- 2 days ago
John Collins speaks with Christopher Green about his experience inside the Word of Faith movement, tracing its overlap with charismatic revival culture, healing teachings, prosperity doctrine, prophetic influence, and the pressure of positive confession. Together they examine how promises of miracles, physical healing, and spiritual power shaped real lives, and why those expectations often collapsed under the weight of scripture, suffering, and unanswered prayer.
The conversation also explores links between Word of Faith, the Full Gospel Business Men, the Kansas City prophetic stream, and broader Pentecostal and charismatic trends. Christopher reflects on how Bible study, theological comparison, and lived experience helped him reevaluate the movement's claims and separate historic Christianity from teachings that placed authority in untouchable leaders, confession formulas, and unfulfilled prophecies.
______________________
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
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– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
The conversation also explores links between Word of Faith, the Full Gospel Business Men, the Kansas City prophetic stream, and broader Pentecostal and charismatic trends. Christopher reflects on how Bible study, theological comparison, and lived experience helped him reevaluate the movement's claims and separate historic Christianity from teachings that placed authority in untouchable leaders, confession formulas, and unfulfilled prophecies.
______________________
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
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LearningTranscript
00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at william-branham.org.
00:42And with me, I have my very special guest, Christopher Green, former member of the Word of Faith.
00:48Christopher, it's good to have you on and to talk through your journey out of Word of Faith.
00:53I've had a few people on who have made a similar journey, and so I'm always excited to hear more,
00:59because we were in something so incredibly similar, yet at the same time, most of the Word of Faith people
01:05just abandon us and say,
01:06no, you guys, we're nothing like you.
01:08But the more I talk to people, the more I realize it was kind of the foundation for what became
01:13Word of Faith.
01:14So, anyway, if you could take a moment and just introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about how
01:20you got into Word of Faith.
01:21Sure. Yeah, my name's Christopher Green, and I've lived all my life in Kansas, and I came from a small
01:28town in south-central Kansas.
01:30The name of the town's Pratt, and the Miss Kansas pageant is there, and so is the State Fish Hatchery,
01:40and those are probably the two main things it's known for.
01:43But I grew up in that town, and there was a church in that town that I went to.
01:49It was a mainline denomination, and somewhere in the mid-1970s, somehow they got introduced to the charismatic movement.
01:59I'm not sure who did that or how it got in, but people started coming in that were introducing things
02:09that were, you know,
02:09different from the way we did them, the way we did normal church.
02:13They were starting to introduce contemporary songs, where previously we'd only done hymns.
02:18And we had a few contemporary songs, but nothing like the ones we were doing.
02:22And we also brought in people like guitarists, and we were used to having an organ and piano.
02:30And I also had a Sunday school teacher who had a very good rapport with the students.
02:38He taught the high school class, and I sat under him for a couple of years, and he was very
02:46good with kids,
02:47but he also taught us a lot of things that I had to unlearn later on as a result.
02:52I spent a good part of my life in Pittsburgh, Kansas, which is, I think it's, if I remember correctly,
02:57it's like three, maybe three and a half hours to the east of you, right?
03:02And I want to say, maybe I've been through Pratt.
03:05I've made it as far, I know I've made it as far as Wichita, but I think I had some
03:09trips that I took out just a little bit further west.
03:11But I'm familiar with the area, and that's right in the heart of where Pentecostalism was birthed,
03:16if you think about Charles Fox Parham.
03:18And there are so many different Kansas figures, the, what's his name, the, they call him the Kansas Hitler.
03:27His name was Gerald Burton Winrod, who's from Kansas, and he's deeply tied to my research.
03:33As is, I don't know if you know this name, but there's a Hatchet Granny that was from Kansas.
03:37And she was famous in the fundamentalist, the Prohibition days.
03:44She would go into the bars and she'd smash all the whiskey bottles with a hatchet.
03:49Gary Nation.
03:51Gary Nation.
03:51I didn't know if you knew the name or not.
03:53Yes.
03:54But yeah, so my research has taken me deeply through Kansas, not just because I live there,
03:59but because it seems to be this explosion.
04:01And then recently, this guy was sharing with me all kinds of information about further research I need to get
04:08into.
04:09But as the fundamentalists and Pentecostalism relates to the influence of the,
04:14apparently the Mennonites had a connection through some of these.
04:17And that trail, according to him, and I've got to research this out,
04:22but that trail leads all the way to Timothy McVeigh.
04:25So my radar for diving into rabbit trails has just gone exploding.
04:31But anyway, I'm glad that you came on to talk through this.
04:36And like I said, I grew up in this weird world where we believed that the preacher had the spoken
04:44word.
04:45And for us, it was a word of faith, but we didn't call it that.
04:49He just simply had a guy who had the spoken word.
04:53But literally everything that he said, if he claimed divinity on the spoken word, then it was God's word.
05:00But you never could really distinguish which words were supposed to be his and which words were supposed to be
05:06God's.
05:07And over time, many of the leaders in the movement just suddenly started to claim that, well, everything that he
05:12came out of his mouth was the spoken word.
05:14And so you're left with his opinions, some of the ridiculous facts that aren't true.
05:20Many of the things became the spoken word or, in our weird way of saying it, the word of faith
05:27for us.
05:27Yeah, and like I said, our Sunday school teacher, his name was Marvin, he introduced us to a lot of
05:35the word of faith teaching.
05:36He said, you can pray and lay hands on people and see them healed.
05:40And nobody ever actually spoke in tongues in this church.
