- 2 hours ago
John examines Hebrews 13:17 and the history behind the familiar command to "obey them that have the rule over you." Beginning with the Greek wording behind "obey," he compares the passage with early Christian leadership structures and explains why the modern image of a single pastor ruling a congregation does not neatly match the earliest Christian communities.
John then traces the development of Christian authority through Ignatius, Irenaeus, the Reformation, William Branham, the Shepherding Movement, and the New Apostolic Reformation. The central question is not whether all church authority is wrong, but how Christians came to organize authority, why those structures repeatedly developed, and what can happen when Hebrews 13:17 is used to demand unquestioning submission.
00:00 Introduction
05:39 Reading the Bible Beyond Learned Interpretations
10:07 What Does “Obey” Actually Mean in Hebrews 13:17?
16:09 How Translation and Tradition Shaped Church Authority
21:38 Acts and Titus: Leadership in the Early Church
27:00 Ignatius and the Rise of Episcopal Authority
32:55 Why Ignatius Emphasized Unity and Church Order
38:40 Irenaeus, Apostolic Succession, and Roman Authority
43:32 William Branham and the Return of Prophetic Authority
48:38 How Hebrews 13:17 Became a Tool of Religious Control
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
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John then traces the development of Christian authority through Ignatius, Irenaeus, the Reformation, William Branham, the Shepherding Movement, and the New Apostolic Reformation. The central question is not whether all church authority is wrong, but how Christians came to organize authority, why those structures repeatedly developed, and what can happen when Hebrews 13:17 is used to demand unquestioning submission.
00:00 Introduction
05:39 Reading the Bible Beyond Learned Interpretations
10:07 What Does “Obey” Actually Mean in Hebrews 13:17?
16:09 How Translation and Tradition Shaped Church Authority
21:38 Acts and Titus: Leadership in the Early Church
27:00 Ignatius and the Rise of Episcopal Authority
32:55 Why Ignatius Emphasized Unity and Church Order
38:40 Irenaeus, Apostolic Succession, and Roman Authority
43:32 William Branham and the Return of Prophetic Authority
48:38 How Hebrews 13:17 Became a Tool of Religious Control
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:31Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:35I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at william-branham.org,
00:42where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it, is truly stranger than fiction.
00:48I was asked recently in the comment feeds, and you may have actually seen it on YouTube if you were
00:53following the discussion,
00:55I was asked about the passage from Hebrews 13, specifically Hebrews 13, 17.
01:02And I avoid theology, as everybody knows. I'm not a theologian. I'm not a preacher.
01:07I don't claim to be, never really wanted to be.
01:11But this is an important passage of Scripture, because this is the Scripture that ruined my life.
01:18And when I say ruined, I'm saying that loosely.
01:20I actually had a relatively good life when I was in the destructive cult that we escaped,
01:26but it could have been such more of a fulfilling life.
01:29I guess that's probably the best way to say it.
01:31Now, there are people who it absolutely does ruin their lives, and this is a very destructive verse if handled
01:39improperly.
01:40And I want to talk through that because there's some history behind it.
01:44And this is one of the examples that I can talk about the Bible, but I can actually focus on
01:49history instead of theology
01:51and help people to understand why they have been abused and beaten with the Bible.
01:56And I, for those who are unaware, this series that I do by myself, I've titled it Weaponize Religion,
02:03because truly they have weaponized the Bible against the people.
02:08And it has been to the benefit of some very destructive leaders.
02:12This verse in question, Hebrews 13, 17, has been used by numerous high-demand groups, high-control groups,
02:20to claim that they have, they being the ministers or the central figures,
02:24have the authority to do with whatever they will to the people.
02:28And it's destructive. It is weaponizing the Bible against the people.
02:32And in this way, the Bible simply becomes a ball bat that you smack the people with.
02:37And that's not what it is intended to be, nor was that how the Bible was viewed by both the
02:44early Christians
02:44and predating the New Testament by the Jews.
02:48This was not intended to be this way.
02:50But I want to talk through that history because it is really, really important.
02:54For those of you who are unfamiliar with the verse, I'll read it in the King James English to satisfy
03:01those who are KJV only.
03:03The verse says,
03:04Obey them that have rule over you, and submit yourselves.
03:08For they watch over your souls, as they must give account,
03:12that they may do it with joy, not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you.
03:18So for those of you listening who were in one of the destructive groups, like I mentioned,
03:23My Family Escaped, you heard this verse and suddenly you were triggered.
03:28Instantly, you had whips and chains in the back of your minds,
03:31because that is how this verse is viewed by the high demand, high control groups.
03:36When you listen to the words in today's English, and this was King James Version,
03:41so this was written 1611,
03:43That phrase, rule over you, suddenly that's in the back of your mind.
03:50The second thing, submit yourselves.
03:52I can't tell you how many sermons that I heard growing up about submitting yourself to the leaders,
03:59and pastors would use it to no end.
04:02If they had an opinion, and you did not like their opinion,
04:06you had to submit to their opinion in the high control group that we escaped.
04:11Not every pastor was like this.
04:12We did actually have some good ones.
04:14But those who were full of themselves used this so that you could be full of themselves too.
04:21And I'm laughing at the absurdity, but that is how it was.
04:25If you keep reading, it says,
04:28They watch over your souls because they must give an account.
04:31I also can't tell you how many sermons that I heard about this.
04:34They're the ones who are going to stand before God in the judgment day and give their account of you.
04:40In other words, you mean nothing to God.
04:42It's them that means everything.
04:44And I heard that over and over.
04:46It was drilled into my head, man.
04:48In fact, we had the central figure, William Branham, from whom all of this developed.
04:53Branham was the one who spearheaded the post-World War II healing revivals,
04:57which developed into latter reign, shepherding movement, charismatic movement, New Apostolic Reformation.
