The False Gods Christians Still Believe In | Bob Scott | Episode 737 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

John and Bob explore the false gods Christians still believe in—sometimes without realizing it.  From territorial spirits and demons to Satan, divine councils, idols, and the spiritual powers described throughout the Bible, they ask whether modern Christian beliefs have preserved ideas that look surprisingly similar to the ancient world's pantheons.  The conversation traces how the Bible speaks about other gods across different periods, from "you shall have no other gods before me" to Isaiah's declaration that there is no other God. They also examine Psalm 82, "you are gods," ancient Israelite religion, the Golden Calf, the Trinity, NAR spiritual warfare, and the modern tendency to give spiritual beings powers that rival God.  Are these beings really gods? Are they demons? Are they powerless idols? Or have Christians simply changed the names while keeping the same basic worldview?  John and Bob follow the history, theology, and biblical language behind one of Christianity's most uncomfortable questions: do Christians still believe in false gods?  CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 03:25 Are False Gods Real? 06:40 Why Humans Created Gods 10:06 The Divine Council and Israel’s Changing Worldview 13:12 El, Yahweh, and the Canaanite Context 20:10 Bible Translation and the “Sons of God” 26:22 What Did “You Are Gods” Mean? 32:31 Isaiah and the Shift Toward One God 35:26 Is Christianity Monotheistic or Polytheistic? 39:58 The Danger of Dogmatic Worldviews 45:38 Are Spiritual Beings Gods? 50:02 Did Ancient People Believe Idols Had Power? 52:24 What Makes Something Your God? ______________________ 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

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

00:35I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research

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

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

00:50Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, the Kansas City Prophets, and

00:54the International House of Prayer.

00:56Bob, I hate to do this to you, but I decided today we're going to go controversial, and

01:02I'm going to step it up a few notches from your controversial.

01:06Like our last one wasn't controversial?

01:09I'm going to take it to the next level.

01:11I've actually been wanting to do this for a long time.

01:14Okay.

01:15There's a reason why.

01:17We grew up in this strange world of angels and demons, and we've talked about this almost

01:22every podcast.

01:23You're scared you're going to stump your toe because the demon of stump-toeness is not there

01:28to get you.

01:29That's how bad it is.

01:30And whenever I left the Branham movement, I started reading the Bible over and over and

01:35over, just reading it for what it said and not for what I was told it was to say, and

01:42I started to understand that the whole worldview I had didn't quite match the Bible, but there

01:48were bits and pieces that if you took them out of the historical context, you could kind

01:52of make it fit, and one of them had to do with the false gods, and I've mentioned this

01:58to you, I've mentioned this to a few co-hosts, but I became fascinated probably about 2014.

02:05I was two years out of the Branham movement.

02:07I became fascinated with studying ancient mythologies and the pantheons of gods and what did the gods

02:14mean to the people, and in the worldview that I had, they were these evil, powerful forces

02:20that eventually came to what Gnar would consider to be territorial spirits that you must climb

02:26a mountain and scream at and do weird stuff, but to the ancients, it actually meant much

02:31more.

02:31It was their political system, their religious system, their family system, sometimes their

02:36family lineage, and it all comes down to the totem pole.

02:42I remember growing up when I was a kid, I had some toy set, Lone Ranger or something, and

02:48it had a totem pole, and my family had no problem giving it to me, but we encountered other families

02:55who were very, very fundamentalist in their mindset, and they started to say things to

03:00their children.

03:01They didn't know I had it, but, no, you can't have that toy because a demon will come out

03:05and get you.

03:06And I started thinking, well, no, it's made by Mattel, man.

03:10It's not something like this.

03:12And then I came across the Bible passage.

03:15I'll look it up while you're talking, but there's a Bible passage that says exactly the

03:19same thing.

03:20Don't you know the woodsmith down the street made that idol that you're worshiping, and

03:24it's powerless.

03:25It's a hunk of wood.

03:26And so I wanted to have the conversation with you today about are false gods real and ask

03:32the question, because of this, I did some research after leaving, and the vast majority

03:38of Christians, the majority, if you were to tell them the statement, the Bible teaches

03:44that pagan gods are imaginary and idols are just pieces of wood or stone, the vast majority

03:50of Christians would say, yes, that's what the Bible says.

03:54The vast majority of Charismatics and Pentecostals would say, no, those people are apostate.

03:59And that division in Christianity, people believing both of these things, it changes their entire

04:06worldview, and that's why they actually can't communicate with each other.

04:09So I wanted to explore, are false gods real?

04:13One of the things that I think we struggle with is the difference between perception and

04:20facts.

04:20I notice quite a bit when people are having discussions, they make very dogmatic statements

04:27as though they have a fact.

04:29The reality of it is, is I think we all know, especially as you've gotten older, a lot of

04:37the things you thought were facts turned out to not be facts, right?

04:42Our culture, by virtue of the way we've been programmed, we have a tendency to default to

04:51people who are classified as experts.

04:53What ends up happening is, is by virtue of the way we've been programmed to think, we

04:59default to their perspectives because they claim their facts.

05:05But when you get to be our age, you realize when you look back at your life, the vast amount

05:12of things that you were told that were facts that have since been proven not to be facts.

05:18We tend to default to a very small group of elite leaders who either by virtue of their

05:28knowledge of the written Bible or in the charismatic world, their relationship with God and their

05:35special standing with him as to being the experts.

05:40And we default to them.

05:42I think one of my frustrations and one of the reasons why I think I value our friendship is

05:49that the vast majority of people that I've had discussions with in Christendom, when I start

05:58peeling back the layers of their worldview, I get about two layers in and discover they actually

06:05don't have firsthand knowledge based on research they've done.