05:44I think it would have weirded everyone out if they had done that.
05:47But they talked about it and talked about the importance of the spiritual gifts.
05:51And I remember Marvin, you know, he kind of took a personal interest in me and he knew my father.
05:59And both he and my father were members of the Full Gospel Businessmen's chapter that was in my hometown.
06:04And I'm not sure how that one got started, but there was a fellow named Alan Webb who was the
06:09president of it.
06:10And my father worked at a local bank, and so he was the treasurer.
06:15This chapter I don't think is still active, but it was very active in the late 70s and early 80s.
06:22But I used to go to those meetings and kind of got introduced to more of the charismatic type worship
06:28and songs.
06:28And I remember the first time I saw people dance in a service.
06:33And it's kind of weird the first time you see it when you're not used to seeing that.
06:37And I also got to see other phenomena like people being slain in the Spirit and laying out on the
06:43floor.
06:44And Marvin, my Sunday school teacher, told me that this was supposed to be a really good experience
06:50and that God would talk to you and things like that.
06:53And I remember having the experience once or twice in some of those meetings.
06:57And I remember just laying flat out on the stage.
07:01This was at the local college where we had these meetings.
07:05And I just remember I would just lay flat on the floor, and I don't see the heavens opening,
07:10and I don't hear God talking to me.
07:13So I found it kind of disappointing at first.
07:16Yeah, and the irony is that – so all of that was in the Branham movement before I was born.
07:22But then after – I don't know what year it was – they started to silence all of this.
07:28In fact, if you were to speak in tongues in a Branham church, usually they might escort you to the
07:33door.
07:35They were very against any sort of emotion in the service.
07:39One of the leaders, when he came to Jeffersonville, where my grandfather taught or preached,
07:46he would say that this is like a museum of wax figures.
07:49There is no emotion in this building.
07:51And a lot of the churches that I went to are like that.
07:54Not all, but many of them were.
07:56And we just kind of silenced that.
07:58But in its history, this was a big part of the movement.
08:02You had all of the emotion, the hype, the speaking in tongues, the prophesying, praying in tongues, the running.
08:09Have you ever been in a service where there was a runner?
08:11I've seen a few of those, yes.
08:13I've known a runner or two, and it's something I don't understand, but to each their own.
08:19Maybe that's something that they get a blessing from running.
08:22I get a blessing from jogging around the block, but it's more for my heart and my –
08:27Right.
08:28You know, keep up my body shape.
08:30So we had many of the things that you had in our past, but then it developed later into the
08:39version that you had.
08:40And I think it was largely due to the full gospel businessmen.
08:45They seemed to be the funding engine, the backbone.
08:49Basically, to operate a church and a movement, you have to have two sides.
08:53You have to have the religion, and you have to have the business.
08:56And so they brought the business where ministers like John Osteen, Joel Osteen's father, struggling, barely could make it.
09:06And full gospel businessmen came in, basically funded his tent, brought – that whole church would not have existed without
09:13the full gospel businessmen.
09:15So I'm familiar with all of these things you're talking about.
09:18One of the things we were told in the movement was that the charismatic movement was supposed to unite the
09:23church,
09:24because we were told that there's all these denominations out there, there's all these divisions,
09:28and what God wants to do is to bring us all together.
09:31And they never really articulated exactly what that was, whether that meant we were all supposed to be one denomination,
09:39or one church, and just forget about denominations and do away with those, or what it was exactly.
09:47But that was a common theme was, you know, the body of Christ is divided, and we need to unite
09:54it.
09:54And what ended up happening was it split this church down the middle,
09:59because there were people that started to raise objections to what was happening.
10:04And they started to – they eventually called to force the pastor out, because the pastor was involved in it.
10:12You know, he allowed it to go on, and they didn't like the new worship songs.
10:17They didn't like the – they thought the music was too loud.
10:20They didn't like bringing a guitar in, and it got very angry and nasty.
10:26And sometimes the pastor got secret notes put in the offering plate that were, you know, not very nice or
10:34complimentary.
10:37And what didn't help during this time, Jonestown occurred – you know, the whole Jonestown massacre occurred in 1978.
10:45I think it was September, and this was going on at about the same time this stuff was happening in
10:50our church.
10:50And they started accusing the pastor of being another Jim Jones, and you need to take your colt and get
10:56out.
10:57And it was – you know, it came to a head eventually where they came to voting the pastor out.
11:04This was – this probably all happened in the space of two years.
11:08And if anybody's ever been in the middle of a church split, it's a very ugly thing, and it's –
11:13you know, people are very unkind to each other.
11:17And this side is of the devil, and we're from God, and you know how that goes, I'm sure.
11:22You happen to be the very first person that I have spoken with out of the charismatic movement that mentioned
11:27that your group did not like the guitars in the service.
11:32That was unique to my grandfather's church.
11:34William Branham instructed him, no guitars.
11:37It's kind of funny because I'm a musician, and I know instruments.
11:42So I have tuned pianos.
11:44I know what's in the guts of a piano.
11:47But Branham, like I said, whenever he would say these things, everything was the spoken word to our group.
11:52But he told my grandfather, no stringed instruments, just the piano.
11:57And for my whole life, I thought about that, and I just kind of ignored it.
12:02But after I left, I realized you can't say, no stringed instruments, just the piano.
12:06That doesn't work.
12:07Pianos have strings in them.
12:09And that was – anyway, that was part of my background.
12:13But I did not know that it had made it further out than this.
