that, I will probably say that I'm in favor of YWAM to some extent.
00:11:34But you don't frame it as the mission, right?
00:11:37You don't – like if I was a pastor, which I'm not.
00:11:40I never want to be.
00:11:41But if I were to say, okay, church, we're going to take all of your kids, and we're going to
00:11:45take them to Hawaii.
00:11:47We're going to have fun.
00:11:48We're going to party.
00:11:49And we're going to have glory for God in the place, and children can see how to behave in a
00:11:55normal situation and still be a believer in God.
00:11:58And then we're going to come back and train for helping people to learn more about Jesus.
00:12:03That's a good thing.
00:12:05I see that as very healthy.
00:12:06But framing it as the mission, like the end of day's mission, we're going to have an end of day's
00:12:10mission, and you're going to go party in Hawaii.
00:12:13I just don't get it, man.
00:12:15I think some of your other guests talked about a psychological problem, which is when you're getting beaten down by
00:12:21fasting and not sleeping enough and eating well, you end up being in a psychological state where you want to
00:12:26latch on to a motherly figure or a fatherly figure.
00:12:29And that can be quite a risk.
00:12:31And you might think that you've formed these bonds in YWAM and these high-control, high-requirement groups.
00:12:40But what you're really doing is you'd have latched on to anyone, really.
00:12:44And it's a bit Stockholm syndrome there, is what I've seen.
00:12:49But when you've got well-fed people who are in comfortable areas, that's also a challenge in the Christian life
00:12:55to learn to rely on God, certainly.
00:12:56But you're less likely to be carried up and swept into someone's ill-thought, ill-conceived plan for mass revival.
00:13:03It was always one of my biggest fears growing up.
00:13:05The pastor at the front was going to start jumping in the area and saying, we're all going to go
00:13:09out and evangelize the local supermarket.
00:13:11Let's all go out on the streets now.
00:13:12I was always really afraid of that for some reason.
00:13:15Thankfully, it was an irrational fear.
00:13:17Yeah, but it wouldn't be part of the Lord of the Church.
00:13:22To get on to the Stewie family guy line of thinking, this was originally about me framing it, talking about
00:13:30believing in the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit.
00:13:33Because often, as I mentioned earlier, when I was growing up, people would say, you don't believe in this, you're
00:13:37a cessationist.
00:13:39Let me introduce you to the phrase which I've coined.
00:13:42I've never heard anyone else say it.
00:13:43It's called less-ationism.
00:13:45It's not cessation, it's less-ation.
00:13:48So I happen to speak six languages, French, Spanish, German, Norwegian, and Chinese, and a smattering of English.
00:13:53I didn't make up any of those languages.
00:13:55So when I'm meeting somebody who says, do you speak in tongues?
00:13:58I'll often just respond to them in the language that I think they won't speak.
00:14:02Some people do speak French.
00:14:03I was speaking in tongues as I could do demonstrators.
00:14:07It wasn't because the disciples said, oh, we're just going to babble now and, you know, throw popcorn in the
00:14:13air, run around with a mouth open and see how much we catch.
00:14:15They were told by other people, oh, wow, they're speaking our languages.
00:14:18So the analogy I came up with is Stewie from Family Guy saying, is this how anyone speaks in this
00:14:24episode?
00:14:25Is Seth MacFarlane doing an impression of how British people speak?
00:14:29Whereas if you want to hear how someone from the UK speaks, well, listen to me, or some of your
00:14:33other guests, and, you know, Patrick Stewart, and, you know, that's the real accent.
00:14:38But if someone had just been raised on Stewie from Family Guy, they think, well, he's the real deal.
00:14:43Do you not believe in British accents?
00:14:45Well, like, dude, but he's not speaking the right way.
00:14:49And the reason that we know that he's not speaking true isn't because we've studied his accent.
00:14:54It's because if you know the real way people speak, like Patrick Stewart, myself, and, you know, even the variants
00:14:59of Scottish and Welsh, you realise there's a huge wealth of diversity.
00:15:03And I wouldn't need to make up any accent from the British files.
00:15:07I would just simply say, look, there it is.
00:15:09Listen to that.
00:15:09That's quite different to how Stewie speaks.
00:15:11But do you see the fake one now?
00:15:13Well, that was the analogy I was going for with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which always tends to
00:15:20be speaking in tongues.
00:15:23That's the easiest one to kind of fake up on a stage.
00:15:26And if I remember everything I've learned from you, it starts with Parham, then there's a guy who goes to
00:15:33Africa, and they all try and speak in the local languages, and it turns out it's all making up.
00:15:38And then someone goes, oh, look, I've got a load of Chinese, and he was just all made up scribbles
00:15:41as well.
00:15:42So then the whole movement said, well, we'll move away from it being languages that people can understand to this
00:15:48language of angels.
00:15:50I'm sure the angels are scratching the head and saying, well, we don't understand what you're saying either.
00:15:53Can you not just have a serious conversation instead of babbling?
00:15:57And so that was the analogy I was going for then.
00:15:59And it also made me think of something else today.
00:16:03There was some people I know from the US who were having a Scottish day because they were proud of
00:16:08their Scottish heritage.
00:16:09And they were coming up with a few things which were correct.
00:16:13But I've got a fairly good knowledge of Scotland, even more so in Norway, but let's stick with Scotland.
00:16:18And I would say to them, well, this is how they do things in Scotland.
00:16:20And they say, well, you're making this up.
00:16:22Well, I don't need to make any of it up because there's a huge wealth of reality.
00:16:27You don't need to make something up when it's true.
00:16:29I would say to them, have you heard of Iron Brew?
00:16:32You know, the two main football rivalries in Glasgow, you know, do you know there's been Gaelic and Gaelic?
00:16:38You know, all these things that can draw on the huge wealth of experience in Scotland.
00:16:43I wouldn't need to make anything up.
00:16:45And so that's what strikes me with the charismatic, Charismanian movements.
00:16:50How much stuff is just, it's true.
00:16:52If this is your Holy Spirit, why is he less than what we read about in the New Testament?
00:16:57I'm a cessationist. I'm not a cessationist. I believe that God can move however he wants to.
00:17:01But when we compare it to the modern Gnostics, which I'm pretty sure you call them,
00:17:05I'd say to them, your Holy Spirit is less than what I would come to expect from someone who calls
00:17:10themselves a charismatic.
00:17:12Your Holy Spirit can't speak in tongues. Your Holy Spirit rarely heals.
00:17:17And there's a get-out clause, even when he does heal, that's not a mark of the true salvation.
00:17:20It's about the fruit of the Spirit.