05:05This is the framework that he helped to establish in the United States and abroad
05:10so that he could claim that he was the one who would give an account to God on behalf of
05:17the people.
05:17And he even claimed that he had a vision of him doing this on the other side.
05:21So we were listening to things like this, and we listened to this passage partially thinking,
05:29oh, blessed us, because he's going to do this, and we mean nothing to God.
05:33But on the other side, we're thinking, oh, I'm not sure if I really agree with that.
05:37So your mind is really torn between two dichotomies.
05:40Now, the interesting part about this, fast forward.
05:44After my leaving and after I read the Bible for myself over and over and over,
05:50I lost count of the number of times.
05:51I think I've mentioned 15 times or so.
05:55I just read it cover to cover for what it said,
05:57and I tried to ignore what I was trained to believe that it said.
06:03And here's the thing that I found, which strongly applies to not only this passage,
06:08but you can apply it to every single thing in the Bible.
06:11When you find two polar opposite opinions that are sometimes given by the same person who's writing,
06:19it might be Paul, it might be Peter, whoever,
06:22and one opinion says you're free in Christ,
06:25no longer do you have to submit yourself to these people.
06:28Who has bewitched you that you're submitting yourself to these people?
06:32These are actual passages.
06:33You cannot make that come together with this, obey those who rule you.
06:39So either they are bipolar and they have some mental health problem while they're writing the Bible,
06:46or we are not fully understanding what they're saying in one case or the other case or even both cases.
06:52And the way that I try to tell people who I've worked with for years in the support groups is
06:58this.
06:59The English language is very, very difficult,
07:02especially when you're trying to find compatibility between an ancient language that we don't even have today
07:10and compatibility between the modern language today.
07:14There are words that just don't connect.
07:17And you can complicate this further because the English language likes to overload the meaning of a single word.
07:25And the example that I give is the word love.
07:28I love my wife.
07:30And when you hear this in English, you think,
07:32yes, John has a romantic relationship with his wife.
07:35He loves his wife.
07:36They have this bond because they are husband and wife.
07:40But what if I told you that I also love Doritos?
07:45Your mind does not think that John has a romantic relationship with Doritos.
07:50It just does not work.
07:51But the English language is that complicated in that you have to understand the word by the surrounding words.
07:59Not all languages are like this.
08:01And especially in the ancient Greek, they had so many different words for just the word love.
08:06And they had a divinely heavenly love.
08:09They had a romantic love.
08:11They had all different variants.
08:13Well, there were words or phrases for each one of these.
08:16And what do you do with this?
08:18The King James translators and practically every English translator after this has to pick a word
08:24because you can only make one word fit.
08:27But you don't really grasp what the original language was saying about that word.
08:32To solve this problem, sometimes they will take one word in the original Greek or Hebrew
08:38and they will expand it into a phrase.
08:41And so you find one word and you find a phrase.
08:44There is a tool for doing this.
08:46And I highly recommend if you have been trapped in one of these groups
08:50and you've been beaten over the head with the Bible, this is what I did.
08:54I read the Bible over and over, like I said.
08:57Well, then I also went to my favorite tool today.
09:00I went to these tools that have interlinear versions.
09:04And you can go to biblehub.com and you can type in any verse, any chapter,
09:09and you can click on the interlinear button.
09:12And you'll find, I'll pull it up for those who are watching on YouTube.
09:16You can see this stack of words and numbers.
09:20And this is very, very critical to understand
09:23because it is showing you exactly what I just described
09:27and they're clickable so you can go into them and see what the word or phrase means.
09:32But more than that, it has a, the number is a Strong's Concordance.
09:36So you can click on the number itself and it will show you,
09:39well, here's some other passages that use that same word.
09:42So you can get not only the meaning and the broad, complex connection between words,
09:49you can also see how it's used in other places in the Bible.
09:52And that way you can find, some cases, you can even find where the translators didn't quite get it right.
09:59And so that's why modern translations have sometimes corrected this.
10:03For those of you who are watching on YouTube, I click the word obey,
10:06which is really the word in question whenever you think about this verse and how it's misused.
10:11And the original word, the phrase that is given is to persuade, to convince, to trust, and to have confidence,
10:19which sounds totally different than it does to us today when we hear the word obey.
10:24But again, the word obey doesn't quite fit the exact meaning.
10:29They just had to choose an English word and that's what was chosen.
10:32The interesting part about this passage, however, is this.
10:36There's not that wide of a variety between all of the modern translations and the King James Version.
10:42And in the King James Version, what I would say is not really a mistake,
10:47but they chose a very poor choice of wording in the King James Version.
10:52They did not really deviate from that very much in many of the modern translations.
10:57The New International Version seems to have translated the word obey more correctly than all of the others.
11:05It does use the word have confidence.
11:07So for those of you who are KJV only and say that the modern translations are luring souls to hell,
11:13and this is a clear example of a very, very different translation,
11:18the one that is in the NIV, the translation have confidence,
11:21is actually closer to the original Greek than the KJV.
11:25Are both right or wrong?
11:28Not really, because they're both a translation, a modern translation,
11:31trying to fit a single word that fits the Greek phrase or word, and it doesn't quite fit.
11:38So you can say that both are correct, but both have a different meaning in today's world.
11:43That's probably the best way to say it.
11:45Now, what's interesting is the NIV, which I'll read for those who are listening and not watching,
11:51it says,
11:52Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority.
11:56So the NIV people who haven't studied the original Greek will say,
11:59Well, this still says the same thing.
12:01It's the same meaning of the verse.
12:03It says,
12:05Submit to their authority because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account.
12:10Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be no benefit to
12:17you.
12:17So when you compare the two passages, they're very, very close.
