- 10 hours ago
John examines how ideas about deliverance ministry and spiritual warfare changed from the early Christian emphasis on Christ’s authority into increasingly elaborate systems involving deliverance specialists, territorial spirits, spiritual mapping, prophetic intelligence, intercessory networks, and cultural influence. He traces that progression through the Latter Rain movement, the healing revivals, the Shepherding Movement, the Third Wave, and the New Apostolic Reformation, asking where these teachings came from when their detailed mechanics cannot be found in the Bible.
The discussion also explores the cross-pollination between religious teaching and popular culture, including exorcism stories, occult revivals, The Exorcist, Dungeons & Dragons, the satanic panic, Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, and changing cultural ideas about witches and supernatural conflict. John argues that this evolving mixture helped create a mythology of organized demonic territories and supernatural warfare that eventually expanded from individual deliverance to spiritual mapping, strategic warfare, the Seven Mountains Mandate, and attempts to influence entire cultures.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
05:25 From Christ’s Authority to Human Authority
08:41 The Rise of Deliverance Specialists
13:12 What Spiritual Warfare Is Not
19:18 Exorcism, the Occult, and Popular Culture
27:02 How Secular Culture Entered Christian Teaching
34:36 The Cross-Pollination of Pop Culture and Doctrine
42:33 How Spiritual Mapping Became a System
47:22 Apostles, Prophets, and the Expansion of Spiritual Authority
53:56 Who Is Really in Control of the Spirit World?
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
The discussion also explores the cross-pollination between religious teaching and popular culture, including exorcism stories, occult revivals, The Exorcist, Dungeons & Dragons, the satanic panic, Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, and changing cultural ideas about witches and supernatural conflict. John argues that this evolving mixture helped create a mythology of organized demonic territories and supernatural warfare that eventually expanded from individual deliverance to spiritual mapping, strategic warfare, the Seven Mountains Mandate, and attempts to influence entire cultures.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
05:25 From Christ’s Authority to Human Authority
08:41 The Rise of Deliverance Specialists
13:12 What Spiritual Warfare Is Not
19:18 Exorcism, the Occult, and Popular Culture
27:02 How Secular Culture Entered Christian Teaching
34:36 The Cross-Pollination of Pop Culture and Doctrine
42:33 How Spiritual Mapping Became a System
47:22 Apostles, Prophets, and the Expansion of Spiritual Authority
53:56 Who Is Really in Control of the Spirit World?
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:31Hello 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, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it,
00:46is truly stranger than fiction.
00:48As many of you know, I have been looking into the history of deliverance ministries and how
00:54that evolved over time and shifted into this New Apostolic Reformation idea of spiritual
01:00covering and spiritual warfare.
01:02I've had several conversations with Pia Hugo and Franny Nance and others talking about just
01:09how weird it has gotten.
01:11And it'll probably come out after this podcast, but I was talking with Pia Hugo about just
01:17how similar the new version is to Harry Potter, and we did a whole episode talking about Harry
01:23Potter.
01:24But all of that aside, it is different, and it is different than Christianity.
01:29Anytime I mention this, especially if I mention the name Derek Prince and associate him with
01:35some of this weirdness, people seem to get up in arms because so many people have been
01:41trained that this is a Christian doctrine, that Christianity supports deliverance ministries.
01:47And when you hear somebody come to your pulpit and talk about how they had a coven of witches
01:53attack their Airbnb, which is an actual thing, they're taught to believe that it is biblical
02:00doctrine.
02:01Yet at the same time, there isn't a single passage of scripture that ever talks about a coven of
02:07witches, and I'll get into that into a bit, but it has changed and morphed to match the
02:14entertainment industry more than it has the Bible.
02:18And, you know, when you take a step back and you look at all of this from outside of
02:24it, just looking into this weird box, what you find is people are just so filled with the
02:30entertainment side of the industry that they kind of lose focus of what the Bible actually
02:35says.
02:36And whenever a minister steps up and says, I was attacked by a coven of witches, nobody
02:40stops to think, does the Bible even support the theme of a coven of witches?
02:46It's really odd.
02:47I mean, it's really odd.
02:48So today I wanted to talk through that, and I wanted to go just a bit deeper with the comments
02:54that I've made about how different it is than Christianity.
02:59And one of the advantages that I have, all things out in the open, my family escaped one
03:05of the most destructive cults that has been created by all of this mess, and that was
03:10Branhamism.
03:11Whenever I talk to people who are in the support groups who have escaped from different groups,
03:17Branhamism, those people are really, really struggling to cope with what all has happened
03:22to them.
03:22It's so far more destructive than some of the other groups.
03:26But yet at the same time, some of the other groups have very destructive themes, this being
03:31one of them, the idea that they should fear witches and covens of witches.
03:36Well, in the Branham movement, we were stuck in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s.
03:42We listened to the recordings of Branham from 1947 to 1965.
03:46And our mindset was stuck in themes like the Cold War of the 60s.
03:52We were taught the version of deliverance that was in existence in the movement that evolved
03:59into the charismatic movement from the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
04:03So my mindset is of that nature.
04:07Whenever I came out of this and I started experiencing Christianity outside of the 40s, 50s, and 60s,
04:14I found it odd because it was eerily similar, yet far worse.
04:19I'll just say it like that.
04:21And when I began studying the Bible for myself, reading it cover to cover over and over again,
04:27what I found was what we had was so far anti-biblical that it was unimaginable that this entered into
04:35the Pentecostal movement.
04:37And then that was the foundation for what was developed from it.
04:41And so I want to talk through that.
04:44This will be a podcast talking about the shift in spiritual authority, but I'm focusing on
04:50the themes of deliverance, of spiritual warfare, of spiritual coverings, all of these things.
04:56And for me, having read the Bible cover to cover multiple times and understanding what
05:02the Bible says without all of the weirdness that is being taught, what I found was this.
05:09In simple Bible terms, God is the one in control of the spirits, and that wasn't what we were
05:17taught in Branhamism.
05:18So I'll divide this into six, approximately six different categories, but starting in the
05:25first century, studying what Christians believed in the first century, God is in control.