12:18So it makes me wonder, was your group more influenced by Branhamism than some of the others?
12:23I don't really know.
12:24Like I said – I know you said the Full Gospel Businessmen's organization was big in financing a lot of
12:32these things.
12:33And I don't really – we had not really heard of William Branham out where I was at.
12:38We mainly heard about the faith teachers.
12:41We heard about the teachings of mainly Kenneth Hagen and Charles Capps and Kenneth Copeland.
12:47And these were people who were kind of almost considered infallible figures in the movement.
12:54You couldn't question these people's teachings.
12:56We were told that you had to confess positively about healing.
13:03You couldn't say anything negative, and you had to have this perfect faith, which I guess you just kind of
13:10had to program your mind to think like that.
13:14We were told that, you know, confessing the scriptures concerning healing and prosperity, those were the two big things, healing
13:21and prosperity.
13:21And I know that one of the factors, I think, that got people into this movement, including my father, people
13:30were starting to get squeezed in the late 1970s because of spiraling double-digit inflation, which was happening at that
13:39time mainly because of large government deficits and things like that.
13:44And, you know, we've had that, you know, we've had that reoccur recently with deficit spending at all-time highs.
13:51And it was starting to squeeze people and making it difficult for them to make a living.
13:56And I know my father struggled to pay the bills for a while.
14:00And I know the prosperity teaching was very seductive at this point.
14:06It drew a lot of people in, but like I said, the people that wanted the church to go back
14:13to the way it was just basically said, you know, we don't want this.
14:17And I think it was in 1979 they voted the pastor out.
14:22And I remember being there at that meeting when it happened, and there were actually people who cheered when that
14:28was handed down.
14:29And it was, you know, it was, at the time I considered it very discouraging.
14:33It was, that was not an easy time.
14:38And it turned out this pastor ended up starting another church outside of town.
14:43And, you know, it was a full gospel church.
14:46And we also had an association with the church up in Great Bend that had another pastor.
14:51I think his name was Fred Kirkpatrick.
14:53And I see where he had passed away a few years ago.
14:56And also my Sunday school teacher, Marvin, he died in 2019.
15:02So most of these people are gone now.
15:04We had many of the things that you're describing.
15:07And right down to the core elements of the movement, we, Branham claimed that he could speak a squirrel into
15:14existence so that he could blow its head off, which is a funny story.
15:18But then he started framing this as something that you can do, too.
15:21So me, as a child, I'm listening to these things, and I'd love to be able to create an animal.
15:27I wanted to create my own animals to play with, but it just simply never worked.
15:32And I can't really think of a single person who was actually able to speak an animal into existence.
15:37So you have to wonder how much of it was real and how much of it was due to his
15:41mental health issues, which is probably the case.
15:45But the thing that, at its core, one of the elements that we had, which sounds like what you had
15:51as well, we treated faith as something like a force.
15:55So it became more like sorcery than it did devotion to God.
15:59It wasn't faith in Jesus Christ.
16:01It was faith that you could do something.
16:04And that really comes down to sorcery.
16:06And, I mean, when it comes right down to it, if you were to speak a squirrel into existence to
16:12kill it, it sounds more like a Stephen King movie than it does the Bible.
16:16But that's the good life that we live.
16:19We had a religion of Stephen King doctrines that we simply branded Christianity.
16:24Right.
16:25And I got out of the movement for a while.
16:28I remember I went away to college in 1980, and even though I still believed in the word of faith,
16:36I didn't attend the church for a while.
16:38I visited one or two.
16:40But there was one that I started going to in the late 80s when I got out of college.
16:47And I was, you know, trying to find a career and trying to find, you know, trying to get settled
16:55after completing graduate school.
16:59And I started going to a charismatic church.
17:02I moved to Lawrence, Kansas.
17:04I went to the University of Kansas and got two degrees.
17:09And I started attending a place called the Mustard Seed Fellowship, which was a – it actually started out as
17:16a kind of a Jesus movement church.
17:18It started as a bunch of hippies in the 70s.
17:21And I didn't know that until later.
17:23You know, if they'd have told me that up front, I would have thought, what am I doing here?
17:27Because I didn't really – I wasn't really keen to the hippies at the time.
17:32But I remember them talking about the time that they sat on top of the old church building and they
17:38tried to get a – there was a tree in the backyard.
17:41They wanted it to be removed and planted in the sea, just like Jesus was saying.
17:46And somehow that just never quite worked.
17:49But I started attending there and I started seeing a lot of the things that I was into earlier when
17:55I was going to the, you know, the church in my hometown.
17:59And which was – it was a Disciples of Christ denomination.
18:03And by the way, I found out that was the same one that Jim Jones Church was part of.
18:08And that was a real shocker, especially when the whole massacre happened.
18:14And it's like, wait, how were they a part of the Disciples of Christ?
18:18And yet, did they not know what was going on with Jones?
18:21With Jones, I mean, and I saw a few of your podcasts about Jim Jones and what was going on
18:28with him.
18:29And I had no idea he was associated with Branham.
18:32Yeah, and there were a few different trails that I found back into the Disciples of Christ, which is a
18:38little bit interesting if you think through it.
18:40But the spider web of connections, just literally there's no end to it.
18:45And yet at the same time, it's all – I want to say this cautiously because I don't want to
18:53offend different groups.
18:53But there are different groups within Christianity that they all believe kind of the same thing but just a different
19:00variation of it.