06:10They're merely mimicking a worldview, a perspective, or a perceived fact from somebody that's an

06:19expert, i.e. their pastor, something they learned in Bible school.

06:24And what's ended up happening is we've really become a culture of parrots or apers, I guess,

06:32or whatever you want to call it.

06:33We mimic, we just, we regurgitate things we've been told.

06:40We don't actually drill down to find out if they're facts.

06:43Why are there gods in the first place?

06:46Like, why do we need a god?

06:48I mean, what was the root of gods in the first place?

06:51And the root is, we don't know what the heck's going on out there.

06:58We're looking at all this stuff around us.

07:00Darrell Bock There's actually two things.

07:02If you go back to study the ancient worldviews, there are gods because of what you said.

07:06Absolutely.

07:07How do you explain this world?

07:09Where did it come from?

07:10There must be something else.

07:11But once everybody came to the understanding of the something else, now we had to say our

07:18something else is better than your something else because we're more powerful.

07:21And it becomes political.

07:23It really does in the ancient world.

07:24Darrell Bock No, that's absolutely true.

07:26I mean, whole, I mean, that's what I mean.

07:29In the ancient world, it was predominantly conflict over our gods better than your god.

07:36This is not the Kansas City Chiefs, you know, versus the Indianapolis Colts tonight.

07:42Darrell Bock Yeah.

07:42Darrell Bock It's the god of the chiefs versus the god of

07:45the Colts.

07:46I mean, that's exactly how they went to it.

07:48Then what people may not understand is there's a whole religious system around these.

07:56So now all the prophets of the cults and the prophets of the chiefs are all prophesying

08:01against each other that they're going to win.

08:04Now, of course, I'm joking here, but I'm trying to, you know, use a word picture that described

08:10the ancient world because nobody really knew.

08:13Darrell Bock So there had to be a reason.

08:15So therefore, oh my gosh, there's got to be a being behind all this, right?

08:23And then because of the fact that every time they sort of thought that they were, you know,

08:28that they'd appease the gods and then nature did something catastrophic like bring a drought

08:34or a tornado or whatever, they developed the whole concept that the gods were what?

08:39Capricious.

08:40Unpredictable.

08:43And so, you know, it was like, okay, well, our gods, you know, are unpredictable because

08:50they're like humans, right?

08:52They got to be.

08:53Like, it's the only thing they knew.

08:54Like, nobody could conceive of the fact that a god may not be like us.

08:58Like, it might be a spiritual entity that doesn't need any of the things, but we gave them human

09:04attributes.

09:04That's all we knew.

09:05And therefore, because humans are unpredictable and capricious, the gods must be too.

09:10I mean, look around, you know, we just, man, we just gave all our money, all of our harvest

09:17to the god, and we still ended up in trouble and lost that battle.

09:21Darrell Bock And that's why, when you look at the pantheons

09:24of gods, that's why it gets really interesting.

09:26They put human personalities, personality traits on gods.

09:31Like, in Egypt, you had the gods of judgment.

09:33You had the gods of fertility, et cetera.

09:35What they're trying to do, basically, is say, we have Patrick Mahomes, and you don't.

09:40They're essentially creating gods for every situation that matches a human personality.

09:46And that's where it gets interesting.

09:48So, before I said, the vast majority of Christians don't believe that there are such things as

09:53false gods, and the idols were powerless.

09:56Pentecostal charismatics, most of them believe the other way.

09:58However, it's interesting because if you were to ask a Pentecost or a charismatic, do you

10:04believe that Yahweh, the god of the Hebrews, sat in a divine council among other gods and

10:12was the leader of the gods above them, much like the ancient Egypt?

10:17Every one of them, I can't think of any who would agree with that statement.

10:21They would all disagree, except for those who went to seminary.

10:25Because when you read Psalms, what is it, 82, it says something to the effect that Yahweh

10:32sits in the council of the divine, and the divine, when you read that word in King James

10:37Version, it says divine, but the actual word is el.

10:40So, Yahweh sits in the council of gods.

10:44Actually, I said that incorrectly.

10:45It says Elohim sits in the council of the gods.

10:48Elohim in Hebrew means both singular in some cases and plural in others.

10:53In this particular case, because it's in the council of El, council is plural, so Elohim

10:58means plural.

11:00Literally, it's saying that there's a divine council.

11:02So, when you read that and understand that it is talking about a divine council, the next

11:08question in your head, if you're coming out of the Pentecostal charismatic movement, is,

11:13oh my gosh, does that mean that there is a divine council?

11:17And let's go there and let's try to wrap every single passage of scripture around that.

11:22But if you understand the progression of worldview and how it changed for the Hebrews, you can't

11:29make that passage align with some of the later passages, because they began to understand the

11:34worldview was different than they believed thousands of years before.

11:38So, things like the Ten Commandments, you shall have no other gods before me.

11:45That's a good example, because Pentecostal charismatics will say, well, that says gods, so therefore

11:51there must be false gods.

11:53The vast majority of Christians would say, no, that doesn't mean what you think it means,

11:57because it does not actually say that there are in existence other gods.

12:02It says you will not worship other gods.

12:04So, there's this debate, and I actually read long forms about that debate, but it all comes

12:10down to this.

12:11When you understand the progression of history that is recorded in the Bible itself, what

12:17you find out from the very beginning, whenever they left Egypt, they left a group of people

12:22that had a worldview that there was a pantheon of gods, and you find that in their language.

12:28There's a pantheon of gods.

