Christian Nationalism vs. Christian Identity: What’s the Difference? | Bob Scott | 671 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John and Bob discuss the meaning of Christian nationalism, why the term creates confusion, and how it differs from Christian identity. They examine the religious views attributed to America’s founding generation, the Constitution’s approach to religious freedom, Thomas Paine’s criticism of the Bible, and the tension between Christian influence and an established national church.  They also trace how Christian identity, British Israelism, nationalism, restorationist theology, political power, institutional wealth, and the New Apostolic Reformation became intertwined. The conversation considers whether Christian ethics can influence public life without allowing religious institutions or political leaders to control one another.  CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 03:41 Bob’s Family Connection to Benjamin Rush 07:29 Benjamin Rush and the American Founding 13:16 How Should Government and Christianity Relate? 21:01 Defining Christian Nationalism 22:29 Christian Identity vs. Christian Nationalism 25:05 How the Two Movements Began to Merge 29:50 Democracy, Morality, and the Bible 36:09 Religious Freedom and the American Colonies 42:47 The Establishment Clause and the NAR 47:11 When Christianity Gained Political Power 54:30 The Cyrus Argument and Political Alliances 56:30 Human Nature, Politics, and Christian Values 1:02:21 Closing Thoughts ______________________ Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR: Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962 Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K ______________________ – Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham – Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ – Visit the website: https://william-branham.org – Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg  – Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham – Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr – Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books

Transcript

00:00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.

00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research

00:00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder

00:00:46of the Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books, the latest is Some Said They

00:00:51Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, The Kansas City Prophets, and

00:00:55the International House of Prayer.

00:00:57Bob, it's good to be back and to talk about Christian nationalism.

00:01:02This is one of the most important subjects of today.

00:01:05If you read through the news, you're going to find newspaper articles about Christian nationalism.

00:01:09You're going to see figureheads of the New Apostolic Reformation behind political figures who are

00:01:15involved with Christian nationalism.

00:01:17And at the same time, there's this confusion as to what it is exactly, and is it good?

00:01:24Is it bad?

00:01:25What is this thing that we're talking about?

00:01:27And to some extent, we've actually talked through this because Christian nationalism and Christian

00:01:33identity fit together like a zipper.

00:01:35They're two separate things, which we'll talk about later in the podcast, but they merge very

00:01:42significantly, especially whenever you get into the forties and fifties and beyond, it becomes

00:01:47very hard to separate the two.

00:01:50And in many ways, the two kind of feed on each other.

00:01:53So very glad to talk this through with you.

00:01:55Thank you for thank you for coming on and talking about it.

00:01:58Well, it's deeply personal for me in two regards.

00:02:03One, obviously, we all have lots of friends.

00:02:05And what's become difficult in the social media world is buzzwords.

00:02:14It's like buzzwords, that's a marketing term.

00:02:17It's just the problem because everything now is all about marketing, right?

00:02:21And so we try to find words, right?

00:02:25And so Christian nationalism right now is one of those lightning rod buzzwords.

00:02:32And depending on where you're standing in the spectrum of politics, it means two completely

00:02:39different things.

00:02:39But I would venture to say, based on my conversations, most people are absolutely confused with what

00:02:45it actually does mean because there's so many different people using the term.

00:02:51And as you're listening to them talk from based on their perspective, you go, well, you're

00:02:55using it in a way that's different than I thought.

00:02:59That's what it meant, right?

00:03:00So I think there's a lot of confusion out there.

00:03:03As I was telling you earlier, I see two reactions.

00:03:08One, you hear the word Christian nationalism and people start instantly going into anxiety

00:03:14mode, right?

00:03:15It's like, oh my God, don't say that word.

00:03:17It's a lightning rod.

00:03:19Conflict is pending right now.

00:03:21The minute you bring that word up, I don't want to get into a conflict.

00:03:24And so people just start spazzing out.

00:03:26No, no, no, no, don't say that.

00:03:28Don't say that word, right?

00:03:29And then the other half are kind of just go glazed over, meaning I have no idea what

00:03:35you're talking about.

00:03:36I hear the term all the time.

00:03:38What does it mean?

00:03:39So let me, for the sake of our listeners, let me explain why this is very, very personal

00:03:46to me.

00:03:47It's not a political thing.

00:03:49It's a family history thing.

00:03:52When I was a little guy growing up, my dad said to me one day, do you know you're a

00:03:58descendant

00:03:59of Dr. Benjamin Rush?

00:04:00What does that mean?

00:04:01Right?

00:04:02I didn't even know idea who that was, right?

00:04:04Well, it turns out that my dad's mom, whose maiden name was Brewer.

00:04:10She was Irene Brewer.

00:04:12Well, the Brewers are Dutch.

00:04:15When they originally came over, they were Browers.

00:04:19So sometimes it's spelled B-O-W-E-R.

00:04:22A lot of times it was spelled B-R-U-E-E-R, right?

00:04:27But the Dutch all settled in New York and then across the Hudson in New Jersey, right?

00:04:33That was their big settlement.

00:04:35So that's my grandmother's roots.

00:04:38And he said, but your grandmother's grandmother's name was Nancy Jane Haynes Brewer.

00:04:46So anyways, I got told these stories and then probably 10 years ago, I actually went in and

00:04:51dug into this to find out if this was actually true, right?

00:04:54There's lore, you know, family stories.

00:04:57And then there's, well, what do the facts bear out?

00:04:59So anyways, I discover that my grandmother, and the reason why I was kind of aware of

00:05:07a little bit is my grandmother always used to go to Des Moines.

00:05:10My grandmother grew up, or sorry, my grandmother lived in LaGrange, Chicago, but she would go

00:05:15to Des Moines all the time.

00:05:17Well, it turns out that that's until Nancy Jane Haynes Brewer got older.

00:05:24She lived in Des Moines.

00:05:25In fact, her husband, William Brewer, is buried there in Altoona.

00:05:29I've actually been to his gravesite.

00:05:31It's just as you're coming into Des Moines.

00:05:33Anyways, long story short, Nancy Jane Haynes was born on the frontier in Ohio in like 1816

00:05:42or something like that.

00:05:44And it's very funny because for people that may not be aware of this, after the Revolutionary

00:05:50War, people that fought in the war didn't, there was no money to pay a lot of guys, right?

00:05:57They basically got food and clothing, if that, and then what they got was land grants.

00:06:03So after the Revolutionary War, there was no trains yet, so people came down the Ohio River

00:06:11from the east.

00:06:12And so the Brewers got land in Sciato County, which is the very southern county in Ohio,

00:06:21and the Haynes got land across the river in Lewis County, Kentucky, which is the northern

00:06:27part of Kentucky, right?

00:06:29So somehow across this river, probably at some shindig, right, where they're playing the fiddles

00:06:34and getting together, whatever, Nancy Jane Haynes meets William Brewer.