12:22The word confidence is used in NIV, the word obey, and most of the other translations.
12:28But the original Greek, again, was to persuade, to convince, to trust, to have confidence.
12:35I would say that the NIV have confidence, for me, fits better because that fits better with
12:41the broad scope of what's being said throughout the Bible, not just this one passage.
12:46But I want to go deeper with that because there's some clear history where this has been abused
12:52in multiple cases throughout time.
12:55And this has been a debating point just simply because the understanding of what it meant to
13:01be a leader in the religion was always a struggle from the dawn of time.
13:07And if you go back beyond the New Testament, go all the way back into the Old Testament,
13:13there was always this hierarchy that existed.
13:16And whenever the New Testament apostles came, they started to flatten this where there's God
13:22and here's everybody else.
13:24We're all one in Christ.
13:25Well, that flattening was a problem for many people, especially those who felt like they
13:30had the need to lead other people.
13:33So it's always been a struggle, a power struggle.
13:36And I want to talk through that a bit as we get deeper in this podcast.
13:40The first thing I want to do is go back to the interlinear version because this is a very,
13:45very powerful tool, especially for people like me who do not understand Greek or Hebrew.
13:51And at the same time, if you don't know how the tool works, you can go way off into error.
13:57And it is a very simple tool to use.
13:59Once you figure it out, the top line has the numbers.
14:02It's the Strong's Concordance, which I clicked on before.
14:06And the third line, you can see it's the bold black line on the page.
14:11It is the original Greek wording.
14:14Above that is the Greek word in our character set.
14:18You'll see the bold black is the Greek character set.
14:22Well, above it is our character set.
14:23And you'll see the bold black line right below it is red, which is the word that was
14:28translated, used in the translation.
14:30Obey those leading you and be submissive.
14:34So this is laid out very clearly.
14:36It's very easy to use.
14:38You only really need those four columns, but you can go deeper into, there's a fifth column
14:44that you can go to.
14:45And if you hover over it, it just simply gives you some information about the word.
14:48So this is a very, very easy tool to use, but it's also a very easy tool to abuse if
14:55you
14:55don't understand how this works.
14:57Because you can see these words that are translated in red don't exactly match what you read in
15:03Greek or Hebrew.
15:04That's because the words in the original Greek in the character set were not arranged in the
15:10same way that they are in the King James Version or modern translations.
15:14They had to rearrange words to make it flow in our language.
15:18So you have to think of this more of a, each word can mean a phrase or each phrase can
15:24mean
15:24a word.
15:25You have to do the mapping kind of in your mind as you read it.
15:28But what this does is this gives you the power to understand why it's a difficult passage to
15:34understand in cases like this.
15:36And I want to be clear, if you think about this and you think about the difference between
15:44the word obey and the word persuade, there are people who might mistakenly say, well,
15:48this passage doesn't mean to obey at all.
15:51That's not quite true.
15:52There are some nuances.
15:54And that's one thing that whenever you get into the theology side of things, a pastor who
16:00has studied the Greek can probably help you better than I can.
16:03But there's some nuances that go into theology.
16:06There are also some nuances that go into history.
16:09And that's where it gets interesting for me, because think of it like this.
16:14You had an original translation, the gospel spread, people translated to their own dialects
16:20and their own, there's many different families of Bibles as this is being transmitted around
16:26the globe.
16:27Well, people began to read these who could read and they started to understand it in their
16:32worldview, and their worldview began to shape the theology.
16:36And so there's a progression of original text, worldview, theology, transmission, and then
16:44the theology begins to evolve.
16:47And it evolves into what we have today.
16:49And that's where for me, it gets to be a little bit troublesome in cases like this, because if
16:56you let it evolve in the wrong way, it can spin completely out of control.
17:01This is a clear example of that just simply based on history.
17:04And if you think logically about the transmission of this original text, it completely destroys
17:11the mental picture that you have of what has developed into the church today.
17:15The church today just simply does not match it.
17:18Remember, when this letter was written to the Hebrews, whenever the author said, your leaders,
17:24there was not anybody receiving that letter who was picturing what you and I picture today
17:30as someone who says he is or she is your pastor.
17:34It just simply did not exist back then.
17:36The hierarchy and structure of the church comes much later.
17:40So your leader meant something entirely different than what you see today.
17:45In most Christian churches today, and I'm not talking about those who are destructive or
17:50high-demand groups, you have a senior pastor.
17:52Below them, you have associate pastors, ministry leaders.
17:56Below them, you have elders.
17:58You have a board.
17:59Below all of this structure, you have a congregation.
18:02And sadly, this is the structure that matches the business model.
18:07Leadership in the earliest Christian churches, and you can read this according to some of the
18:11earliest Christian sources.
18:13It's talking about multiple leadership terms and functions, and it doesn't really give—there's
18:20no evidence that suggests that there's one universal adopted first-century organizational
18:25chart.
18:26The hierarchy that we have today just simply did not exist.
18:29Think of it more like a community.
18:31In the community, you had people who were teachers.
18:34In the community, you had people who were prophets.
18:37In the community, you had people who were apostles.
18:39In the community, there were those who were overseers, and you can read that clearly in
18:44Acts or Titus.
18:45You also had deacons in the community.
18:47You had elders in the community.
18:48You had people who were caring for God's flock, shepherds of the movement.
18:52It was a community.
18:54You didn't go to this church building and see a pulpit, and some guy who's in here who
18:59we salary.
19:00That didn't exist back then.
19:01Even the names that, if you watch the YouTube video you saw on the slide, apostles, prophets,
19:07teachers, elders, overseers, deacons, all of these, when you hear that today, immediately
19:13because of the way that the Lateran movement specifically, but other movements as well,
19:20bastardized that passage, you begin to think five-fold ministry.