00:17:23Perfect. And so, yeah, that's what I've noticed mainly with the whole fake healing stuff as well.
00:17:30You know, one of the points that you brought up in the email, I had actually never thought of it
00:17:35that way.
00:17:36And the funny part is, once you said it in your humorous way, I caught it because I pick up
00:17:41on the humor, right?
00:17:42I thought at that moment, you know, I've had other guests try to say this, but it really didn't click
00:17:47with me.
00:17:48And hopefully it clicks with the audience, but you said something to the effect, and I'm going off of memory,
00:17:53but there's the economic reality of all-in for God versus the real life.
00:17:59This is something that I knew.
00:18:00I mean, that's what they're all talking about, right?
00:18:03You're all-in until you're not.
00:18:05And you're all-in thinking this is the end of the world mission,
00:18:08but then you're watching people graduate and leave, and they go home.
00:18:12And what happened to their life?
00:18:14They've not gone to college.
00:18:15They have no real work skills.
00:18:17They have some of them.
00:18:19I mean, I hate to say it, but it's like you're robbing that part of their life,
00:18:23the part that's most fundamental, robbing it from them,
00:18:26and then throwing them on the street because what are they going to do when they get back out?
00:18:29You're kind of stuck in this limbo between the real world and the church,
00:18:33and the church has, I hate to say it, but it feels like the church has failed you in that
00:18:39aspect
00:18:39because you're all-in, end of the world is coming, we've got this end of the day's revival.
00:18:44Oh, and now you can go home.
00:18:45Yeah.
00:18:47I grew up on the edge of the yearning for revival.
00:18:51We knew of the Welsh revival.
00:18:53That was very different.
00:18:54That was in the Welsh language, and there were a couple of links between him and Azusa Street.
00:18:58They tried to reach out to him, and he was like,
00:19:00Well, okay, it's nice to hear from you, but I don't think I want to appear on your podcast, more
00:19:04or less.
00:19:07Nigel Evans, whatever it's called, Mr. Welsh revival, he didn't want anything to do with Azusa.
00:19:12They contacted him, and he said, Well, no, thanks.
00:19:15But the Welsh revival was quite short.
00:19:17It's a bit like the Asbury revival.
00:19:18There's a right, no more revival, we're finished with that.
00:19:21I think what I was talking about in my email when you're saying all-in for Jesus
00:19:25is that the local YWAM base now in Norway, I'm a 20-minute drive away from it,
00:19:32they're doing 24-7-hour prayer.
00:19:34Yikes.
00:19:36And that level of demand is, I don't think God wants that much.
00:19:40I've just been reading through Exodus with my prayer mates,
00:19:43who's the son of the founder of the church, and we were struck by how God says in the tabernacle
00:19:49when they're constructing it, God actually says to them,
00:19:51Right enough, we don't need any more donations.
00:19:54Imagine if a church leader said that in his new newsletter.
00:19:56No more tides, I have enough private jets.
00:19:59I don't need any more.
00:20:01So that's what really struck us from reading Exodus.
00:20:04Wow, Moses is not acting like a modern Pentecostal Brannemite.
00:20:09You know, John is saying, We've got enough gold, don't give us any more.
00:20:15So when God says, Give enough, I think we used to the parable of the 10,000 talents
00:20:20and the 5,000 talents.
00:20:21But the issue of sufficiency, I think if I started a prayer room,
00:20:27it would be called 31, 30 minutes a week, 30 minutes a day, like 30 minutes once a week.
00:20:34I wouldn't want to push it.
00:20:36It's the analogy of the hare and the tortoise, right?
00:20:38I'm surrounded by people in their early 20s and then their mid-30s saying,
00:20:43We went all in for Jesus.
00:20:44We went to the prayer meeting.
00:20:45We went to everything.
00:20:45And then I'm left saying, Great, you can help out at Sunday school with me.
00:20:50No.
00:20:51Right.
00:20:51It's not really Hawaii, is it?
00:20:53So I'm the only person going on a Sunday school leaders conference for my church
00:21:00for the ones to sixes.
00:21:03It's not Hawaii, is it?
00:21:06That's everyone not going all in in that regard.
00:21:09They're waving the shoes during the sends, which was the call, didn't it?
00:21:15It was the call with a certain Mike Bickle, which I'm a little bit familiar with.
00:21:20And he started off with a couple of other guys.
00:21:22And then that became the send.
00:21:23I played a part in stopping Todd White coming to Norway because I said,
00:21:27This guy's a lunatic.
00:21:28He's from Hogwarts.
00:21:29We don't want any of that.
00:21:31And as we were told, it was a non-denominational thing.
00:21:34Everyone's going to be involved.
00:21:35But I said, Todd White is right up there on the top corner of what can still be called Christian.
00:21:39And I would place myself kind of in the middle, maybe a little bit more calvaced
00:21:43during 20-year-old day a week.
00:21:45But he was right out there.
00:21:46And I said, none of that.
00:21:47So this whole all-in thing just doesn't really, it doesn't play out in a kind of regular,
00:21:53just show up at church on a Sunday, maybe one Sunday a week, one Sunday a month,
00:21:58if you can manage it.
00:22:01People are still going all in for Jesus when they're on their missions trip
00:22:04and when they were 22.
00:22:07They're just absent.
00:22:09And far from me having deep theological discussions with these YWAMers or XYMers,
00:22:14they're just not there that frequently at church.
00:22:16They're often on the base because the base is, they're serving,
00:22:20or there's another worship team, or there's Heidi Baker.
00:22:23I think she came a few years ago before COVID, which they didn't prophesy.
00:22:27And there's always some property or something going on at the base.
00:22:29There's a lot of growth there.
00:22:31They've bought new land and property on the base.
00:22:34But my wife and I have said that we will have more to do with the Roman Catholic Church
00:22:39than the local YWAM base.
00:22:41I hope to never serve it there again.
00:22:44And I'm in the process of dissuading people from going.
00:22:48I'm not saying warning.
00:22:50I wouldn't persuade them.
00:22:51I would dissuade them and say, think carefully about it.
00:22:53Just be aware that you'll go all in, new 20s, and you'll hit 35,
00:22:57and you'll desperately want a mortgage.
00:22:59You'll want what I have.
00:23:00I don't want what they have.
00:23:02No, it's called Youth with a Mission.
00:23:05And when you're approaching 35, it's high time you're out.
00:23:11The local leader in YWAM, Norway, he's written some great books, yeah.
00:23:18But there have been young men who've been promoting his book for free.
00:23:25And you're shifting copy for someone who's got his mortgage,
00:23:28who's got his house.