05:31The early Christians believed that Jesus Christ had come, and through the power of Jesus Christ,
05:36there was authority over the demons, but it wasn't something that they did so much as
05:41it was by Jesus Christ himself.
05:44Authority of the spirits came from Christ, and the kingdom of God basically displaced the
05:51entire authority of demonic power.
05:53So there was no need for secret knowledge or techniques in combating the spirits.
05:59You wouldn't find a handbook that's teaching you how to do deliverance ministries back in those
06:04days because they weren't looking to themselves as the people who were in charge over the
06:10spirits.
06:10They were looking to Christ who had came, conquered the spirits, and ascended to the throne.
06:16And that's really the key difference between Christianity and what we're going to talk about today.
06:21That shift in power and authority is significant.
06:25In the latter rain movement, whenever William Branham started to preach the deliverance ministries,
06:33the early stages of the deliverance ministries, he changed it significantly in the claim that
06:39he himself had the authority over the spirits.
06:42I remember sermon after sermon where the preaching would end, the prayer line would form, and right
06:50before the prayer line began, he would say, now I take every spirit in this building under
06:55my control.
06:56And to the person in the seat, they're not really looking at Jesus Christ who had died and
07:02risen and taken authority over the spirits.
07:06They're looking to the man on the platform.
07:07He's the one who just said, I have control over the spirits.
07:11We'll talk about that in more depth, but that was a significant shift.
07:16There were people who had attended the revivals and left and said, we don't believe that this
07:21is Christianity, that these divine healers have the power that they say.
07:25And whenever they would leave and they would talk negatively or critically about the revivals
07:31and the way that it was being presented, those who were in attendance and followed the evangelist
07:37or the revivalist were trained to believe that outsiders who disagreed with this disagreed
07:44with divine healing in general.
07:46Which isn't the case, and we have an example on the website of this, the most famous in
07:51Branhamism in the latter reign, actually famous even to the extent of what's happening in
07:56New Apostolic Reformation, was Reverend Best.
08:00Reverend Best opposed William Branham and F.F.
08:03Bosworth and said, I don't believe in the way that you guys are teaching divine healing.
08:08He was a Baptist minister who actually did believe in divine healing and published books on the
08:14subject.
08:14He just did not believe in the authority that these ministers were claiming to have.
08:20And so they held this debate and during the debate they captured a photograph and the lighting
08:26makes it look like William Branham has a halo above his head.
08:29That halo is referenced by ministers today in the New Apostolic Reformation.
08:33So it was a shift in authority, and that shift went from God to the man on the stage.
08:41Then we have number three, the deliverance specialist who develops the system.
08:46Interestingly, Branham had a part in this, as did Gordon Lindsay, his campaign manager.
08:51They began holding these deliverance seminars, training others to do the same stage acts.
08:58And that's really how this all developed.
09:01This was bringing in people like Derek Prince, Don Basham, A.A. Allen.
09:05If you go from the 1960s into the 1970s, this is about the time the shepherding movement starts
09:12to form, and the shepherding movement had William Branham's campaign manager, Ern Baxter, four
09:20others were joining together to create this authoritarian structure, and they were claiming
09:25spiritual authority not only over the spirits, but also over the people, which was a little
09:31bit disturbing.
09:33Well, this eventually transitioned into around the 1980s through the 90s.
09:38Now ordinary believers have that same authority.
09:42So it had shifted significantly from God to the man on the platform to a group of people,
09:50these specialists, to now you too can do the thing, and we're going to give you the power
09:55and equip you to do all of this spiritual stuff.
09:59Well, that transference of power made things even more complicated because instead of just
10:04a handful of people who claimed that they had authority over the spirits,
10:08now you have thousands of people who are being taught to believe that they also have charge
10:14over the spirits, and therefore, if we have this many people and this big army of people
10:19fighting spirits, well, what happens whenever you don't have enough spirits for all of the
10:25people to fight?
10:26So authority began to expand into places and regions, and people were saying, I have authority
10:32over the spirits in this particular continent or this particular country.
10:36And from the 90s through the 2000s, this was the big deal.
10:41We now are fighting this war, and we have platoons that are targeting different regions.
10:47And then later, 2000s to present, it turns into this thing where every believer now becomes
10:54a spiritual warrior.
10:55And no matter where you go, no matter where you are at or who you are with, you may encounter
11:01a demon or a spirit, and you may not even know it.
11:04It may just be in conversation, and somebody may say something, and that's a demon talking
11:09through this person.
11:10So when you look at the changes in each era, it's just a subtle little change.
11:16And apparently, not many Christians really caught on that things were shifting away from the core
11:21values of Christianity.
11:22But if you compare where it was in the beginning to where it is now, it is a significant change.
11:28The early Christians believed that trusting Christ's authority was all that they needed,
11:33all that they needed to understand.
11:35He was the one who had conquered the unseen world.
11:40We in today's world, if you're believing the spiritual warfare thing, you believe that
11:45you must see this unseen world.
11:48You must manage and exercise control over it.
11:51And it becomes increasingly complex in how you do this, because it's an unseen world.
11:57How do you even prepare for an unseen battle?
12:01And so when I look at all of this transition away from what the Bible says, I have to believe
12:08that people were reading other sources outside of the Bible to get this type of doctrine.
12:13I mean, it's very plain and simple.
12:15Whenever they're talking about covens of witches, and there is no coven of witches in
12:19the Bible, where did it come from?
12:21What extra biblical source did this come from?
12:24And what you find out is, if you align each one of these eras with something that was
12:30very popular in the secular world, you're going to find that it's like a zipper closing.
12:36On the one side, you have the deliverance-type ministries who are introducing new themes, and
12:42on the other side, you have books, you have movies, you have radio programs, you have publications.
12:47All of this stuff that is extra-biblical coming into, even anti-Christian sources coming into
12:55the movement.
12:55And for me, looking at it historically, that is really significant.
13:00If you have a movement that is feeding on things that aren't in the Bible, can you really
13:06say that it is a Bible-based movement?
13:08And I simply could not.