00:06:41William Brewer was from New Jersey, and his father, or sorry, he was from Ohio or from

00:06:48that whole area, but his grandfather, John Brewer, fought with Washington in New Jersey.

00:06:54In fact, Nancy, when she reaches 100 years old, and she's living in Springfield, Missouri,

00:07:01and they do a big interview celebrating her 100th birthday, and she talks about how John

00:07:08Brewer and his wife were really good friends with Martha and George.

00:07:12They were together there in New Jersey when Washington was, you know, I think he had his

00:07:20winter residence or something there.

00:07:22And then she talks about, but my great uncle was Dr. Benjamin Rush.

00:07:27I'm like, wow, okay, so this is really fascinating, right?

00:07:31Well, who's Dr. Rush, right?

00:07:34Who's Dr. Benjamin Rush?

00:07:35He's one of these guys that most people never heard of.

00:07:40You know, everybody knows Jefferson and Adams and Washington and these names, even maybe,

00:07:47you know, Matt, John Madison, right?

00:07:50Those are kind of the guys, but Dr. Rush is not really considered, you know, one of the

00:07:55more well-known guys.

00:07:58Fascinating, though, he was incredibly influential, and here's why.

00:08:02He was from Philadelphia, and in fact, I've been to his grave site.

00:08:07If you go to Philadelphia, you'll see the Liberty Bell.

00:08:10It's in a little glassed-in area.

00:08:13Right behind that is Constitutional Hall, where they signed the Declaration of Independence,

00:08:17and just across from the Liberty Bell is Ben Franklin and Dr. Rush's grave sites, right?

00:08:24So, I mean, again, this is a small little city, you know, early America, and Dr. Rush

00:08:31is an academic, but he's totally into medicine.

00:08:35So, he is considered, by most people, the father of American medicine.

00:08:40He was the guy that saved most of the founding fathers when there was a giant yellow fever

00:08:48outbreak in Philadelphia, and then it got into New York and different places, and Dr. Rush

00:08:54was, if you've ever watched John Adams, where they were figuring out how to give people diseases

00:09:00to build up immunities, that was Dr. Rush.

00:09:03He was the guy that had figured a lot of that out, right?

00:09:06He was also the guy, I don't know if you, for those of you that like history, there is

00:09:14a pamphlet that most people consider the catalyst for the American Revolution, and it's written

00:09:22by a guy named Thomas Paine, and it's called Common Sense, and it's basically his argument

00:09:30as to why these colonists should leave the tyranny of the English monarchy.

00:09:37Dr. Rush was the editor.

00:09:39He was very good friends with Thomas Paine, and so he edited the whole thing and got it

00:09:44ready for public consumption, right?

00:09:47But he was really close friends with Jefferson and Adams, right?

00:09:52And one of the most endearing stories is, if you know what ends up happening, is Jefferson

00:09:58and Adams had two very different ideas as to what the federal government should look like,

00:10:05right?

00:10:06You know, and this is where we still have these debates 250 years later between states dominating

00:10:13or the federalists dominating, right?

00:10:16It's this thing, do we centralize it or do we separate it?

00:10:19Anyways, long story short, Jefferson and Adams got into some real conflict because they were

00:10:26both running for the presidency, and things got really nasty, and they quit talking to

00:10:29each other for two decades.

00:10:32Adams went back to Massachusetts, Jefferson ends up going back to Virginia, and what ends

00:10:40up happening is Dr. Rush goes, hey, you guys are my buddies.

00:10:44I love both of you.

00:10:45And the truth of it, remember when we were young and we were all in this together, and

00:10:51he ends up reconciling the two of them, and they spend the last 20 years of their life

00:10:57writing these wonderfully kind letters to each other, and if anybody's ever had a chance

00:11:02to read them, it's really fascinating, right?

00:11:05These two old guys looking back on what they did.

00:11:09Crazy story, they end up dying on July 4th together within hours of each other.

00:11:17I mean, you talk about one of those kind of wild, historical, spiritual, if you want to,

00:11:25you know, it's just like, what's that all about, right?

00:11:28It's like, how do you guys both die on July 4th on the same day, right?

00:11:32It's just crazy story.

00:11:34But here's where this gets really interesting for me, is because delving into Dr. Rush's

00:11:41life, you begin to realize this guy is not just sort of a couch potato Christian, he sees

00:11:49Christianity as absolutely fundamental to everything they're doing.

00:11:54Like, this doesn't happen without the Bible and God and all this, right?

00:12:01So the reason why this is so fascinating for me is here I am reading the letters, I have

00:12:08friends who actually have some of his private correspondence, they've purchased it, so I've

00:12:13got to actually hold in my hands letters written by him, and you read these, you know, you read

00:12:19his perspective, and then you get on television, and you listen to people who say, there was

00:12:25no influence, right?

00:12:27This, right, it was like, this whole thing happened, you know, outside of the church,

00:12:32and blah, blah, blah, blah, and you're just going, wait a minute, have you not read these

00:12:37letters, right?

00:12:38This is where I get, I got to, you know, confess here, this is where the word pundit kind of

00:12:44gets under my skin.

00:12:45Because I listen to some of these guys on television, and they're promoted as pundits, and yet, when

00:12:52you're somebody that's actually done your homework, and actually drilled down and read some of this

00:12:58stuff, and then the pundits say that what you know, what you've held in your hands and

00:13:04read with your own eyes, right, doesn't exist, you're kind of going, huh?

00:13:10So, that ends up creating a really interesting question.

00:13:15So, how do these two worlds actually, how are they supposed to relate, right?

00:13:20How does government relate with the spiritual world?

00:13:26Because it hasn't really gone very well.

00:13:31And sorry for the long introduction, but I, you know, a lot of you like to hear some of

00:13:37our personal stories, so I wanted to, you know, I wanted to share with you why these

00:13:42questions are pertinent to me, because it's personal, right?

00:13:44This is family, right?

00:13:46This is my heritage in a way, and it's like, okay, you know, this is what I know.

00:13:53And so, and yet, historically, when the two worlds come together, they don't do very well.

00:14:02And so, my question has always been, why?

00:14:05So, let me read something to you that's kind of interesting.

00:14:09When George Washington was saying goodbye after his second term, in his speech, he said this,

00:14:16of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality

00:14:25are indispensable supports.

00:14:28So, here's Washington, right, considered the father of a nation, basically saying that this

00:14:37doesn't work without morality and religion.

00:14:42So, why?

00:14:44I mean, this is 180 degree different from a lot of what I'm hearing these days from certain

00:14:50sectors of our culture.

00:14:52He's basically, this is what he spoke to everybody in 1796, when he was saying goodbye.

00:14:58In his mind, he had the same worldview as Dr. Rush.