00:23:30And ultimately, what's going on here?
00:23:34What are we all in for?
00:23:37Are we all in for Jesus?
00:23:39But then we realise, oh, hang on a second.
00:23:40I want to put everything in to get a deposit on my house.
00:23:43I've received so many of those newsletters from people,
00:23:46people who are at the same stage of life as me.
00:23:48I'm an immigrant, and they're Norwegian,
00:23:50and they're asking for help getting set up in Norway.
00:23:51I'm like, well, I didn't speak the language 15 years ago.
00:23:56I can figure out how to live in this country better than they can.
00:23:59It's because I haven't done YWAM.
00:24:01And it's because I just cracked on and got a job
00:24:04and got involved to a certain extent in the local church as much as I could.
00:24:08And I guess that would be my vision.
00:24:10Just get stuck in, do the Sunday school,
00:24:12help out on the worship team if you want to.
00:24:16But avoid large-scale meetings of the SEND.
00:24:18The SEND was so – there's been so much focus on that.
00:24:21I'm sure your listeners, viewers are aware of what the SEND was and still is.
00:24:25It's just – I guess you'd call it the grandson of what was happening,
00:24:30what started in Kansas City.
00:24:33I'm sure I'm edging into stuff you would have documented far better
00:24:37because it's almost history.
00:24:38It started with a call, didn't it, and then it became the SEND?
00:24:41Yeah, it did.
00:24:42You know, one of the things that I don't think people think through very carefully,
00:24:46which you're alluding to, but I'm going to actually go deeper there.
00:24:50And I don't talk about this purposefully because I don't want people to –
00:24:54this is a large group of people who have been robbed in many ways of their money,
00:25:00and I don't want it to come across like I'm begging for money.
00:25:03But my family had zero dollars in retirement whenever I was 43 years old.
00:25:11You almost can't come back from that, right?
00:25:13In fact, I don't know that I will.
00:25:16Every one of these people that get involved with this,
00:25:19and they escape at the point in which you're talking about – 30 years old, say.
00:25:2330 years old, you're not even thinking that retirement is an issue for them.
00:25:26But when you take away the ability to have a good salary job,
00:25:32suddenly you're thrown into where I was back at, I don't know, age 20, 25 when we first got married.
00:25:39All of my money, every spare dime that I had went towards just living.
00:25:44That's it.
00:25:45We really didn't have any extra.
00:25:47The thought of retirement wasn't even possible for another 10, 15 years.
00:25:51So now take these people, another 10, 15 years from that,
00:25:54they're actually getting a start on retirement later than I did whenever I left the cult,
00:25:59and I didn't leave a youth cult.
00:26:01So I look at this, and I think, my gosh, man,
00:26:04I'm scrambling to try to make a way in which my family can be protected whenever I do retire
00:26:11or I'm not able to work.
00:26:12Every single one of these people that escape from this,
00:26:15they all have the same issue that I have, and I have strong compassion for that.
00:26:20Yeah, I do too.
00:26:23I've done what I can to talk with young men who are about my age,
00:26:28early to mid to late 30s, who have been in for decades,
00:26:33and I'm just saying to them, you know, get out.
00:26:36I almost wish I could speak their language.
00:26:40Maybe I've received a word from God, John.
00:26:43And the Lord appeared to me as I stood on the mountain,
00:26:46and there was a picture of a river, and I could flag it, I think.
00:26:50I did have to, speaking to someone recently about the problems in Norway,
00:26:55I gave the picture of me feeling like I was a little,
00:26:59a little sort of a tin aluminium foil light amongst three braziers.
00:27:04And he's like, wow, that's really powerful imagery.
00:27:06I just thought, it sounds...
00:27:08But what I meant, all I meant to say to him was that I really feel there's an absence here,
00:27:13and these people are missing out financially.
00:27:15And I think it says in the book of Proverbs, money answers everything.
00:27:18No, money gives an answer to everything.
00:27:21And quite often I've done that when people say,
00:27:24oh, we see that you don't eat out much in restaurants.
00:27:25I'd love to say it's an ideological reason.
00:27:27It's just we don't have enough money for it.
00:27:29And so when people are coming out of YWAM, or, you know, still find themselves in it,
00:27:33I would say, spiritual stuff aside, let's all agree that what you're showing us you want
00:27:39is a house and a car and stability.
00:27:42These are all good things.
00:27:44Can we preach that to the youth?
00:27:47Well, not really youth.
00:27:48As I did say earlier, and I won't retract it, I think it's a good laugh.
00:27:51If you want to do it for a gap year and you've saved up the money,
00:27:54people can spend the money on all sorts of funny things.
00:27:56But when you've been doing it for two or three years,
00:27:59people then move up on the track they do.
00:28:06You do a discipleship training school, and you can lead a discipleship school.
00:28:10When you're 20 or 21, that's very unhealthy.
00:28:13And then when you're 22, you sort of do your third year.
00:28:16Then you do your School of Biblical Studies.
00:28:18Thank goodness.
00:28:19But it's like, well, why didn't you do that in your first year?
00:28:22Because the content of the discipleship training school is very high-paced.
00:28:27Each of the speakers will say, this is the most important part.
00:28:29This will be the most important talk of your life.
00:28:32And there's a lot of hype there, and people go on their first missions trip
00:28:35after six months, and they just want to street evangelize everyone.
00:28:38And they wouldn't want to knock that aspect of Christianity at all.
00:28:41You know, great, do it when you're 20.
00:28:45But, yeah, how do you get these people out?
00:28:47And what you're describing with the difficulty of not having any money
00:28:52when you retire is that a lot of the newsletters from YYAM,
00:28:55they're not reflecting a community which is happy to go by with very little money.
00:29:02Because if the ex-YYAMers were all buying a house for next to nothing
00:29:07and then just all doing it up to – kind of like the Amish, really, and the Mennonites.
00:29:11It's just like, okay, you've got this rebuild project.
00:29:15It's got no door, no window.
00:29:16We'll all come along.
00:29:17We'll do some carpentry.
00:29:18And, hey, you bought this house for what most people buy a car.
00:29:22I'll be like, well, that's a really challenging way of living.
00:29:24They're getting by with next to nothing.
00:29:26They're walking.
00:29:27They're not, though.
00:29:28They all went in their four-bedroom detached with two cars.
00:29:31You know, that's more than I have.
00:29:32If I've only got one car, I cycle to work every day in the freezing cold.
00:29:36So the standard the ex-YYAMers want to get to is higher than what I have.
00:29:42And I'm just like, well, you've got to work for these things.