12:29Over time, that worldview began to change because they started to see that, number one, these false

12:36gods are powerless, especially before Yahweh, our God, but number two, they're praying

12:41to these idols, and we just watched the carpenter down the street cut it from a tree, or we watched

12:47a stone carver or whatever.

12:48So, they begin to understand, and there's a progression of worldview, and that's the part

12:53that I think, because of Christian fundamentalism, Pentecostals and charismatics who are influenced

12:59by Christian fundamentalism, it's really hard to grasp.

13:02They view the entire Old Testament as static.

13:05Everything has the same worldview over time.

13:08And it's not true.

13:09Yeah, most Christians understand there is a progression of time.

13:12Well, even the word El, right?

13:15It's like, where did that come from?

13:17What people don't understand, if you don't understand history, is that when they came into

13:23the promised land, the Canaanites that lived there, their primary god was El.

13:31El wasn't a creation of the wandering nomadic Hebrew people.

13:37He was the god of the Canaanites.

13:40And when the two cultures ended up merging, El and Yahweh almost became synonymous with each

13:48other.

13:49So, it gets tricky.

13:50One of the things I think that people, you know, let me give some more context here, because

13:57we're venturing into areas that I know are going to flip people's switches.

14:03One of the things people have to remember about the Bible is it's a Cliff Notes version of history.

14:08And if people don't know what Cliff Notes are, when we were going to college and we didn't want to

14:14read

14:14Homer's Odyssey, we went and got the Cliff Notes version, which was the outline and the summary.

14:21And, you know, it's the highlights, right?

14:25Based on the Cliff Notes version of what's important.

14:28That's the Bible.

14:30People need to realize there's only, maybe at best, one to five percent of people in the ancient world could

14:39even read or write.

14:40So, what you're reading in the Bible is written from the perspective of a very small and elite group of

14:50people.

14:50Who, oh, by the way, are controlling the religious, political, and economic narrative of this people.

14:57So, where this gets tricky is that because most American Christians, and I would virtually say most Christians around the

15:07world,

15:08don't understand the fact that there's a whole lot more going on in these stories than what's recorded in the

15:14Bible.

15:14They don't use the tools that we have, i.e. history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, all these different, you know, fields

15:31to actually dig into a story and take the Cliff Notes version and fill in a lot of stuff.

15:39Because when you do that, what ends up happening is you begin to realize you kind of have a distorted

15:45view here of what's really going on.

15:48This is one of my favorite books.

15:49It's called Traders, People's Chronology.

15:53And what it is, is it's the history every year of the world and what was going on.

16:00And so, when I'm reading a story in the Bible, the thing I want to do is I go to

16:06Traders and I look, what was happening in that same decade?

16:09Around the world.

16:11What was happening in Assyria.

16:12What was happening in Babylon.

16:14What was happening in Egypt.

16:16Like, what was happening around this little group of people, right?

16:20Because what you begin to realize when you get into the archaeology, in many of these stories, there's another perspective.

16:28When they start unpacking the cuneiform writings in clay in Babylon, the same event has another perspective from the Babylonians

16:38or from the Assyrians or whatever, right?

16:41So, I'll give you an example.

16:44We read the Bible from the perspective of the Hebrew people are the heroes of the story.

16:51They're the chosen.

16:53They're special, right?

16:55All the kind of same things we do in the Christian community with our leaders.

17:00Do the three other kingdoms that have been in place for thousands of years before this group of people have

17:07that same perspective?

17:08When this ragtag family shows up in Egypt, they don't even want them around the Egyptians.

17:16So, their perspective of these people is the exact opposite of our perspective of these people.

17:22We're thinking, oh, we got this chosen family, and God's with them, and these people are going, who are these

17:30people?

17:32And why are they here?

17:34And we got to feed them, right?

17:36And so, anyways, but then to your point, when they leave, what people don't understand, they've been in this culture

17:42for 400 years.

17:43They are more Egyptian than anything else because why?

17:48Because when they came there, they were just goat farmers, you know, herdsmen moving around.

17:56They had very little culture.

17:58So, again, this is where this all gets very tricky, right?

18:02So, they bring all this stuff with them.

18:05And you see it.

18:06Like, if you go to Israel, here's the problem with Israel.

18:10Israel makes $3.5 billion a year by telling Christians exactly what they want to hear.

18:15It's a massive industry.

18:18The people that run this industry all know what they're doing.

18:23And they're taking you to all the places that you want to go, and they're telling you all the stuff

18:28you want to hear.

18:29But the people that actually know the history are the anthropologists and the archaeologists and the people in all the

18:38museums, which the Christians don't visit.

18:40They just go to the sacred sites.

18:42They don't actually go back and study the culture and the people and what's going on.

18:48I've had the privilege to do that, which has shaped a lot of my understanding of the Bible because I

18:54got to go and see what?

18:57The concrete evidence.

18:59So, as I mentioned to you the other day, one of the big ones is that the ancient Hebrews believed

19:07that God had a wife.

19:09Nobody wants to talk about that.

19:11But in all the archaeology, what are they finding?

19:15There's Asherah and Yahweh, statues and all these houses.

19:21So, again, what was happening on the ground in the civilization with the people like us, right, the citizens of

19:34this land,

19:34and what the religious elite claim is going on are two very different things, two very different perspectives.

19:43And so, one's got to be very, very careful here when they make very dogmatic statements because, guess what?

19:51Again, perspective.

19:53Well, if God's a he, he needs a she.

19:56Everybody else has a she with their he.

20:00Every animal, every insect, every bird, there's a he and a she.

20:06So, therefore, God needs a she because he's a man.

20:09He's a male.

20:11Add to that the level of complexity just simply by the history of the text of the Bible.

