June 25, 2025 • 58 mins
As the country reeled from the politically/religiously motivated murders in Minnesota, the killers association with a religious movement called the New Apostolic Reformation raised questions. Author of Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR and host of the Leaving the Message podcast, John Collins joins Michael Regilio to discuss the history and trajectory of the NAR. More at dogmadebate.com
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Hey, I'm Adam Caralah Gillette.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Not only listening, I'm a guest, I'm a penn.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
And teller, and I am a fourth listener.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
And I am the fourth listener, and that must make
me at least the fourth listener.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
It's Dogma Debate with your host Michael Rigillio. For extra
content and to join the conversation, please head over to
Dogma Debate dot com and join our Patreon And welcome
to what absolutely promises to be a great episode of
Dogma Debate because I've got John Collins here, author John Collins,
(00:38):
and I came across John's work because of the very
unfortunate event of the shootings in Minnesota by what I would,
with my layman's terms, call a religious nutball. And I
started looking into it. And you know, I've talked many
times on the show about Christian nationalism, the Heritage Foundation
and how this all ties into what's going on in
(01:00):
America today. But I discovered the New Apostolic Reformation is
actually the movement that the gentleman I almost said gentleman.
I can't call this man a gentleman. Vance bolter. The
piece of Garbage, who is responsible for the shootings in Minnesota,
associates himself with the New Epistolic Reformation, and John is
an absolute expert on it. In fact, he's written a
(01:22):
book on the subject entitled Weaponized Religion. From Christian Identity
to the nar New Epistolic Reformation. We've got him here
today to teach us all about it. John, thanks so
much for joining us. Thank you for having me absolutely
so your history is you actually came up in the church.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I did so. I grew up in the Branham Tabernacle,
which many people today will not be familiar with this name,
But William Branham was the leader of the post World
War two healing Revival. So from nineteen forty seven till
his death in nineteen sixty five was a very famous
(02:01):
public figure, deeply embedded into the type of Christianity that
birthed what you're talking about. So whenever you call vance
Bolt or a religious nut, I can say, from a
former religious nut to you, I can sympathize with many
of the things that apparently had gone through his head.
(02:24):
I don't know yet exactly all the details of why
he did what he did, but what I can say
is from the limited amount of research that I have
been able to do in piece together, it is definitely
tied to the same type of religion. And I can
trace it all the way back to my grandfather's church.
My grandfather was the head pastor at the Branham Tabernacle.
(02:45):
So from this little place in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where there
is literally nothing else, here's a church that birthed this
mess that we see today.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Right, And what is this myth we see today? What
is the New epistol Reformation? I understand it's not so
much a branch of Christianity as much as it is
just an a loosis association between a bunch of different churches.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Absolutely, it is the best way to describe it is
if you take the worst elements of extremist Christianity for
several decades and create a cafeteria style religion where you
can pick and choose all of the worst elements that
you can find, piece it together. You have the New
Apostolic Reformation. There is no headquarters that is called the
(03:34):
New Apostolic Reformation. There is not a central governing body. Instead,
what we have created are several Apostolic networks wherein different
groups of different theologies and belief sets are all communicating
and organizing through different conventions and different ministries associating with
(03:54):
other ministries, So it turns into this Heinz fifty seven
type religion. But at its core you have a very
dark history that most of them have covered up. I
discovered some of that history as I was examining my
own church. What I did not know when I began
my journey was that this little church from Jeffersonville, Indiana,
(04:18):
where William Branham headquartered his ministry, it was a global ministry.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But what I didn't.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Realize is that it birthed all of these other things.
And as I'm starting to piece together all of the
different ministries that he associated with and all of the
different splinter groups that emerged from it, I began to
realize they're all kind of connected. And it wasn't until I,
like you, discovered the New Apostolic Reformation, that I could
(04:46):
even make sense of it, because they're so different, yet
all organized in such a way where they're in collaboration.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Right, do you mind giving us a little bit of
that dark history and tying it all together to so
to the world we live in now?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Absolutely so I'll try to be careful with my words
because you mentioned you might put this on YouTube. Some
of the history is so dark that if I actually
say some of the words, I get filtered on YouTube,
which has been a huge problem I had through experimentation.
I had to learn what I can say and can't
(05:23):
say about this history because it is that bad. But
in the you're familiar with the birth of Pentecostalism, I'm
assuming if you study this to any degree. But you
have the birth of Pentecostalism that's happening on the West coast,
and you have on the East coast, you have the
(05:45):
birth of the nineteen fifteen Ku Klux Klan. And at
the same time all of this is brewing, you have
this thing that's called British Israelism that is forming a
strong foothold in the United States. And all of these
pieces come together. They are even though they seem quite separate,
(06:05):
they do all come together. But British Israelism is the
notion that the British Isles and the United States were
the direct descendants of the Lost Ten tribes of Israel,
and people of that mindset believe that any of the
blessings that are given to Israel, to the children of
(06:30):
Israel in the Bible, those same blessings apply to today.