19:24You begin to think authority, hierarchy, control, and ultimately, what you really are thinking
19:31about, for those of you who are in business, you're thinking of a business pyramid.
19:35You've got the CEO.
19:36Under him, you've got the vice presidents, and you can go all the way down the line to
19:40the customers.
19:41And sadly, when you go to a church, you are a customer for their business.
19:46Not that I'm disagreeing with church or anything like this, but they've adopted the wrong model
19:52if they're trying to enforce this passage in the way that is to submit your authority
19:57to them.
19:57And think of it like this.
19:59You who are sitting in the pews, if you were to instead flatten this church and put it into
20:06a city, and you go to deacon's house, you go to neighbor's house, who's a congregational
20:11member, you're all responsible for the survival of that community.
20:16And even, I won't get into this in this podcast, but there are even provisions for if somebody
20:21is suffering and poor, the community comes in to help them.
20:25Well, it's a lot different than a donation basket where you trust that the pastor is
20:29going to help the poor, and he has to intelligently decide, can I keep the lights on while giving
20:35money to all these poor people?
20:36How much do I give?
20:37What percentage of my salary do I give them?
20:40None of that existed.
20:42It just totally did not exist.
20:44So the other thing that I'll say is the words themselves, it's really worth looking it up
20:50in the interlinear version of the Bible, because when you think words like overseer, because
20:57of the way that we've been trained, we think, well, that's somebody who is the king of his
21:02domain.
21:02But that's not really what this is.
21:05Eventually, it did evolve over time in Christianity into the word bishop.
21:10But that word is potentially misleading because the first century text that we have, it doesn't
21:17show the monarchy of the monarchy of a bishop society, I guess if you call it this, as a
21:24more developed office until much, much later.
21:26When Hebrews was transmitted, none of that existed.
21:30And I can already hear some of the pastors in the five-fold ministry starting to revolt and
21:35saying, John is trying to create anarchy.
21:37This is anti-biblical.
21:39He's got an anti-Christ spirit.
21:42Well, I'm going to challenge them by Acts 20.
21:45And this is not me trying to be theological.
21:47This is just simply, I read the book.
21:50I know what is in the book.
21:53I know what's in Hebrews.
21:54I know what's in Acts.
21:55I have read it.
21:56And I want to empower people who are submitting themselves falsely to the authority of these
22:02people that you can't biblically make that argument.
22:06In Acts 20, it says, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders, plural, of the church.
22:13He didn't say elder.
22:14He said elders.
22:16Those same men.
22:17It says, the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.
22:21It goes on to say, if you continue reading, to shepherd the church.
22:26So are they shepherds in the five-fold ministry?
22:28Are they overseers in the five-fold ministry?
22:30No, this is a community of people.
22:34So let's talk to another example in Titus 1.
22:36Paul writing to Titus says, to Titus, mine own son, after the commoner faith, it says,
22:42for this cause I left you in Crete.
22:44And it goes on to say that I'm wanting to ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee.
22:51And he wanted to appoint other elders.
22:53He goes on to say the qualifications of such an elder.
22:56And then in verse 7, it says, for if a bishop be blameless.
23:02And think about that.
23:03It's an elder and it's a bishop.
23:06In many church settings, this is not really that big of a problem.
23:10A bishop is an elder.
23:11But if you think about the church hierarchy, this is a significant problem.
23:15Because in church hierarchy, the bishop was at the top and it went all the way down to the elders.
23:21Paul is not writing to Titus to create a church hierarchy.
23:24He's more to the point saying that I'm appointing leaders in the city into the communities that the gospel is
23:31spreading,
23:31just like I did you.
23:33And there are various nuances to the translations, of course.
23:38You can go read through some of those nuances.
23:40The church was largely in small communities that were in much larger communities of different pagan religions.
23:48And so they couldn't have the Christian temple like they do today with a big megachurch and a pastor and
23:55the speaker and Stone Age band clicking the drums.
24:00It just simply would not have worked.
24:02There would have been a lot of conflict.
24:04And so the early Christians, as they were growing and spreading Christianity, it was a lot of meeting in the
24:10homes.
24:10It was a community, not a megachurch.
24:14Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter
24:22reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
24:27You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
24:35On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,
24:43John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
24:49You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
24:55If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the
25:01top.
25:02And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or
25:08watching.
25:08On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
25:13So now let's talk through the history of how it began to transition from the early church model into what
25:19we see today.
25:20And I know everybody's thinking, I'm going to go back to William Branham and say, Branham did this in the
25:26latter reign movement.
25:27Because I grew up with this, Branham definitely, clearly was teaching people to create an authoritarian model.
25:35However, we're going to go way, way back.
25:38Remember in Acts 20, Paul summoned the elders and said some men are overseers, and their responsibility was shepherding to
25:45the church.
25:46Go forward about maybe a generation, early 2nd century, and you start to see what is being shaped as the
25:56structure of the church.
25:58And there's one bishop that begins to stand out to the local community, and that is Ignatius.
26:04And I've been actually asked by a few people to talk through Ignatius and his role in all of this.
26:10Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch, and usually when people talk about him, they're talking about the early church and
26:19the church as it's beginning to form its foundation.
26:23Well, part of that foundation, not many people realize, is directly relevant to what we're talking about today.
26:30And this is what makes him so important to us.
26:33We're not jumping forward to medieval Catholicism, which is, I'm certain, where everybody thought I was going to head with
26:40this.
26:40I'm going to go way back to Ignatius, because we're barely out of the New Testament period whenever you start
26:48to see things change.
26:50And we're going to bring in the Magnesians.
26:53And you can go look this up, and I think Wikipedia even has an article on it.
26:58You can read where Ignatius writes a letter to the Magnesians to their bishop, Damas, I think is how you
27:07say it.