19:01So you had the Christian fundamentalists, and they had a deep intersection in doctrine with the Pentecostals, but yet you
19:08could not call them Pentecostal.
19:10And you had different groups that had just a slight variation on – basically it was the same structure and
19:17the same doctrinal framework, but different doctrines, if you will.
19:21And some of those pathways, they all seem to merge into this weird spider web of trails for me to
19:28research.
19:28So it's like a never-ending journey.
19:31But they're fully separate from, say, the Methodist Church or the Baptist Church or one of the main denominations.
19:37It always seems to be these independent churches that grow into these disasters.
19:42And I'm trying to find out why that is.
19:46One part of me just simply says that it's because whenever you have a structure that has an organizational structure
19:55with rules, boundaries, checks, and balances,
19:58it seems that it prevents a lot of the weirdness that happens.
20:03But at the same time, those can come with their own sets of problems.
20:07It seems to me that the independent churches basically wanted to avoid the problems that exist in a structured denominational
20:15church,
20:16but they just simply adopted problems that were much, much bigger, which is really odd if you think about it.
20:22I read some of the foundations of the Disciples of Christ, and it was actually founded by two fellows,
20:30Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell.
20:33And I understand those two guys didn't agree on much of anything,
20:37but somehow they managed to get together and put together an organization that was part of the,
20:43I guess it came out of the Second Great Awakening and the Cain Ridge Revival, they called that.
20:50And it was kind of interesting to learn that these people,
20:53I didn't know how these two people could put together an organization and be at so much odds with each
20:59other.
21:00You know, one being more rooted in a tradition in scripture and one who, you know, wanted to go off
21:06the rails a little bit.
21:08But I think it kind of led to that organization not having a lot of structure or a lot of
21:14accountability in some ways.
21:17And, you know, that might have led to some of the problems like what we ran into.
21:22I just thought I'd bring that up.
21:24But when I was in Lawrence, Kansas, I was going to get back to where I was in the, you
21:30know, late 1980s.
21:31And I think things started coming to a head when I would hear all these people talking about all these
21:37miracles and living in victory
21:39and all these, how you were supposed to live as a Christian.
21:42And I wasn't seeing it happen because I was seeing people who were actually,
21:49I saw some people who, frankly, I thought were a little bit on the crazy side because I met a
21:57so-called prophetess.
21:59And I think she had more emotional and mental issues than I could count.
22:06But yet she claimed to be a prophetess and she claimed to speak for God.
22:10And whenever she would get a word from God, her eyes would get really big and then she would look
22:16at you
22:16and prophesy something about you.
22:18And it was a little scary because sometimes she'd be sitting in a meeting and sometimes she would just look
22:23at you.
22:25Her eyes would get big and tense up and it was kind of spooky when that would happen.
22:32Yeah, and that's the thing that I'm also working through.
22:35I don't want to say anything to offend people, but if you've ever had a family member or a friend
22:41who has had mental health issues
22:42and been around them, when they go into an episode, it looks very much the same.
22:47And so there's a lot of questions that are raised.
22:49I won't ask them here because I don't want to offend anybody.
22:52But there's a lot of potential for things to be not as they seem.
22:58I'll just say it like that.
23:00But the problem is there are people who I have identified who clearly did have mental health issues
23:07who were claiming some of these supernatural things, Branham included.
23:10And how do you distinguish which parts were mental health episodes and which parts came from God?
23:16According to Branham, he would say that every one of his mental health episodes was from God.
23:21And he started branding all of the – I'm laughing because of the absurdity,
23:26but he would say things like the great leaders of the Bible, they all had – they were all neurotics
23:33because if he can have what he would call a neurotic episode, then it must be of God.
23:38So therefore, the Bible figures must also be neurotics.
23:42And that was his logic.
23:44It's odd to me that I was – as an intelligent person, I was in the movement and I accepted
23:50that.
23:51After leaving, I thought, why on earth did I listen to something like that?
23:55If somebody told me that they're crazy and they're speaking from God, I'm going to go towards the crazy
24:00rather than the speaking from God.
24:02But yet, that was the core element of his version of what you call the word of faith.
24:08It was his spoken word when he was in these moments of insanity.
24:12Right.
24:12And one of the things I saw – like I said, there was all this talk about healings and miracles,
24:18and many times I didn't see those, but people would confess them.
24:22Like, for instance, there was a friend of mine at the church that had a toothache,
24:26and another friend of ours was praying for her.
24:30And it was kind of funny because we were sitting in Perkins after church one night,
24:36and my other friend who's praying for the one with the toothache is –
24:42she's speaking in tongues right here in the middle of Perkins and getting a little embarrassed
24:47and looking around like, does anybody notice that this is all going on?
24:51And, you know, we've got people lifting their hands and praying,
24:53and I can remember that this is going to look really strange to people who don't go to this church.
25:01But I would see things like that happen, and sometimes I would see things like people laughing.
25:11Sometimes I saw holy laughter.
25:13I used to go to a Friday night meeting in someone's house, and I would, you know, hear people prophesying.
25:22And one of the things that I think was happening during this time that helped me was when I was
25:29–
25:29I had read the New Testament through four times as a teenager,
25:33and I think that foundation was very important because it kept me rooted in the Scripture.
25:38And then when I – in the 1980s, I decided I wanted to read the rest of the Bible,
25:44and so I started reading the Old Testament all the way through.
25:47And as I read the Old Testament, I began to understand the New Testament in an entirely different way
25:53because I started to understand why this and the New Testament.
25:57Why did this happen, and why did that happen?