And so as they're reading through the Bible and they
find blessings of land or dominion over different nations that
they've conquered, etc.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
They apply that.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Even though the Bible is referring to something that's you know,
millennia ago, well as that is being birthed at the
same time of Christian identity. Obviously many of the people
who were in the clan, people who were in the
Klan who had the racist theology, merged in with this,
(07:06):
and over time British Israelism began to shift into a
more anti Semitic, anti Black, anti Catholic. You had all
the elements that the Clan stood against coming into British Israelism.
So then it became more than just simply we are
the children of Israel today. Instead we identify with these things,
(07:30):
these concepts, and they must exclude these other races. This
turned into pure chaos whenever the whenever the influx of
Jews started, actual Jews started coming into the nation because
Christian identity viewed those as the false Jews, so they
(07:53):
felt like the nation was being taken over by false Jews.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
So who were the real Jools? They were because they
were the descendants of.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
They can't help out they were descendants.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, interesting, and I can't help but point out that
there's some crossover with Mormonism there.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
There's a lot of crossover with Mormonism. Actually interesting.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Interesting, Yeah, these American versions of Christianity.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, exactly. The best book on it that I have
found anybody who's interested in this weird history. Michael Barkun's
book Religion and the Racist Right walks you through all
of that history pretty well. That book for me was
a gold mine. Have a partner who was going through
it at the same time I was, and we were
(08:41):
piecing together what Barkoon had in his research with what
we had in our research, and started to notice it
began to fit like a glove because we're starting to
see key concepts of what was Christian identity being embedded
into the Pentecostal movement. And at first, Glas I looked
at it and I just kind of thought, you know,
(09:03):
it's maybe it was somewhat popular back then and maybe
that's why they accepted it. But no, it actually became
core concepts became core theology probably the biggest, darkest one
that really stuck. They were teaching in Christian identity groups
that the Eve, the mother of all living, produced kin
(09:28):
by having sex with a serpent. So Cain was not
actually fully human, he was less, he was subhuman, and
through his lineage they traced him all the way through
the lineage of Ham, one of the sons of Noah,
which just happened to be believed to be the black
people in Africa. They traced this lineage and started to
(09:50):
claim that there were in today's world there were pure
people that descended from Adam and Eve, then there were
the sub human that descended from Cain and the serpent.
This weird mess. This was the core concept of Christian identity.
You either identified with Adams race or you identified with
(10:11):
the serpent's race. And so as that began to spread,
I'm starting to notice that there are more than just
the cult that I grew up in that are believing this.
This seemed to spread across several different groups, and I
began to piece together how all of those connections were made,
which I walked through quite a bit of that in
(10:31):
my book.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Right, I've heard it said the mark of Ham or
something like that, curse of Ham curse of Ham right,
And I mean, just off the top of my head,
I can't help but wonder that. So they consider themselves
better because they are the product of Adam and Eve.
But their great great grandmother on the side was having
(10:55):
sex with serpents. Doesn't seem like a very great great
doesn't seem like a great great great grandmother to me.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
But okay, it's it's such a weird thing, man Like,
I'm embarrassed to say that I believe some of this nonsense,
but that's I was taught from birth to believe this.
This was something that we were taught. Now, after the sixties,
this turned into something it morphed into something else because
(11:23):
once you started to have the race riots and the
government getting involved, you can't openly say these things. This
just isn't This isn't how it's going to be right,
So it kind of went underground. The version of it
that I grew up with. We were taught different concepts
of the same theology, but separately. So we were taught.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
That this.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Lineage that came from Cain was the evil seed. But
then we were taught that this was a spiritual thing
not a physical thing, but yet it required sex, which
those two things cannot go together. But in a halt
through cognitive dissonance, you just don't even think about that
kind of thing. So I was taught that it wasn't
a racist theology. But at the same time, I was
(12:10):
taught that you cannot have a person with black skin
to marry a person with white skin, or you would
create a hybrid person. That was part of our core theology,
and we were taught, well, that's not racist. God just
likes the different colors of the different people. He doesn't
like the mixed. So I grew up in that type
(12:30):
of theology, which is horrific. I'm embarrassed to say that, right.