00:15:01You can't separate these two things and be successful.

00:15:05There's so much to untangle here.

00:15:07I, you know, when I began my research, I thought that Christian nationalism and Christian identity

00:15:13were one and the same.

00:15:14Because if you look through history and you look at some of the major milestones or events

00:15:20in history, you find that the people who are in one side or the other are sharing the

00:15:27same events, the same propaganda, the same, sounds like the same ideology, holding the

00:15:32same picket signs and the riots, etc.

00:15:35And it's because the two, they fit together like a zipper because they're cross-pollinating.

00:15:41I don't believe that you could have Christian nationalism and Christian identity in its current

00:15:47form without both sides of the equation.

00:15:50They've cross-pollinated and they've kind of blended together where it's very difficult

00:15:55to distinguish the two.

00:15:57As I was beginning to research Christian identity from my latest book, I was going through some

00:16:05of the history, learning that Christian identity means that we identify as Christian, but more

00:16:13than that, Christianity is identified in our DNA.

00:16:17We're part of a bloodline that became Christian.

00:16:21We're part of the lost ten tribes of Israel, is the ideology.

00:16:26That ideology is quite different at its core.

00:16:31And so I wanted to know the difference.

00:16:33I started to study on the opposite end, what is Christian nationalism and how did it develop?

00:16:38And I had the mindset from growing up and being taught this way, we are a Christian nation.

00:16:44We've always been a Christian nation.

00:16:45The Constitution is a Christian constitution.

00:16:49And anybody who tries to say otherwise is wrong.

00:16:51That's how my mind was wired from growing up in this thing that we did.

00:16:57But that's not quite true.

00:17:00It's partially true, which I'll get into.

00:17:02But there are a lot of gray areas between that black and white.

00:17:08So I began studying the early founding fathers of the nation.

00:17:11And one of the events, which they don't talk about in high school or grade school, is an event with

00:17:18involving Thomas Paine, the man who wrote the pamphlet that was sent out that started the Boston Tea Party.

00:17:25He became an ambassador.

00:17:27I think it was an ambassador to France, if I remember correctly.

00:17:31He got into a little bit of trouble, got thrown into prison, and he contacted back to the United States,

00:17:38please help me get out of prison.

00:17:40And he didn't get his way.

00:17:43And so what happened was he became angry in prison, and he started to attempt to create a Boston Tea

00:17:52Party of sorts against Christianity.

00:17:55And he wrote, I think it was two different pamphlets or books, attacking the Christian Bible.

00:18:02And that was shocking to me.

00:18:04I had no idea that history existed.

00:18:06So I started reading through.

00:18:08You can read through his books online.

00:18:11But more importantly, you can read through the responses that were sent to him.

00:18:16And there's so many different unusual things in the responses, the biggest of which I found it a little bit

00:18:23shocking and, quite frankly, a little bit appalling that some of the founding fathers attacked his character rather than the

00:18:31content he published, attacking the Bible.

00:18:33They could have, you know, they could have gone further and said, hey, you're wrong and this, that, and the

00:18:39other.

00:18:39But instead, some of them just simply attacked his character.

00:18:42But others, you could tell clearly in the responses which ones were Christian, which ones were greatly offended by what

00:18:49he published, and which ones they may not have been Christian.

00:18:53Benjamin Franklin, for example.

00:18:55His response was very blunt to the point.

00:18:58And I'm paraphrasing greatly.

00:19:01You have to go look this up if you're interested.

00:19:03But he said something to the effect, yes, what you say might be true, but how will we govern the

00:19:09people if we don't have a moral code such as Christianity?

00:19:14It will turn into complete chaos, essentially, is what I'm paraphrasing him to say.

00:19:19There were people who responded like that, and there were others who responded, you know, using Christian terminology that would

00:19:26have existed back in the day.

00:19:28So you could tell clearly that among the founding fathers, there was a variety of views and different ideologies, different

00:19:35mindsets.

00:19:36So as I'm studying that, I'm piecing together the fact that maybe I'm not thinking clearly, or maybe my thinking

00:19:48has been altered to believe something that we believe to be, as a Christian nation, the Constitution written in a

00:19:58Christian format, etc.

00:20:00Maybe that's not quite true.

00:20:02So I started reading through some of the laws, the articles that are written in the Constitution, and the word

00:20:08Christianity just simply isn't there.

00:20:10It does talk about religion, and it talks about a freedom to worship as you please, but it doesn't outright

00:20:17say Christianity, opening the door for other religions and other belief sets, which would have likely been a result of

00:20:26those who were deists in the deist camp.

00:20:29So I'm beginning to understand that it is a little bit confusing to go through because at the same time,

00:20:37the Constitution is written in a way that is very tailored for a Christian belief set of that era, which

00:20:49means that there were Christian ideas getting into the Constitution while also leaving the door for the freedom of worshiping

00:20:55as you please under whichever religion or not.

00:21:00So I think the best way to start this out is to let's first define what is Christian nationalism, and

00:21:07this is just one of the definitions that I got online.

00:21:10Christian nationalism is the belief that a nation has a special Christian identity and that its laws, institution, leadership, and

00:21:19public culture should preserve that identity.

00:21:22In other words, we're a Christian nation, and we must preserve our Christian values.

00:21:27And in its simplest form, that's what the early church fathers believed.

00:21:31Do you think our founding fathers believed the same thing?

00:21:34I said founding church fathers, but I meant founding fathers of the nation.

00:21:39This is in a realm that I don't usually talk through.

00:21:43So if what I read and the way I understood it of the responses in the letters to Thomas Paine,

00:21:50who had written this attack against the Bible, if that was true, it looks like some of them, there's at

00:21:57least an open question as to where they were.

00:21:59Benjamin Franklin, for example, his response, it wasn't really attacking the fact that he had just attacked Christianity.

00:22:08It was more to the fact that how will we lead the chaos if we don't have a rule set?

00:22:13Oh, and Thomas Jefferson, right?

00:22:14He cut out a bunch of stuff, right?

00:22:16He was like, okay, I don't like this.

00:22:18But he had a Bible, which is interesting.

00:22:21But it was the stuff he agreed with.

00:22:23Yeah, exactly.

00:22:26So I think the people who are commenting are really trying to understand what is the difference?

00:22:32How does Christian identity differ from Christian nationalism?

00:22:37And so let's take Christian identity.

00:22:39Again, it is the idea that we are the, as the United States and Canada, we are the descendants of

00:22:46the lost 10 tribes of Israel.

00:22:48And that's because it was built upon British Israelism, which had that ideology.

00:22:54But Christian identity mixed some of the more racist and anti-Semitic elements into it.

00:23:00Whenever they, when the learn, the protocols of the learned elders of Zion was published and distributed, Henry Ford and

00:23:08the Dearborn Independent were largely a part of that.