25:59No, it's a fulfillment of the Old Testament, you know, the life of Jesus and the ministry of the apostles
26:05and the gospel going to the – from the Jews to the Gentiles.
26:10And one of the things I began to realize was that a lot of these things are not coming to
26:17pass
26:17when people prophesy them.
26:18And my Bible says that if somebody prophesies something that doesn't come to pass,
26:23I do not have to regard that person.
26:25I don't have to listen to them.
26:27And I was – and I was – to me, this whole thing was starting to come apart
26:31because I was seeing one thing in church, and I was seeing another thing in Scripture.
26:38And another thing that happened was I went to a full gospel businessmen's convention
26:44in Topeka, Kansas back in 1989, I believe it was.
26:47And I decided, you know, well, I'm going to learn everything I can about faith
26:52and about miracles and about how to heal people.
26:55And so, I bought every book I could find.
26:58I got probably about half a dozen Kenneth Hagin books.
27:02They were real cheap and real easy to come by, especially if you were at one of those conventions.
27:07And then I started reading Hagin's books, and I started to have some problems
27:12because I'm not seeing in his books what I'm seeing in the Scripture.
27:16It seems to me like he's adding principles that I'm not finding in here.
27:21Like, he would talk about how your faith will rise to the level of your confession.
27:25But when I looked at the New Testament, especially where Paul talks about,
27:30I believe, therefore I spoke, it's usually the faith that comes first, not the confession.
27:37But he was turning it around and saying that if you wanted to have this great faith,
27:42you had to confess it.
27:43And it was really more like a mind trick to get you to, you know, kind of,
27:48you do like this feedback loop in your head where you're trying to talk yourself into believing
27:54rather than just simply, you know, faith coming from God and His Spirit.
27:59Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started,
28:03or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,
28:08charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
28:13You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
28:18william-branham.org.
28:20On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research
28:24of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,
28:29with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
28:34You can also find resources and documentation
28:37on various people and topics related to those movements.
28:41If you want to contribute to the cause,
28:43you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
28:47And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
28:53to or watching.
28:54On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
28:59So let's talk a moment about the consequences of the Word of Faith.
29:03One of the things that Word of Faith teaches you, which you and I, our groups both shared,
29:08was the fact that if you could speak it, and it was a disease or some affliction that you have,
29:14you could speak it away.
29:15But then, since it didn't go away, you had to positively confess that the thing that you still have
29:21had gone away.
29:23And there's an array of both physical and mental consequences that come with this.
29:28But even beyond that, one of the problems that I saw was that if you had something that was incurable
29:37and it was something that was dehabilitating, something that you struggled with,
29:43I had family members with chronic illness.
29:46Often the chronic illness was seen as evidence of the weaker faith
29:51or evidence that there was something wrong in their lives.
29:54They would usually put the blame on the person rather than the instructor, teacher, minister, pastor, evangelist
30:00who's trying to say that, speak it and it will go away.
30:04Well, over time, this turns into a huge problem because these people think that they've done something wrong
30:08or they have weaker faith.
30:10How do I get this greater faith that's going to cure me?
30:13And they're just one among a large number of people who came to the movement
30:19for the sole purpose of the healing of whatever was the affliction
30:22who never really got healed.
30:25But yet they're all confessing that they did.
30:28So when you read a newspaper report, a magazine, anything to do about the word of faith movement,
30:34they'll say, look at these great numbers of people healed.
30:36Well, yeah, there are a great number of people claiming that they did.
30:40But from my experience, I knew several people who claimed healing,
30:44very few that I would say who were actually improved at all.
30:49What was it like for you?
30:50Did you see great improvement through this word of faith doctrine?
30:54Not really.
30:55It kind of gave you a personal high at first because you would just feel that faith rising
31:01in your spirit and you would get real excited about it.
31:04And yes, God's going to do this.
31:07And sometimes those promised miracles did happen.
31:12Sometimes there were things that happened.
31:14And sometimes I wondered, are these really miracles or are these just nice little coincidences
31:19that God put together?
31:20Like, for instance, I remember one month I was trying to get a hold of my landlord
31:25so I could pay my rent for the month.
31:28And I was having a hard time finding her.
31:30And so I prayed about it.
31:34And I need my landlord to show up so I can hand the check to her.
31:40This is, you know, back in the days before it was all electronic.
31:44And it just so happens that I kind of get this inkling to go up to my landlord's apartment
31:50and boing, there she is.
31:52And I hand her the check for the monthly rent.
31:54I'm good.
31:55I mean, sometimes it was small things like that.
31:58But when it came to big things, like when I would see people with cancer,
32:03I would always hear all these things about, they're going to be healed.
32:08And our pastor, fortunately, the pastor that was at the Mustard Seed Fellowship,
32:12he was an old fellow from Holland.
32:16He was Dutch, both he and his wife.
32:18And he was a very kind and compassionate man.
32:20And I don't think any of the people in any of the churches I was in were, you know,
32:27deceivers deliberately.
32:27I think a lot of them were just buying into this because it was, you know,
32:31they were told that this is a move of God.
32:34And I don't think there was anyone that was deliberate, you know, charlatan or anything
32:42like that.
32:43But I think a lot of people get led astray by this because it promises big.
32:47But sometimes it doesn't always deliver what it promises.
32:51And I know down the road, as I went to other churches, I know I went to an Assembly of
32:59God
33:00church.
33:00Well, before then, I went to another charismatic church when I moved out of town.