But what people don't understand, and there's a point to
all of this that I'm driving at all of that
history that I have just talked about, if you trace
it all the way through to the big ministries today,
you're going to find all of them. Go back to
(12:52):
that lineage. For example. I know you've mentioned a couple
of churches on the phone that we are on the
text that we were talking about, but Joe ostein Big
Megachurch in Houston, his father John Ostein was part of
this movement. Was he anti Semitic? Did he believe Christian identity?
I don't know, but he was part of the movement
(13:12):
that did. So as you're tracing all of these people
and connections together, you start to realize that if enough
people were joined in it who did believe the dark,
sinister things, at some point everyone who's involved with that
movement had to have come in contact with those dark,
sinister things, and they had to actively make a choice
(13:35):
do I stay with this these people who believe this
horrific thing, or do I walk away? And sadly, I'm
learning that a lot of people just didn't walk away.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, And I want to get into what it is
that they believe in, what their goals are here in
America today. But I'll point out that I did come
across Paula White's name in association. I guess no one
is particularly loud and proud with their new Apostolic Reformation ties.
It's not like a badge of honor they wear. But
(14:09):
these ties are there, and they can be discovered in
Paula White, Donald Trump's spiritual advisor, who speaks in tongues
on the White House law and she is somehow affiliated
with the New Apostolic Reformation as well.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Absolutely. I mean there's so many White House in the
White House. Well, there are these pictures. You can go
on the Internet and you can find all of the
different people who are gathering around the president and praying
with him. There's some really weird characters if you know
who they are. But Paula White is part of what
was called the Prosperity Gospel. She was really big into that,
(14:47):
and I guess still is Word of Faith movement. All
of that comes from the same thing. The key figures
in the Word of Faith were organized in different various
organizations associated with Brannaman and after Branham died it turned
into the Charismatic movement and beyond. But what happened is
through Brannimism they created all these Apostolic networks, one of
(15:11):
which might be Word of Faith, one of which might
be the Prosperity Gospel, the Pentecostalism. There's different sects that
organize under this. But there was this network, this umbrella
of ministers that was created through There was a magazine
called The Voice of Healing, and this was the magazine
(15:32):
that was created to promote William Brannam and his ministry,
but there was more power in promoting all of the
other ministries and creating like a pyramid scheme of ministries.
So they would have all of these ministers in these
conventions and they would all connect together through this thing.
That organization developed and transitioned into what became Christ for
(15:55):
the Nations, which is part of our discussion we'll get
into later. Because of this, you had people who were
in the Word of Faith and the Prosperity Gospel, the
movements that birthed Paula White. You had those central figures
in this. And the interesting part about all of this
is that one of the key figures that was in
(16:18):
that epicenter whenever it began to branch out into these ministries,
was named T. L. Osborne, who worked closely with William
Brannham and openly declared at Branham's memorial service after he
died that William Branham was God sent down in human flesh.
And the interesting part of that's not the interesting part.
(16:41):
The interesting part of that is that when he said it,
and he openly said, some of you might think I'm
sacrilegious when I say this, and I'm paraphrasing greatly, But
this was God and human flesh. The interesting part about
that is, out of all of the people who would
birth the charismatic movement that were in this thing, there
(17:01):
was not a single person who stood up and said, no, man,
you can't say that. William Branham is got in the flesh.
And this man went on to create, as you know,
the Prosperity Gospel and work with several key figures and
other movements.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
And it is part of the new Apostolic reformations belief
system that there are new profits and new apostles that
walk amongst us now. And I see with that that
is the assumption that these people are in direct communication
with the creator of the universe, and he's telling them
his dictates and they are passing it along.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
And anytime you have two or three of these so
called prophets and gathered together, the way prophecy generally works
among them is somebody will say something randomly, I've witnessed
this happen. They'll say something randomly. I believe that something's
going to happen, whatever it is. I believe the Chiefs
are going to win the ballgame. Well, when it happens,
(18:01):
then you've got another prophet to back it up and
say I was with him whenever God told him that
the Chiefs were going to win the football game. And
because you have that network, there's power in that network.
The people look up to these people as spiritual authorities.
They look at up to them as the absolute truth
on absolute ultimate decisions on scripture and truth. So whenever
(18:26):
they have that level of authority, there will believe anything
they say.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Right. And at some point, you know, I mean all
of evangelical Christian Christianity, which was once somewhat a political
became political, and the New Apostolic Reformation is part of
that movement where they believe that they should be I
mean we're talking about the Seven Mountains movement as well.