00:23:12We've got some history written on the website.

00:23:14When anti-Semitism and racism combined with British Israelism to form Christian identity, now it became a DNA issue.

00:23:27The identity was a bloodline.

00:23:29And because that bloodline developed in this nation, we need to keep the bloodline pure.

00:23:35And don't let all of the other bloodlines come in and flood our gates.

00:23:40I mean, there's some weird stuff in there.

00:23:41They were especially adamant that the Jews not come into America because they were identified as false Jews.

00:23:48So in other words, Christian identity means I identify because my bloodline declares me to be Christian.

00:23:56And this ground that we're on, this Christian nation is a ground of Christian identity because we descended from that

00:24:07bloodline.

00:24:07So it's a blood issue.

00:24:09So Christian nationalism, on the other hand, means we came to this nation to be Christian, to worship in our

00:24:18Christian, in our Christian belief sets, to establish laws that allowed us to worship our Christian belief sets in freedom.

00:24:27But we, from its inception, we also will allow other religions, other faiths to come in, as long as they

00:24:36don't impede our constitution.

00:24:39So Christian nationalism, when it began, was the idea that we want a Christian nation, but we want to welcome

00:24:47other people to our Christian nation.

00:24:49So we're direct descendants of the Hebrew Israelites, and therefore we're chosen.

00:24:55So that's Christian identity.

00:24:57So Christian identity says we're chosen.

00:24:59We're special.

00:25:01Got it.

00:25:02Okay.

00:25:02That's a good way of separating that in my mind.

00:25:05Exactly.

00:25:06So now, fast forward in time, in history, to the point where Franklin Delano Roosevelt becomes president, and he's been

00:25:14president for a few years, and then suddenly the Christian identity people start to say that his policies are now

00:25:23too supportive of the Catholics and the Jews.

00:25:27And they start to say that because of this, he's opening the floodgates, the false Jews are going to come

00:25:32in, the nation that we have now will no longer be the pure bloodline, it's going to be impure, the

00:25:39policymakers will be affected by this.

00:25:42In other words, we're going to lose control of our Christian nation.

00:25:45That's what the Christian identity folk were saying.

00:25:48And it was spread and being popularized, especially by, you know, the Dearborn Independent was one of the big movers

00:25:55of this.

00:25:55We've also talked about Gordon Winrod.

00:26:02His father, Gerald Winrod, was publishing and distributing all throughout the fundamentalist sects.

00:26:08He had the Defenders of the Christian Faith that worked with Charles Fuller.

00:26:12He was working very closely with Amy Semple McPherson, et cetera.

00:26:17We've talked about that history, and I won't go deep into it.

00:26:20But, needless to say, it began to spread throughout the nation that we're about to lose our Christian nation.

00:26:26So, this would alarm the Christian nationalists, obviously.

00:26:31So, the Christian nationalists began to join forces with Christian identity, even though they probably were a little bit already

00:26:38merging together.

00:26:39But, now they had a common enemy.

00:26:42Let's attack Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

00:26:45And so, interesting, one of the leaders behind that attack was Gerald L.K. Smith, who I've mentioned a few

00:26:52times in different podcasts.

00:26:54He was the one who started the Christian nationalist crusades and the American First Party.

00:26:59So, when you hear America First today, this is nothing new.

00:27:03It can be actually dated back to this time period.

00:27:05But, what happened was, because of this, Christian nationalist people started to adopt many of the ideologies of the Christian

00:27:13identity framework, but not always with all of the racist elements.

00:27:18So, you could say that culturally, we're a Christian nation, and we must recover our Christian heritage.

00:27:24So, as the Christian nationalism began to gain power over certain Christian beliefs and institutions, it began to change the

00:27:35way that it was developing into the United States as a mindset.

00:27:39You no longer had the mindset where everybody, like the Founding Fathers, everybody's welcome to come to our nation and

00:27:45be free to, you know, practice their belief sets as they please, as long as they don't impede ours.

00:27:52Now, you have things in today's version of these two, we must keep the Muslims out, because we're not a

00:27:59Muslim nation.

00:28:00That's really how it has changed and morphed.

00:28:03So, it's quite a lot to take in.

00:28:06But, in the end, what it is for me is this.

00:28:09They both share a similar platform.

00:28:13From both of their roots, they both probably were out to do good, had a good idea, but they mixed

00:28:20in some very, very wrong, very bad ideologies into their movements.

00:28:25And, where it gets really problematic for me is both of those very bad ideologies and some somewhat dangerous extremist

00:28:34ideologies, they found that religion was one of the strongest platforms to move their ideologies forward.

00:28:43And so, as a result, you have many of these ideologies now starting to come into Christian doctrine in the

00:28:50United States.

00:28:51Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter

00:28:59reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

00:29:04You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.

00:29:12On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,

00:29:20John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

00:29:26You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

00:29:32If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the

00:29:38top.

00:29:39And, as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or

00:29:45watching.

00:29:45On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

00:29:51Based on what I read from Dr. Rush, Franklin, Washington, a lot of these guys,

00:29:58what they seem to understand was the political system of democracy is only as good as the people in it,

00:30:10right?

00:30:10In other words, if, and the reason is, is because the way democracy is different, right, from what preceded it

00:30:19was,

00:30:20you used to have top-down, right?

00:30:22You had monarchs and dictators and tribal chiefs, right, who were dictating to everyone else how things were going to

00:30:31go,

00:30:32and whatever their moral code was, was what that tribe or that area or that nation got ruled by.

00:30:41Democracy is supposed to be from the bottom up, right?

00:30:44It's supposed to be about the citizens, right?

00:30:47And it's about, and so what the founding fathers believed, in order for democracy to work,

00:30:55we have to have citizens that have a moral, ethical code that we all agree on, right?

00:31:03You know, therefore, if you kill someone, that's murder, you go to prison, right?

00:31:07That's a moral code.

00:31:09Well, that moral code was all based on the Bible, right?

00:31:13That was the root of it, right?

00:31:16That's why, if you go to Washington, D.C., you see the Ten Commandments, you see biblical stuff everywhere,

00:31:22because the whole basis of our morality and ethics is, in their mind, biblically based.

00:31:29But it wasn't about Christianity ruling the government.

00:31:36It was about Christianity transforming the souls of the democratic, the people, the citizens, right?

00:31:45We need to have morally good citizens who will elect morally and ethically driven people to represent them,

00:31:54because we're not totally a democracy.

00:31:56A democracy would mean that we would all vote, like the early Greeks did, on every issue.

00:32:03In our case, we're a republic.

00:32:05We elect people to vote for us on all these issues.

00:32:09But the key to it is, in their mind, if you take the Bible or God out of the equation,

00:32:16right,

00:32:17we will descend into moral and ethical bankruptcy.