33:05And there was an old man that was, he was a greeter.
33:08And he was one of the kindest, most wonderful people you could ever meet.
33:11He would just hug people as they came in the door.
33:13And his name was Sam, and he kept claiming that God was going to heal him of emphysema
33:21because he was a lifelong smoker and he'd quit the habit.
33:25And I remember seeing him confined to his house several years later because he could no longer
33:30come to church because of his emphysema.
33:33And he was sitting watching TBN day and night, hoping to receive that miracle.
33:38And several years later, he passed away.
33:41And I remember seeing him in the casket.
33:44And one of the last things, I guess, that he had said was, well, there was a guy from the,
33:52by the way, this was close to Kansas City area.
33:57And there were some people that were allied with the international, what later became the
34:02International House of Prayer.
34:04And one of these so-called prophets had told him that he was going to live to see Jesus return.
34:10And I remember seeing him in the casket at the funeral home.
34:14And one of the last things he had said was, I was hoping Jesus would come back for me.
34:19And that really, that kind of hit me right between the eyes.
34:24Yeah, there are a few moments that I had where it was hitting me between the eyes.
34:29And it's really sad because usually for somebody who's really suffering, you can tell they're
34:35suffering.
34:35And when they're, they're in positive confession, you're suddenly torn between two worlds.
34:40Is the positive confession real or are they really suffering?
34:44Because when you're looking at somebody who has cancer and their body's just really, you
34:49know, shrinking to nothing, you can tell that something's wrong.
34:52And they can tell you that they're healed as much as they want.
34:55But the moment they die, and I had friends who did die of cancer, I watched the progression
35:01and I could see very clearly, they could tell me positive confession all they wanted.
35:06And no, that's not, that's not what's happening here.
35:09But yet at the same time, I was indoctrinated to accept it.
35:13I watched a friend, I watched a friend who was a, he was a Marine and he was, or he's
35:19a
35:20Navy guy.
35:20And he was a big, bulky Navy guy.
35:23He, when we moved, he picked up my mom's upright piano and set it up in the truck by
35:28himself.
35:28Really?
35:29Yeah.
35:29This was a stout guy.
35:31And up until two weeks before he died, he was running five to seven miles every day.
35:37His wife would follow around in a pickup truck behind him just to make sure if something
35:41happened, she was there.
35:42And up until about two weeks before he died, but his body was shrinking and shrinking and
35:48shrinking to nothing.
35:50So this massive, massive, bulky guy just wasted away.
35:55And when you see this happen, you're, and you're indoctrinated to believe in the power
36:01of the spoken word and the positive confession, you're torn between two worlds in which do
36:06you believe my mind stayed believing it.
36:10But yet I was so incredibly sad that it didn't work.
36:13And I think there was a moment in time, just a brief moment in time that I was allowed, I
36:19allowed myself to think about that.
36:20And then I said, no, I can't think about this because that's the devil talking because
36:25you're indoctrinated to think this way, right?
36:27Now, in hindsight, I really wish that I could have spent that time knowing him better up
36:34until his death and helping, you know, bring the whole church around, encourage this family
36:39who is about to lose a loved one.
36:42But they, in my opinion, they just were neglected because they weren't allowed to accept the fact
36:47that sadly he was dying.
36:49Right.
36:49And I, and I've seen numerous examples of this.
36:52Like I saw somebody whose wife died of cancer after about two years and everybody was saying,
37:00she's going to be healed and we need to fast and pray.
37:02And I remember we fasted and prayed and we had, we had a prayer meeting and, and we're going
37:08to see her running down these aisles.
37:10And, and we, the, the church I was in at the time in the Kansas city area, it was an
37:16independent
37:17church in Gardner, Kansas that we even had a seminar.
37:21I, I, I've never heard you mention Charles and Francis Hunter on your podcast.
37:25Maybe you have, but, uh, they were another, uh, ministry that was involved in healing and
37:30they, they even had, um, these certain tricks that what they called the leg trick where you'd
37:36pull somebody's leg out.
37:37And they also had another one called the arm trick.
37:40And, uh, they even had a manual that told you how to use all these to heal people from
37:44different diseases and stuff.
37:46And I, I remember even when, when I looked at the, at the manual, I thought this is pretty,
37:51this is pretty hokey stuff we're dealing with here.
37:54But I mean, you, you, you kind of suppress that stuff in your mind because you think,
37:57no, wait a minute, this is, you know, this is a, this is a God's healing ministry.
38:02And, uh, and you, you, you, you deal with that.
38:05You have that dichotomy, you've got reality, and then you've got this kind of other world that
38:10you're living in, uh, which is, you know, supposedly a spiritual realm or something.
38:15And, uh, and, uh, it's, yeah, it all gets very strange after a while.
38:22And you mentioned something that I fully agree with, and that's that there are really good
38:27people who are caught up in it.
38:28And even though the things that they're saying aren't quite true, they, like me, they were
38:33just indoctrinated like I was to believe these things.
38:36And so if you've never been in this and don't understand what that's like, it's, it's
38:41different than you might think.
38:42It's, I, I'm very hesitant to condemn people for truly doing what they believe.
38:49But then on the other hand, there were some really terrible, terrible people in it.
38:54And I know very few who got into the seed faith doctrine who weren't just out to make a buck.
39:01Well, at least the one from the ones I've researched, you can tell very clearly that these guys are
39:06just out doing this for money.
39:08What, what was that like for you?