(18:52):
I mean this all ties in which is the belief
that there are seven categories to which Christianity he should
be at the top of the mountain, that is to say,
dictating ruling, that is government, entertainment, society, law. I can't
remember all seven off the top of my head, but
I mean this is not benign, but rather very active
(19:14):
in our society. And we're witnessing what happens when they
gain power.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Oh yeah, absolutely, we're witnessing more to the point, we're
witnessing history repeating itself, and it's repeated itself multiple times,
which I also cover in the latest book. But the
Seven Mountains, for example, William Brannam and his mentor, whose
name was roy E Davis. Roy E Davis was the
(19:41):
second in command of the nineteen fifteen KKK, and he
was one of the original people who signed the contracts
and the constitutions for the clan, etc. When the Klan
was exposed as a terrorist organization, and I think it
was nineteen teen twenty four ish when it was exposed
(20:04):
as being a terrorist organization, it kind of disbanded and
the shift of power, interestingly came to Indiana, where my
hometown is. When this happened, they started to form different
organizations to try to regain control. One of those organizations
was called the Supreme Kingdom. And this was emerging at
(20:26):
the same time they were having all of the debates
on evolution and fundamentalism, and they were branding any Christian
who wasn't a fundamentalist against evolution as being a false Christian,
much like today the New Apostolic Reformation brands anybody who
doesn't agree with their political policies as a false Christian.
(20:46):
Their intent was to regain control of the education system
because they were teaching evolution. They wanted to gain control
of the government because they believed that the false Jews
had taken over the government and so it was allowing
this evolution to come in. They were trying to persuade
people through media and even they even got into the film.
(21:10):
I don't know if you know that history. The Klan
was producing videos and had movie films that were played
all throughout churches. So if you go through all of
the Seven Mountains in the Seven Mountain Mandate, they were
actually doing this in what was called the Supreme Kingdom,
which was a very short lived organization. But what happened
was even though their organization was short lived, the movement
(21:34):
itself began to spread and this began to invade what
became the fundamentalist version of Christianity.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Interesting when was that that the Kingdom movement was happening.
Is that the fifties or no much earlier. I imagined
school a rocky trial.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Right, This would have been in the twenties.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Twenties, okay, and from there, I mean you mentioned that
college that mister Bolter went to in what was that Houston?
Or is that Dallas?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Dallas?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Right?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Christ for the Nation's Institute.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Right, And so I mean that seems to me to
be some sort of central hub of the New Apostolic Reformation.
I mean, is that would would you say that that's
an accurate description of it?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Well, that's the difficult part, right, Nobody can tell what
the New Apostolic Reformation is because the nar itself also
can't tell.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
What it is.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
There are all of these Apostolic networks, and so yes,
it is a central hub, but there are more central hubs,
and which one is more central than the other one? Right,
You've got this spider web going across the globe of
all of these things. But what I can say, so
in that history that I mentioned with William Branham, healing
(22:57):
revivals swept across the world, and they're going all across
the different continents with all of these ministries, and they're
teaching divine healing, they're teaching elements of Christian identity doctrine,
they're teaching weird things that in today's world Christians would
just look at and say, what in the world is
(23:17):
this nonsense? But As they're spreading this, they start to
birth what became known as the Deliverance Ministry, and so
ministers were coming in being trained how to cast out
demons and being trained, more to the point, what a
demon was, which gets really funny if you understand it.
(23:39):
I have a book. I should have got it out
for this podcast, but I've got a book of one
of these training manuals for deliverance ministries, and it's talking
how to cure the demon of hiccups and different different
nonsensical things, man like there was a demon of cataracts,
and you pray this certain prayer, it becomes almost like
(23:59):
a casting a spell if you're a shaman or something
like this. Yeah, this is spreading across the globe. They're
teaching ministers how to do this. This grew into the
Voice of Healing, which started for Branham's ministry began to
form an organization with a hierarchy where they're training and
(24:21):
establishing ministries and giving them quite fictitious backstories. I'll just
say it like that and you can take with it
what you will. But they created stage personas essentially, and
these stage personas began to collaborate together to form deliverance seminars,
and so if you came to one of these seminars,
(24:43):
they could teach you how to cast out the demon
of cataracts or the hiccups or whatever is the thing
that they're teaching. So Gordon Lindsay, who founded Christ for
the Nations, was William Branham's campaign manager through all of
those years, from the late nineteen four up until I
can't remember what year he left, but they were collaborating
(25:04):
together and they were holding In fact, I just got
one in my email today another advertisement for Branham and
Lenzy and a few other guys holding a deliberan seminar
to teach these people how how to cast out demons.
After Branham died, people were still familiar with this process,
so they kept coming to Lendsey. And I want to
(25:26):
say it was the seventies, nineteen seventies he created Christ
for the Nations.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Interesting. I just the whole casting out of demons and
curing cataracts and hiccups. It strikes me as odd that
there can't have been any successful results to these other
than Charlatan's and having inside men that were claiming it.