00:32:22We will become perverted, in their mind.

00:32:25And we will, you know, we'll depart.

00:32:29And I think it was to Tocqueville or whatever, who wrote a book, and he realized that one of the

00:32:35great weaknesses in democracy,

00:32:37he said when people start figuring out that they can elect people that give them stuff, right,

00:32:44this whole thing's going to go off the rails, right?

00:32:46Because they're going to start electing people who keep giving them stuff, right?

00:32:50And so the founding fathers realized there were some inherent weaknesses, right, in human nature, right?

00:32:58And what did they reckon?

00:33:00And this is something that I find interesting, because this never really comes up in any of the discussions,

00:33:05because people don't like to get into this world.

00:33:08But when you read what the founding fathers understood,

00:33:12is they understood that humans by nature are driven by selfish ambition and greed, right?

00:33:18And so how do we set up a system that mitigates selfish ambition and greed?

00:33:24Well, we have these three power structures, right?

00:33:27We have legislative, judicial, and executive.

00:33:31Well, let's put them in their own little silos and make sure that they are all independent from each other,

00:33:38so they'll balance each other, right?

00:33:40Because if we don't want to let any, if somebody gets morally bankrupt or ethically bankrupt,

00:33:46we have two other branches that can hold them in check.

00:33:49So that was their checks and balance system, because they understood human nature,

00:33:56which is something I don't hear much discussed.

00:33:59You know, in fact, one of the things I find interesting is that a lot of stuff that I hear

00:34:06is this sort of default setting from, you know, a lot of people that they just think humans are good.

00:34:13Like, we're by default good, right?

00:34:17And so let's believe the best in each other, right?

00:34:21Let's, you know, there's almost this naivete, like we're good people, really.

00:34:26You know, we just got to focus on the good side.

00:34:28And the evil people look at that and go, oh, my God, this is our opportunity, right?

00:34:34These people are so naive, right?

00:34:36And you just see this constant tension all the time,

00:34:38because the people that believe that everybody's good, the evil people look at that and go,

00:34:43you're so gullible and naive, and we're going to take advantage of you.

00:34:47In fact, this is a little sidebar here.

00:34:52For people like me that travel the world and get to talk to a lot of foreigners,

00:34:57what you're seeing in Minnesota with the whole Somali fraud thing,

00:35:00I saw 30 years ago in Africa, listening to them talking and going,

00:35:06we can't wait to get to America.

00:35:08You guys are so trusting.

00:35:10And that's what they would all say.

00:35:12You're so trusting.

00:35:13Your system is just so ripe for abuse because you just believe the best in everyone.

00:35:22It's like people from around the world looked at our system going,

00:35:25oh, my God, this is like an orchard or a field with no guard, right?

00:35:30It's like they just believe everything's trust this, trust that, right?

00:35:34Well, guess what?

00:35:34We figured out people actually can't be trusted, right?

00:35:38And I think our founding fathers recognized that.

00:35:42You know what?

00:35:42Not everybody can be trusted.

00:35:44Therefore, let's put some of these guardrails in.

00:35:46And, oh, by the way, religion and morality and ethics are fundamental

00:35:52to our whole civilization lasting.

00:35:56If this thing goes south and people get driven by selfish ambition and greed,

00:36:01what James says in 3.16 in the Bible is you're going to end up having chaos and evil.

00:36:07And they seem to recognize that, right?

00:36:10And why?

00:36:12Because, and this is something I think people forget,

00:36:15how did we even come to be, right?

00:36:18Who were the very first people that came here and why, right?

00:36:21And it was the pilgrims.

00:36:23Well, who were they, right?

00:36:24A lot of people always think Thanksgiving, right?

00:36:27Pilgrims, you know, they wear those funny hats and ate turkey.

00:36:31But the pilgrims were actually religious refugees, weren't they?

00:36:38And they didn't come from England, even though they were English.

00:36:41They came from where?

00:36:43They came from the Netherlands.

00:36:44They came from the Dutch.

00:36:46And why were they living there?

00:36:48Because there was no freedom to express their religion in England.

00:36:53So they had to flee and go to the, in fact, you know,

00:36:56the Dutch had more religious freedom than the English.

00:37:00And finally, there was this opportunity and they came here.

00:37:03But they came here for one reason, primarily.

00:37:07So we could just be free to be us, right?

00:37:10To worship God the way we wanted to.

00:37:13This is what's so crazy to me when people go there was, you know,

00:37:17that Christianity had no, you know, no influence or wasn't a part of,

00:37:23I'm like, wait a minute, what do you think the 13 colonies were?

00:37:27These were each, you know, what was Rhode Island?

00:37:29It was the Center for Catholics.

00:37:31What was Pennsylvania?

00:37:33Oh, it's the Center for the Quakers, right?

00:37:36It's William Pitt, the whole thing.

00:37:38What's down in Georgia?

00:37:40Oh, it's the Baptists.

00:37:41That's why John Whitefield went there and preached.

00:37:44They had big religious meetings.

00:37:45And, you know, why did, you know, Wesley and all these guys, right?

00:37:49Why did they all come to America?

00:37:50And where did they go?

00:37:51They went to the colonies because that's what people wanted.

00:37:56They wanted religious leaders because each one of the colonies had its own religious bent, right?

00:38:02They were pretty much a denomination.

00:38:05They denominated that area.

00:38:08That's why it made it so difficult when they decided to, like, how are we going to bring these 13

00:38:13different religious, you know, worldviews or, you know, denomination?

00:38:18How are we going to bring it all together?

00:38:19Everybody thinks it's just about the colonies.

00:38:22It was more than that.

00:38:23It was the colonies.

00:38:24It was about slavery.

00:38:25And, oh, my God, what are we going to do?

00:38:28We have 13 different, well, not 13 because there wasn't that many, but I'm just saying we have a variety

00:38:34of expressions here.

00:38:37And what did they all know?

00:38:39They all came from a place where diversity of religious worldviews was not appreciated.

00:38:47In fact, it would get you killed, right?

00:38:51People died having a different worldview.

00:38:54And so the whole thing, for people to say that our nation wasn't founded, you know, on Christianity, it's almost

00:39:04mind-boggling to me.

00:39:05It's like, do you not understand who these people were, why they came here, what they set up, right?

00:39:12So you still have 150 years before we ever become a nation, right?

00:39:17But even in that, what were the founding fathers afraid of?

00:39:20The problem they had in England, which was there was a state church.

00:39:27So the whole idea of separation of church and state has nothing to do with keeping the morals, values, and

00:39:35ethics of Christianity out of government.

00:39:38Absolutely nothing.

00:39:39There was nobody in the early colonies that were writing the Declaration or writing any of that who was looking

00:39:47at it and go, we've got to keep God out of this.