00:29:45And suddenly you're hoping that your parents –
00:29:47you're hoping that your parents haven't done YYAM
00:29:50because you're hoping that they'll help you with the deposit.
00:29:53So it becomes a bit like it is an extractive group.
00:29:58Or another way of putting it, it's a bit like the Klingons, really.
00:30:02You're just sort of raiding people.
00:30:03And at some point you need to get civilised and sort of settle down
00:30:07and, you know, learn the First Order and all these sort of things.
00:30:11You need to build a civilisation.
00:30:13You can't just raid off other people.
00:30:14You can call it a prayer letter.
00:30:16But it is raiding.
00:30:19You're raiding people who are creating stuff.
00:30:23And it's an infringement of –
00:30:26you might not have expected me to go here.
00:30:28It's an infringement of 7th century Christianity
00:30:30because the monasteries, when the Roman Empire collapsed,
00:30:33they started – the monks said, right, what are we going to do?
00:30:36And they started brewing beer and doing honey and all these things.
00:30:39So then when the barbarians came and wanted to attack the monasteries,
00:30:41why did they survive?
00:30:42Because they're like, well, we don't know how to brew beer or make honey.
00:30:45So the monks said, you could raid and pillage,
00:30:47or we could sell you these things.
00:30:50And they're like, well, okay, we do want beer.
00:30:52Like all of the German beers, they're all named after monks.
00:30:55That's what the monks are doing.
00:30:56So these monasteries were not – they weren't standing on praying.
00:30:59I'm sure there were a few monks who said,
00:31:00hey, guys, you remember that praying thing we used to do?
00:31:02No, no, no.
00:31:03We've moved on from that.
00:31:04That's so prosaic.
00:31:07Yeah, that whole God thing.
00:31:09Well, that's very 5th century.
00:31:11You've got to move with the times.
00:31:12It's all about the meat.
00:31:14It's about the beer and the cheese.
00:31:16You must have gone, these guys aren't monks at all.
00:31:19Well, what they were showing pagan Europe was a way of living and working.
00:31:24Get a job.
00:31:25Settle down.
00:31:25I'm sorry, we can't come out of these walls because you'll just kill us.
00:31:28Sorry.
00:31:28So we're going to settle down.
00:31:30You know, Cluny and all of these monks and monasteries around Switzerland.
00:31:34That was the beginning of European capitalism.
00:31:36These guys were working hard.
00:31:37They showed the rest of society.
00:31:39Look, going around raping and pillaging, that's not economically sustainable.
00:31:44You know, it's worse than it's in.
00:31:45It doesn't make economic sense.
00:31:47It's, you know, as Napoleon said, it's worse than a crime.
00:31:50It was a blunder.
00:31:51So to go around just killing and destroying or writing prayer newsletters because you don't
00:31:55earn any money, that's just not sustainable in the long term.
00:31:57So I used to joke about the local Y1 base being a bit like a monastery.
00:32:02Well, sadly, it's not.
00:32:03The modern monasteries are very prayer focused, which is not really, you're not going to make
00:32:10a living out of that.
00:32:10But the monasteries kind of dissolved by the 15th century, 16th century, because they'd
00:32:16shown society what it needed to be doing.
00:32:19In a sense, we've all become monks in a good way, and that we've all got a job, and I'm
00:32:24sure we do our homebrewing projects.
00:32:26I'd do a little bit of yeast and sugar, you know, sort of stuff.
00:32:29And we work for a living.
00:32:30We don't go around pillaging.
00:32:32So I don't think the Y1s are monks enough.
00:32:36They're ascetics, and they're pietists.
00:32:40They do realize that they need to get a job and create economic benefit for their family.
00:32:45Doesn't it say in one Thessalonians or one Timothy that whoever wrote that said, I despise
00:32:51the person who doesn't work?
00:32:52And I've brought that up with the Y1s.
00:32:54They said, well, Paul didn't work.
00:32:55Oh, yes, he did.
00:32:56He was a tent maker.
00:32:57I know, but he said something about the oxen not being jackaled and, you know, should
00:33:01eat while it's treading the corn.
00:33:03So he was a tent maker.
00:33:04Let's just stick with that one detail.
00:33:07So the power and the normality of work is, it's what they end up wanting.
00:33:13But I think I might be misremembering, but it might have been, I was listening to one
00:33:19of your guests or someone else that said that when you get to a certain point in life, you
00:33:27end up just wanting the things which you lied that you exude.
00:33:31It is a good sign that they do want to settle down.
00:33:35But I just sort of kind of wish that that would, I wish that all of that would said on
00:33:39the stage at this end and all these things.
00:33:43But that's what you'll end up wanting.
00:33:44And these are not bad things to want.
00:33:46Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of
00:33:52modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
00:33:57movements into the new apostolic reformation?
00:34:00You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
00:34:05william-branham.org.
00:34:07On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
00:34:13Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
00:34:19audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:34:22You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
00:34:27movements.
00:34:28If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the
00:34:33Contribute button at the top.
00:34:35And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
00:34:40to or watching.
00:34:41On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:34:46One of the things that really stood out to me as I was reading your email, that again,
00:34:52these are things that I should have really clicked with, and I didn't until your humor
00:34:56picked me up, but youth with a mission.
00:34:59What does it make you think of when you think youth with a mission?
00:35:03It makes you think of the youth, right?
00:35:05They don't say late teenagers with a mission or early 20-year-olds with a mission.
00:35:10Yet every single person that I have spoken to, they tell me it's late teens, early 20s.
00:35:15My frame of reference, even after they said that, is still youth with a mission.
00:35:20And so it makes you wonder really about branding.
00:35:22Was the name all about branding?
00:35:25Or was there initial some goal that they were actually going to do the youth?
00:35:29And in that case, you know, if the initial mission was a six-year-old, and we're going
00:35:33to take a six-year-old and convert the world, and then when they turn to a teenager, we're
00:35:38going to teach them how to go to college, how to get a job, how to do all these things.
00:35:42Actually, that's not that bad.
00:35:44But then you wonder what the mission is, right?
00:35:46And what is a six-year-old going to do?
00:35:47So I'm wondering, was the intent to do something that was good and healthy, and then it kind
00:35:53of transitioned when they realized, wait a minute, it's kind of like Parham sending all
00:35:57of the missionaries to China who can't speak in tongues.
00:36:01We can't send six-year-olds out there because they're not going to do God's work.
00:36:05They're probably going to be playing with rocks or whatever.
00:36:08So I'm sitting here thinking, was it branding, or did they really have the initial mission?