13:10Before I get into the history of spiritual warfare, I wanted to talk a little bit about
13:14what spiritual warfare is not.
13:17If you read the Bible, and you read it just simply for what it says, in context, without
13:22adding anything to it that is taught by the modern charismatic world today, you can find
13:28that it does plainly talk about elements of things that they're using as truth, but they're
13:34twisting just a little bit, or they're adding to it.
13:36If you read the Bible, you can find it talking about demons and unclean spirits.
13:41You can find it talking about the authority to cast them out, principalities and powers,
13:47demonization, possession, sorcerers, mediums, spiritual conflict.
13:51You can find almost every element, obviously, with the exception of covens of witches, which
13:59is another topic that I'll get into later.
14:02But what you don't find are many of the themes that have been added to it.
14:07You won't find it talking about identifying territorial demons that are governing cities,
14:13for example.
14:13The Bible does talk about wars and battles, but what you don't find is the Bible talking
14:20about identifying territorial demons that are governing cities, for example.
14:25An example of this is Daniel.
14:27Daniel talks about the prince of Persia, the prince of Greece.
14:30But Daniel is not told to identify them and name their territorial spirits or any additional
14:36territory spirits.
14:37He's not told to bind them or rebuke them or to map their territory.
14:42Daniel just simply talks about there's a prince of Persia and a prince of Greece.
14:46And historically, you can obviously go back and you can find these people that are being
14:51referred to.
14:52So, the Bible does not instruct Christians to identify territorial spirits, to map spiritual
15:00strongholds.
15:01You won't find it talking about discovering demonic legal rights.
15:06You won't find it talking about researching a city's occult history to diagnose its spirits,
15:12for example.
15:13It just simply doesn't exist in the context of the Bible.
15:16You won't find it saying that we need to identify the spirits through bodily sensations.
15:21That's one that I could go off into a full podcast on, but they want you to feel this emotion
15:30of the spirit.
15:31That's what they're really striving for.
15:33If they can get you to emotionally connect, then you will believe more of what they're saying
15:38than if you don't emotionally connect.
15:41So, identifying spirits through bodily sensations is just simply not something that's biblical.
15:46You won't find it talking about finding or closing spiritual portals.
15:51That's something that makes great science fiction, but not really a Bible theme.
15:57Or cleansing the land of territorial spirits.
16:00Think of the children of Israel as they left Egypt land.
16:03And in the greatest example that could have been used for this, they did not cleanse the entire
16:09land of territorial spirits.
16:11But the modern New Apostolic Reformation has gone so far to extremes, they will ask you
16:16to map out demonic hierarchies.
16:19Something that just simply cannot exist without all of the other things that we just mentioned
16:24is not in the Bible.
16:25You won't find the Bible talking about conducting coordinated warfare efforts against which covens,
16:32because, again, which covens are just simply not in the Bible.
16:36You won't find it talking about determining which specific demon causes which specific behavior.
16:43That, for me, is the most manipulative thing that has been adopted by the movement in large,
16:49is trying to say that if you have a condition, many of which are just simply human conditions,
16:55if you have a human condition, you can name this one demon for it.
17:00That does not exist in the Bible.
17:02And if it doesn't exist in the Bible, how do they know?
17:04Who's the guy who come up with the idea that if you have the demon of hiccups, then demon
17:10Ralph is the one who gave you this demon and inhabited your body with hiccups.
17:16So you have the Ralph demon.
17:18It's just unbelievable the levels that this movement has taken all of this doctrine, compounded
17:24upon other false doctrines that really aren't in the Bible, but yet are teaching people that
17:29it is in the Bible.
17:30And the way that they do this is so insidious because they'll take some far-off fantastical
17:36doctrine, and they'll give you just one element of truth and give you a Bible verse.
17:40And they'll say, see, it's in the Bible.
17:43Here's this verse that talks about a principality.
17:46Well, yes, it may talk about a principality, but it does not talk about a principality that
17:52we can mark in a territory, we can name, and it's going to give you the demon of hiccups.
17:57And I realize that's an absurd example, but I have Randy Clark's handbook on fighting all
18:04of these demons, and hiccups is truly one of the demons that they're teaching in this
18:08weird supernatural doctrine.
18:10For me, this just doesn't make sense at all.
18:14So understanding what the Bible doesn't say is very critical to understanding the whole
18:19rest of this.
18:20If you don't understand what the Bible doesn't say according to what they're telling you it
18:26says, they can say anything that they want, and you will believe it because you're not
18:31critically thinking about what they're teaching.
18:33That, for me, if you take nothing else away from this podcast, that's the most important
18:37thing.
18:38Critically think about what's being said.
18:41And with the spiritual warfare, you can simply say, does that make any more sense than what my
18:4710-year-old would tell me whenever they're watching Harry Potter or playing some, I don't
18:52know, some fantasy game?
18:53This is fantasy.
18:54That's really all it is, pure, plain, and simple.
18:57In previous podcasts, I've talked about how the spiritualist craze in the United States
19:02strongly impacted the latter rain movement.
19:05And I won't rehash that history, but you can find it if you go look on the website or look
19:10through the podcasts.
19:11But that did not end with the spiritualist craze.
19:14That was just one of the occult crazes that hit the United States.
19:19There were others, some of which inspired movies and books and all kinds of different propaganda.
19:26One of the biggest was in the late 1940s.
19:29In the United States, there were priests of the Catholic Church that performed a series of
19:34exorcisms on an anonymous boy.
19:36And the boy went by the pseudonym Roland Doe or Robbie Manaheim.
19:41He was apparently a 14-year-old boy that was a victim of alleged demonic possession.
19:47And the events of the demonic possession and the exorcism was recorded by the attending priest.
19:55And this is just another event where two worlds begin to collide.
19:58So on the one hand, you've got the revival evangelists.
20:02They're telling every person who comes through the healing lines or the sermons that are
20:06preached before the healing lines, that if you have a sickness, a disease, a broken bone,
20:12it's because a demon has possessed you.
20:15And then in the Catholic world, you have demonic possession and exorcism.
20:20And those two worlds are completely separate.
