- 17 hours ago
John and Brian explore Brian's journey from Roman Catholicism into the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, tracing how questions about salvation, confession, sacraments, and the born-again experience pushed him toward charismatic spirituality. Along the way, they examine how speaking in tongues, Spirit baptism, and charismatic prayer circles took root inside Catholic settings and why those developments still matter.
They also compare Catholic hierarchy, sacred tradition, and saint veneration with similar authority structures in Latter Rain, Branhamism, and the New Apostolic Reformation. The discussion highlights how both systems can elevate leaders, private revelation, and spiritual intermediaries in ways that reshape ordinary believers' relationship to scripture, church authority, and personal faith.
______________________
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
They also compare Catholic hierarchy, sacred tradition, and saint veneration with similar authority structures in Latter Rain, Branhamism, and the New Apostolic Reformation. The discussion highlights how both systems can elevate leaders, private revelation, and spiritual intermediaries in ways that reshape ordinary believers' relationship to scripture, church authority, and personal faith.
______________________
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
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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
00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Brian Etheridge, former
00:45member of the Latter Rain and Charismatic Movement.
00:48Brian, it's good to have you on and share your story about the Latter Rain, the Charismatic
00:53Movement, and everything that that entails, which, as you and I both know, is quite a
00:58bit, so maybe if you could begin by telling everybody a little bit about yourself.
01:03I'd be happy to.
01:04My name's Brian.
01:05I feel like I need to follow that up with, hello, my name is Brian, and I'm an alcoholic,
01:09or whatever, but not quite.
01:13I'm a former Catholic.
01:14I'm a cradle Catholic.
01:15Was a cradle Catholic.
01:17Born into the post-Vatican II Church.
01:20Almost immediately passed it.
01:23Without giving an exact date, I was born between late 64 and early 65, so literally on that
01:31cusp.
01:33Baptized, raised in the church.
01:37And that will bring me to a short thing about the church.
01:41We really need to define our terms, especially when you're talking to a Roman Catholic, or
01:45a former Roman Catholic.
01:47You've got to know what you're talking about when you use these verbiages.
01:51So, really, Roman Catholicism is a branch of Christianity that is led by, and I'm going
01:58to get this right, I promise, a unitary, theocratic, Catholic, elective, absolute monarch.
02:05His name is currently Leo XIV.
02:07You may know him, if you're from Chicago, as Robert Prevost.
02:14The Catholic Church is singular in the fact that it is a country.
02:19It has its own sovereign territory.
02:23It's got something of a parliament.
02:26It's its own.
02:27It controls huge amounts of capital.
02:32Opus Dei, which is one branch.
02:35It's called a personal prelate.
02:37But it's worth nearly $3 billion in and of itself.
02:41The total value of all of its assets is inestimable.
02:47Currently, it has a secretary of state, treasurer, president.
02:51It's a country.
02:52And it's a church at the same time, which is kind of like the end point that I think William
02:58Branham really wanted to get to.
03:02That was kind of his desired end state.
03:05But to move on past it, Roman Catholics basically believe in baptismal regeneration.
03:10When you're baptized, you're saved.
03:14Original sin arguably is removed from you or the guilt of original sin or the shame of original sin.
03:23It changes depending upon which priest you happen to be talking to.
03:28It's a real spiritual birth, a la John 3.16.
03:33I mean, John 3.16.
03:37It imparts sanctifying grace.
03:40We'll get there, too.
03:43It also infers, according to the church, permanent, irrevocable membership in the Roman Catholic Church.
03:52You're in the Roman Catholic Church once you're baptized.
03:55Yeah, it's such a fascinating history, the Catholic Church.
03:58I've studied it some, not to the extent that I plan to intend to in the future, but just enough
04:04to be dangerous.
04:05And it's interesting because I have people from time to time who are on the podcast who are Catholic.
04:10And you watch the comment feeds and you watch the Protestant people just blast the Catholic person for whatever is
04:16the belief that they mention on the podcast.
04:18And yet, at the same time, many of those same beliefs and ideologies, they were trying to recreate it, like
04:24you said, in Branhamism and Lateran, carry that forward to the New Apostolic Reformation.
04:30They may not have a central pope, but they're trying to elect that governance system.
04:34And eventually, if you continue down that pathway, the logical conclusion is that a pope will eventually emerge.
04:40And I think that's really, from my perspective, I think that's one of the problems with where New Apostolic Reformation
04:47is heading.
04:48And there's so many similarities, things that—so let's talk about sacraments a bit.
04:53Sacraments, if you study the Catholic Church and study what's happening in New Apostolic Reformation, they're not a one-to
04:59-one similarity, but there are a little bit of similarities.
05:02Maybe you could talk through the sacraments.
05:05Sacraments come into the picture at this point because you get your initial sanctifying grace when you're baptized.
05:13Then you have to participate in the sacraments.
05:16There are seven.
05:16It's possible to do all seven in a lifetime.
05:19Most of us normally only do six.
05:22You've got baptism, the beginning.
05:24Then you go to penance or reconciliation, once again, depending upon the diocese, the priest, the bishop you're talking to.
05:32And then communion, which is also called Eucharist.
05:36Taking the Holy Eucharist, confirmation, where you have adulthood, matrimony.
05:42That's when you get married.
05:44That's another sacrament.
05:46Each of these sacraments kind of inject grace.
05:50It's called infused grace.