00:36:13We grew up singing that Joel's Army song, I'm in the Lord's Army as well, and a lot of
00:36:18YWAMs do talk about raising kingdom children, where they want their children to be co-participators
00:36:26in the mission field until they turn 15 and they've got to go back and get a further education,
00:36:32which is a good thing.
00:36:33And there seems to be, thank God, and I do thank God that he's been merciful to YWAM in
00:36:40that regard. It's not a generational thing that's always passed on.
00:36:46It's not a given that your children are going to do YWAM and live with you on base.
00:36:49What usually happens is the children go back to their home country and settle down, finish
00:36:54off high school, and then maybe go to college and then do YWAM.
00:36:57So it's not, there's still a lot of new genes come into the organization.
00:37:02It's not just kind of a generation thing going along.
00:37:05Well, but I think when Lauren Cunningham started it, or it came out of the Jesus Revolution
00:37:11with a thingy for Isby and all of that, I don't think Lauren, it's not his style to go
00:37:19in for those kind of allegations.
00:37:21And I met the guy once, and well, I have no idea what's going on behind the scenes.
00:37:26Maybe we'll find out something in five years.
00:37:28It's, you know, tends to happen, or cast any aspersions on him now, but a lot of people
00:37:32said that about Michael, right?
00:37:35Who knows?
00:37:36Don't know anything about Lauren Cunningham, Ravi Zacharias.
00:37:39But what they were thinking about in YWAM was, I guess, yeah, people in their 20s with
00:37:43a mission, youth without any money, youth wanting him out, you were already married.
00:37:49It's strange that that's the thing that they say in YWAM.
00:37:51I mean, you're not supposed to date during those six months, but I would say, well,
00:37:54that's the time we probably should be dating.
00:37:58They're like a Viking plunder, right?
00:38:00Get the woman or the man and get out, run away before they come and stop you.
00:38:05This isn't a dating thing.
00:38:06Of course it's a dating thing.
00:38:07You know, it's one of the best dating things you can do, because when you meet a woman
00:38:11or a man during YWAM, you've got no money.
00:38:13And so they're attracted to you because of your character.
00:38:16And I'm like, that's, that's, you know, if you're a 20-year-old bloke and you can
00:38:21marry a woman who's 20 as well, and she's attracted to you, you've got no money or
00:38:26anything, like, well, credit to you, man.
00:38:28You know, you've done a pretty good job.
00:38:31You've got no flashy car to show off to her.
00:38:33I certainly do hope you have that in 15 years' time and you're not still in YWAM.
00:38:37But, you know, if they nabbed the woman pretty early on in Viking raid style, I would
00:38:42say, you know, that's, for me, that's, you know, mission fulfilled.
00:38:47Maybe that was the mission of YWAM.
00:38:50The Christian life isn't all about getting married whatsoever at all.
00:38:53But for them to say, don't date while you're there, it doesn't make a huge amount of sense
00:38:58to me.
00:39:00I would say go for it.
00:39:02I'm trying to think to myself what other hilarity I did mention in that email, because
00:39:06I sent a couple of ones for the lols.
00:39:10That was my central analogy, I think, the all-in and the gift of the spirit versus the
00:39:19underfruits of the spirit as well.
00:39:21There's some great stuff from the local base coming out.
00:39:25But the direction it's gone recently, what I also wanted to mention is the, without opening
00:39:31a can of worms of the whole Charlie Kirk thing that's going on, but the external Americanization
00:39:36and the politicization of the Norwegian church is a risk.
00:39:40That's not such an issue locally.
00:39:42There are a few people at church who want to make Europe great again, whatever that means.
00:39:48And everyone can have their own political opinion about various things.
00:39:51But what tends to happen is that people come from a low Lutheran church background in Norway
00:39:57and confuse fluency in English and a Californian accent with kind of theological reliability.
00:40:04And, you know, even worse than being Californian, if someone's British and white, I mean, they're
00:40:08even higher up in the chain.
00:40:09It sounds, it's true, because he's British.
00:40:12Whereas anyone who's from the UK, they'd know, hang on, Daniel's working class.
00:40:15He doesn't know what he's talking about.
00:40:17He's never been to private school.
00:40:20So outside of the UK, John, people would know, people would think, oh, Daniel's really clever.
00:40:24But what happens in Europe, particularly, not so much South America, is that when people
00:40:29hear that you're a native speaker, they have a lot more respect for you.
00:40:32Well, they think you know what you're saying because you've got more vocabulary than they
00:40:35have.
00:40:36And that's confusing fluency with actual knowledge of the subject.
00:40:41And it's been, I take the verse in Acts very seriously, that when Paul spoke to the
00:40:46crowd in Aramaic, they became silent.
00:40:48That's not saying that we should all learn Aramaic.
00:40:50It's simply that he spoke to them in the way that they could understand clearly.
00:40:54He didn't speak high-convoluted Greek.
00:40:56We know that Peter's Greek was terrible.
00:40:59They spoke urgent street Greek, and they spoke Aramaic when they could.
00:41:02Speak to the people in the language they can.
00:41:04We had an example in a church thing that I was trying to do in another town along, and
00:41:11some people who were trying to help me, they went along to the way on basis, said, oh, could
00:41:15you help us plant a church?
00:41:17And because there was a non-Norwegian speaker there, they all spoke in English, and they
00:41:21were saying, oh, bless you, a light will shine over this town, and pouring out mountains,
00:41:25seven thunders, all this stuff, hashtag nonsense.
00:41:28But if they'd said it in Norwegian, they'd have simply said, that's great, we don't have
00:41:33the resources to prioritise this logistically.
00:41:35Sorry, wish you all the best.
00:41:37But because it was in English, they became very superficial.
00:41:41The old saying, on the surface, they were superficial, but deep down, they were found
00:41:45all the other way around.
00:41:47On the surface, they found that deep down, they were superficial.
00:41:49So what tends to happen is that young people go to Hawaii, invariably, sometimes Montana,
00:41:54and pick up an Americanised form of Christianity.
00:41:56There are some great things with American Christianity.
00:41:59The fact that there's no state church is good.
00:42:02That's a good thing.
00:42:03I'm glad there is no state church in the US.
00:42:06But the worst elements they're copying only come from Branhamism.
00:42:10And I've spoken with so many people recently from Wyoming, they've never heard of William
00:42:14Branham, when they say, okay, have you heard, you can list off the family tree, there's no
00:42:19point in me doing it.
00:42:20They'll be like, oh, yeah, we've heard of that guy.
00:42:21We've heard of that guy, then you'll have heard of Branham.
00:42:23You've heard of Azusa Street.
00:42:24You've heard of Azusa Street.