27:07He's apparently a relatively young man.
27:10And he tells the congregation not to disregard him because of his youth, but that's where things start to get
27:19extraordinary.
27:21In Magnesians 3, and you can pull this up, there's a website called newadvent.org, which I spent so many
27:30hours reading after I left the Branham cult.
27:33I wanted to know how did the early church form, what is in the early church.
27:37And it's quite shocking when you get into it.
27:40It really, really is.
27:41And anyway, you can read down to chapter 6.
27:46There's a section that's entitled, Preserve Harmony.
27:51And he says,
27:52Since therefore I have in the persons before mentioned, the whole multitude of faith and love, I extort you to
27:59study all things with a divine harmony, while your bishop presides in the place of God.
28:06Let me say that again.
28:07While your bishop presides in the place of God.
28:10And your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear
28:16to me and entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the beginning of time,
28:22and the end was revealed.
28:23Do all then, imitating the same divine conduct, pay respect to one another.
28:29Let no one look on his neighbor after the flesh, but continually love each other in Jesus Christ.
28:34And here's where it starts to get interesting.
28:36Let nothing exist among you that may divide you, be united with your bishop, and here's the phrase, those that
28:45preside over you as a type and an evidence of your immortality.
28:50So let that sink in, and compare that to what we just talked about, not ten minutes ago, in Acts
28:5620.
28:57Acts 20 laid it out like this.
28:59You have elders, some people who are overseers, and their work is the work of a shepherd.
29:04In other words, they're all doing similar work.
29:07And now Ignatius changes it a bit, and he says you have a bishop, and you have a presbytery, and
29:13you have deacons and people, and you don't necessarily need to look at it like he invented this.
29:22This is something that evolved over time.
29:25Whatever happened between these two sources, Acts and this book I'm reading here, by the time we reach Ignatius, we
29:32start to see that there's a clear structure developing in the church.
29:37And it's developing outside of the book of Acts and some of the Bible that we have access to read.
29:43So the point I'm trying to make is, whenever people look at some of the things like this, and you
29:50examine it theologically, you're looking backwards in time, and you're reading it through the theology of the current era.
29:59And Ignatius was reading it through the theology of his era, looking backwards in time, obviously.
30:04Well, if you look at it from a historical standpoint, it's difficult to make that leap.
30:10How did it develop into what we see by Ignatius' time?
30:14So it gets stronger.
30:16We can go to, I think it's pronounced trillions.
30:20Ignatius says, you are the subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ.
30:25The interesting part about this is, I grew up hearing that phrase, but take bishop out and put Branham in.
30:33You are subject to the prophet, is how we would say it, which meant Branham, as to Jesus Christ.
30:40And it was just so damaging to the people because you had to have this mediator between God and man.
30:47And the Bible clearly says there is no mediator between God and man.
30:52But Ignatius, and this is part of the early, early church, before it even reaches the councils of Rome that
31:01everybody points to as creating the church structure, he's already got it.
31:05So this is significant when you look at the timeline of this.
31:09In the epistle to the Smyrnians, he goes so far as to say that wherever the bishop appears, let the
31:15multitude of people also follow him there or be there.
31:18And those of you who are watching the YouTube feed, you can see it in just simply the titles that
31:23they have given these sections of his letter.
31:26Let nothing be done without the bishop.
31:28Be subject to the bishop, etc.
31:31These titles weren't in the original manuscript, as far as I understand it.
31:37It was just a letter, but they have categorized it based off of his meaning, which is the bishop is
31:42in full control.
31:43So he is essentially saying you have the bishop, you have the congregation, you have the Eurachrist, you have the
31:50baptism and church unity.
31:52And he is declaring that the bishop is the head or all of this.
31:57So therefore, the bishop isn't simply the best preacher.
32:00He's basically the congregation's administrator.
32:03So you start to see this business church hierarchy being set up.
32:08I'm calling it business because of today's world.
32:10But in the world gone by, it was just basically an administration of the people.
32:15And he is becoming the visible organizational leader of the group.
32:20We were actually told in Branhamism, and I've heard this in other groups as well, that the Council of Nicaea
32:27is where all of this began to change and take shape.
32:30And it was because of the Catholic Church.
32:32Catholic Church got its hands in it.
32:34It created this hierarchy, etc.
32:37But this was 200 years before the Council of Nicaea.
32:41We're talking two centuries before.
32:42And he's going just a bit outside of the text of the Bible that we have, at least.
32:47So you have a single bishop whose crowd must appear.
32:53I mean, think the pope is the good example that I would say in the Catholic Church today.
32:57When the pope appears, all the crowd must come.
33:00Well, that's exactly what he's saying for the bishop.
33:03Now, I should probably pause.
33:04And for the theologians out there who are familiar with this history that I'm talking about, who know it much
33:09better than me and know the theology behind it,
33:12I should probably qualify what I've said in that it wasn't so much that he was trying to create an
33:19authoritarian Christianity, by no means.
33:22And you can't even really say at this point in time, look how authoritarian Christianity had become, because it had
33:28not.
33:29Ignatius isn't writing a church management system.
33:32He's not developing the New Apostolic Reformation or Lateran nonsense.
33:37He's basically writing church, I guess you could call it church management manuals in a very peaceful environment is what
33:45he's doing.
33:46But if you read his letters, they show real anxiety about divisions and wicked doctrines.
33:55And I think it's Philadelphians.
33:57You can you can go look that up on the site.
33:59He says something to the effect, flee from the divisions and the wicked doctrines.
34:02So he's dealing with a problem that is a human problem and it's a real problem.
34:08And when you weigh this into the balance scales of church history, it's a problem that it's almost impossible to
34:16solve.