20:22But what happens is, because it was recorded, this eventually made it into the newspapers.
20:28And the newspaper coverage eventually led to fictional stories about the demon possession.
20:34And that actually led to the book and the movie, The Exorcist.
20:38So as those paths are starting to evolve and grow and spread, both sides are adding elements
20:46of fiction to it.
20:47And The Exorcist, it's not a movie that I've actually seen, but I do know about it.
20:51It was actually based on this event that happened in Catholic history.
20:55So when you compare the two, from 1949 to 1959, you have this exorcism example.
21:03It was reported in the Washington Post.
21:06That inspired William Peter Blatty.
21:09He's the guy who authored The Exorcist.
21:11And as that is developing, healing evangelists, healing revival grows in America.
21:17William Branham describes demons and supranational discernment as early as the 1950s.
21:22Did he read this newspaper article?
21:24I don't know.
21:26But through cross-pollination, these ideas were beginning to spread.
21:30And it was spreading in the other worlds, not the religious world, but Catholic world
21:36into the newspaper world, into the fictional world, at the same time that it was spreading
21:41within the Lateran revivals.
21:44Fast forward to the 1960s.
21:46From 1960 to 1969, there's this weird occult revival in the West.
21:52You have witchcraft and Satanism becoming far more visible.
21:56You've got Rosemary's Baby, which was a popular novel in the late 1960s, film in 1968.
22:03This is the same time that Derek Prince begins to talk about his sustained deliverance ministry
22:10and charismatic renewal begins to spread.
22:13Deliverance became a major teaching emphasis at the same time that this occult revival is
22:20happening.
22:20Was it specifically targeting the popularity of the occult revival?
22:25I don't know.
22:26But I can see the two paths converging in many ways.
22:30And again, they're talking about covens of witches.
22:33Well, that's coming out of the 1960s whenever the occult world is talking about covens of witches.
22:39So this gets really scary when you piece the two timelines together.
22:44Fast forward to the 1970s.
22:46The Exorcist novel, as I mentioned, the Exorcist film in 1973.
22:51Demon possession becomes a mass market entertainment.
22:54In Hollywood, in books, in newspaper articles, there is a public fascination with the occult that
23:01just simply explodes.
23:03That's the same point in which Don Basham wrote his Deliver Us From Evil book.
23:08Frank and I had a May Hammond's Pigs in the Parlor book, which Chino and I mentioned in
23:12our podcast on deliverance.
23:14Deliverance ministries were literally creating ways to systematize and reproduce the deliverance
23:21concept to combat things that were happening in the fictional world and in the occult world.
23:27Fast forward to 1974.
23:29Dungeons and Dragons was released from 1974 to 1985.
23:34You had occult horror films, witchcraft books.
23:38They began to flourish in the United States and abroad.
23:41The New Age movement began to grow and spread.
23:44And in the 1980s, you had the satanic panic.
23:47So when you compare the two worlds over on the deliverance side, this is the same time
23:52that they began to introduce these demon taxonomies.
23:55They resurrected a concept that William Branham had introduced in the 50s about generational
24:01curses and how this generational curse could impact you.
24:05Suddenly, these occult doorways become standard teaching among the deliverance ministries.
24:11And deliverance training began to spread to combat all of these sudden evils that are emerging
24:17in the world.
24:18By 1986, the virus had spread and even impacted mainstream Christian churches.
24:24In 1986, Frank Peretti published This Present Darkness.
24:28And these supernatural spiritual themes became so commonplace that mainstream churches were
24:35teaching it.
24:36Revivalists were teaching it.
24:37Deliverance ministries were teaching it.
24:39And think about what's happening on the deliverance side.
24:42This is the time when C. Peter Wagner visits Argentina.
24:45And he comes back telling his stories of deliverance.
24:48There's a sudden mapping of the spiritual territories that happens in 1989.
24:55So as you can see, this is not simply just copying an idea from either a book or a movie
25:01or a magazine.
25:02This is happening over time.
25:04This is happening through cross-pollination of ideas, so much so that the mainstream Christian
25:09world starts to even adopt some of these things.
25:12These periods of time are evolving based off of the growth and concepts of ideas that aren't
25:21all coming from the Bible.
25:23Some of them are literally coming from the occult world, even occult fiction.
25:27But what's happening is when the occult fiction begins to be adopted by the mainstream church,
25:34now the deliverance ministries have to adopt ways to combat that fiction.
25:39And none of it, nobody took a step back to say, wait a minute, is any of this even biblical?
25:44The Christian world just started to say, well, we have this battle to fight.
25:48Let's fight it.
25:49Let's go in head first.
25:50And let's not even look behind us at the Bible to see, is what we're doing actually biblical?
25:55Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of
26:01modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
26:06movements into the new apostolic reformation?
26:09You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
26:14william-branham.org.
26:16On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
26:22Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
26:28audio, and digital versions of each book.
26:30You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
26:36movements.
26:37If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the
26:42contribute button at the top.
26:43And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
26:49to or watching.
26:50On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
26:55One of the more alarming things for me about the Pentecostal charismatic movement, as compared
27:00to mainstream Christianity, is that a lot of secular themes, politics, different aspects
27:09of life that are outside of the Christian Bible enter into the sermon.
27:14And I'll never forget, I grew up in a world where we were listening to recordings from 1947
27:20to 1965 of William Branham.
27:23And because I'm living in a world that is past that, I never really recognized some of the
27:31political themes or the pop culture themes that were embedded in the sermons.
27:35It really wasn't until I began researching and understanding history and then aligning history
27:42timelines with the timelines of the movement as it was developing.
27:46It wasn't until that that I realized this is really a lot of pop culture that I'm hearing
27:50and none of it makes any sense because it's not my pop culture, if that makes any sense.
27:55I really was taken aback whenever I came to terms with that, but at the same time had entered
28:04into a mainstream church.
28:05And I stopped and thought about, it was approximately a year into being in the mainstream instead
28:11of Pentecostal charismatic.
28:13I had not yet heard a single sermon about politics.
28:17And I grew up in a world where almost every sermon was about politics, but it was politics
28:22of days gone by.