00:39:50In fact, it was exactly the opposite, right?

00:39:52What they were saying was, the government should not be a religious institution.

00:40:00The president of the United States should not be the head of the church, as it was in England, right?

00:40:05Or in Italy, you know, where you had the popes and the Holy Roman emperors, right?

00:40:10We're like, we're not doing that.

00:40:12This doesn't end well, right?

00:40:13So, yes, we want Christianity to influence everything we're doing, but no, we don't want an institution called the National

00:40:22Church run by the politicians.

00:40:24And that's the separation of church and state, not keeping moral ethics and values out.

00:40:30And so that's, to me, I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible, but this whole confusion that academics

00:40:36have brought into this is just mind-boggling to me.

00:40:40And part of the reason I discovered, after kind of having off-the-record conversations, is most of these people

00:40:48that are making these statements have never read the actual private letters of these guys, where it all is laid

00:40:58out, right?

00:40:59If you really want to know what somebody's worldview is, right, read their stuff, and it's all in there.

00:41:07It's just, it's not even hidden.

00:41:10So that's where this, you know, I get a little frustrated because it's like, wait a minute here, you know,

00:41:16it's like, what's really going on right now in our country, right?

00:41:20Because it's like, I'm sorry, but when you say Christianity has no part in this, I have a problem with

00:41:27that, right?

00:41:28At the same time, I have a problem when political parties claim to represent the church, right?

00:41:37Or God, right?

00:41:39You know, there was a bit of my frustration with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson with the moral majority, right?

00:41:47I was like, you guys are walking on a very, very dangerous place right now, right?

00:41:55It's like, you know, you're trying to turn something into a religious revival here, right?

00:42:03I have no problem if you want to run for president and say, hey, my Judeo beliefs are Christian.

00:42:11But don't be president of the United States and think you're the head of the church.

00:42:17You're not the pope.

00:42:19You run civic affairs.

00:42:21So, anyways, this is just me kind of sharing my perspective.

00:42:26And, of course, other people will have different ones.

00:42:28But it's personal to me because I've read all this and read these guys' letters, and I'm just fascinated.

00:42:34Like, how can you even think that Christianity had no influence in the founding of our country when it's absolutely

00:42:42paramount?

00:42:43Like, it's the foundation for everything.

00:42:46So, let's add some history to this that adds some complexity to what you just said, and totally confuse everybody.

00:42:55This is really important, I think, whenever you consider how these ideologies have mixed into the New Apostolic Reformation.

00:43:03So, as I mentioned, most of the early founding fathers of the nation, not all, but most, were devout Christians.

00:43:10Some were deists, and Thomas Paine was helping fuel a growing deist movement, apparently.

00:43:16And so, you had a wide variety of people with diverse belief sets, but they created the Establishment Clause in

00:43:28the Constitution that says, basically, the government cannot dictate or establish any religion.

00:43:33And, again, they did not use the word Christianity anywhere in the law, so you're free to establish a religion,

00:43:40you're free to establish any religion, but you must obey our moral code, which comes from our Christian views.

00:43:49Then, maybe in the same sentence, there's a free exercise clause, which says, basically, you have the right to practice

00:43:56your religion in any way that you want, or not practice it in any way that you don't want, but

00:44:03you must obey our moral code, which we got mainly from our Christian values.

00:44:07So, the early founding fathers of the United States were basically allowing diversity, granted anyone who came into the United

00:44:16States of a different religion, they might not see things eye to eye.

00:44:23And that's where it gets a little bit sketchy, because we, let's say it like this, we in the United

00:44:30States are Christian.

00:44:31You can come here, if you're not Christian, you're going to obey our rules, which were established based off the

00:44:37moral code that we're Christian.

00:44:39So, yes, it was technically a Christian constitution, though the word is not in there, but we're going to allow

00:44:46you if you're Hindu, Islam, Buddhist, etc.

00:44:50And that's where it gets a little bit sketchy, because what happens whenever somebody comes into the United States, and

00:44:59their moral code does not jive with our moral code?

00:45:04That's really the problem that we're starting to see today.

00:45:07You have people who are in the Christian nationalist camp, Christian identity camp, saying, well, they must identify as Christian

00:45:14if they want to come here.

00:45:15But that's not really what the Constitution says.

00:45:19And take it a step further, in the way that the religious mindset has developed off of these things, they

00:45:26start to say, well, this is the development of the kingdom of God.

00:45:30You're not welcome here.

00:45:31You can't come here.

00:45:32So you have people who are trying to reject the Islam, anybody who's Islamic, for example.

00:45:39So it gets really, really murky.

00:45:41How you view this is basically through the restorationist history.

00:45:48If you study how all of the doctrinal frameworks developed at the same time these ideological frameworks developed, you see

00:45:58in the picture this restoration element.

00:46:01Lateran had it.

00:46:02We're coming to restore the church.

00:46:04The New Apostolic Reformation builds upon that idea.

00:46:07We're coming to restore the apostles, the prophets, the pastors, the five-fold ministry.

00:46:11And that structure is going to be bound to our government.

00:46:15So that's why when you look at the news, you see NAR leaders trying to get very, very, very close

00:46:21to people who are in politics governing bodies because they want to reestablish the kingdom.

00:46:27And part of that reestablishment is to take this Old Covenant system, the Old Covenant systems in the Old Testament

00:46:35and establish those and create not quite a monarchy, but essentially the same thing that the Catholic Church did, where

00:46:44we have a pope-type figure.

00:46:47The leader of the United States needs to be a Christian leader who is closely tied to the church, essentially.

00:46:54So it gets really, really murky when you try to take all of these ideologies, combine them with today's laws,

00:47:02and then add to it all of the complexity of everything that we see with the people who are coming

00:47:08into the United States.

00:47:09It's almost like a no-win scenario.

00:47:12Well, here, so one of the things that's interesting, so not only do we see the fact that, you know,

00:47:22the Christians go through hundreds of years of persecution, and then all of a sudden everything flips, right, around 300

00:47:29AD, right?

00:47:30And when we see something really interesting happen, it flips at the time of Constantine over the next three administrations,

00:47:40right, to the point where the third guy, Theodosius or whatever his name is, ends up making it the state

00:47:46religion.

00:47:47Now, this is where everything gets complicated, right, because, and this is where I think things really go haywire, and

00:47:55it gets back to what I talk about in my book, money, wealth, right?

00:48:02Because, and this is why I said in my book, if you really want to solve all of these problems

00:48:08in the American church or the global church, get rid of the money.

00:48:13Because, and why do I say that?

00:48:16Because before money and power became a thing in the Christian church world, it was about relationships and community and

00:48:29people surviving together through rough times.

00:48:32What happened was, is that when the Romans decided to make Christianity the state religion, what did they do with

00:48:41all the real estate that belonged to the other religions?