05:53And you are given grace a little bit at a time.
05:57I kind of got that from Mike Winger.
05:59His series on the Roman Church is excellent if you want to do a real deep dive.
06:04After marriage, you've got holy orders.
06:09And then finally, last unction or last rites right before you die.
06:16So you're getting these little injections of grace all through your life.
06:20Yeah.
06:20As I mentioned, it's not a one-to-one comparison.
06:22But when you think of things like the born-again experience, you're going through these levels and tiers.
06:28And depending on which Pentecostal sect or charismatic sect that you're in, there are achievements to get there.
06:34And it's not the same as sacraments, but it's the same type of structure if you look at it structurally.
06:41And similar to what you see in the Catholic Church, there are a lot of problems that arise with this.
06:46One of which, I won't talk about it deeply, but the abuse.
06:49You see that in the Catholic Church, and you see the Protestants pointing fingers at the Catholic Church.
06:54But at the same time, you have the same kind of things happening, especially in the New Apostolic Reformation.
06:59You see that all over the news right now.
07:02I'll put it this way.
07:03I was raised with some pretty severe amounts of abuse.
07:07My father suffered from multiple undiagnosed mental illnesses.
07:11He chose self-medication most of the time.
07:15Unfortunately, that led to some pretty bad outcomes for me.
07:19Growing up, I had a deep, abiding sense.
07:23And it was more or less fed by this system where you have to go to a priest to confess
07:28your sins.
07:30I'd go to the priest, I'd confess the sin, and nothing happened.
07:35I just, yeah, okay, I did that.
07:37And then, I didn't know what was going to be a bad sin, or a really bad sin, or a
07:44horrible sin, or just, why are you even telling me this kind of a sin?
07:48You know?
07:49You know, there's not a lot of definition about what these sins are called.
07:54Officially, they're called venial and mortal sin.
07:57So, you can commit a venial sin and not even know it, or a mortal sin, and people die, and
08:05houses light on fire, and cities go up in a puff of smoke.
08:09And, you know, and you're like, oh, wow, that was a mortal sin?
08:15It's really poorly defined.
08:17Anyhow, we move on to that.
08:19Finally, and as I grew up, I did also witness and was subjected to a little bit of what I
08:27call groping abuse.
08:28And I'm going to go that far with it, because I don't want you to get demonetized or anything, John.
08:36We'd be changing.
08:37I was an altar boy, and we'd be changing in the sacristy.
08:40And there were the priests that you knew that liked to come by and pinch the guys in the butt.
08:47And, you know, we would call it grab-assing.
08:52I even hate saying that, because it sounds so petty.
08:55But there were a couple of what we would call weird priests that came through our parish.
09:02Wow, that's awful.
09:03Yeah, it wasn't a good time.
09:06I'll just leave it at that.
09:08Then, finally, we—and all of this happened when I lived in Arizona.
09:12I'm a native Arizonan, and this all happened to us while we were living in Arizona.
09:17It happened to me.
09:19The whole time, I'm living in a very dysfunctional—in an obviously dysfunctional family.
09:27People could tell that my father was sick, that the way he spoke to me, the way he spoke to
09:33my mother, he was not well.
09:37But the family was insistent on keeping that guy in charge.
09:42We had to support dad, because if we didn't, we would have no money.
09:48We had no money.
09:49We would have no food, blah, blah, blah.
09:53That's not a very happy place to be living and to have a church, seeing it in plain sight.
09:59But, obviously, dealing with other things, other things were more important than, you know, the welfare of some of their
10:07members.
10:10It was difficult at first, or it was difficult the whole way through.
10:14Finally, we left Scottsdale.
10:17My father lost his job.
10:19It only took him, like, about 20 years to figure out that he was unreliable, and we went and we
10:27traveled up to Española, New Mexico.
10:30We lived up there for a while, traveled down to Silver City, New Mexico, and it was there in my—late
10:38in my sophomore year, early in my junior year in high school, that I met a fellow by the name
10:42of Billy.
10:43And that is—I'm not going to use his real name.
10:48I'm going to protect his privacy.
10:49But he brought up something to me, and he asked me an interesting question.
10:54That question was simple.
10:56Are you born again?
10:58And I thought about it.
11:00I'm like, well, I think so.
11:02I'm Catholic.
11:04So—and this brought me back to an earlier time.
11:07For a while, my grandmother and great-grandmother lived with us, and they were extremely Catholic.
11:12They had their little Marian shrine.
11:16I would be in charge of cleaning the Marian shrine, and it was a table, and there were candles on
11:22all four corners, and there was a doily on the table, and there was a Bible sitting on the table,
11:26and there was another doily on top, and there was a statue of Mary, Virgin Mary.
11:32She was sitting on there, and I remember one time cleaning it, put her down on the bed, and I
11:39was reading the Bible, and I read the third chapter of John, and I saw where it talked about, you
11:46must be born again.
11:47You must be born of the water and the Spirit.
11:50And I had no idea what that meant, and I asked the priest, and the priest just about flew off.
11:56I got in a lot of trouble over that.
11:58Yeah.
11:58I actually got punished for asking a question about the Bible in a Roman Catholic church.
12:06And Billy asking me this question again, it kind of brought it all back.
12:12I'm like, wow.
12:15Am I born again?
12:17I didn't know.
12:18I wasn't sure.
12:20I never had that.