00:42:25You've heard of it all.
00:42:26This is your history, I'm telling you.
00:42:28They really should know it.
00:42:30Because they've all put books about Azusa Street.
00:42:32And they want that to happen in Norway, not to mention Elim and all of that stuff.
00:42:37This is their family tree.
00:42:39I got in contact with a woman who was on, with Sissel, who was on your show last year.
00:42:46And as you can do in Norway, you can find anyone.
00:42:49So I just Googled her and sent her a message.
00:42:51And we had a really good chat about what's happening.
00:42:53There was an entry into Norway from Branhamism that actually came through Stavanger, which
00:42:59was through Levertård, which is a church out there.
00:43:03So Branhamism has infected Norway in that regard.
00:43:06Not as strong as you'd think.
00:43:07It's actually come in through, I guess it would be almost like people learning about the US
00:43:12through New Brunswick.
00:43:13You'd be like, well, New Brunswick, that's in Canada, right?
00:43:15So people have come through, people have been exposed to Branhamism fourth-hand through
00:43:20YWAM.
00:43:22It hasn't directly come through Kenneth Hagen.
00:43:25What Kenneth Hagen was in Stavanger, we know that.
00:43:27And you can track that line of thinking.
00:43:29And all of that fizzled out by the 2000s, thank goodness.
00:43:31But the real exposure is through, yeah, the real exposure is through the, I guess you'd
00:43:37call it second or third cousins through YWAM.
00:43:40That's the Branhamism link in Norway.
00:43:44You know, I keep mentioning your email.
00:43:46I'm going to say that you probably need to write a book because your way of explaining
00:43:51it, man.
00:43:51And so I hit this roadblock whenever I was talking with Jenny.
00:43:56There is some verbiage that in the United States right now is so highly politicized that
00:44:02if you mention it, they just shut you off.
00:44:04They don't hear it.
00:44:05But the way that you said it, I'm going to say the same exact thing that she said, but
00:44:10I'm going to say it in your language.
00:44:12And maybe it will resonate with the listeners who have turned her off.
00:44:15She mentioned a phrase that is politicized, but basically it means what you said.
00:44:21So you're from, you have this language that is seen as highly respected among different
00:44:30cultures.
00:44:30And you're going out on these missions to people who, there's no better way to say it.
00:44:38They were infected.
00:44:38All of these lands were infected by the Pentecostal movement.
00:44:42Not Pentecostalism in general, that's a gray area for me still, but this healing revival
00:44:48thing, it spread all over the globe.
00:44:50You go to South America, they've already been infected.
00:44:52You go to South Africa, they've already been infected.
00:44:55Now send a person who speaks either British or American English.
00:45:01Immediately you've got this respect that you would not have already had.
00:45:05Combine that with, oh, and they're telling us more about our heritage, our Pentecostal heritage
00:45:10that came from Latter Rain, not even the original Pentecostal.
00:45:14So basically they've already been infected and now you're bringing a catalyst to that
00:45:19infection.
00:45:21Jenny had a different word for it, which I'm not going to use, but it means the same exact
00:45:25thing.
00:45:25You are overprivileged for no reason.
00:45:28And that's what these youth with a mission camps, that's really what they are.
00:45:33Which leads me to the other question, which it's like I'm defending them in this podcast.
00:45:38It's kind of funny.
00:45:39If you instead send them to Hawaii, you don't get that.
00:45:42So this may actually be a good thing, right?
00:45:46And as far as Lauren Cunningham doing anything inappropriate, I've never, ever heard that.
00:45:52I don't know if that's true or not.
00:45:54But if I see him transitioning away from, okay, we're sending these people and they're getting
00:45:59this undue respect and we can't penetrate the gospel to them, we're going to instead
00:46:04go to Hawaii and have fun.
00:46:05I kind of get that.
00:46:07Yeah.
00:46:08Yeah.
00:46:08I see what you mean.
00:46:09Yeah.
00:46:09And in my email, I talked about cultural superiority, which is definitely a thing in Europe that
00:46:15there's, that everyone's white, you know, barring a few immigrants.
00:46:18But you do, you do, you do have national superiority in terms of how long that country was under
00:46:24communism for.
00:46:25And there's no chance you're going to get a Romanian base leader in the UK.
00:46:29But of course you get a British base leader in Romania, naturally, because they know what
00:46:33they're talking about because they speak the original King James English that the Bible
00:46:37was written in, as we all know.
00:46:39And I've, that's another tangent, the King James Version of the Bible.
00:46:44That's called a lot of confusion as well with a lot of Christians.
00:46:47So they think you have to address God in, in a kind of 16th century British English
00:46:51without realizing the revolution.
00:46:53You could call God the vow.
00:46:55You can use the informal with God, which is revolutionary at the time.
00:46:58So if we use that version of speaking to, speaking to God, and you need to use really
00:47:04urgent street Greek.
00:47:05So the kind of missionaries we need are people from Nigeria and Sri Lanka and Singapore speak
00:47:10good enough English.
00:47:12But they don't, they don't speak it like me.
00:47:14They don't speak it like you.
00:47:15They certainly don't speak it like anyone in Norway.
00:47:16They, they've got, they've got a very good usage of it.
00:47:19They can really, they can use really powerful idioms and analogies that we wouldn't think
00:47:23of.
00:47:23And they're not using as many Latin words.
00:47:26I'll just give you two examples of something I was saying to some Norwegians was, if, if,
00:47:31if I said to you, we must, we must persevere regardless of the circumstances.
00:47:36It's good, isn't it?
00:47:36But if I said to you, don't give up, try, it's the same thing.
00:47:41But one of them, one of them is just trying to sound high and convoluted.
00:47:47And the other one is just urgent.
00:47:48Don't give up.
00:47:49Try.
00:47:49That's how we need to be, that's how we need to be conveying the gospel.
00:47:54And when we start filling it with a Christianese and seasons, don't get me started on that phrase.
00:47:58I work as a guard and talk to me about seasons, but how much loaded language in Christianese
00:48:04are we using and, and, you know, how much, how much, how much fluency of English are we
00:48:11confusing with their knowledge of the gospel and how it actually works.
00:48:14And on that point, in almost every language in Europe, they talk about their word for the
00:48:19gospel is Evangelium or Evangelium, but words of other facts.
00:48:23It's only in English that we actually use the word gospel, which comes from the ancient
00:48:26and by Saxon word, good spell, because they thought, oh, wow, this is really good.
00:48:31It's what is better than our witchcraft and wizardry.
00:48:34Because it actually worked.
00:48:36It was effective.