34:17When you had the little communities, like I talked about in the book of Acts, when you get some person
34:22in the community that has a harebrained doctrine or notion,
34:25well, everybody in the community might say, look, man, that's that's not quite right.
34:29And explain why and and try to correct it.
34:32And if one one person gets to be a bad apple where you just say, I'm sorry, you probably might
34:38find a different community because you're just a small group of people.
34:42But once you grow into a multitude of people, how do you do this?
34:47How do you control it?
34:48Somebody gets a an opinion on doctrine that's different from different from the rest of the group.
34:54Well, if they can get two or three people to join with them, now they've got a small crowd.
34:58And when you get a small crowd, people get curious.
35:01They come join the crowd.
35:02It turns into, oh, my gosh, now we've got a movement within the crowd.
35:06The movement says we don't like those original guys.
35:09We want our own thing.
35:09And they split.
35:11And I've just described every denomination in existence, every splinter group, every movement, brandimism, all of this stuff.
35:18It really comes down to that.
35:20And he is trying to address that problem, which is a good thing.
35:25So it's not that he's a bad guy or he's he's bringing anything.
35:28But it is important because you can start to see how the church is progressing and why.
35:33And it's written right there in his letters.
35:35You can go look these letters up.
35:37So what Ignatius was trying to peacefully solve turned into a real problem when you continue.
35:43Because as he's sending these letters telling people they need to trust the bishop, they need to be accountable to
35:48the bishop.
35:49What happens when somebody rises up and says, why should I trust your bishop?
35:53And that's essentially what happened.
35:55Because by the time of the second century, you start to see Gnosticism coming into the picture.
36:02And Christians weren't just arguing about who is in charge at this point.
36:07They were actually arguing about what Christianity was.
36:10The argument had changed from who should we trust to, well, what is this religion that we're in?
36:16And that's a big deal.
36:18The Gnostics weren't really a rival denomination like a lot of people mistakenly think.
36:25It is a group of people that began to develop from within.
36:29Think of it like Latter Rain.
36:31To the assemblies of God, the Latter Rain were the Gnostics of their day.
36:36They were bringing in these heretical doctrines.
36:38They were starting to do things that weren't good and were laying the groundwork for a lot of destructive cults,
36:45which we have seen did develop from all of this.
36:48Well, they tried to draw a line in the sand.
36:50We don't want you in our group.
36:51But they were part of them.
36:53So, how do you separate the people who were part of you at one point in time and then later
36:59became a different group?
37:01I spent many, many months, years probably, studying the works of early Christian apologists who were talking about Gnosticism.
37:12One of them was Irenaeus' Against Heresies.
37:15He goes through and he documents all of these different groups that adopted some pagan idea, something that came out
37:22of one of the pagan religions, embedded it into their group.
37:25And it was a mixture of Christianity and pagan doctrines.
37:28And more to the point, they were adopting the themes from the mystery cults.
37:35And there's a real problem here because when you introduce the secret knowledge, now you've got this conflict in a
37:42way that Christians, they can't understand it if they don't have the knowledge.
37:48What is the secret knowledge you're talking about?
37:50And those who are in the group say, well, they're the ones that don't have the knowledge.
37:53I cut myself off from them.
37:55We're the ones with the truth.
37:56We hold the secret.
37:58They can't even understand the secret.
38:00That's really, essentially, that's what happened with Branhamism as he began to splinter off of the Latter Rain movement.
38:06Well, Irenaeus, he goes through and he talks about this and says that these truths that were transmitted orally by
38:13the people that we read about in the Book of Acts,
38:17suddenly they were merging with hidden mysteries, and those who were receiving them were receiving divine knowledge.
38:24So think the Word of Faith movement.
38:27Think Latter Rain.
38:28Think Branhamism.
38:30I have a new revelation.
38:32I have new manna.
38:34That's what they were doing with Gnosticism.
38:36And interestingly, he took it all the way back to Rome.
38:40So for those of you who were influenced by Branhamism or know some of the history,
38:44Branham labeled Irenaeus as one of the Church Age messengers and said that Irenaeus rose up to fight this evil
38:50doctrine that was coming
38:51that would eventually establish into the Roman Empire, the Roman hierarchy, the Catholic Church, so on and so forth.
38:58While he's railing against that, Branham had actually never read Against Heresies.
39:03Because if you read Against Heresies, Book 3, Chapter 3, he takes the line of succession of the Apostles all
39:11the way back to Rome.
39:13And for those of you who are looking at NAR and saying this apostolic succession thing, all of this is
39:19New Apostolic Reformation stuff.
39:21Well, this chapter predates NAR quite a bit.
39:25We're talking all the way back to the second century.
39:28And he says essentially that if you want to know where the truth actually comes from,
39:34you need to trace that truth through the succession of apostles all the way back.
39:38And there in the second paragraph, he says all the way back to the universally church known and founded at
39:46Rome.
39:46But he's saying specifically the universal church known and organized at Rome by the most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.
39:55And let me read Book 3, Chapter 3, Paragraph 2, because this is where you start to see the church
40:02hierarchy take place.
40:03He's talking about the church that's organized at Rome.
40:07And he says the universally church known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter
40:14and Paul.
40:15And also by pointing out the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by the means of
40:20the successions of the bishops.
40:23For is a matter of necessity that every church should agree on this church.
40:28Let me let me repeat that.
40:29Every church should agree with this church on account of its preeminent authority.
40:35So I know those of you listening are thinking, OK, well, John, the Protestant Reformation solved all of this stuff
40:42you're talking about.
40:43That's exactly what we were taught in Branhamism.
40:46We were taught that not Irenaeus, but the Catholic Church had created this rigid authority.
40:52And because of that authority, everybody was submitting to the Roman Church.
40:55And because of the Roman Church submission, it developed into this thing that Martin Luther decided to break down.