12:23And it's rare to find a Catholic who, a practicing Catholic, who has that assurance, the assurance of salvation that
12:31we're promised by the Apostle Peter.
12:35It's really hard to find those guys.
12:38And I was equally so.
12:41I couldn't commit the sin of presumption.
12:43I couldn't presume that I was born again.
12:46What?
12:47I could go straight to heaven when I?
12:49There were so many theological implications of it.
12:52So I avoided for a while, and then I couldn't avoid it anymore.
12:58I had a decision to make.
13:00There was something in my life.
13:02There was a portion apiece, a large portion apiece of my life that wasn't there.
13:09I knew that I was not forgiven by going to a priest.
13:13I knew for a fact that I couldn't go to a priest and be forgiven.
13:17I had to go to the Most High God.
13:20I had to lay it down.
13:24And when that time came, when I had to look at my sin and say, you know, I can't.
13:30It's too much.
13:32God, can you help me?
13:34And it was at that time that I had a huge, what you would call a born-again experience.
13:41So this part is really interesting to me.
13:43So a person who is Catholic and comes to the conclusion just simply from reading the Bible
13:48that they need the born-again experience, not having heard any of that background from
13:53Pentecostal charismatic movement, I'm trying to put myself into your shoes and understand
13:58what that would have looked like.
14:00What would you do?
14:01Where would you go?
14:03Obviously, you felt like the Catholic Church wasn't the place.
14:06What was your first introduction into the charismatic movement?
14:10I got involved with the local Catholic charismatic renewal.
14:14I knew from my friend, I knew about this group that went and had a prayer meeting on Thursday
14:25nights.
14:26And I would go on Thursday and one of the local, a prominent local lawyer led it, good
14:34Catholic lawyer.
14:35And it was wonderful.
14:38We would go and there was something missing.
14:41Everybody, I heard people speaking in tongues and I wasn't sure what that was.
14:47And so I asked, you know, I asked my friend again, like, well, what is, sometimes when people
14:55are singing in the spirit, they also start talking, start speaking in these languages.
15:02And then he told me about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the second advent.
15:10And I was like, well, doesn't God give you the Holy Spirit?
15:15Isn't God living in you once you've repented and believed?
15:20Doesn't, doesn't, you know, doesn't that count for anything?
15:24He's like, yeah, but this is a second experience.
15:26This is another experience that kind of completes your salvation, I believe was the words that
15:32he used.
15:35And at that point, at that point, I started praying for this.
15:39And one night I was in a, in a prayer meeting with some of the other, because I had met
15:44other students at the high school that were also heavily involved in their own charismatic
15:50movement.
15:51There were folks from the, from the Methodist church.
15:55There was a local, very traditional Roman Catholic church.
15:58I went to the Newman Center when I lived in Silver and there was another very, very traditional
16:03come to find out they were what's called, they were a precursor to what's called SSPX.
16:11And they, there was, there was all of these folks would meet at the Methodist church and
16:18we would all get together.
16:19And one night I asked, well, what is this baptism of the Holy Spirit?
16:26Why, why don't, why don't, you know, I hear you all speaking in tongues.
16:31And it was a, it was that night that they prayed for me and I received the gift of tongues
16:38or what I,
16:39what I believe to be the gift of tongues.
16:42I'm not so sure now, but at that point, I really, we were off the races.
16:49We were a little pack.
16:50There was like six or seven of us kids going to the high school and we would, we would do
16:56incredibly nutty, insane things.
16:58We would have prayer meetings on mountaintops.
17:01Wow.
17:02You know, yeah.
17:04Overlooking this big, beautiful city.
17:06Silver city is a gorgeous city.
17:08And we would have this huge prayer meeting and, and not huge.
17:12And there were, there were shards of glass because it was also a party spot on the weekends
17:17and there would be shards of glass and we'd all pray.
17:21And all of a sudden someone would get slain in the spirit and they would fall back on this
17:25glass.
17:26And I'm really, it's a miracle that we didn't wind up having to take one or more of us for,
17:32you know, bleeding from falling on this glass, on this place that we call the altar.
17:37Anyhow, a little aside.
17:39Um, needless to say, the Roman church kind of fell by the wayside.
17:45We were still, this was, this was around 1980 that the Catholic charismatic renewal began
17:52in 1967.
17:53So we were really hitting it when it was starting to get very, very big.
17:59It's so interesting from the perspective of somebody, like I said, who wasn't from the
18:03same background that I was in, who yet came into it through Catholicism and then started
18:10to, you know, go through a different journey to get into the Pentecostal charismatic movement.
18:14I like what you said.
18:16You, you were talking about speaking in tongues and you said, now I'm not so sure.
18:19That's one of the thoughts that has been going through my head was, was the Pentecostal
18:23version of speaking in tongues truly what they claim that it is.
18:28It doesn't really match the Bible from when I'm reading the Bible and I'm seeing that
18:32the tongues were used so that each person could hear in their own language.
18:36Pentecostalism has kind of contained it where it's for us to hear only.
18:40And we have, we must have an interpreter.
18:42And the whole thing just doesn't, to me, it just doesn't feel the same as what the Bible
18:46says.
18:47But that's, that's my opinion.
18:49Everybody else is welcome to theirs.
18:51Um, but you're talking about the charismatic, uh, the Catholic version of the charismatic
18:57movement.
18:58And that really fascinates me.