00:48:37Or maybe it was a play on words that they said, oh, the real good spell isn't about Expelliarmus
00:48:42and Ogwulf.
00:48:43It's actually that Jesus died for your sins.
00:48:45That's the real gospel.
00:48:46That's the good spell.
00:48:47And so English, in that sense, won the word language by coming up with a term that just
00:48:53worked really well for us locally.
00:48:55And it's a really good point you're saying, but hopefully we could silo the economically
00:49:00and culturally superior, at least in their own eyes.
00:49:02You could silo them off to Hawaii where they can all, you know, just be a bit sort of
00:49:07Elysium in the clouds.
00:49:08And the perceived culturally inferior people could actually just get on with doing the
00:49:14church gospel work because they're not going somewhere and confusing economic prowess with
00:49:23actually being thought through.
00:49:26You know, it's kind of like when you meet, if you have a 55-year-old truck driver who's
00:49:30got no pension, yeah, sure, he's going to look a lot richer to someone from Ukraine or
00:49:34Thailand.
00:49:34But that's only comparatively.
00:49:37And but if, you know, someone from Thailand, Ukraine, who's a well, who's an accountant and
00:49:43a lawyer, they might only earn as much as that truck driver.
00:49:45So when you apply that in a church context, when you've got a 22-year-old, he goes abroad
00:49:50and says, oh, I don't really have much money.
00:49:52So I've only got $500 in the bank.
00:49:53Well, you've got $500 in the bank.
00:49:55You're rich.
00:49:56You go to some of these places, you must be really thought through because you've got
00:49:59so much money because the Lord has blessed you.
00:50:00Well, only because where I was born, it's got a thing to do with me.
00:50:04And so if I went to if I went to Rwanda, I could find myself rubbing toes with a very
00:50:09faithful man apart from Sri Lanka and Singapore.
00:50:11He's got nothing like the net worth that I do.
00:50:13But they've got they've got a huge store.
00:50:15They've got wealth treasured up in heaven.
00:50:18There's there's worth far more than than what I have.
00:50:21So that that's that that's what I've experienced here.
00:50:25It really is the culture of superior.
00:50:27I think, though, is people have gotten to know me better in Norway.
00:50:30And in my case, like, I don't know what he's talking about.
00:50:33So all of the culture of superiority, I used to have a big finish.
00:50:36I just got out the window.
00:50:39Well, there's such a language bear.
00:50:41I was thinking as you were talking, I'm diabetic.
00:50:43And whenever my blood sugar gets low, I get shaky and I get hangry.
00:50:48And there are times that my wife and I will clash.
00:50:51And afterwards, I realize that that wasn't me talking.
00:50:53That was actually the diabetes.
00:50:55I just had the thought as you were talking.
00:50:57Well, what if I started doing that in King James English?
00:51:01Would I have more power over her?
00:51:03Because, oh, the mesmerization of the King James.
00:51:06But the problem is I would be doing the Stewie version, not the Patrick Stewart version.
00:51:11The Stewie, not Patrick Stewart.
00:51:13Yeah, maybe that should be in the show notes.
00:51:15You know, be Patrick Stewart, not Stewie.
00:51:17From Stewart to Stewie, the decline of 21st century Christianity.
00:51:27It's about being genuine when you talk with people and using the language they understand.
00:51:33The Bible's not afraid of translations.
00:51:35Matthew quoted from the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
00:51:38He was supposed to be the most Jewish writer of the Gospels.
00:51:40We're not against saying things in different languages because truth does translate.
00:51:45I've been a translator.
00:51:47So whenever you hear someone saying, oh, the Gospel doesn't translate.
00:51:50I've translated it from English, from Norwegian to English.
00:51:55And I could explain the Gospel in German, pretty well in French and Spanish.
00:52:00And I could write it in Chinese.
00:52:01I'm not boasting.
00:52:02I didn't invent any of those languages.
00:52:03But it's quite simple to explain the Gospel.
00:52:07And when you're wrapping it up in King James English, and this is when I'd recommend anyone
00:52:13listening to and watching to research false friends in King James Version of the Bible,
00:52:19because when it says in Galatians, we must be good in our conversation, conversation in
00:52:24King James English meant behavior.
00:52:25So there's lots of different examples in the King James English, which are changed now.
00:52:28When you read the Bible in King James English, there's a good time you won't know what it's
00:52:31saying.
00:52:32And, you know, Elijah says, how long will you halt between two mountains?
00:52:35He goes, if you're not saying stop, halt, you mean walk slowly between two mountains
00:52:39or seven mountains for that matter.
00:52:43So when you communicate people, well, again, sort of going back to my early point, what
00:52:47have you got to hide?
00:52:48Why are you trying to hide behind high language and convoluted language?
00:52:53Unless you're trying to sound smart, it's not going to be any more specific.
00:52:56Like you say something in Latin and it just means the same thing.
00:53:00If you're just talking about parts of the bone, an elbow is still an elbow, even if you can
00:53:04say it in Latin.
00:53:05I heard of a doctor who found herself in the Congo in the late nineties and she was captured
00:53:12by the local rebels or whatever.
00:53:14And she was on the BBC and she and she said that she escaped by pretending to be a holy
00:53:20priest woman who could speak Latin.
00:53:23And she was just reciting the names of plants and body items in Latin.
00:53:28So they've been used to hearing the Latin mass from Roman Catholicism.
00:53:31There was a woman from God because she sang incantations.
00:53:34There's Christians.
00:53:35We don't believe in chanting.
00:53:37We don't believe in singing about truth.
00:53:39We just believe in proclaiming a very simple gospel, a language that people understand.
00:53:44And, you know, not standing up and speaking in tongues or making up languages that angels
00:53:49don't understand and in private anyway.
00:53:51But it's about clarity of the message, trigger word, that for me would be my gospel.
00:54:02I can explain the gospel in Norwegian.
00:54:04It's not very difficult.
00:54:06The language isn't very difficult either.
00:54:07But the truth does translate.
00:54:09What I really struggled to translate is when I was explaining to someone the whole history of randomism,
00:54:13I was like, we've heard of the Seven Mountains Mandate.
00:54:15And they said, what, the Seven Mountains voting system?
00:54:18No, well, Mandate means something else.
00:54:21That's what it meant in Norwegian.
00:54:22They're like, is this a voting system?
00:54:25Because they thought, what, mountains get a vote?
00:54:27No, Mandate, it means, hang a second, what did Mandate mean?
00:54:31And I was trying to re-translate these bizarre terms that meant something else to William Brandon
00:54:37when he was banging on about it.
00:54:39And they mean something else differently now.