20:17This is another study that I found fascinating whenever I left because we were King James only.

20:22And I know that there are listeners who are King James only.

20:25So, if you're already offended by this podcast, I'm going to take it to the next level, even higher.

20:30I can see the buttons going off.

20:35So, let's talk manifested sons of God.

20:37Oh, wow.

20:37Okay.

20:38There are a lot of people who are in the NAR that love to talk about the manifested sons of

20:44God because that came from their lineage.

20:47Much like we're talking with the different worldview beliefs, this was the worldview belief of the Lateran movement that went

20:55into charismatic into NAR.

20:56And there are passages that are favorable of that concept, so they use it.

21:02One of them is in the English Standard Version.

21:04When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the

21:10peoples according to the number of the sons of God.

21:13If you're a manifest sons of God person, this verse just lights you up.

21:18But only if you're reading the ESV because if you read the King James Version, it says, according to the

21:24number of the children of Israel.

21:25And so, there's this debate that happens by King James-only people who are unfamiliar with the transmission of the

21:34text.

21:35They think of the King James Version much as though it is the original Bible, which it is not, not

21:41understanding the complexities of translations or the history thereof.

21:45And what happened, actually, there were different text families, and the Septuagint, I think I said that correctly, actually preserved

21:56sons of God.

21:58And the other text lineages used sons of Israel.

22:03It was actually a division of words.

22:05And whenever you think of what they believed, the original text actually makes sense.

22:11We are all sons and daughters of the high God.

22:15Sons of God is actually a valid translation.

22:18But sons of Adam, which I think is, or sons of Israel is how it was translated in the others,

22:23that's also a valid translation.

22:26Both are valid from their inception.

22:28But when you read more into it than the text actually says, now you have a debating point.

22:33So, the point I'm trying to make is, if you are familiar with Manifest Sons of God, you're familiar with

22:40King James Version ESV battles, this is a point where they start fighting with each other.

22:44No, it says this.

22:45No, it says this.

22:46They both say the same thing, and they both were translations of an original text, and some of that text

22:52actually had a verbal history.

22:54So, as they lost text, sometimes they remembered passages and wrote them down later.

22:59There's a lot of complexities into the history.

23:01But the point I'm trying to make is this.

23:04We lose things to time because of language transmission.

23:08Yeah, right.

23:09Well, we're in America, and now there's this vast network where we can communicate with each other in other countries.

23:16But think about back in the day when it couldn't happen, when it wasn't instant text communication.

23:22Each language is developing in a vastly different direction.

23:26And so, separated continents had different languages.

23:30Now spread the gospel and spread the Hebrew Bible to those.

23:33We have to translate it in their variation, and the variations change.

23:37So, it's not like one is right and one is wrong.

23:40It's that back when it was originally translated, it made more sense to the people it was translated to.

23:47So, that adds a level of complexity because if you go back to read about the false gods, which I'll

23:53get into that in a bit, when you read about it, the original text actually makes sense.

23:59You shall have no other gods before me.

24:01Well, I just came from a place where they had many, many gods, and we don't want you to worship

24:07those gods.

24:07We want you to worship Yahweh.

24:08We're not saying those gods are real.

24:10The text actually does not say you shall not worship the other gods because they're real.

24:15They don't exist.

24:16Yeah.

24:16It doesn't say that, right?

24:18Well, here, let me complicate this.

24:20I'll give you two scriptures, and then you jump off from there on this thing.

24:26Psalm 82.6.

24:28I said you are gods.

24:30You are all sons of the Most High, right?

24:33Then you jump to John 10.34.

24:37Jesus says, is it not written in your law?

24:39I have said you are gods.

24:41So, John, what is a god?

24:45Because we all have this impression that the word god means this spiritual being that's sentient, like that's over us.

24:54But now we have two scriptures here that are saying we humans are gods.

24:58Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter

25:06reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?

25:11You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.

25:19On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,

25:27John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

25:33You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

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25:58The year of gods thing really stumbled me whenever I left the Branhamite movement.

26:02Because again, we're in a movement that is teaching you the manifested sons of God, but we didn't have it

26:08branded as that.

26:09In fact, I think the vast majority of them would say, no, we don't believe that.

26:13But then they taught it, which was kind of weird.

26:16And I grew up listening to recordings where Branham would say, did not the Bible say you are gods?

26:21And that developed into its own weird thing.

26:24We actually condemned the weird thing that Charismatics and NAR had.

26:28We condemned it.

26:29But I never really stopped to think about it.

26:32And the ancient cultures, their view of God and what God meant to them is different from our view of

26:39what God means to us.

26:41I wondered about that.

26:43From my understanding of the text of the Bible and the combination of that with the cultures,

26:49is that the sense was that you are representatives of the gods.

26:54You are – because think about how Pharaoh worked.

26:59To the people in Egypt, Pharaoh was their god, but they didn't actually believe he was the god.

27:05He was the divine representation, the god manifested in this human called Pharaoh.

27:10And when they worshipped, they worshipped Pharaoh and the gods.

27:14That's how I understand ancient Egypt.

27:16And somebody who's a historian may correct me on the complexities of that, but in its essence, that's what it

27:23means.

27:24Whenever that passage was said back in the ancient world, it meant to us like you are representatives of God.

27:31But to them, they could just say simply you are gods, and it made sense in that culture.

27:36The difference is today they try to empower what it means to be a representative of God.

27:43In other words, you represent God, so therefore, you can do all of these miraculous, mind-bending, mind-altering things

27:52because you're gods.

27:53The ancient world didn't look at it like this.