19:00I've been studying it some and like Catholicism, I've just really scratched the surface.
19:04I really want to go deeper, but there, there are connections and there are similarities.
19:09Not many people who are in the charismatic movement even are aware that there's this thing
19:14that exists in Catholicism.
19:15That's much the same.
19:16Maybe if you could pause and just talk about that a bit.
19:19Absolutely.
19:21The, the, the, the initial time of, of the, what's called the, the Catholic charismatic
19:27renewal.
19:28It began back in really August of 1966.
19:32There were two gentlemen, one of them by the name of Ralph Kiefer and the other one by
19:37the name of William Story.
19:39Ralph Kiefer was a graduate student at Notre Dame and Bill Story was his professor at the
19:45time.
19:45He later moved to Duquesne.
19:47Yeah.
19:47He was more or less in transition.
19:50Um, they were both introduced to the cross and the switchblade, David Wilkerson's famous
19:55book.
19:56And another book here called they speak with other tongues by a gentleman named John Sherrill.
20:01Um, I'm not very familiar with that one, but I am familiar with the cross and the switchblade
20:06heavily.
20:07Um, not anymore.
20:10I tried to read it a while back and, and it was just kind of fell flat.
20:14Um, but the, these two gentlemen were at something called a curcio, which is a, an apostolic retreat.
20:23There was a movement in the Roman church back in the last century in this direction, um, kind
20:30of a precursor for the new apostolic reformation, but I digress.
20:36I won't go any further with that.
20:38Um, after this, they began using a Pentecostal sequence called Veni Vante Spiritus, which means
20:47come Holy Spirit in Latin.
20:49Um, and they were using this sequence, this prayer sequence to pray for a new outpouring
20:54of the Holy Spirit.
20:56Um, they had other prayer meetings where they would ask the Holy Spirit, they would invite
21:02the Holy Spirit, like, like there was a separation, some sort of a divine separation between the
21:09persons of the Trinity when they're perfect in their unity.
21:12And anyone who has spent any time reading the word of God understands that, but once
21:19again, they're approaching it as they would in the mid sixties.
21:24Um, in February of 1967, uh, Kiefer and Story attended a Episcopalian prayer meeting.
21:32And this was early in the month.
21:34They, they, they received, allegedly received the back, not allegedly, I'm going to take their
21:41word for it.
21:41They received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
21:44The same one, I will assume that I experienced too.
21:48Um, so I want to, I'm, I've wanted to perform in good faith.
21:54I want to provide all the grace I can for those who are still Roman Catholic and experiencing,
22:02um, what you would call charisms.
22:05They're not the gifts of the spirit to a Catholic.
22:07They're called charisms.
22:09Um, I've got a whole list.
22:11I can go into them if there are questions for the questions about that.
22:15Yeah.
22:15And I want to pause too, and reaffirm what you said.
22:18I'm not doing any of this podcast to point fingers at Catholicism.
22:21And in fact, I did not know that you were going to go into this history when we first began
22:26talking, but there are so many similarities.
22:29And I do want to point out the similarities because I think on both sides, the, from the
22:34Catholics and to the Protestants, both sides see each other so differently.
22:38And yet, like you've just mentioned, and I had heard some of this history, there are things
22:43that have happened within Protestantism that have heavily influenced Catholicism and new
22:48branches emerge.
22:49So when you look at Protestantism and you see all of this disarray of all of these branches
22:54of disagreements over doctrine and scripture, well, Catholicism has some of the same things
23:00happening within, in their movement too.
23:03So you have to look at both kind of similarly after this baptism, uh, during this time,
23:09I should say Kiefer and story were, were planning a student Cursio, a student apostolic retreat
23:15at the, um, at, um, at the Ark and Dove, which is in Gibsonia, Pennsylvania, near Duquesne
23:23university in Pittsburgh.
23:25And, um, this occurred on February the 17th through the 19th.
23:30And on the evening of Saturday, the 18th, one of the attendees, Patty Gallagher Mansfield
23:36reports the following Saturday night, a birthday party was planned for a few of our members,
23:42but there was an, a listlessness in the group.
23:45I wandered into the upstairs chapel, not to pray, but to tell any students there to come
23:50down to the party.
23:51Yet, when I entered and knelt in the presence of Jesus in the blessed sacrament, that means
23:58in Catholic parlance, consecrated Eucharistic products in the sacristy.
24:06I literally trembled with a sense of awe before his majesty.
24:11I knew in an overwhelming way that he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
24:16I ran in the chapel before me and had encountered God's presence in the same way.
24:23Um, two girls told me my face was glowing and wanted to know what happened within the next
24:31hour.
24:32God sovereignly draw drew many of the students into that chapel.
24:38Um, one of the comments from one of the professors to Patty was, what is the bishop going to say
24:45when he hears that all these kids have been baptized in the Holy Spirit?
24:49Um, that kind of, that sort of encapsulates how a Roman Catholic is going to approach
24:59the gifts of the spirit.
25:00If they believe in that, if they believe in, in their validity, um, they're going to wonder,
25:07how am I going to explain this to my mother?
25:10How am I going to explain this to my priest?
25:14Um, it's, it's, it's the kind of thing that separates you from regular, a regular mass.
25:20Although there are masses that are specifically charismatic masses.
25:25I have some friends who left Branhamism and they told me more than one of them told me,
25:30John, when I learned that many of the things that William Branham said were complete fiction
25:34and many of the doctrines.