(25:54):
But I just you know, if any other product was
on the market with zero results, it would fade away.
And yet to this day we have people casting out
demons and laying hands on and healing. At that time
in the seventies, when he's mentioned specifically, because you talked
about the racist roots of the movement, I'm thinking of
(26:17):
Bob Jones University or Roberts University, which are all segregated
at the time. I guess it was in the nineteen
at the time of the Civil Rights passage that they
had to integrate. And I'm wondering if they are as
affiliated with these movements as well. I mean, obviously they're evangelical.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
There are some I have yet to publish all of
the connections on my website. It gets overwhelming at times.
But so here's another interesting fact, and to piece it together,
I need to give you some back history. I think
I do cover this as well in the book in
much more detail. But we talked about the fundamentalist movement,
(26:56):
the Scopes Trial, all of this stuff. Well, this birth
a movement in the United States where they were really
actively trying to push out evolution. And there was a
man by the name of Gerald Burton win Rod, and
he was just a humble, not very not very rich
(27:22):
minister from Kansas, and he goes and has conference with
Adolf Hitler in Germany before it became Nazi Germany. Okay,
I don't know what happened. Nobody knows what happened. But
he came back with a lot of money, a lot
(27:43):
of money. And he also came back with a book
called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which
is one of the most anti Semitic books.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
In history, and a forgery, if I'm not mistaken completely,
and a forgery.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
It's it's a crazy, crazy history. Came back with Christian
identity this book.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Right, it was Russian intelligence working for the royal family
at the time. I think, thanks so yeah crafted it,
which is interesting because the Russians and the Germans were
enemies at the time. But I guess if hey, if
you're writing anti Semitic, semitic books, ye I gotta, I gotta,
I gotta dive in. I am Hitler after all.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah. Well, there was a big movement in politics. There
was a I'm drawing a blank on the guy's name,
but there's a famous politician that stood against the evolution
and he became known as he was nicknamed the Defender
of the Christian Faith. So when Rod comes back with
all of this money and this anti Semitic book, and
(28:46):
he creates an organization called the Defenders of the Christian Faith.
And he's working with one of the key figures who's
touring with him as Charles Fuller, a Fuller theological seminary
which produced C. Peter Wagner, who is the one who
named the New Apostolic Reformation. So there's connections in that direction. Well,
(29:09):
there's another interesting connection also out of Germany. There was
a man by the name of William T. Freiri von Blumberg,
who was William Brandham's campaign manager. He was the adopted
cousin of Werner von Blumberg, who was avid homosexual. So
(29:29):
here you have this movement that is largely against homosexuality,
has been for decades led by a homosexual man taking
touring ministers around the globe. The ministers who are with
him know that he's openly a homosexual, and he is
working with the Fellowship Foundation. He is one of the
(29:51):
directors of what became the Fellowship Foundation. If you're not
familiar with this, they're called the Family. They hold the
National Prayer Breakfasts for many, many years, big influence on Washington,
d C. It's a crazy history. If you go down
that Rabbit trail.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Wow, he was the Brothers that is popular to this day.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
That exactly exactly a tent exactly, it's that same one
that we're talking about. He was on that board, but
he was also on the board of directors of Bob
Jones University. All of these men were collaborating. And that's
the hard part for people to understand because here you
have the Fellowship Foundation, which doesn't seem to be Pentecostal.
(30:34):
They're holding prayer breakfast. Here is Gerald Burton Winrod, who
is holding services for Amy Semple McPherson in the deep,
deep in the heart of Pentecostalism as it's being birthed.
Here's a man from you know, is.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
That at the Angele's Temple right here in Los Angeles
that that.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Was happening exactly Angelus Temple.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
I'm five blocks from there.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
As we and it gets really crazy. I mentioned this too,
is just casual facts that you just wouldn't believe that
are happening. So win Rod, because he came from Nazi
Germany and he's spreading this anti Semitic nonsense. They labeled
him the Kansas hit Hitler, and that was his nickname,
the Kansas Hitler. He was spreading Nazism throughout the United
(31:22):
States basically the week the very Sunday after the Night
of Broken Glass, whenever all of the Jews were, you know,
their buildings destroyed, et cetera. The very Sunday after this mcpheerson, yes,
Crystal not Amy simple macpherson had him take over her
pulpit to show her support for the before the Nazi guy.
(31:47):
And that's deep in the heart of Pentecostalism being formed.
So you have all these connections. You can't say that
Pentecostalism is Nazism. But here they did this very very
bad thing in their history. What you do with this, right.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Beats me. What do they do with this? They just
bury it?
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I would imagine they bury it. They certainly do. And that, honestly,
that's what has established a pattern. You have things that
are so bad that, like I said, some of the
things I can't even say or YouTube will block us.