28:23But that is the case.
28:25And we've talked about it many times in all of the different podcasts that we've done
28:30of some of the themes that were extra biblical or sometimes even anti-biblical that made it
28:35in because it was pop culture or it was sometimes it was a developing pop culture.
28:42An example of this is the UFO themes.
28:45Yes, this was a UFO craze and it probably should have been addressed, but not in the way that they
28:51did.
28:51The latter rain movement ran wild with the UFO themes and you can find sermons and books
28:57and literature and all kinds of stuff where they're talking about how the UFOs that you
29:02see in pop culture, that's really these angels that are coming down to take us in the rapture.
29:07And that was widespread throughout the movement.
29:10Christian identity is another thing.
29:11It wasn't really pop culture, but it was a developing culture that could have become pop
29:17culture.
29:18And Gordon Lindsay, William Branham, others were adopting it until they rejected it.
29:23And then they just erased that history and wiped their hands of it.
29:27So you find all of these different themes that are making it from pop culture into the sermons,
29:32but sometimes they're not quite right or they paint a picture that is much different than
29:37the Bible paints.
29:38For example, any of you who are listening to any of the podcasts that I've done with people
29:44in the charismatic movement who talk about witches and covens of witches, the very first
29:49thing that comes into your mind when you think about this is the Wizard of Oz lady that says,
29:55I'm melting, I'm melting with the hat and the black cloth, etc.
29:59And yet in history, whenever the church was rising up against ladies that they said were
30:06witches and were actually burning them and killing them, that's not how they look.
30:11These were just normal human beings that they believe they were practicing some weird evil
30:16thing.
30:16And a lot of that history has actually been overturned.
30:19These were not, this was not a good thing the church was doing.
30:22So when you get that picture in your mind, you're actually thinking of the Hollywood version
30:27or the Halloween version of a witch.
30:30Now there are some deliverance ministers who will correct this and they'll say, what you
30:35see in Hollywood, that's just a fantasized version.
30:38Think back to the witch of Endor.
30:40And that is really the only clear example that you can find anywhere of a witch.
30:46I don't believe there's any example of a warlock in the Bible, and there's certainly not a
30:51coven of witches that, that is developed directly from different types of history.
30:57We can get into that.
30:59But the thing of it is the witch of Endor, if you read what the text is saying, you find
31:05that it doesn't really say what they're trying to make it say.
31:09It's not a witch in the modern terms of a witch.
31:12And in fact, the translation of the word witch is under dispute because it is trying to apply
31:19a modern concept for the time in which the Bible, that translation that has the word witch,
31:25was written.
31:26But yet it's talking about actually a medium.
31:29What it's actually referring to, according to the Hebrew Bible, Saul wanted to summon
31:36the prophet Samuel.
31:37And so he went to this place where there was this lady, better translated, I guess you would
31:43say, the woman of the lake, and the lake being this weird place where you could go find
31:50spirits.
31:50That's really how this should be translated.
31:53She was not a practitioner of magic.
31:57She was not what you would call a witch.
31:59She was a medium who was talking to the dead, talking to the evil spirits, or sometimes good
32:05spirits, apparently, if that passage is correct.
32:09But the version that is in the Bible does not match the version that is in the deliverance
32:15ministries.
32:16That's the point I want to make.
32:17However you interpret that scripture.
32:19And there are articles you can go online, you can just type in which of indoor, you can
32:23see the issues with the translation.
32:25And I lean towards some of the critical analysis of that particular translation, because what it's
32:33describing definitely is not a witch, and there are some other theological issues with the
32:38way in which it's interpreted.
32:39So you can go look that up.
32:41That's another topic for somebody else to handle who handles theology.
32:45But historically, what has happened is they are merging history of the witch trials and
32:52the witch history in world history, modern witches.
32:57They're trying to translate that into the passage.
33:00In other words, make the passage say something that it doesn't, because it really doesn't
33:04say anything about witches and magic.
33:06It is a medium.
33:08And the interesting part about all of that, if you go listen to most deliverance ministers
33:14who have been directly descended from the latter rain tree, in latter rain, there were people
33:21who were communicating with the dead, which is doing exactly what the witch is doing, while
33:25condemning the witches, which is kind of funny.
33:27William Branham was talking about this lady, I believe it was her son, or it was the lady.
33:34The lady had died, though he had pronounced healing on her.
33:39She had died.
33:40And so to cover this whole thing up, he apparently, according to some of the people who were there
33:47witnessing it, said something to the effect that I went to the other side and talked to
33:51her and she's so much happier there.
33:53And he's referring to heaven, not some dark place, but at the same time, he's also doing
33:58the work of a medium when he's doing this, if he really did it.
34:02I strongly question whether he did it, but he set a standard that seems to have developed
34:08into this pathway where medium is okay if you follow the deliverance pattern that's mimicking
34:15William Branham.
34:16That's why you have this thing like grave soaking, people who are trying to communicate
34:21with those spirits, that's the work of a medium, that's the work of the witch of Endor.
34:26And they're not wearing pointed hats, they're not crying, I'm melting whenever water hits
34:30them, but they're doing the same thing as the witch of Endor, which is a problem for
34:35me.
34:36And so if you take that a step further, look at how pop culture has influenced the nation.
34:44When I'm referring to the nation, I'm talking about the United States, but this has actually
34:48spread into other countries as well, look at the way in which it has developed.
34:54One of the clear problems that you have whenever you're talking about this history, you begin
35:00to connect the dots between what's happening in the secular world and what's happening in
35:05the charismatic world.
35:06And the people who are influenced by those movements that had descended from that charismatic
35:12root, it must be black or white.
35:14And so they think things like, well, yes, we find this in this Hollywood event, but we
35:20can't say that that is what caused us to preach this deliverance ministry.
35:24Those aren't connected, black or white.
35:27The problem is it doesn't grow black or white.
35:30These ideas, they develop, they call it pop culture for a reason.
35:34It is developing popularly through the crowd of people, through the culture of people.
35:39And as the culture gets an idea, it cross-pollinates.
35:44This is where it gets weird for me.