25:37In fact, I think they said most of the doctrines from their perspective were either extra biblical
25:42or anti-biblical.
25:43They realized that this was so wrong and this guy was so heavily against the Catholic church.
25:49They realized that from their perspective, William Branham was the devil.
25:54One of them used that phrase and they said, the devil of the devil is my friend.
25:59And so they said, we're, we decided to go to the Catholic church.
26:02And recently I had another guy, um, on the podcast, he was very close with John Wimber and
26:09he also, he didn't go to the Catholic church, but he went to an Orthodox church.
26:14And most of the things that they have told me about the Catholic church just defy everything
26:19that I was told.
26:20And I, I understand that there are some differences.
26:23There are some, um, between the different branches of Catholicism, there are things that
26:28are very similar to Protestant and some branches and then others.
26:32It's very, very different, vastly different.
26:34One of the things that I was taught is that every single Catholic goes around just shouting
26:39Hail Mary and they worship Mary and, um, learning from some of my new friends.
26:44While Hail Mary is used, they, they don't view it in much the same way that we were indoctrinated
26:51to believe.
26:52I'll just say it like that.
26:53So there are some differences.
26:54Now I, I will give a caveat to that.
26:57I'm still learning and trying to, trying to better understand because my worldview was
27:02tainted by somebody who was not quite ethical.
27:05I'll just say it like that.
27:06One of the, the activities during this mass is it was, it began with a rosary.
27:12A rosary consists of 53 Hail Marys, 53 Hail Marys.
27:18And if you are Catholic, you know what a Hail Mary is, I can pound one out still to this
27:24day, even though I haven't been to mass in over 45 years.
27:28But, um, during this pre-mass rosary, a, a, a, uh, the, the, the statue of the Virgin
27:40Mary was brought out to the front of the altar.
27:42When that statue of the Virgin Mary was brought up in front of the altar, a large number of
27:48the, of the people there were slain in the spirit.
27:52They fell back into their pews.
27:54Those that were standing in the aisles literally collapsed back.
27:59And I was sitting in the back.
28:00It was my first charismatic mass.
28:03I had no idea that this went on as the mass went on.
28:08If you've ever been to a Roman Catholic mass, it's very, very ceremonial.
28:13It's very stiff.
28:15Well, it was back then very stiff.
28:17Um, you, you know, the, you heard Jim Gaffigan talk about the standup, sit down, kneel, standup,
28:23sit down, kneel.
28:25He has it dead on.
28:28And yet during this mass, there would be spontaneous outbursts of people, you know, speaking in
28:35tongues, um, healings, people would tug on somebody else and you would see them laying
28:42hands in the middle of mass.
28:45It was, it was very interesting if you were Roman Catholic to see this happening.
28:50Um, I got kind of freaked out though, when the Virgin Mary came out, cause I'm, I'm not
28:57a big fan of the Virgin Mary because the one time experience I had with the, her shrine,
29:03I got punished for it.
29:06I, I'm like, I, I don't want to do this.
29:09I'll, I'll get beaten again.
29:10I don't want any part of this, you know, but, um, anyhow, the point being that there
29:18was, there was a lot of growth in these years and there were a lot of liberties being taken.
29:23Um, there still are from what I can see.
29:27I was, I just happened to come across a charismatic mass that was on YouTube and it just happened
29:34to be led.
29:34The, the, the person in, in the rector just happened to be Patty Gallagher Mansfield.
29:41Her and her husband, Al are still publishing works about charismatic Catholicism and all
29:48of the mystical stuff that goes with it.
29:50And there's a lot of mystical stuff that goes with the Catholic church in general.
29:54Um, but let's go back to the story.
29:59Um, additional charismatic meetings were held at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
30:04The word of God, uh, community up there and, um, Notre Dame, Notre Dame became the center
30:11for the international conferences.
30:13The first one being held later that spring in 1967 by 1969, there was an actual national
30:22committee.
30:24The charismatic care, the, the Catholic charismatic renewal service committee will later shorten
30:31thank goodness to a national service committee.
30:34Cause I can say that no problem there.
30:37Um, but it was an actual formal office officially serving North America.
30:43Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern
30:48Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements
30:54into the new apostolic reformation?
30:56You can learn this and more on William Branham historical research's website,
31:01william-branham.org.
31:03On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles
31:09Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others with links to the paper, audio, and
31:15digital versions of each book.
31:17You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
31:23movements.
31:24If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute
31:29button at the top.
31:31And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
31:36to or watching.
31:37On behalf of William Branham historical research, we want to thank you for your support.
31:42I've mentioned this some on the podcast and in the books, talking about how the Klan and
31:48Christian identity were so strongly opposed to Catholicism and some of the battles that
31:54waged that actually entered into the fundamentalist movement and Pentecostalism.
32:00And it was, a lot of it was political.
32:03The Americans did not want to see Rome, which like you said, was somewhat of a sovereign nation.
32:10And Rome controlling the United States through the church members.
32:16And they saw this as a threat because if Rome could push political ideology into the churches
32:22in the United States, then the people in the United States would be voting aligned with
32:26Rome, not aligned with the United States.
32:28And it created this complex issue that I don't know that there really was a good answer for
32:34because of the way that the Catholic Church was structured.
32:37If you're Protestant, you see this as purely evil.
32:39If you're Catholic, you see this as, well, we're doing good.