39:10Did your group ever get involved with the seed faith doctrine where you, you give your
39:14money to the minister and God's going to give you money back?
39:17Yes.
39:18Yes.
39:18The church I grew up in, uh, my, my father really got into Oral Roberts books and tapes.
39:24He listened to quite a few of those.
39:26And, uh, we used to watch his television programs and, and I, I can remember him talking about the,
39:31you know, the seed faith teaching and what you sow is what you reap.
39:35And, you know, if you want more money, sow more money.
39:38Um, if you want, if you want people to be kind to you, sow kindness to them.
39:42And, uh, it's not, you know, always a bad idea, but I mean, the whole, I, I mean, the,
39:47the whole idea was, uh, had a lot of, uh, money behind it.
39:53And it was, it was, uh, mainly about the money and about the prosperity teaching.
39:57So yes, we were, yeah, we were pretty well indoctrinated with that teaching.
40:02And, uh, I can remember, uh, the church I was at in Lawrence, there was a fellow who
40:07himself had actually met Oral Roberts and talked to him.
40:10And, and I remember he said he would never go to doctors and things like that.
40:14And he was a construction worker and he talked about falling down off of a platform one time
40:20and, and, uh, bouncing off a floor.
40:23And he just said, he just got right up and kept going.
40:25And, and, uh, and he, he was a drummer.
40:30He, he played in, in the worship band at this church and he was a drummer and he was quite
40:34a good one, but, uh, he, he would tend to get a little carried away.
40:39Sometimes he wouldn't keep the tempo real, real well, but, but yeah, yeah, there was, uh,
40:45most of the churches I went to, there was kind of a mixture of the word of faith.
40:49And, and sometimes there was the, you know, prophetic ministry.
40:52Um, the mustard seed fellowship often had a lot of people who, uh, would not only go there,
40:57but they would also go to what was then Kansas city fellowship at night.
41:01And, um, on Friday nights was when they had their service.
41:05And, uh, you could always tell who the people who went to KCF were because they were the
41:09people who were usually dancing in the aisles and, and, and carrying on and stuff.
41:14And, and, uh, I remember about 1990, uh, there was that, I think you may have mentioned this
41:21where, uh, there was a local pastor named Ernie Gruen in Kansas city area who had, uh, had,
41:28uh, was exposing Mike Bickle and some of the things that he was doing there.
41:33And I mean, this, that shockwaves through the whole charismatic community at the time
41:38that, whoa, is this going, I mean, what's going on here?
41:41You know, is this, and, uh, he, he talked about how kind of two-faced Mike Bickle was
41:47about, um, you know, he'd be one and when he was talking to Ernie Gruen, he was almost,
41:54he was like rebuking him or, or talking down to him.
41:58And, and, uh, then when Mike Bickle went out to talk to, uh, Dolores Gruen, who was
42:04Ernie's wife, uh, he was just like, nothing happened, you know, hi, how are you doing?
42:08And, uh, and he, he, he warned about the, you know, prophetic abuses that were going on
42:13back then.
42:14Yeah.
42:15And they're, the abuses really bother me.
42:18Like, like I said, I have people who were close to me that were affected by this.
42:22And the other thing that really bothers me, I don't know how it was in your group, but
42:27in our group, they knew that they would be, there would be legal repercussions if they
42:33told people outright, you can't go to a doctor, you can't have medicine.
42:37So our group never outright said that, but there was this indoctrinated discouragement
42:42for using medicine.
42:44And I have friends who, well, one of my friends, the mother died because she refused the medication
42:51and the medication would have actually saved her life.
42:53So I know people who have actually died because of this religion.
42:57Have you, did your group teach anything like that?
42:59Were you pressured or coerced not to take medicine or go to doctors?
43:04Uh, it wasn't quite that extreme.
43:07Uh, we did, we were allowed to take medicine.
43:11Although some people would say, well, I never take medicine.
43:14I just rely on God to heal me.
43:16And, uh, sometimes you had a few holdouts like that, but, uh, for the most part, we
43:20weren't condemned for doing that.
43:23But, uh, I know sometimes I would, um, even when I was in the assemblies of God for a while,
43:29uh, we were kind of told that we were like, for instance, if you had something as small
43:34as a headache, well, uh, what you need to do is depend on God to heal you rather than reach
43:39for the medicine.
43:40And so I always, for, for the longest time, I felt embarrassed to even get out medicine
43:45and take over the counter medicine or prescription medicine.
43:49But I mean, I still did it because it worked and what I was doing didn't.
43:53So, uh, so yeah, yeah, I, I did continue to take medicine.
43:57And I would say that's probably how I would describe myself.
44:00I, I did take medicine.
44:02I did go to the doctor.
44:03My, in fact, my, my family took me at least once a year growing up once a year, whether
44:08I needed it or not, which is kind of funny.
44:10But to this day, I struggle still, if I have a headache, I'll usually try to fight it off
44:16myself before I'll take anything for it.
44:18So still in the back of my head, I have it, even though we weren't outright condemning
44:24it.
44:24You know what I mean?
44:25Right.
44:26You know, still living rent free in your head.
44:28Yeah.
44:28But, uh, I, uh, I, another thing I wanted to mention was, uh, there was a point where
44:34this really came to a head in the early 1990s.
44:40Um, I listened to a program called the Bible Answer Men.
44:43And by this time, Walter Martin, who started the program had passed away and, uh, Hank
44:48Hanegraaff, uh, took over for him on the program.
44:51And I listened to a series they did on the word of faith movements.