27:55There's one all-powerful God, or multiple if you're in a polytheistic religion.

28:01Those gods have the power.

28:03We look to them for the power, but we're a representative of the god that has the power.

28:08Well, because in ancient Egypt and places like that, they saw the pharaohs as gods.

28:12That makes me wonder, in the ancient world, do they see a god as just somebody who's over others, right?

28:21In other words, we're gods because in the Garden of Eden, God told us to rule and reign over the

28:27earth, so we're in control of certain things, right?

28:29We may not be the supreme god, but we're gods in the sense that we rule our own little worlds,

28:35right?

28:35As pharaoh ruled Egypt, right?

28:39Because you see this all the time, is that in these ancient inscriptions, they're always inferring these leaders as godlike.

28:46Like, they're superior to everyone else.

28:48The majority of the world was polytheistic, and if you understand that concept and understand that they came out of

28:56a polytheistic worldview from Egypt, while they were still monotheistic, when they come out of this, some of the verbiage

29:05did make sense.

29:06So, if you're in a polytheistic religion, you have, like I said, the god of judgment, the god of wisdom,

29:12the god of blessings, the god of fertility, all of these different gods.

29:16You're representatives of those gods.

29:20It meant that you could, in idolatry, you could pray to this idol, and you are a representative because you

29:26are invoking that god.

29:28It wasn't that you were empowered and had the same powers as that god.

29:32Well, they came out of that polytheistic mindset, and they had a monotheistic mindset.

29:39We are a representative of the god that has all of this.

29:42So, even the divine counsel makes sense because our god, Yahweh, has all of this.

29:48We don't need all of these things that the ancient world has.

29:51We have them all encompassed in our god, and all we have to do is pray, and to the ancient

29:56Hebrews, we had to sacrifice.

29:57So, there's this worldview that is changing over time.

30:02Where it gets really scary is whenever you get into the latter rain movement and beyond, they're trying to say

30:09that you now, as a human, have all of the powerful attributes that the ancient Hebrews were trying to invoke

30:16from God.

30:17In other words, you become more of a god than even that statement encompasses in the Bible.

30:22So, from a historical perspective here, while the religious leaders of ancient Israel were monotheistic, the vast majority of the

30:36population was polytheistic.

30:38And this is an archaeological fact.

30:43And the reason is, is people didn't actually trust their leaders, so they had to cover their bases.

30:54Yeah.

30:56I mean, think about it.

30:58You're just an average Joe trying to raise sheep or goats, right?

31:02Like, you don't really know.

31:04So, you know, I better make sure El, and I better make sure Yahweh, and I better make sure Asherith,

31:11and anybody else out there, you know, I got to cover my bases here.

31:16Make sure I, you know, I want my goats to multiply, right?

31:20I want my sheep to multiply.

31:22So, they're covering all their bases.

31:24So, again, this is a perception.

31:25There's this perception that you have this whole group of people that are monotheistic, all following these religious leaders.

31:32The archaeology and the anthropology and the history prove that that's not actually what's going on.

31:40It's a very elite group of people who are saying this, but the vast majority of people are actually out

31:46there making sure that they, you know, they got an insurance policy with a number of different companies.

31:53Well, what's funny about that is whenever you think along those lines, people who are anti-education, I know people

32:02who have contacted, even on the comment feed, you can read this.

32:05They're saying, you're going outside of the Bible.

32:06We need to stick with the Bible.

32:08Don't study archaeology and all these other things.

32:10Even if you just simply read the book of Kings, you find everything that you've said.

32:14You had this ruler of Israel who rose up to great power because they were God's elect person, and then

32:21suddenly they fell to idolatry.

32:22So, they had to wipe out all of the idols and start over again.

32:26It kept happening again and again and again.

32:28That's right.

32:29They did have idolatry.

32:30Here's where things began to change.

32:34It's a time yet.

32:35In Isaiah, no, it was long before this.

32:37In Isaiah 43, I think it is, it says something to the effect, before me, no God was formed, nor

32:46shall there be any after me.

32:48And I'm paraphrasing, I think.

32:49It basically is saying, I am the only God.

32:52You who are believing in polytheism in our Israel camps, you're all wrong because there's only one God.

32:58There is no false God.

33:00And that's why the vast majority of Christians do not believe this charismatic Pentecostal thing that all these false gods

33:06are out to entrap you.

33:07And I think if you continue reading, it says, it repeats that phrase, besides me, there is no God.

33:15That sounds vastly different when you compare to what the early Israel believed, where it says, who is like you

33:21among the gods, plural.

33:23So you had this evolving worldview, and it's fully documented in the book of Kings.

33:29But people who are reading the Bible, often they read one, they do the passage a day thing, they've got

33:35the little calendar they flip, and they're not getting the full context of history and understanding that Kings has the

33:42history both good and bad.

33:43They fell to idolatry, they had idols, they had false god worship, they had all of these things, and Yahweh.

33:49And then Yahweh said, no, don't do this, and then they did it again.

33:53So as this is happening, it is actually shaping their worldview, and that worldview makes it documented into the historical

34:00context of the Bible.

34:02Then in Isaiah, it begins to shift.

34:04You've had this false dichotomy.

34:07You've had this false understanding of these gods.

34:09There's only one God.

34:09There is no other false god.

34:11Yeah, the real big shift happens with the Babylonian captivity.

34:16That's the point, to your point, where you start seeing the big shift.

34:22And the reason for that is that you have 12 tribes, 10 of which, 150 years earlier, had all been

34:29taken and scattered.

34:30You got one major tribe left, and then little Benjamin, who get taken into Babylon.

34:37That's where you have the Babylonian Talmud.