41:01And if you're Protestant, that's what you are trained to believe.
41:04But think about what happened, because what we see in the New Apostolic Reformation today, what we see in all
41:11of these extremist groups that developed from it is the same hierarchy.
41:16And instead of going back to Rome as the central authority, they'll go back to the central authority of whatever
41:21is the denomination, whatever is the central figure.
41:25If it's a cult or group of men, if it's a semi-cultish control group, I'll say it like that,
41:32a high control, high demand group.
41:34The Reformation breaks the chain, but it does not eliminate the authority.
41:40Because Martin Luther and the other reformers, as they're attacking the authority, there's suddenly this major shift.
41:47And that shift, Martin Luther called it sola scriptura, by scripture alone, scripture over the ecclesiastical claims, priesthood of believers,
41:58basically.
41:59And what he did, essentially, was he just simply reconfigured it.
42:03Now, instead of the Catholic hierarchy, you've got ministers, you've got elders, you've got church discipline, you've got confessions, you've
42:12got congregational authority.
42:14You have essentially the same thing, but in a totally different model.
42:18And the reason for this, it isn't that he was trying to create a structure that matched the Catholic Church.
42:25He was doing the same thing that I mentioned earlier with Ignatius.
42:29We have a multitude of people.
42:32We have potential divisions.
42:34How do you control this?
42:35We want to remain out of the Catholic Church.
42:38How do I establish it in a way?
42:39We have to have a hierarchy.
42:41You have to have a governing system.
42:43And so that's really what it is.
42:45Because restorationism is basically we're going back to the original church, but which original do you go to?
42:52Do you go to Ignatius?
42:54Do you go to what was being said by the early Christian apologists?
42:59They were all proclaiming a hierarchy and structure.
43:02So Martin Luther, going back to that original, he had to do it.
43:05But it appears they didn't go back to just simply the Bible.
43:09So Sola Scriptura, in that case, I would argue, did they really go back to Sola Scriptura or did they
43:16go partially back to Sola Scriptura and then develop a hierarchy on top of it?
43:21And theologians will battle me.
43:23I know that I don't look at this from a theological standpoint.
43:27I'm looking at it from a historical standpoint.
43:30So here's the part that all of you have been waiting for.
43:33How is this William Branham historical research?
43:35How can you talk about church history, John?
43:38You haven't even mentioned Branham's name yet other than in passing.
43:42Well, now fast forward through the Protestant movement into William Branham, 1948, as the latter rain starts to break out,
43:51God's vindicated prophet.
43:53And this is why I've taken you through this, what is it, 19, almost 2,000 years of history.
43:59And I'm trying to tell you and explain to you that Branham was not the origin of this.
44:05This is something that evolved over time through not even really mistakes, just by natural process of time.
44:14You start to see it developing into a hierarchy because it's getting so big.
44:18But what Branham did is he tried to bring back a stronger church authority.
44:24In Branhamism, he would be the pope figure.
44:27And Jeffersonville, where I live, is the Vatican, which is funny if you think about that.
44:32But he's bringing prophetic authority.
44:34That's the big key here.
44:37He is redefining the offices.
44:40While he is supporting the five-fold ministry, yes, the hierarchical version of five-fold,
44:47he's changing the offices in such a way where he's structuring it where he can be at the top, even
44:52though he's a prophet.
44:53And that's weird when you think of the New Apostolic Reformation.
44:56The apostle is supposed to be the top guy.
44:59Branham wanted to be the top guy, and he claimed to be a prophet.
45:02So he had this weird unilateral, yes, you're an apostle, but I'm a prophet.
45:07I'm actually above you because God's prophet is the one with the message for the day.
45:12That's what he would say.
45:13So in his weird hierarchy, apostles were just slightly either off to the side or sometimes below.
45:19Well, what he did was he established the notion that this divine lineage of doctrine that comes through the prophetic
45:30authority is the spoken word.
45:32In other words, we have the written word, Martin Luther's Sola Scriptura.
45:36Well, my Sola Scriptura, as Branham, is the words that come out of my mouth.
45:41And convince people of this.
45:43When you think about it, it just blows your mind.
45:46How do you convince people that your words, the thing that you say through a microphone,
45:50picture me sitting here before you holding this microphone saying,
45:54whatever I say into this thing, that is your ultimate authority.
45:58Well, that's what he did, and he sparked a movement.
46:01Like I said, you draw two or three people out of the crowd, get them to listening.
46:06Well, suddenly you've got two or three people as a small crowd.
46:09People come, they're curious, it grows, it grows.
46:11Well, this grew into filled stadiums of 100,000 people would come listen to this guy claiming his microphone was
46:19the word of God.
46:20And that's the precursor to the charismatic movement, to the new apostolic reformation.
46:26They don't want to admit it, but that's really what's happening.
46:29He has redefined, again, what Martin Luther had redefined as far as it related to church structure and authority.
46:38Fast forward after Branham's death comes the shepherding movement.
46:41Arne Baxter, who was one of the five founders of the shepherding movement, was Branham's campaign manager.
46:48And as Branham's campaign manager, it's very easy to see how he would share and be aligned with some of
46:54the doctrines.
46:55You have the succession, the same type of succession that I mentioned with Irenaeus.
47:01With that succession, now you're building up to what becomes NAR because, like Irenaeus would say,
47:08we trace through all of these lineage of people all the way back to the apostles, therefore follow the Roman
47:15church.
47:16NAR would say, we follow all of these people, these gods generals, back in time.
47:22And Branham's one of them, but they'll go back further, obviously.
47:25So you have the same type of succession.
47:27You have the same type of structure.
47:29It is fully rebranded.
47:32And they're doing essentially the same thing.
47:34Why?
47:35Because when you have a multitude of people, you have to have a way to govern it.