44:56And, uh, they had one, I didn't get to hear it, but they did a second one in, uh, 1991.
45:03And, uh, that, that kind of was, that was like a sledgehammer because I listened to that
45:08and they were, they were playing some quotes from the faith teachers.
45:12That's stuff that was so unbelievably blasphemous.
45:14I had to go, wait, is this for real?
45:17Did they really say this?
45:19They were taking quotes of, uh, Kenneth Copeland and Kenneth Hagin and some stuff that, I mean,
45:25I probably don't have time to go into it where they were, you know, denying the deity of Jesus
45:31and were saying, you are little gods, we're all little gods.
45:34And, uh, the little gods doctrine was, it was a real, was a real wedge that kind of helped
45:40me separate from that movement.
45:42I thought if that's true, I mean, if these people are really teaching this, I, I, I want
45:46to get out of this.
45:47Darrell Bock I've not listened to Hank Hanegraaff.
45:50I've, I've read one of his books, The Counterfeit Revival, but I did listen to an awful lot of
45:55Walter Martin and I can't say that I've listened to everything that he's done.
45:59I read his book, Kingdom of Cults, and this was early on in my research and I came to understand
46:05this, that's really what gave me the understanding that this is a different brand or breed of Christianity.
46:11There are different, there are different flavors of Christianity, but if you take most
46:16of the major denominations, they're small variations, they're not that much different.
46:20But this was a completely different breed.
46:23And he got deep, deeply into explaining that through various, basically through the Kingdom
46:29of the Cults, because you can see how these cults spun off of it.
46:33So that set me down the pathway.
46:35And then I read Hanegraaff's book.
46:37What's interesting is recently I was having a deep conversation with a person who was very
46:43favorable of John Wimber and they were unhappy that I was publishing anything and some of
46:52the references they questioned.
46:54So I went through and I was talking through those and the moment I mentioned Hank Hanegraaff,
46:58like everything he said was discounted.
47:00He's, well, we don't listen to him at all because everything he says is false.
47:04And like, you can't really say that.
47:06Some things I say might not be true because I may make a mistake, but you can't just discount
47:11everything I say if you don't agree with me.
47:14And that was the position they took.
47:17And that actually made me want to dive deeper into reading Hanegraaff's work.
47:21Because if somebody who's in one of these groups will just blindly say with a blanket
47:26statement, nothing this person says can be listened to, I want to see why.
47:31And so it inspires me to go deeper.
47:35Exactly.
47:36And yeah, I read Christianity in Crisis.
47:38I read that cover to cover and I started to realize I can trust what I read in the Bible.
47:44I don't have to listen to somebody else telling me what it says.
47:48And I started reading the scriptures all over again.
47:52And I think I read the Bible like maybe 10 times, 11 times through in my lifetime.
47:58And mega doses of scripture, I think, are the best way to treat that.
48:02But anyway, what you were saying about John Wimber, incidentally, John Wimber actually appeared
48:07at the Mustard Seed Fellowship in Lawrence, I think, in about 1988 or so.
48:12Some of those people from the vineyard actually, you know, Anaheim, California, actually came
48:17out to Lawrence, Kansas.
48:19And so, yeah, some of this stuff, you know, got into the Midwest.
48:23And, you know, it wasn't just a Kansas City Fellowship or, you know, that organization.
48:30You know, it was different churches and things like that.
48:34Darrell Bock Especially there in Kansas, man.
48:36It's like this is a spider web from which everything grows, it seems to be.
48:42But speaking of John Wimber, one of the other problems that I saw, and this really, I think
48:48it was Walter Martin, I think this wasn't Hanegraaff, but he was describing this problem when he
48:52was describing how it is a different breed.
48:53The leaders in this type of movement are untouchable, whereas the leader or the minister or evangelist
49:01and one of the others are not.
49:02They're accountable.
49:03And so there's this difference between untouchable or uncountable.
49:08What was that like for you?
49:09Were you – if a minister said something wrong, were they approachable where you could say,
49:13hey, man, what you said doesn't quite match what I'm reading here?
49:16John Wimber Well, I'd never really had that close a relationship
49:19with my pastors, so I didn't really feel at ease to do that.
49:25But I think this was a lot that I did on my own.
49:29I had to do a lot of thinking and a lot of soul searching on my own and search the
49:32scriptures.
49:33And I'm having a little trouble with this.
49:36And sometimes I would take it like if I was going to a new church, I would often bring
49:40that up to the new pastor.
49:41I'm like, you know, I started having some problems with this church because they were saying
49:45this thing, and my Bible said that, and I never really brought it up with them personally.
49:52But it was something that – yeah, I mean, it was in my mind, but I didn't feel like
49:59those people were approachable, at least as far as I was concerned.
50:02Darrell Bock For me, it's a huge problem.
50:04If somebody can't be held accountable, especially for the things they do or say, what kind of
50:09a person is this?
50:10You know, it's not –
50:11John Wimber Exactly.
50:11Darrell Bock It's not a good movement to be in.
50:13I'll just say it like that.
50:14Now, I will say this with a caveat.
50:16I know – I have Pentecostal friends.
50:18I actually have some friends who are Pentecostal ministers, and they're very good people.
50:23They don't believe like this.
50:25It seems like this breed produces some good fruit, some bad fruit, but the overwhelming
50:32volume of fruit is what you really have to look at.
50:34Is it producing good fruit by nature, or are there exceptions to the rule?
50:39John Wimber Like I said, I was in the Assemblies to
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