00:48:47It all got turned over to the Christians.

00:48:50And many pagan temples became churches.

00:48:54Well, suddenly now the church had what?

00:48:56Real estate and wealth, right?

00:49:01Well, then what happens?

00:49:02The church keeps accumulating, the Roman church, right, keeps accumulating more wealth, more wealth, more wealth.

00:49:10Well, what happens when you get a lot of wealth?

00:49:13What do other people want to do with your wealth?

00:49:15They want to take it away from you.

00:49:17Except for here's the problem.

00:49:20You're a religion.

00:49:21You don't have an army.

00:49:22You have no military.

00:49:24You have no police force.

00:49:25You have nothing to defend yourself against all the people that want to take your stuff away.

00:49:30So what did they come up with?

00:49:32What's their brilliant solution to this problem?

00:49:36Well, we need to create an alliance with a civil government that has an army that can defend our wealth.

00:49:44And they come up with the concept of the Holy Roman Emperor, right, which ended up being Charlemagne, the French

00:49:52king, the Frankish king at first.

00:49:54But then you have this whole series of, you know, governments now protecting the Vatican.

00:50:02And that dynamic, that dance has been going on for centuries, right?

00:50:07But it's the same problem.

00:50:08It's like whenever the church gets into trouble and it gets, it's threatened, its wealth and its accumulation of stuff

00:50:17gets threatened, they always go straight to the civil leaders and go, hey, protect us.

00:50:23They're taking our stuff away, right?

00:50:25Well, what if we got rid of the stuff?

00:50:28What if you didn't have any, like, let's go back to Jesus, right?

00:50:32Like, Jesus didn't have any stuff.

00:50:34You know, how much real estate did Jesus own?

00:50:36Like, how much stuff did the disciples own, right?

00:50:39That was the whole idea.

00:50:40Get rid of the stuff.

00:50:42You get rid of the stuff, you have nothing weighing you down.

00:50:46You're not beholden to anyone.

00:50:48And in my mind, and again, I'm being very philosophical here, but I think that's where things always go wonky,

00:50:56where things end up falling off the rails, as it were, is whenever the issue becomes around preserving the wealth,

00:51:06right?

00:51:06And I think, you know, in our situation here in the States, you know, the government's been trying to figure

00:51:17out that equation for a long time, right?

00:51:19It's like, well, what did we do here, right?

00:51:21For a long time, the church didn't have a lot of wealth.

00:51:25But then we got into the prosperity gospel, and then we got guys driving around in Learjets, right?

00:51:30And guys having mansions and all this kind of stuff.

00:51:34And so now what are people saying?

00:51:35Hey, where's the government?

00:51:39You see what I mean?

00:51:40It's just weird tension going on here.

00:51:42It's like, I mean, I know Bill Cosby's kind of a lightning round thing, but he used to have this

00:51:47whole stick with Adam and Eve.

00:51:50Come here, come here, come here.

00:51:51Get away, get away, get away.

00:51:52Come here, come here, come here.

00:51:53Get away, get away, get away.

00:51:54And it feels like to me that the church world has that sort of dynamic with the civil government.

00:52:00Come here, come here, come here.

00:52:02Wait, help us save, you know, preserve our stuff.

00:52:05Get away, get away.

00:52:05Hey, don't tell us what to do, right?

00:52:08I mean, I ended up, this is a crazy story, but, you know, I have a not-for-profit called

00:52:14Compassionate Justice International.

00:52:15It took me two years to get this not-for-profit.

00:52:21And just so people know, it should have taken three months.

00:52:25Well, why?

00:52:26I happened to try to get a license for this thing or get it approved during when Barack Obama was

00:52:34president.

00:52:35And there was this whole backlash during that period against religious organizations that had not-for-profit status.

00:52:43Well, it just so happened in my bylaws, I had made the comment, you know, I wanted the organization to

00:52:49run on Judeo-Christian values.

00:52:51Well, I got flagged.

00:52:53So I ended up, I mean, again, I want to be careful here, but the lady that had my file

00:52:58was a black woman, right?

00:53:01And she would not approve of this because of the fact that I had that in there.

00:53:06And I had to argue with her.

00:53:08I finally had to get a lawyer involved.

00:53:09And so my argument to her was, ma'am, do you go to a black church?

00:53:14You know, I said, where is the separation between church and state and your church, right?

00:53:22In other words, so there's this whole concept about separation of church and state and this, that, and everything else.

00:53:28I don't, you know, it's like all my black friends that are pastors are like, wait a minute.

00:53:33You cannot be not political and be a pastor in the black church, right?

00:53:38Those two things go hand in hand.

00:53:40You have to be involved in politics or you can't be a pastor there, right?

00:53:44So again, these are, this is where this, as you were saying, it gets murky, right?

00:53:48It's like, well, wait, this group over here, they can't have this, but this group over here, you know, they

00:53:55can have it.

00:53:55And it's like, it's, there's no consistency, right?

00:53:58And so I think that's what's also caused confusion, right?

00:54:01It's like, well, how come the black church in New York has political rallies?

00:54:05And, you know, I mean, I just, you see it right now, right?

00:54:08These political figures are all showing up at the black churches with the black pastors all supporting them, right?

00:54:14But you try to do that over here and you're like, wait a minute, we're going to take your taxism

00:54:19status away from you.

00:54:21So that, I mean, I've had to deal with this in the real world, right?

00:54:25It gets confusing to people.

00:54:27Again, come here, come here, get away, get away, right?

00:54:29Well, I can explain to some extent the come here, come here, get away, get away.

00:54:34And that's through the Cyrus argument.

00:54:36So if you remember King Cyrus in the Bible, he was not a, he was not of the children of

00:54:42Israel.

00:54:43He was very tolerant of other religions and cultures, but he was used by God to further the kingdom of

00:54:50the, um, kingdom of the Jews.

00:54:53So what happens in today's world, you have these ideologies, some of them extremists or tied to extremist backgrounds, trying

00:55:02to make the constitution say things that it doesn't really say to support the ideology that the constitution doesn't really

00:55:09support, which in fact, in some cases is polar opposite from what the founding fathers were intending to create.

00:55:18The only way that you can do this is you need to have politicians in your pocket who will write

00:55:23new laws and amendments and, uh, produce code that will enable you to continue with your extremist agendas.

00:55:34That's probably the simplest, simplest, most confusing way I could put it.

00:55:38But essentially you're trying to do things that it was never intended to do.

00:55:42I'll say it like that.

00:55:43And so what you do is you get somebody who's on the other side.

00:55:46You get a King Cyrus, you get somebody who is going to be very tolerant of us in our very

00:55:52weird extremist views because we're Christian or we're using the word Christian in our new apostolic reformation, charismania, et cetera.