That bad of things in the history, And what do
you do with this? You have to just simply try
(32:29):
to forget it and walk on. And that's what the
pattern that has been established. They just do not want
their history to be uncovered. And once that pattern was established,
now you have people who are in the prophetic movement.
If their prophecies fail, if they prophesy Trump will be
elected right this coming election and then he doesn't, well
(32:51):
then they just forget about it and absorb it and
move on, because that's what the movement historically has done.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Sure of course, that's uh, that is how cognitive dissonance works.
You pay attention to the hits and you ignore the misses.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
So the kind of sort of brings us up to
the movement as it stands today, which is no longer
happy to be an a political movement as they were
at one point, but rather a very political movement. In fact,
they want to I mean, it seems to me they're
very anti democratic. They would like to have a theocracy
(33:29):
of sorts in America. They believe that Trump is their man.
Putting PAULA White into the White House certainly was a huge,
you know, gift to them, I would imagine, and they're
feeling rather empowered right now.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Absolutely, who hardly interesting. It's interesting if you know the
history too, because while they will say that they have
been lifelong Republicans, if you go back in their history,
because of this history that I'm talking about, whenever Franklin
Delano Roosevelt was in office, the party actually flipped the
(34:07):
side that was taking the fundamentalist group that it actually
was the Democrats and the Klan was all embedded into
the other side. And then they kind of flipped because
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But you're right, they have stood
off and they've tried to pretend to be a political
But I was just having this conversation early earlier today
(34:30):
in another interview. Here's what you have to understand. When
you're on the outside of this movement looking in, it
looks to be a political And if you were to
go visit one of the sermons of the people who
are preaching, you would say, well, they're preaching about this
subject in the Bible. There's no politics here. I grew
(34:51):
up in it. I grew up in the side that
was on the inside, not the outside. What the movement
has been doing for decades. Whenever they want you to
vote against somebody, you can't really say, don't vote for
so and so in a religious setting, because there are
laws that prevent this.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
You don't do this.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Exactly, which is why Trump wanted to overturn this right.
There are so many laws against it, you can't openly
do this. But what they have done is insidious. What
in the way that the cults have loaded language around
certain key doctrines, they will also load language from the
Bible for different political parties. So they may be talking
(35:37):
about Ahab, for example in Jezebel, Well they will brand
one candidate or the other to be Ahab, and then
they'll go preach this series on sermons on Ahab. So
if you're outsider who's walking in and you're hearing a sermon, well,
it's about Ahab, It's about the Bible. This isn't politics.
But every single person sitting there knows exactly who they
(35:58):
are talking about.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Interesting, but I feel like he goes beyond that, even now,
just the violation of the Johnson rule into where this
is an actual grab for power on a national level
that you know, in my more hyperbolic moods, I might
say resembles the Handmaid's Tale or something like that. I mean,
(36:23):
an actual theocracy in America, which is what I believe
they dream of if you know from my limited research
compared to yours.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, absolutely, and they've dreamed about it for decades. That's
that's the part that for me. As I'm going through
the research, I'm just blowing away every single fact that
I uncover, Because before Amy Simple McPherson's movement began, there
was another movement in Zion City, Illinois, a man by
the name of John Alexander Dowie who is one of
(36:54):
the greatest con artists known to world history, and he
he was going across the name. He actually stole his
first church in Australia. But as he's being kicked out
of the country.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
I walked through this.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
In one of my books. It's called Militant Christian Extremism.
Examination of John Alexander Dowie. But he stole the church,
and as he's running from countless crimes that the government's
at when he.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Say stole a church. Sorry, I've just never heard that
that actual sentence come out of somebody's mouth before. So
could you explain what you mean?
Speaker 2 (37:31):
It's the funniest story, man. I'm going through his actual writings.
The man he's well respected in Pentecostalism, believe it or not.
But he's going through all of his writings and in
one place he seems to be maybe he's got Alzheimer's
or something. He's got some problem where he's opening up
far more than he should. And he's talking about the
(37:53):
sins of his past, and he starts talking about it. Well,
I have a curious mind. I want to know, what
did you do?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Man?
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Why are you writing about this? So I went and
pulled I want to say, I read over one hundred
thousand newspaper articles as many as I could find to
write that book. But he starts attending a church, becomes
embedded with all of the people that he's well respected,
(38:21):
such to the extent that the minister takes a leave
of absence for being when he was sick. So he
goes out on his hiatus and says, well, you will
you handle my church. Well, while he was in there,
he overthrew everyone and started chastising people who didn't adhere
to his supreme authority, to the extent that he stole
(38:43):
the church, which is it's one of the craziest stories ever.