32:43We're pushing what we believe is Christianity to the people of the United States.
32:48And what's interesting is that kind of shifted in the opposite direction.
32:53You had people who were in the Pentecostal or charismatic movement who wanted to start to
33:00sway the Catholics.
33:00And this especially came into play during the charismatic movement in the United States.
33:07They were starting to work with Catholics.
33:10And I don't, like I said, I'm skimming the surface.
33:12I don't have a whole lot of history yet to publish on this, but I've come across different
33:17names, famous names in the charismatic movement.
33:21New Apostolic Reformation's history talks about some of these people as God's generals or working
33:27with God's generals.
33:28But they were trying to sway Catholic opinion.
33:33And like you mentioned, the cross and the switchblade, there were specific promoted ideas.
33:39And in this case, with the cross and the switchblade, it was a promoted work, entertainment that was
33:46being pushed into the Catholic religion.
33:48And what happened is you start to see people who are significant to the charismatic movements
33:54of Pentecostal version, charismatic movement, that are now interfacing with some of the Catholic
34:00versions of the movement.
34:02So this intersection gets fascinating to me.
34:05I do fully intend to explore it one day, but maybe you could talk about that.
34:09Are you aware of any figures that were in the charismatic movement that were interfacing with Catholicism?
34:15There was someone by the name who was very popular in the mid-70s by the name of Catherine
34:20Kuhlman.
34:20She had a weekly television show, I believe it was called I Believe in Miracles.
34:27There was a book by that name published by her.
34:31I came across a paper that was written about Catherine Kuhlman and her involvement with the movement.
34:44Her engagement with Roman Catholics really culminated in an audience with Pope Paul VI in 1972.
35:00And Catherine Kuhlman was widely known for her ecumenism.
35:05She would reach out to Episcopalians.
35:07She would reach out to Catholics.
35:09She would reach out to all these folks that were experiencing this.
35:12And this paper is absolutely fascinating.
35:17It dates from 2009, so it's fairly recent.
35:21I'm kind of silly that way about history.
35:24It's fascinating to me to see what happened and where it happened.
35:28Needless to say, though, the Roman Catholic portion of the charismatic movement grew and grew and grew.
35:36It hit me right about the year 1980.
35:40And October the 15th, 1980 was the date when I met the living God of the Bible.
35:47So between that date and back in 1967, there was all that time for the movement to grow and get
35:56big.
35:57But that's the basics of the background of what we see in the Roman Catholic charismatic movement.
36:06Yeah, I may have came across that information that you're talking about with Catherine Kuhlman.
36:11I know that I have came across others who, even in the podcast, I think, we talked about people who
36:17were interfacing with Catholics.
36:19And it created this weird bridge.
36:21And I'm still trying to wrap my head around that because most of the people in Protestantism are so heavily
36:27and strongly programmed against Catholicism.
36:30To have an interface like this, it seems to be counterintuitive.
36:34But it is happening.
36:36And I think it's happening a lot more than people recognize, especially take this to the broader scale.
36:42Look at things like the National Prayer Breakfast, where you're starting to see the church, and that's both Protestant and
36:49Catholic, interfacing with government.
36:51And you start to have these arenas where everybody is coming together for a religious purpose, and it's both Protestant
36:57and Catholic.
36:58So I knew this kind of thing existed.
37:01I'm really curious how the Catholic priests—what did they do?
37:07Did they accept this, or did they push back against this?
37:10Normally, you would have, when this type of a movement came that was this closely tied to Scripture, you would
37:19have immediately priests coming out and saying,
37:22absolutely, and here's what sacred tradition says about it.
37:27Because according to Roman Catholicism, we're not supposed to read the Bible directly and pull our doctrine directly from the
37:34Bible.
37:36There's the three stools, the three legs of stools that you have for—you have sacred tradition, you have the magisterium,
37:48and then you have Scripture, finally.
37:51And you read the Scripture through the eyes and the mind of these two other legs of that stool.
37:59And if any one of them say, uh-uh, no, this isn't right, then you ignore Scripture completely and go
38:06with the tradition.
38:08That's simply the way it is.
38:15In order to gain any self-ethic effect from reading of Scripture, you have to believe in sola scriptura.
38:27You have to know that the Bible is there to be the single, infallible rule of truth, rule of faith,
38:34for yourself if you call yourself a Christian.
38:39Roman Catholics get around that by adopting this sacred tradition piece.
38:46You know, Catholicism isn't called the plus religion for anything.
38:49They add to each of the five solas.
38:52If you're not fully on board with all five of the solas, I understand some are, some aren't.
39:00I am.
39:01And I personally believe that you must be.
39:04You must believe that you are saved by grace through faith in Christ to the glory of God alone as
39:11told in the Scriptures.
39:12That's five legs of that.
39:16I don't believe you can have any of them missing and not be in what I would call the right
39:23relationship with God.
39:24Because God himself, in the person of Jesus, came down to begin that process, to begin that justification, get that
39:35done and over with so you could get on with the rest of your life, just doing the best you
39:40can every day, being sanctified, being brought up.
39:45Roman Catholicism substitutes a lot and adds to those five.
39:52Instead of just the Scriptures, you have Scriptures, tradition, and whatever proceeds from ecumenical councils and whatever ex-cathedra writings
40:02come from the Pope.