47:39But think about the transition from shepherding movement to the new apostolic reformation.
47:44You have this weird situation that's very similar to what Ignatius was dealing with.
47:49You have strange doctrines creeping in.
47:52And some of them, if you look at just the histories of some of the groups that spun off of
47:57the latter rain movement,
47:58some of them are going very, very destructive.
48:00And they're bringing in Gnostic ideas.
48:03They're bringing in witchcraft.
48:05They're bringing in all of these different things that many of my peers are pointing out theologically.
48:11They're starting to do it in this movement.
48:13And these movements represent the networks that later get branded the new apostolic reformation.
48:20It's all of these apostolic networks.
48:23So think about this.
48:24All of these networks are establishing apostles and prophets and spiritual leaders.
48:30They're creating coverings, alignment, submission, honor culture.
48:37What is that?
48:38That goes back to our original conversation when we're talking about Hebrews,
48:43which you may have forgotten that that's what this podcast was about.
48:46Hebrews 13.7.
48:48How do you control all of these people?
48:50How do you make them listen to the leader of each independent group?
48:56There is only one way.
48:58You tell them that the Bible says you must obey me as your leader,
49:02because if you don't, they're going to hop over to one of the other groups,
49:06or they might even go to the mainstream group.
49:08Some people who do all of the research that I've done may look at the things that Irenaeus is saying,
49:14and, oh, my gosh, he's saying go back to the Catholic Church.
49:17Maybe I need to go back to the Catholic Church.
49:19If you follow all of that line of thought, you come up with this problem that you can't solve.
49:26And so what they did was they began to use Hebrews 13.17 as a weapon.
49:33And through Hebrews 13, now you can flip all of this up on its head.
49:39You can add scriptures like, and I'm certain that you guys have heard this,
49:43touch not God's anointed.
49:45Do my prophets no harm.
49:46Every one of those verses that you hear that's saying essentially trust your leadership
49:51and submit to your leadership's authority is all wrapped up in that one verse, Hebrews 13.17,
49:57and they will give examples of the Bible of what happens to people who don't listen to the leader.
50:04Korah's rebellion.
50:05Miriam challenging Moses.
50:07I can't tell you how many sermons I heard about that.
50:09David's refusal to kill Saul.
50:11They'll go to all of these Bible examples where they didn't submit to the authority
50:16and something bad happened.
50:18But they don't tell you about the times in the Bible when they also didn't submit to the authority
50:23and something good happened.
50:25Read the book of Kings.
50:27You would see the leader rise up and fall into idolatry,
50:30and the people revolted, and something good happened.
50:34They went back to God.
50:35So, it's a false narrative that they're trying to push,
50:39but they're weaponizing the verse from Hebrews.
50:43Hebrews 13.17 becomes the weapon to enforce all of this.
50:48So, for those of you who saw the title or the preview and thought,
50:52John's going to take this back to Branham as the origin of all of this problem,
50:56I'm showing you a historical pattern,
50:58and I want to leave you with this question.
51:01Who speaks for God?
51:02Because that is really the problem.
51:04When you think of this history that I've put down before you,
51:07from Ignatius to Irenaeus,
51:10you can go all the way into the Reformation,
51:12you can go into Pentecostalism, healing, revival, and beyond.
51:16The problem is, there is a hierarchy of authority
51:20that has been established with each split
51:22as the group grows to a significant size.
51:26Well, who's the one who gets to say,
51:28I'm the one who tells you what to do?
51:30Who's the one who's speaking on behalf of God?
51:342,000 years of Christian authority,
51:36and we still have the same problem that we've had for years and years and years.
51:41It's not one single unbroken system.
51:44It is a huge, huge problem.
51:47And the point I'm trying to make in all of this
51:49is not that you should not trust church authority by no means,
51:53but I'm saying that you should critically think about church authority
51:57because sometimes, as we've mentioned,
52:00sometimes you get a person who's wanting to create a division
52:04and they'll break off into error.
52:06And that's what we see is 2,000 years of people breaking out into error.
52:11People like Ignatius, they were really trying to do good
52:16and they were getting really frustrated that people were breaking off into error.
52:20And you can follow that pattern all throughout time.
52:23People who go off into error.
52:25The interesting part, which I'll leave you with the second thought to think through,
52:29the interesting part is this.
52:31When you consider the latter rain movement,
52:34shepherding movement and beyond,
52:36what you see breaking out into these apostolic networks
52:39are people who went off into an error, a clear error,
52:44and it was a well-defined error by the assemblies of God.
52:47Well, people broke off of that error into other errors.
52:51Each one of these other errors, in many cases,
52:54formed what became the apostolic network.
52:57When C. Peter Wagner defined the new apostolic reformation,
53:02what he did, and you can go back and read this.
53:04This is his words paraphrased, not mine.
53:07He says, I'm not naming something new.
53:10This is something that already exists.
53:12And he's referring to all of these groups that broke out
53:16from the original error of latter rain into different errors.
53:21And yes, there were some good mixed in with error, of course,
53:24but he's talking about errors as well.
53:26And that is the foundation, the pure foundation,
53:30for the new apostolic reformation.
53:32So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information,
53:35you can check us out on the web.
53:36You can find us at william-branham.org.
53:39For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation,
53:42you can read Weaponized Religion,
53:43From Christian Identity to the NAR,
53:46available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
54:14Of course, we'll see you next week.
54:16We'll watch again at Will there in a movie.
54:17That's the secret fromque committee.
54:19And we'll see you next week.
54:19And now,
54:22it's fun to check on our website.
54:22And now you can see you next week.
54:23I don't see you next week.
54:24Get to hell be a telephone.
54:24Loose New things,
54:25Then we'll see you next week.
54:28So if you've waited for your old synagogue,
54:28So if you can see you next week.