35:46The cross-pollination of ideas, yes, it doesn't show a direct linear root, but they're influenced,
35:54they've influenced Christian churches while they're in a secular root.
35:58So there's this cross-pollination of ideas.
36:00The UFO thing is a great example of this.
36:03This mystery that's surrounding all of these UFOs, and now we can read the history of the
36:08UAPs, the mystery itself was popular.
36:12And so books like Gordon Lindsay published The Mystery of the Flying Saucer.
36:17They were trying to capitalize on the popularity of what was happening outside of the church
36:23so they could bring it into the church, wrap a doctrine around it, and say this is a biblical
36:30situation.
36:31And it's not.
36:32It's UFOs, and it's aliens.
36:34And what happened is because they took the wrong turn, they deviated from the passage of
36:40scripture that talks about you don't need this mystery.
36:43Christ is the mystery fulfilled.
36:45They went down that pathway, and then what do you do with this?
36:49You've got a doctrine.
36:50Well, you must build upon that doctrine to keep it going.
36:53And it eventually ended up in they were believing in little green men coming down as angels.
36:58I know there are some in the Pentecostal charismatic crowd that'll say, no, no, no, we don't do
37:02this.
37:03We don't take fiction and add it to our sermons.
37:05Well, I'll remind people of the book, This Present Darkness, and we'll compare it to the
37:10Deliverance teachings.
37:11It was released in 1986.
37:13So think about whenever the deliverance ministries begin to shift into the way that the NAR has
37:19adopted it.
37:20And it was using many of the same themes that we see in the New Apostolic Reformation today.
37:25And again, we can't say that it's traced directly back to this book.
37:28It was a cross-pollination of ideas, but this was a fictional book talking about invisible
37:34beings that influence human affairs, much like it was happening in Latter Rain.
37:38There were these invisible alien beings and UFOs that were influencing human affairs.
37:44And if you take it all the way back to the ancient mythologies, it's these invisible beings
37:49in the sky that are influencing human affairs.
37:51It's definitely not a Christian teaching, but this was coming in a book that was presented
37:57as a Christian fiction book.
37:59Demons were operating with assignments and organization.
38:03Look at the NAR.
38:05Demons are organized spiritual beings with specific assignments and areas of operation.
38:10It's like it was a cross-pollination of ideas.
38:13You can't say it came directly from the book.
38:15But as this idea was spreading in mainstream popular culture, that all of these different
38:22weird horror culture and witchcraft culture and UFO culture, all of these different ideas
38:29were developing into this unseen enemy that we can't understand, who is actually very organized,
38:36very military strategic, and we need to combat them.
38:41That's really what was being adopted by the church.
38:43Look what's happening today in the New Apostolic Reformation as it relates to the territorial
38:48spirits.
38:49They can influence cities and regions, institutions.
38:52Spiritual warfare is basically us confronting this invisible enemy we can't see, but they
38:59apparently have taken charge over a city.
39:01Well, in the book, a town or an institution could become an arena of supernatural conflict.
39:06So it's like it's not the same exact idea, but you can see how that idea can develop through
39:12cross-pollination of culture.
39:14And that's the point I'm trying to drive at.
39:16It's a cross-pollination of culture, not something that is going directly back to a Bible passage
39:22that is saying, this is what you can expect in the end times.
39:25It's coming from pop culture.
39:27Human prayer affects the invisible battle.
39:30And that's one of the things that if you are a Christian, most Christians, even in mainstream
39:36Christianity, believe that.
39:38But when you combine it with the other things, you have this invisible battle that not all
39:43Christians really believe in because it's not biblical.
39:47There are things that maybe it's true.
39:49I don't even know if it's true or not.
39:51We can't see it.
39:52But we can clearly say the Bible doesn't say this thing is coming.
39:56So the prayer is actually different when you're in one of these movements than it is if you're
40:01just in a Christian church that doesn't believe any of this weird stuff.
40:05One of the big ones, and this definitely did not come directly from the book, but through
40:10a cross-pollination of ideas, some of which developed in Latter Rain itself, invisible causes
40:15lie behind the human problems that we see.
40:18In other words, you might have a problem and you're not even in control of what happened.
40:23It's this outside demonic force that's causing it.
40:26And I remember the first time I came across a person who was given a testimony in the
40:32voice of healing and said, I was in the prayer line.
40:34I was being prayed for and they cured me of cancer.
40:38And then she went on to say, I did not even know that I had cancer.
40:42And that's just the type of thing that we're dealing with here.
40:46Once you take a human problem and you put it into this realm where you can't quantify it,
40:51you can't critically examine it.
40:53It's in the spiritual realm.
40:54You don't see it, but I see it because I'm behind the pulpit.
40:58Once you do this, you can make anything fantasy or real come to life.
41:03And that's what's happening.
41:04The supernatural realm operates according to recognizable rules.
41:09This one is troublesome for me because after we left the cult that we escaped from and we
41:16entered into mainstream churches, to some extent, this has actually invaded mainstream.
41:21I sat through a meeting where we were talking about all of the ways in which the demonic
41:26forces can operate and how they operate.
41:29None of which you can find any resemblance of that strategy in the Bible.
41:35But they have apparently come up with these ideas of how demons operate.
41:40And I took a step back even while I was listening to this in the mainstream church and thought
41:45about how similar it was to some of the fantasy movies that I have seen or the fantasy books
41:52that I have read.
41:53You can't quantify it.
41:55I can't stand up and say, no, you're wrong, preacher.
41:57I don't believe that these demonic forces have this covert strategy and they can spy and
42:03all of this weird stuff that you're saying.
42:05I can't prove it either way.
42:07The only thing that I can say is, not a single thing that you have said can I find in
42:11the
42:11Bible.
42:11And I just, I don't want to, I don't want to think about that.
42:16It really doesn't do me any good to think about all of the things that are outside of
42:20my control.
42:21Because if you're in a true Christian church that hasn't been invaded by any of this culture,
42:27that's all you care about.
42:28You're caring about a God who is in control so that you don't have to be.
42:33And that's really the difference.