40:04So, instead of just Jesus to be your mediator, the single mediator between you and God, now you have the
40:14Virgin Mary, you have a saint, this saint, that saint, all the other saints.
40:19There's a saint of the Catholic charismatic movement.
40:23And that's really the part that I think people need to realize.
40:27So, I've been talking recently about this God's Generals book and how, from the Pentecostal charismatic side, they have to
40:35look backwards to people who they see as quote-unquote God's Generals.
40:39Or, in Branhamism, we didn't call it this.
40:41We just called it Heroes of the Faith.
40:43And what this really tells you is that there were certain individuals who had doctrines that swayed the movement.
40:49And if you take any one of these succession of dead elders of the Pentecostal charismatic movement away, with them,
40:58you take the extra-biblical doctrines.
41:00And if you did that, the doctrines without their doctrines and without the doctrines built on top of those doctrines,
41:07the movement does not look the same.
41:09So, you must go back to the dead people.
41:12And from the Protestant side, from the Pentecostal charismatic side, while they may not call it the dead saints, they
41:21may call it the dead generals or the heroes of the faith, they're still, to some extent, worshiping them.
41:27They give them undue reverence.
41:29I'll say it like that.
41:30But yet, at the same time, they will condemn the Catholics for doing much the same kind of thing.
41:35And I grew up—when you're talking, all of that loaded language is going off in my head of all of
41:42the things that I was programmed to believe against the Catholic Church, many of which were not quite true.
41:49I've talked to Catholic people, and they've explained what they believe, how they believe, what they do, what they practice,
41:55who they worship, all of these things.
41:57And what they describe is vastly different than what I believed.
42:02And when I start to look at things like the—we were programmed to say, which I've learned later, this is
42:08offensive to a Catholic person, the worship of dead saints.
42:12To a Catholic person who corrected me one time, they said, John, that's offensive.
42:15Don't say that.
42:16We don't worship the dead saints.
42:18We respect them.
42:20And they went off into the reasons why.
42:22Well, that's the same response you would get from a Protestant who is holding up the book God's Journal.
42:27We don't worship these generals, these so-called generals.
42:30If you replace the word general with saint, you have much the same thing.
42:35I know there are differences, but in its essence, the form and structure of both faiths, they have to have
42:43that progression.
42:44So it is quite different.
42:46And it creates this separation between the leadership and the common people.
42:52That's really the problem that I see.
42:54If you look at how the New Apostolic Reformation today is starting to change the structure, they're changing it to
43:02match what I would say Martin Luther left behind.
43:05They do not want the power to be in the hands of the common people.
43:10They want it to be in the so-called apostles, et cetera.
43:14And how is that different?
43:15They're basically trying to recreate the structure of control that was the very reason why Martin Luther had the Reformation.
43:24So what is your perspective?
43:27Did you see something that resembled a, I don't know, a level of control that was flowing down from the
43:37priest to the parishioners?
43:38Really?
43:39Well, in Roman Catholicism, I mentioned previously that there's a huge gap between your clergy and your laity.
43:48This goes to an extreme, though.
43:51You've got, worldwide, there are nearly 1.4 billion Catholics.
43:58Now, of that number, how many do you think, how many of those should be clergy?
44:03What, 5 million maybe?
44:053 million?
44:064?
44:06No, no, no.
44:09Approaching a quarter of a million.
44:11That's 250,000 priests serving 1.4, almost a billion and a half people.
44:21You are going to have a lot.
44:24You're not going to be able to give anything close to pastoral care, given those ratios.
44:30That's magnitude-level ratios.
44:35The church officially says that there's 400,000 priests, 100,000 seminarians in training, about 600,000 nuns, and 50
44:47,000 monks who are not ordained.
44:50Still, that's, you're just bumping up on about a million there to take care of, you know, you're talking about
44:59parishes with over 1,000 people in them, if you follow the ratio.
45:03And that's not even for priests.
45:07You've got groups out there, groups of priests, or you've got a group of priests out there.
45:13First of all, there's only about 200 and some odd, 250 some odd cardinals in the Pope.
45:21You, and they're going to take it, 200 people are going to manage, you know, 400,000 priests, half a
45:29million are probably, of those, are probably in constant pastoral care.
45:33There's no way that that is going to happen.
45:36So a natural outgrowing of that is going to be a huge, wide gap, a big gap between the laity
45:45and the clergy.
45:47The clergy are going to be able to do something, do things.
45:51And one other item, this sacred tradition, that's held by the priests and not the laity.
45:58The priests, the nuns, the monks, they hold that sacred tradition.
46:03So in essence, what they're doing is they're telling you, yeah, you can read the Bible, but we have to
46:10interpret it for you.
46:11We have to tell you what the Bible says.
46:18That doesn't sound like faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God to me.
46:24There's, even in that, when Paul said that, hearing by the word of God, he implied that God was actually
46:30inhabiting the words of the preacher as the word of God was being preached.
46:36Not as the word of God was being interpreted.
46:40Not as the word of God was being possibly edited or changed, perhaps.
46:45Not as the best example of this is Matthew, in the book of Matthew, chapter 16, or no, no, it's
46:55chapter 13.
46:56I get that mixed up because I'm neurodivergent.
47:00Part of that is severe dyslexia.
47:05And I'll bring up Logos real quick.
47:09And for me, that is the similar thing to the Pentecostal charismatic movements, divine revelations that are flowing from the
47:17ministry.
47:18They call it different names.