34:38Out of that, that's where you see the shift historically where the culture ended up focused on a single Yahweh.

34:50But that doesn't happen until the 700, 600, you know, during that captivity period.

34:56That's when the synagogue comes in, the Babylonian Talmud, you know, the whole culture that we know.

35:04Because this is the problem, we look at modern-day Judaism, and we see through that lens.

35:09But that, the version of Judaism we know only happens as a result of their captivity in Babylon, well, in

35:17Susa, right?

35:18But they're there.

35:20So, you see that.

35:21So, now I'm going to ask you a really controversial question, since we're on controversy.

35:25Is Christianity a monotheism or a polytheism religion?

35:33I was actually hoping that you would ask me this in this, because it's both.

35:39If you study the Pentecostal charismatic progression that I've been talking about, to believe in other false gods, you must

35:47be polytheistic.

35:48You absolutely have to be.

35:50If you believe there is only one God and there are no other gods, if you believe what Isaiah says,

35:56you are monotheistic.

35:57But take these people that go up on the mountaintops, and I was reading crazy histories of Nara, that go

36:03up and scream at these gods, these territorial spirits that are hovering over areas geographically.

36:09That is a polytheistic religion.

36:12And Isaiah, what is it?

36:14It's Isaiah, I think, 44.

36:17It mocks the whole system.

36:19If you read Isaiah, 44, it's in the ESV, which I sometimes prefer.

36:25I think it even captions it, the fool, what is it, the fool of idolatry or something like this.

36:31It says basically that this man cuts down a tree, and he cooks dinner, he bakes bread, and then with

36:37the leftover wood, after cooking his meal, he carves this god and says, save me, you're my god.

36:45If you read Isaiah, 44, and I'm paraphrasing greatly.

36:48But it's basically mocking the idea that a human can fashion a god and that god can save him.

36:55When you understand that the Pentecostal care, Nara especially, when you believe that Nara is teaching all of these territorial

37:02spirits, all of this polytheistic religion, and that you as a human have to do something to fight the territorial

37:09spirits, you are empowering yourself so that you are becoming more powerful than a human.

37:15You're demoting the all-powerful God who's taking care of you, and you're creating this false dichotomy.

37:21You actually are fashioning idols, but it's worse than Isaiah is mocking because it's not even wood or gold.

37:27You fashioned it in your head.

37:30Well, the early church struggled with this, and that was where the whole battle came about whether there's a trinity

37:37or not, because you have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

37:42Well, if those are three distinct entities, then we're a monotheist, a polytheistic religion, because we have three gods, but

37:51they're one.

37:53So, you know what I mean?

37:54You see what I mean?

37:55They were struggling.

37:56I mean, the theologians, they've been struggling with this for years, right?

38:01How do I take three distinct entities, and yet they're one?

38:05So, we have a monotheistic religion that actually, in practice, is polytheistic.

38:13Sorry, I'm just trying to wrestle with this in my head, right?

38:16Because it's like, I always have struggled with this.

38:20Well, what do you mean we're monotheistic?

38:21You keep telling me that God the Son, you know, God's Son came and died for my sins.

38:26Well, that means there's a second God.

38:27Then he left, and then he sent the Holy Spirit, and you say, he's God, too.

38:31Well, that's the third God, right?

38:34I mean, this is just me as a young Christian going, wait a minute.

38:37How is this monotheistic?

38:38Darrell Bock That's the funny thing.

38:39I came out of a religion that viewed it as polytheistic.

38:43We were oneness in Branhamism.

38:46But I spent long hours reading and trying to understand exactly that.

38:51What is the view on the Godhead?

38:53Was Branham right?

38:53Was Branham wrong?

38:54And I sat down with a person who had been to seminary who was highly educated, and he explained

39:02to me, I went to the specific passages of the oneness view of God, and then I went to

39:07the specific ones that are Trinitarian.

39:10And what's funny is when you compare them, there's actually more in the New Testament

39:14that support Trinitarianism than there are that support oneness.

39:17And I asked him to explain it, and then he did, and it made sense in a theological way.

39:23And then I said, now, explain how that makes sense.

39:29And he said, I'm sorry, man.

39:30He says, I don't understand it.

39:32I can't understand it.

39:33And so what it comes out to be, it is a polytheistic by, if you understand the definition of polytheism,

39:42it is a polytheistic religion.

39:44But if you understand how theology tries to interpret it, you have to take that leap of

39:49faith, so you have to believe that it is monotheistic, while it is describing something

39:55logically that is polytheism.

39:57I think one of the biggest problems we have in the church world is because of the fact

40:04that we're so dogmatic in our world rules, we create expectations in people sitting in

40:10pews.

40:11And so then they build their lives around these dogmatic statements, and then they run into

40:17situations.

40:18Like, I'll give you an example of one.

40:20Good things happen to good people, and bad things happen to bad people.

40:24It's a weird default setting.

40:26I remember, as a young believer, when a really good guy, who was like the Dr. Dobson dad and

40:35husband, got cancer.

40:38Like, it was a complete meltdown for a whole community of people who go, but he's good.

40:45He's a good guy.

40:47My point here is, I just think we need to all, like, take a chill pill here and back up

40:52a little

40:52bit with what we think we know and start realizing that, hey, let's focus on our relationships and

41:02loving one another and kind of hold all these big picture items loosely in the palm of our

41:09hand, realizing that one day it's going to all be revealed to us, and we're probably going

41:14to find out we really didn't know what we thought we knew.

41:19So, we can have these fun dialogues, but to your point earlier, the worldview of God or gods has shifted

41:30dramatically over the millennials of human history.