00:56:01Because that word is used, they will somewhat tailor to our beliefs, but we slide in our ideologies, hoping that

00:56:10the King Cyrus will move things forward.

00:56:13But what happens whenever the King Cyrus draws a line in the sand and says, you know, I'm going to

00:56:18help you on the things that the constitution can support, but I'm not going to go beyond this.

00:56:23And so what happens is while they're being supported, yes, they're all in, but the moment, whenever that changes, they

00:56:30kind of back off and say that, that guy's of the devil.

00:56:33From my sociology background, one of the things that I realized is that politics actually is predetermined, meaning that we

00:56:44tend to flock to what's familiar.

00:56:47Well, our worldviews, we congregate in subcultures, right?

00:56:53And so there's a particular subculture that sees themselves as victims about everything, right?

00:57:00And if you study Cartman's triangle, relational triangle, which is very interesting, he talks about victims, persecutors, and rescuers, right?

00:57:08You can see this whole thing play out in our culture, right?

00:57:12There's victims, rescuers, and persecutors, you know, people that, you know, attack other people and go, you're not doing, you

00:57:19know, you're not living up to your share.

00:57:21You know, they're pointing out what's wrong.

00:57:23There's other people going, whoa, it's me.

00:57:25Everybody's stronger than me, right?

00:57:27And I need somebody to defend me, right?

00:57:29Well, anyways, you see this play out in politics.

00:57:32You see it play out in the church world.

00:57:35So a lot of times people are attracted to a particular group of people because of their nature, right?

00:57:41And so these things will never change because we're just all different, right?

00:57:45And we're going to see things differently.

00:57:47And so I think we just have to be, you know, very sort of tolerant to a certain point and

00:57:53realize that in some situations, it's just the nature of things, right?

00:57:59It's, you know, we can have all these things on paper and we can draw them on whiteboards and we

00:58:04can throw all this, but it's human nature is what's going to drive us forward.

00:58:09And I think that's where, you know, if we circle back and try to pull this back together for where

00:58:16we started in this,

00:58:16I think that's where the guys that started this whole thing, which was an experiment.

00:58:23And that's what I was trying to say at the beginning of this is all the people that want to

00:58:29be fault finders, I get it.

00:58:31We got a whole history of things we did terrible, right?

00:58:35But I'm also in the business world, right?

00:58:39I'm in the church world.

00:58:40I'm in all these other worlds.

00:58:41And in every other sector, guess what we have?

00:58:44Two steps forward, one step back.

00:58:46Two steps forward, one step back.

00:58:48We have humiliating defeats and glorious victories.

00:58:53It's been the story of human history from the beginning of time.

00:58:57So when I get all these people that start pointing out all the negative things about the country,

00:59:03I kind of go, okay, why is that news?

00:59:07Like, welcome to life.

00:59:11Welcome to history.

00:59:12Like, do we want to stop for a second?

00:59:14And let's not unpack the last 250 years.

00:59:18Let's unpack the last 10,000 years.

00:59:21And guess what you're going to find?

00:59:23The same pattern over and over and over again.

00:59:27The thing is, is here's the key in my mind to this whole thing.

00:59:33Whenever we think we've arrived and we think we're there and we start getting self-righteous about ourselves,

00:59:41that's when we're in trouble.

00:59:43But if we pursue this thing going, you know what?

00:59:46We're not perfect.

00:59:47And we can do better.

00:59:48And we can keep pursuing things.

00:59:50And guess what?

00:59:51Judeo-Christian values are absolutely critical to our unity as a country and our ability to treat one another with

01:00:01honor and respect, right?

01:00:04And not steal from one another and not put each other down and all these kind of things that are

01:00:09so intrinsic to Jesus' worldview,

01:00:13then we're going to be better, right?

01:00:15See, you know, one of the things that, and again, I'm just going to go there.

01:00:22However, contrary to where a lot of academia is, I believe that Jesus and his teachings are the cure.

01:00:34I think he's the solution.

01:00:36And what I mean by that is when you go back and you look at Jesus' teachings, what really do

01:00:43they center on?

01:00:44They center on the fact that we are all, by nature, self-centered and selfish.

01:00:49And therefore, if you want to be like Jesus, learn to love.

01:00:56And what does that mean?

01:00:57Love means caring about others more than yourself, sacrificing for others, caring about others, right?

01:01:04I mean, you go back to the early church.

01:01:07That's how deacons came to be, right?

01:01:10How do we take care of poor widows?

01:01:12How do we care for the sick?

01:01:15That was the church.

01:01:17That's what they spent most of their money and their time doing, helping the disadvantaged, right?

01:01:23Helping.

01:01:24That's what love was about.

01:01:26So to me, Jesus is like, when people try to erase him out of the national dialogue, I'm looking at

01:01:34it going,

01:01:34I don't think you understand.

01:01:35He's the key.

01:01:36He's the antibiotic.

01:01:38He's the thing that solves our default setting to being selfish and driven by selfish ambition and greed,

01:01:47which are the things that destroy civilization.

01:01:50So this is where, again, and you guys will have to all be gracious with me,

01:01:55I'm all about Jesus being more involved, not less involved, like his worldviews, his teachings, right?

01:02:04Not institutional religion.

01:02:06I'm not talking about denominations or even any of these ministries.

01:02:11I'm not talking about that.

01:02:12I am talking about his worldview.

01:02:14I don't think we survive without it.

01:02:17And that's my humble opinion.

01:02:21Well, thank you again so much for doing this.

01:02:23Okay.

01:02:24Well, hopefully we haven't upset too many people.

01:02:27But again, we're just two guys on a journey trying to figure this out as we go.

01:02:32Both of us kind of, you know, we're citizens of this country and we're sitting there sometimes and it feels

01:02:38like we're watching a tennis match, right?

01:02:40It's like I watch people.

01:02:43It's like, you know, it's like you can turn on the news, right?

01:02:48If I wanted to play political tennis, depending on, I could turn on Fox News and turn on CNN and

01:02:54I'm like this.

01:02:55It's just like a tennis match, right?

01:02:58Our head's on a swivel.

01:02:59And we're all here trying to survive, right?

01:03:01We're just trying to raise our kids and try to be a decent husband and try to be a good

01:03:06citizen.

01:03:07And it's just like, oh, this just gets too much.

01:03:10Yeah, sometimes it does.

01:03:12Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

01:03:15You can find us at william-brannum.org.

01:03:18For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to

01:03:23the NAR.

01:03:24And for more about Mike Bickle and IHOPKC, you can read Some Said They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence

01:03:30on Mike Bickle, The Kansas City Prophets, and The International House of Prayer.

01:03:52See you next time.

Christian Nationalism vs. Christian Identity: What’s the Difference? | Bob Scott | 671

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