47:19We called it in Branhamism, we call it the spoken word.
47:22But in modern circles, they may call it fresh manna, fresh revelation, et cetera.
47:28And it's loosely based on scripture.
47:30That's really the devious part about this.
47:32They will come up with some new doctrine, and they'll say, they'll quote a portion from a passage from the
47:38Bible, and they'll say that this is the new word that God gave me.
47:42It's a new thing.
47:43It's always a new thing.
47:44And that's not really that different from what they condemn the Catholic people of doing.
47:49So I see both sides, and in my opinion, both sides that are doing this are in error.
47:54Like you said, there's one mediator between God and man if you read the Bible.
47:58How can you place these people in leadership positions of authority to bring these so-called new words and claim
48:08that they're doing God's work whenever they're actually becoming a mediator, which is the opposite of what the Bible says?
48:15When you have Matthew 16, verses 13 through 20, which is where they base the papacy on, they state that
48:24that passage establishes the papacy and established Peter as the singular head of all of the apostles.
48:33Well, if you read it for yourself, it's not very clear that that's exactly what happens.
48:39In fact, you can hear it when you say that in Latin.
48:43I remember this from hearing the old Latin Mass forever.
48:48Tu es Petrus, Latin for Peter.
48:52Et superank petram, rock.
48:56Two different words.
48:58I don't believe that Jesus was talking about Peter.
49:01Peter, I believe Jesus was talking about Peter's confession, which happens in the 13th verse.
49:10You are the son.
49:11You are the Christ, the son of the living God.
49:14Peter's confession was what his church was going to be based on, not Peter himself.
49:21Yeah, that's the exact point.
49:22While condemning the Catholics of going outside of Scripture to create authority and control, you look at the New Apostolic
49:31Reformation, and they're doing the same thing.
49:33They're just using different verses of Scripture, and they're doing it through this framework of divine revelation, rhema, spoken word,
49:41etc.
49:41And it is exactly the same thing.
49:43Now, when I express that opinion to a priest, the priest is going to immediately interpret me into being very
49:52wrong about that.
49:53And that's the best example that I can think of, of how a priest is going to interpret the Word
50:01of God, to say things that will back up his perspective and point of view.
50:06This is backed up by the Council of Trent, which was the reaction to the Reformation of Martin Luther as
50:13well.
50:14For me, this is why history is so important.
50:16And if you're a Christian, this is why understanding the Bible is so important.
50:21Sadly, there are a lot of Christian people who don't even read and study the Bible in a way that
50:27is teaching them what the Bible says.
50:29They're studying it in a way that aligns with whatever they have been taught that it says.
50:34I was one of those people.
50:36I was trained to believe a version of the Bible that really did not exist.
50:41The speaker was taking it, William Branham was taking it out of its context and trying to make it fit
50:46his agendas.
50:47But if people just read the text for what it says and understand what it says, whenever somebody tries to
50:53rip it out of its context, then you instantly pick up on it.
50:57You say, why are you doing this, man?
50:59Why are you trying to make this book say something that it doesn't say?
51:02And for me, that's really why the two sides can't understand each other.
51:08Because on both sides, there are people who just really don't know the history and they don't know what the
51:15Bible itself says about the different belief sets.
51:19So one of the problems that I have, and you can kind of sense this, I think, when I talk
51:26to people who were either raised Catholic or who are still Catholic, it's very difficult for me to interface with
51:34them in a way where we can both learn just simply because of the indoctrination in my head.
51:39We were taught so many things about not just the Catholic Church, but Catholics in general, and I'm learning a
51:46lot of it just really isn't true.
51:48The two groups are really so similar and both claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, in other words, Christians,
51:56but they can't talk to each other because both sides have been trained in a way that it really breaks
52:02down communication.
52:32I can't imagine.
52:33the regular language of the people, which here in the United States would be English.
52:39There was this continued need by the Roman church to keep, and history speaks that to this as well, to
52:46keep the Bible out of the hands of the people whose butts were in the pews.
52:53And instead of being what I knew right after, on the hour I first believed, when I knew that Jesus
53:05died on that cross and was resurrected bodily three days later, we're going to celebrate it in a couple of
53:12days.
53:12And to the audience who isn't aware, we're recording this ahead of time, it's a couple of days till Easter.
53:18This is a fascinating discussion.
53:20I hope to dive deeper into this in the future.
53:24As I said, I've studied quite a bit of the Catholic history in the Catholic church from a from an
53:30ancient perspective, not up to the, you know, the Catholic charismatics that you're talking about.
53:35But I have came across in my research, different connections, like you mentioned, the Catherine Coleman connection, different connections from
53:43charismatic Christianity into Catholicism.
53:45And that fascinates me to no end because of the roots of where the charismatic movement came from.
53:50So very glad you did this.
53:53Hopefully something that we have said can help somebody along the way.
53:57I know we we covered quite a bit of ground and this is a little bit it's a little bit
54:01out of my element because I'm still researching, but it does inspire me to research more.
54:07So thank you so much for doing this.
54:09You got it.
54:10I you can feel my burden.
54:13Absolutely.
54:14Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the Web.
54:17You can find us at William dash Branham dot org.
54:20For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation, you can read weaponize religion from Christian identity to
54:26the NAR available on Amazon, Kindle and audible.
55:00Oh boy.
55:16You can find us.
55:17Have a great day.
55:17Oh no.