41:36Or millennia, I should say, of human history.

41:40And to your, also to your point, it changed in the Bible.

41:44Those, that original guy, Abraham, who was a polytheist, right, came from a culture where each of the

41:53Mesopotamian cities had a deity that they were built around, right?

41:59Abraham came from Ur.

42:01Ur worshipped the moon god.

42:05That's where Abraham came from, right?

42:08Abraham decided to pick a side.

42:10Instead of, like, having, you know, all 32 NFL teams, he picked a team.

42:16He was a Chiefs fan, I'm sure.

42:19But he picked a side.

42:21That's what, I mean, that's the big controversy.

42:23Like, Abraham picked a side.

42:26Everybody else was picking, you know, had multiple sides.

42:29What does that mean, right?

42:31It's just, a sheep herder decides to worship one god.

42:35That's it.

42:36And out of that, then, comes these families.

42:38And over time, right, all these things that develop.

42:42But, you know, it was a gradual shift in worldviews.

42:47As understanding.

42:48The more people began to understand, the more things shifted.

42:52For me, it's really this simple.

42:54For example, over time, through millennia, whether we're talking about NAR, Charismatics, Pentecostals, or go back to the ancient Hebrews,

43:03go through the New Testament, Old Testament, no matter what period of time you're talking about, the only way that

43:10people can conceptualize God is to give human attributes.

43:14It's something that you said early on.

43:16The problem with this is, when the God doesn't match those expectations, which is another word that you used, whenever

43:25the expectations don't align with your theology, suddenly you have this crisis of faith and you try to reconceptualize God.

43:34And it all comes down to people struggle to grasp something that they can't understand all throughout history.

43:43Here's the world.

43:43Talk to any atheist.

43:45Here's the world around us.

43:46And they'll say, we don't believe in the gods.

43:48Well, what created this?

43:50I know the Big Bang Theory.

43:51I've studied all of this stuff.

43:52In the end, you still come down to, well, what was there in the beginning?

43:56There still had to have been something, right?

43:59What sparked it?

44:00What sparked the Big Bang you're talking about?

44:02And it all comes down to people try to put human framework around God.

44:06When you do this, you're actually putting God in chains.

44:10If it's something that your human mind can understand, then it must be limited to the conceptualization that your human

44:18mind can produce.

44:19Agreed.

44:20Read Corinthians.

44:21Here's another thing.

44:23I'm going to blow heads even more, I guess.

44:25Because Paul struggled, I think, to some extent to understand these things.

44:30If you read Corinthians, there are passages that back everything that I've just said.

44:34There's no God but one is something that Paul says.

44:37There's no other gods.

44:39Pagan gods don't exist is essentially what he's saying.

44:41If you keep reading in that same book, I think it's Corinthians, he starts talking about pagans that sacrifice to

44:48demons and not God.

44:50And so he's referencing demons and not Yahweh, not our God.

44:56But if you understand how polytheism worked, a demon was a God in the ancient world.

45:02So in his language, he's talking about a lesser God.

45:05There are greater gods and lesser gods.

45:07The demons were the lesser gods.

45:08So he's talking both, but also at the same time, Paul is talking to a people in a way that

45:16they can understand, because they have all come from this worldview.

45:19So either A, Paul was trying to understand it himself and writing in both sides.

45:25B, he was talking in a way that the people could understand, because that was the language they were familiar

45:29with.

45:30Or C, we don't understand it at all, because the loss of time to translation, and we can't go ask

45:37Paul.

45:37Let's go down another road here.

45:39Do we all concur that there are spiritual beings, and there's more than one?

45:45So, for instance, I think there's pretty much a consensus that Lucifer, i.e. Satan, was a real spiritual being.

45:54There's very little debate about that, right?

45:57There's very little debate about whether there's angels or, to what you just mentioned, demons, right?

46:03So we are very aware that there are at least, well, I mean, not everybody agrees with this, but I

46:12think there's a big consensus out there that there's a spiritual world with spiritual beings, right, in another dimension that

46:19come into our time and space worlds.

46:22Are they gods?

46:24They're superior to us.

46:26There are people that worship Satan.

46:28So, is he a god?

46:30He is a god to that group of people that worship him, right?

46:35There's, you know, angels, things, you know, things that have appeared over human history, you know?

46:41It's kind of like, I mean, I was watching Star Trek this week, you know, and it's like, you know,

46:47the directive, you know?

46:49They can't affect culture, right?

46:52And so, but it's funny because they go into these primitive, you know, civilizations and they're gods because they have

46:59superior technology.

47:01So, I guess where I'm going with this is even the word gods is so vague and it has so

47:09many different perspectives of what that word even means, right?

47:13Like, when you say gods, well, what does that mean, right?

47:17Does this just mean somebody that's superior to you?

47:21Somebody that has giftings and abilities that are greater than you?

47:26Does that make you a god?

47:26Or does it make you a god because of the fact that you worship them?

47:31Like, you change your life or you do things in your life in relation to the fact that you view

47:39this person as being one who provides or protects or whatever, you know what I mean?

47:45It's like, who defines a god?

47:47You know, we do.

47:49Like, humans are the ones that are saying who's a god and who's not a god.

47:53That's the funny part.

47:54If you study this from a historical perspective and understand what a pantheon of gods means, Satan would fall into

48:04that category.

48:05And interestingly, I think it's also in Corinthians, Paul calls Satan the god of this world or something like this.

48:13In Branhamism, we had an entire series of sermons on god of this evil age.

48:17So, we actually gave Satan god status.

48:21And the latter rain movement.

48:23So, you were polytheistic.

48:24We were polytheistic.