But this led to all kinds of rioting, et cetera.
Long story short, he fled the country. He comes to
the United States and pretends to be a faith healer.
And he's carrying around satchels of these legs, letters that say,
in this other city or even in this other country,
(39:04):
I healed so and so, and here's their testimony. So
he's reading these and people come give him tie his money,
et cetera. In ten years, he amassed ten million dollars.
In eighteen ninety. This is in today's money, it's a
half a billion dollars. He literally took over Chicago to
(39:26):
the extent it was. They did not know what to
do with him. They couldn't convict him, they couldn't kick
him out. There were hundreds of thousands of people coming
to see him. They finally moved to Zion, Illinois. And
this was a country inside of our country at one
point in time. So this became the prototype for everything
(39:48):
that I'm talking about, this just weird divine healing mess.
It grew to such an extent that he controlled Illinois politics.
If he said vote for this guy, and all of
his cult did well swayed enough votes, he literally could
could steer the politics. And he realized the power that
he had and so he created the Theocratic Party to
(40:10):
try to take over Washington and take over the nation
and failed, but he did try.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
That was the actual name of the party was the
actual name of the party was a Theocratically or at
least they're honest and up front. I'll give him that.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Well, this became the backbone for what we see today
because everything that I've mentioned in all of these very strange,
odd stories, they're all connected if you know where to look.
So John Alexander Dowie his commune was Zion City. In
that city is where Gordon Lindsay was born, the founder
(40:46):
of Christ for the nations in that city. Uh his
leader of his director of music was a man by
the name of F. F. Bosworth who mentored William Brannam
in the Healing Revivals. So all well, everything that he did,
right down to he claimed to be the return of
Elijah the Prophet. John Alexander Dowie did well. When he died,
(41:10):
William Branham starts to claim that he is the return
of Elijah the Prophet, and the New Apostolic Reformation starts
to claim this weird notion that the Elijah spirit is coming,
and what they were doing in. I don't know how
they phrase it, but like in type John Alexander Dowie
was the Elijah for his day, William Brannon for his day.
(41:32):
Now it's the people. Now, we're all who have this
apostolic authority are claiming the spirit of Elijah. So all
of this is connected. But it's so weird to think
of all of the different nonsensical stories that I have
just told you.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Absolutely, and I mean again, the whole idea of modern
prophets and apostles is just I mean, it's you're just
so open up for Charlatan's. Do you feel like that
that's part of it? Because I mean obviously our friend
from Australia who took over Illinois was an admitted Charlatan.
(42:10):
But I don't know if this is something you'd be
comfortable answering. But like you mentioned Joel Ostein and Paula White,
I mean they just scream Charlatan to me. Do you
think these are deeply faithful people or do you think
that these are people for whom a grift was taught
to them, passed on from previous generations and then that
(42:32):
is the tradition there and they're not in a Christian tradition.
They're in a grift tradition.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
It's a very complicated question. Having grown up in this
ministry and understanding how things work. There are people who
are truly grifters. Have so William Brannam, beyond the shadow
of doubt, we have uncovered enough information about him. He
was a grifter. He fully was lying through his teeth.
You would go to one city and claim one thing,
(43:01):
go to the next city and claim something different, very
much like the snake oil salesman that you see in
Bonanza or raw Hide, any of these old shows. So
there are people who are truly grifters. Those people, because
of the way that they have the charismatic personality, they
attract other people, and in a faith healing type of movement,
(43:24):
you usually attract people who are struggling mentally or struggling
physically with a sickness or mental condition. Those with the
mental conditions are the ones who are most susceptible to
this because as they come in and they start to
believe this, they'll believe pretty much anything to get the
(43:45):
demon out of their head. So they're held captive by
fear that they actually have a literal demon in their head.
Well because of the mental health issues. They too sometimes
see visions because of the mental health issues. So they'll
start to prophesia, etc. And then you start to see
this pattern where their prophecy it's not from God, it's
(44:08):
from this mental condition. It doesn't come true. But if
they ever strike one of them right by accident and
have ten false prophecies, but have one of them just
hit the mark. Because everybody's in this condition where they're
looking so hard to find something to make their life better,
they'll grasp whatever was the thing that happened that was correct.
(44:30):
So there are people who are in it who truly
believe that they have this power, this gift, and they
have some kind of mental condition instead. Well, then it
gets more complicated than that, because now those groups of
people have all produced offspring, and the offspring was raised
like this. I was one who was raised like this.