00:54:41Now, there is a guy in Norway who's actually translating all of Branham's sermons.
00:54:46Well, all of them, so he's scratching some of them out.
00:54:49He sits there with a tape recorder and he's translating to Norwegian.
00:54:52And I'll be amused to hear how he translates some of the things because the concepts are just,
00:54:57I just can't make head nor tail of it when I'm trying to translate them.
00:55:02I've tried to explain the history from Parham through Branham and Paul Kane and Mike Bickle
00:55:09and all this stuff and the black horse.
00:55:11What, are we saying we shouldn't ride?
00:55:14No, the black horse has all sorts of significance.
00:55:16But I don't find myself doing that when I'm translating 1 Corinthians or the Psalms.
00:55:24When I'm translating at church, as quickly as I'm speaking now,
00:55:28that's how quickly I'll translate from Norwegian to English.
00:55:30And again, not voting.
00:55:31I didn't invent the language.
00:55:32But truth can be translated.
00:55:34But I'm really struggling to explain the whole Branhamism stuff, John.
00:55:38Help me.
00:55:39I need a gift of translation.
00:55:41Actually, I can explain this.
00:55:42I have a family member.
00:55:43So I know the gentleman who you're talking about.
00:55:46I've actually had indirect interactions with him.
00:55:49And here's the problem.
00:55:51The things that Branham said, if you understand what he's saying in his era,
00:55:55they are horrendous.
00:55:57They are things that you just don't say.
00:55:59And especially in today's world, you just don't say these things.
00:56:02So what do you do when you translate it?
00:56:04You either, A, let's not translate this sermon, my brother,
00:56:07or you give it a completely different connotation.
00:56:11No, he didn't mean this racist thing.
00:56:13No, he wasn't insulting the racist.
00:56:15And it's like, I have a family member who used to,
00:56:18whenever there would be a Spanish-speaking person in the room,
00:56:22as a joke, they would walk up to him and say,
00:56:24Eso sé que es.
00:56:25Eso sé que es.
00:56:26Do you know what this is?
00:56:27Yeah, they would scratch in the head.
00:56:29What is it?
00:56:29I just spelled socks.
00:56:33And so it's that kind of translation, right?
00:56:36It doesn't mean the thing that you think it means.
00:56:38That's what they're doing.
00:56:39It's just a play on translations, unfortunately.
00:56:42But anyway, I could talk another two hours.
00:56:46We'll have to save that for another day.
00:56:47If you had advice for the people who are trapped in this world that we're
00:56:51talking about, what advice would you give them?
00:56:53I would say watch Lord of the Rings and read The Hobbits.
00:56:57That's because Bilbo, after he's gone on his missions trip abroad to defeat
00:57:02Smaug, the dwarves say of him, Bilbo has got all the gold.
00:57:06He's got one ring.
00:57:08But they said of Bilbo, I think if people spent more time focusing on beer
00:57:12and singing and a house, then the world would be a happier place.
00:57:17And whatever these wyomers are searching for, they're not finding it.
00:57:22And Frodo goes on his missions trip abroad to destroy the ring.
00:57:26But what's not in the Peter Daxon film, which you've got to read in the book,
00:57:29is that he goes back to the Shire.
00:57:30And it's a bit of a disaster.
00:57:32Saruman's destroyed his house and he's destroyed the Shire.
00:57:34But Frodo has come back from his missions trip and he goes back to his house.
00:57:39And he's got four blokes with him, Frodo, Sam and Merry and Pippin.
00:57:43But they've been equipped because of their mission to get involved with their Sunday
00:57:47school, to get involved in their local church community.
00:57:49So the Lord of the Rings doesn't end with them being crowned in Minas Tirith and
00:57:55Seven Mountain Mandate and Dominionism.
00:57:57It actually goes full circle.
00:57:59They're going back to their hobbit hole that Sam would marry Rosie Cotton and
00:58:04settle down.
00:58:05And Lord of the Rings ends with Sam saying, I'm home with his nine children or
00:58:11however many.
00:58:11He's married.
00:58:12He's got a home.
00:58:13He's got children.
00:58:14That's what Lord of the Rings was getting at.
00:58:15That's what Tolkien said.
00:58:16You want, again, we all want to be the hobbits.
00:58:19We want to live in the Shire.
00:58:20But no one thinks I want to be arrogant and reigning in Minas Tirith.
00:58:24I've never heard anyone say that.
00:58:26And so if people want what the Bible is talking about,
00:58:29illustrated, I think the Shire is a picture of God's intention for humanity.
00:58:34Each man owning his own house, working his own garden, settling down, getting
00:58:39wife or not getting married in Frodo's case.
00:58:40He's perfectly fine.
00:58:41Bilbo didn't get married.
00:58:42And just getting involved as much as you can locally and helping people.
00:58:47And if people think, why doesn't he talk more about the Bible?
00:58:51Well, people explain it much better than I do.
00:58:53But I'm very much into Lord of the Rings.
00:58:57And that's what I go for every year.
00:59:00So we want to be Frodo rather than Aragorn, is what I'd ultimately say.
00:59:05Yeah.
00:59:06And the NAR leaders, they want to be the evil sorcerer Sauron.
00:59:10Yeah, they do, basically.
00:59:11Yeah.
00:59:13There's a detail that I'm just to end with.
00:59:16There's a detail about Morgoth, Sauron's boss.
00:59:21When they were creating the world in Tolkien's Legendarium, they created the world through
00:59:26song.
00:59:27But Melkor was just singing the same song with one or two notes with very little variance.
00:59:33And I was like, oh, gosh, that's a rather terrifying detail.
00:59:35So the next time you listen to a pencil singing from Bethel, just know how much variance there
00:59:39is in the song.
00:59:40And if they're just beating the same word 20 times, do they sound more like Melkor?
00:59:43Or do they sound more like Beladriel?
00:59:45Now, whose side do you want to be on?
00:59:47Well, and everything that you said about beer, it made me think.
00:59:50Martin Luther said, whoever drinks beer is quick to sleep, and whoever sleeps long does
00:59:55not sin, and whoever does not sin enters heaven, therefore let us drink beer.
00:59:59Which leaves me in my –
01:00:00I agree.
01:00:01I'm in this other category because I don't like beer.
01:00:03So that's probably why I'm such a troublemaker.
01:00:06But anyway, thank you so much for doing this.
01:00:08It's been really fun, John.
01:00:09Thanks.
01:00:10Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information or to share your story,
01:00:14you can check us out on the web.
01:00:15You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:00:17For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion
01:00:21from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:00:24Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:00:54You can find us at william-branham.org.
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