48:25Once it got into Gnar, they gave Satan powers far beyond what latter rain ever did.

48:30They actually empowered Satan, which is really, really scary if you think about it.

48:34But there are, and this is probably another podcast for another day, there are numerous passages that talk about how

48:40Satan is constrained.

48:42So, instead of a god who is a powerful, all-demon, all-powerful demon that Gnar has given him, it

48:50talks about how God controls Satan.

48:52And there are passages that basically limit him to just another spirit being.

48:57Now, to you and I who know history, another spirit being is very similar to this is a pantheon of

49:03gods and Satan is the lesser one.

49:05However, to Christianity, who is monotheistic, it brings it into the same realm of question that you have with the

49:14Trinity.

49:14How can you define Trinity as monotheistic?

49:18Well, you have to kind of change what the framework of monotheism is.

49:23So, the point I'm trying to drive at with all of this is, if you don't take the humanistic mindset

49:31and you ignore all of the stuff that we've said about history and just try to understand this,

49:36the Bible is really trying to tell you that God is this all-powerful thing that is in full control.

49:43You don't really even need to understand it.

49:45You don't need to fashion and carve wood, stone, idols, golden idols, et cetera, to invoke those powers.

49:54You don't need to climb on mountaintops and scream at the demons because God is fully in control.

50:00Everything else, there's one God, everything else is subordinate.

50:04That's the really-

50:05So, do you think that the ancients actually believed those statues had power?

50:09Based on everything that I have studied, I think there's a point in time in which they did believe it,

50:14and that's kind of documented in the Bible whenever they're rebuking the people who believe this thing.

50:20But over time, that changes significantly, and I don't know at which point it did,

50:25but there came a time whenever they started to see it as like a mediator figure.

50:31And interestingly, we've talked about the political aspects of these gods.

50:36There's also a familial aspect.

50:38Some of these gods were part of your family lineage as well.

50:42So, you go down to Mexico, you can see some of this.

50:44So, I think at a point in time, they did believe this for whatever reason,

50:48but later they came to realize, I can pray this thing all I want, and we're still in the drought.

50:54Well, you know, I mean, an interesting story is the exodus,

50:59because you have this whole group of people that are being led out to a promised land,

51:06and they don't get there.

51:08And so, what do they revert to?

51:11They build a golden calf.

51:13Well, if you don't understand history, you don't realize that that golden calf is actually an Egyptian god, right?

51:20So, here they are, like, okay, this isn't working out the way we thought.

51:25Let's go back.

51:28You know, was it Keith Green or something like, so you want to go back to Egypt?

51:32Isn't that like one of his songs or something?

51:34Anyways, but, you know, they go right back, and it's like, well, how do they even know about this god,

51:40right?

51:40If they're monotheistic, and they're worshiping Yahweh, then why are they going straight back, you know,

51:46to the golden calf, representing another god, right?

51:50This is where it gets kind of fascinating to me.

51:53I don't think it's also neat and tidy as everybody, you know, has this perception that it is, right?

52:00And so, I think that's a lot of that carries off into even where we are now in the church

52:07world.

52:07I don't think it's as neat and tidy as everybody wants to perceive.

52:11Like, you know, we like to get everything sorted and, you know, get our ducks in a row and compartmentalize

52:16and define everything.

52:18And I just, in my world, I just think it's a lot more murky, a lot more undefined.

52:25I think I'm with you.

52:26It's just like, the reality of it is, there's the Creator.

52:30You know, you can call Him God the Father, you can put a thousand names on Him, but the Creator.

52:35And that Creator has given us life, and He's given us a responsibility with that life,

52:41and there'll be an accountability for what we did with that life.

52:45And I think that's where we kind of got to bring it back to that, you know?

52:50And I think another lesson out of this is that whatever you trust in is your God, you know?

52:58If your security is based on all the money you make, well, then that's a God, right?

53:03If your security is that your government is going to be the thing that protects you or whatever,

53:11that's your Savior, then that's a God too, right?

53:13So, I'd say, what defines a God?

53:15I think, in some ways, a God is anything or anyone that we defer to and give power over us,

53:25right?

53:26It's like we default to, right?

53:30We, you know, we look at them to save us, right?

53:34I think that's where a lot of your rulers, why they got defined as gods, right?

53:41Because they were going to save us from the big, bad Assyrians or the big, bad Egyptians

53:46or the big, bad, you know, Babylonians or the big, bad Israelis, you know, somewhere in there.

53:53They're going to save us from something.

53:56Because if you think about it, I mean, that's where the whole thing with the gods came from

54:00in the beginning.

54:01We're powerless here.

54:03We're in the middle of this existence with forces around us that are, like, wiping us out here.

54:10Like, we need help.

54:12We need a Savior.

54:14So, the whole concept of saviors and, you know, and all that, that's been there from the beginning,

54:19you know?

54:19God save us.

54:21Well, this has been a wild ride.

54:22Thank you so much for doing this.

54:24Well, it's been fun.

54:26Hopefully, we haven't offended a whole bunch of people.

54:28But, again, we're just two curious guys asking a lot of questions.

54:32Not making, I hope we haven't made any dogmatic statements.

54:36Yeah.

54:37But if we did, we'd take them back.

54:42The only dogmatic statement I would make is I have no dogmatic statements.

54:47It's like the only constant is change.

54:49Exactly.

54:51Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out

54:53on the web.

54:54You can find us at william-branham.org.

54:56For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion

55:00from Christian Identity to the NAR.

55:03Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

55:05Keep going.

55:17See you soon.

The False Gods Christians Still Believe In | Bob Scott | Episode 737

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