42:35That core concept, you don't have to be, is the difference between deliverance ministry
42:41and Christianity.
42:42So when you piece together a historical timeline of how all of these cross-pollination of ideas
42:48began to develop, began to be changed and altered, entered into fictional reality, fictional
42:55reality entered into Christian sermons, developed into the new apostolic reformation, it's a little
43:01bit disturbing.
43:02In 1985, C. Peter Wagner visited Argentina and he encountered the Argentine revival, the spiritual
43:10warfare that was apparently developing in Argentina.
43:15Not long after this, Frank Peretti publishes This Present Darkness.
43:19So you can see these are two very similar topics, but it's a cross-pollination of ideas.
43:251989, Taking Our Cities for God is published.
43:29And so you suddenly have the idea of spiritual strongholds.
43:32Once the spiritual strongholds are established, now you go back to Argentina and you do this
43:37case study on how to do strategic spiritual warfare.
43:41And by 1990, the Sentinel Group is founded by George Otis Jr.
43:47And he gives the movement the name and helps systematize and popularize spiritual mapping.
43:53So you've got strategic warfare, now spiritual mapping.
43:581991, Wagner edits the Engaging the Enemy, How to Fight and Defeat Territorial Spirits.
44:04And that same year, Cindy Jacobs publishes her book, Possessing the Gates of the Enemy.
44:09Understanding that progression and understanding that Christian fiction was integrated in that
44:15timeline, it starts to open the door to questions that just can't be answered.
44:20So around 1990, you've got this spiritual mapping thing.
44:24So many questions that a person should have asked, and I don't know that anybody did.
44:29If demons could really control territories, how do you know which demon controls which territory?
44:35You're not going to find that in the Bible anywhere.
44:38How do you fight an enemy that you can't see?
44:40How in the world can you even pray to God to fight this enemy if you don't even know that
44:46the enemy is there?
44:47And what is God going to think when you're doing this?
44:50It becomes, for me, when I take a step back and just look at all of this, it's the blind
44:55leading the blind.
44:56Because the blind can't see.
44:58You have a blind leader who's blindly saying there's a demon over a territory.
45:03And the people who are praying blindly because the leader says this, it is truly the blind
45:08leading the blind.
45:09Yet that is what is happening with spiritual mapping.
45:12And what happens when you combine all of this is you start to see that it is actually a
45:18mythology that has been created.
45:20So while Christians believe they're worshiping God and they're believing in Christianity,
45:25they're actually believing in a mythology that was created by key individuals of the charismatic
45:30movement combined with Christian fiction, combined with pop culture, combined with all sorts
45:36of different things that weren't really in the Bible.
45:38It was myth.
45:40It was mythology.
45:41See, Peter Wagner, he brought all of these streams of deliverance, third wave ministry,
45:46these territorial spirits, the spiritual warfare.
45:49And he began to develop and teach a strategic spiritual warfare ministry through all of his
45:56networks.
45:57Sidney Jacobs began to help organize this.
46:00And she started saying that intercessors would receive supernatural intelligence, like the
46:06CIA, to inform prayer and spiritual action.
46:10So she's bringing her own things that aren't really in the Bible.
46:14They're just something that she concocted and said, well, this makes sense.
46:18But if you look at it from a biblical standpoint, none of it makes any sense.
46:22The mid to late 1990s is when all of these weird things began to emerge.
46:27And again, it's based off of this history that is pieced together in this timeline that I've
46:32presented.
46:32You have the prophetic intercession.
46:34You have the prayer assignments, spiritual intelligence, prayer waking, identifying strongholds,
46:40territorial spirits, identificational repentance, spiritual mapping, taking cities or territories
46:47and spiritual gates, coordinated intercessory networks.
46:52None of which, not a single one of those in that list, can you find in the Bible.
46:57So they have based it off of this mythology.
47:00This mythology came from a coordinated effort of combining pop culture, politics, all sorts
47:08of different things into this thing that is going to become the belief set of Christian
47:13believers, none of which is based on the Bible, mostly based off of mythology.
47:18And Christians began to wander off into myth.
47:21So at the point in which they wander off into the myth, that is when the new apostolic reformation
47:27officially is named.
47:29See, Peter Wagner describes it as something that pre-existed him.
47:33He didn't invent this, which is true, but he didn't really say it was a cross-pollination
47:38of ideas that were extra biblical.
47:41What he did whenever this was established, because we needed key figures of this mythology, he
47:48created demigods, but he gave them the name of apostle.
47:52So the apostles provide the authority in the mythology.
47:55They are the intercessor between God and man, and sometimes so filled with God that they become
48:00a god-man, which is a demigod.
48:03That's really what it is.
48:05Prophets provide the supernatural intelligence, just like the prophets of the ancient mythologies.
48:11Intercessors conduct spiritual warfare, just like the ancient mythologies.
48:15They're fighting the battles in the sky that humans can't see, but they're being fought
48:20by these intercessors.
48:21Spiritual mapping and strongholds.
48:24Think of the ancient mythologies, how they mapped them out to the stars.
48:28The church and networks began to mobilize believers.
48:32That's where it gets scary, because in the ancient world, all of these ancient mythologies,
48:36led by these demigods, mapped out to the stars, they began to conquer and invade other nations.
48:43And when you look what is happening in the world today, and look at how the church, the
48:49new apostolic reformation of the church, has invaded politics, and watch what is happening
48:55in the military, it's a little bit scary and concerning for me.
48:59So the end result of all of this is they have scaled up the supernatural spiritual authority
49:06from basically the room, being alone in your prayer room, to the nation.
49:11We now control the nation, or we attempt to control the nation, is what they'll say, through
49:17the Seven Mountain Mandate.
49:18So it went from individual deliverance back in the latter rain movement to now, we're going
49:23to actually go conquer territories, but we need a physical army to do this.
49:28So the movement is suddenly becoming capable of deploying supernatural strategies at scale
49:34through humans that are intercessors and humans who are weaponized.
49:39In the end, this gets really scary, because spiritual warfare suddenly becomes cultural warfare.
49:46And that historically, throughout time, has always ended in disaster.
49:51And remember where we first started.
49:53In the beginning of this, we talked about the early Christian church, what the early Christians
49:58believed, and they simply believed this, Christ defeats the supernatural powers, the spiritual
50:04powers, and Christians must simply resist evil.
50:08Christians can cast out demons, yes, Christians can pray, but the authority and the power goes to
50:15God, not to the humans.
50:17The humans are simply powerless, and they must believe, and that's all that they have
50:22to do.
50:23This began to accelerate rapidly into chaos through the healing revivals, because now you have
50:29a specifically appointed leader who is exercising authority over all of the spirits, and the people
50:36in the audience are being told that he has the power.
50:39They don't have the power.
50:42God intermediating the power, I guess you would say.
50:45But in some cases, William Branham would say, bring any cross-eyed children before me, and
50:51without even praying for it, I'll cast out the demon and make its eyes come straight.
50:55That's a direct quote.
50:57I paraphrase just slightly, but you can find that in the very first sermon, I believe it
51:01is, that's on Branham.org.
51:03If you study this, he is saying that he has the authority, and what happened is others,
51:09other ministers, other evangelists, they wanted that same power, and so they started teaching
51:16the same doctrines, thinking that they would eventually be empowered, and that led to the
51:20deliverance movement.
51:21This invisible world that they have power over is now creating these elaborate mechanics
51:29that are really going to be destructive to the church, so we must create a movement to
51:34fight these invisible forces.
51:36John Wimber, the third wave of Pentecostalism, taught that these ordinary Christians now can
51:41fight these forces.
51:43The supernatural ministry is happening through them, through their experience, and it just
51:48continued to develop.
51:50Wagner comes along.
51:51It's now a battlefield.
51:53Now we have territories.
51:54Otis brings the spiritual mapping.
51:56You have suddenly strategic territories by the demons, and you can see it is just going out
52:02of control.
52:03Not a single aspect of it comes from the Bible.
52:07It's all coming from the mythology that they themselves have created.
52:11So culture itself suddenly becomes the territory.
52:14The government, the education, the media, business, arts, entertainment, family, religion.
52:20What they've described when they talk about the seven mountains mandate is the culture.
52:26They have really wrapped up all of these terms for the seven mountains in such a way that
52:31when people hear, we're going to go invade somebody else's culture, most people would
52:37reject this.
52:38They would say no.
52:39But if you tell them, we're going to go invade the seven mountains, they can get on board
52:43with it because they have disconnected from the believer's mind the idea that we're going
52:48to go conquer a culture.
52:51Historically, conquering cultures is a bad idea.
52:54It doesn't look at the Catholic Church and the Spanish Inquisition.
52:57This doesn't work out well, and that's what they're trying to achieve.
53:01So when you take a step back and you look at all of this, the seven mountains, the spears
53:06of influence, all of these things that they have concocted, and then realize that a lot
53:13of it came simply from pop culture, not from the Bible, ask yourself why they did this.
53:19Why do we need all of these things instead of simply say, I'm going to resist evil.
53:25God has already conquered the enemy for me.
53:28I don't have to worry about any of this.
53:31Think of that mindset and compare it to the mindset of somebody who's trapped in this
53:35movement thinking, I have to worry about everything.
53:38There are demons everywhere.
53:40There are territorial demons over my city.
53:42That's a person who is in high anxiety.
53:45And I can tell you from coming out of the movement, I had the high anxiety.
53:50It's a horrific mindset to be in.
53:53And it all comes down to who is in control of the spirit world.
53:57Is God in control or are the leaders of the new apostolic reformation in control?
54:02So I've mentioned several times in several podcasts that the new apostolic reformation
54:08and parts of the charismatic movement were really entertainment gospel based off of entertainment,
54:14based off of Hollywood.
54:15And that's a really complex thought.
54:18So I hope this podcast has been able to unravel some of that a bit because it's not really
54:25that demons were borrowed from entertainment or exorcism was borrowed from the horror movies.
54:31These spiritual beings weren't really originating in the entertainment industry.
54:37But what was happening was this cross-pollination of Christian ideas.
54:41And through that cross-pollination, what happened was the ideas, some of them did exist in the Bible.
54:48You can read the Bible.
54:48You can find demons.
54:49You can find exorcism.
54:51You can find all of these things.
54:52But what happened was the Christian version that developed from this latter rain mess
54:57started to create elaborate descriptions of what was happening with these demons.
55:03And some of those elaborate descriptions eerily match Hollywood, eerily match horror movies,
55:09horror books, horror fiction, witchcraft histories, things that aren't really in the Bible.
55:15And that, for me, becomes problematic when you think of all of the complexities of where this came from
55:22and where it is headed.
55:24Where it is headed really scares me because we're talking about rules governing supernatural interactions
55:30of other countries where a territorial demon is sitting.
55:34We're talking about invading a culture using Seven Mountains Mandate
55:39as the name of cultural displacement or cultural genocide.
55:43That's really what we're talking about here.
55:45And we're also talking about a shift of authority.
55:49In the early Christian church, as I've mentioned, all authority, all power over the unseen world
55:55was given to Christ.
55:56In the new modern version, it's given to the individual people.
56:00And to do that, in order to give the people that power, they had to create all of the details
56:06to instruct the people how to use, how to wield that power.
56:10And the question that you end up with is this.
56:13Once Christianity, or pseudo-Christianity, I'll call it, began to fill in all of these
56:19details of what it looks like with these demonic territories and which demon was over which
56:25territory and how to intercede between God and you to conquer these territories and invade
56:32these territories and change the culture of these territories, when all of those details
56:37started to come into the movement, where did they come from?
56:41Because they're not in the Bible.
56:43You can't find them anywhere in the Bible.
56:45Where did they get the ideas?
56:46That's the simple question that you can ask that unravels the whole thing.
56:51So, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on
56:54the web.
56:55You can find us at william-branham.org.
56:58For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion,
57:02From Christian Identity to the NAR.
57:04Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
58:01Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
58:04www.available.org.
58:07Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
58:08www.available.org.
58:15www.available.org.
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