So I look to all of this mess and I
(44:52):
believe when this guy says he's a prophet, because this
other guy believes he's a prophet, and this person who
has the spiritual experience, think about the fact that they
have mental health issues, I think, instead, well, wow, God
did the thing that they said God did so I
wouldn't consider myself to be a con man even though
(45:13):
I believe this thing. But it produces a cycle. A
It produces this cycle wherein people people have offspring that
support the ministry itself, and it ever evolves and keeps growing.
It keeps growing in the nonsense because as the nonsense continues,
(45:35):
more nonsense is added to it with offspring to support
the nonsense. If that makes any sense.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
That does make sense, and it makes me wonder. Now
bringing things up to the Bolter guy again, his actions
on the surface seem like he was suffering from mental conditions.
Those are not the actions of a stable person, but
they could also be the actions of a true believer
(46:04):
who it was, not mentally compromised, but actually buys into
every sermon he's heard and the message is coming out.
And at which point it's like, does it even matter
anymore if it's mental illness or if it's a true believer?
And is there even a difference? And should is it
crazy to say? Should we anticipate more of this? I mean,
(46:29):
is this the fervor the movement is experiencing right now?
Because they truly see this, whereas from my research again,
they see new prophets New Apostles walking amongst us. I
assume from what I read they also see devils walking
amongst us. The enemy is here as well, and that
(46:50):
the spiritual battle is now. That this is of course
like all religious groups, they say the end times is now.
The battle that has been brewing and it's canaenable is
right here right now, and they are in the thick
of it. Is that an accurate way to look at it?
Should we be anticipating more violence on the part of
(47:13):
the New Apostolic Reformation.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
If history has any say in it, I would say
that absolutely if you look through that just the history
that I've mentioned, which is only going back to the
nineteen hundreds, and I'm certain you can go before this.
This is a cycle that continues, and as I said,
it continues with more nonsense as it goes. But the
(47:37):
thing that you have to really understand is there's another
component to it that may be playing a factor. We
don't know yet what happened with Bolter. Well, more of
that information will come out in the investigation. But you
have to also consider radicalization. When you're in this type
of movement, many many people are radicalized, and the sad
(48:01):
part is that many people don't realize that they're radicalized.
Some of the doctrines that they're spouting off the we
need to claim dominion, the end time's coming. We need
to be preparing for this battle that's coming. We're going
to take arms and fight for this battle. It is
radicalized to the point of growing up. One of the
(48:22):
things that Jesus said that I really found to be profound.
Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. And
whenever I would get into a situation when people would
you know, in school, people pick on you, well, my
kingdom's not of this world. They can pick on me
when people misuse me, mistreat me. My Kingdom's not of
(48:43):
this world. I'm looking for something better. I never wanted
to fight back unless I had to, and only whenever
you have to. That was my mentality because that was
kind of what Jesus taught. But what this movement has done,
they have radicalized two point where they see the kingdom
as something they need to claim for themselves forcibly and
(49:07):
the way that they're doing it from what we said
in the beginning of this podcast, where they're taking Bible
versus and they're applying it to today, whenever it should
have been applied to the historical children of Israel. Anybody
who has been radicalized with that frame of mind, what
happens is the more it's preached, the more they're talking
(49:31):
about how we need to stand up, we need to fight.
They use very militant words in their sermons. Will people
go home and read the Bible thinking about those militant
words that were used in the sermon and then start
reading about the actual battles that happened with ancient Israel
where there were countries conquered, where there were people claiming
(49:55):
dominion of other people. This is a thing that if
you read the Old Testament, actually see this playing out well.
To the person who's been radicalized, what's the trigger that
connects them from the sermon that they heard with all
of those militant keywords to the actual Bible that they're
reading where they say, oh, well, this is what I
need to do. I need to step up and do this.
(50:17):
I'm going to be the one. I'm going to be
the one to fight for our freedom, to fight for
our dominion these people. There are many people who are radicalized.
It doesn't mean that many people will act out upon it.
But it's like the sleeper cell suicide bomber. All it
takes is that one statement that triggers that thing in
(50:39):
their head where they go off and do something destructive.
I don't know if that's what happened with Bolter. We
won't know until the investigation. But I can say that
many of the people who are associated with the movement
that he said he's from, which is the movement that
I came from as well, many people in that are radicalized.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Right and the people that they listened to the sermons
that they're listening to. Do you think that there's a
stochastic element to them where these people are aware of
the fact that their flock can be right, can be
triggered into acting. Is this something that you think they're
actually trying to brew?
Speaker 2 (51:22):
When I was writing the book, I was mortified at
some of the things that I was reading. I just
wanted to see and what I sing in history, am
I seeing it playing out today? Once I got to
about halfway through the book, I wanted to know where
am I going with this? Am I going towards the
(51:43):
political side of the nar Am? I going to the
individual individual churches? And so I just did some internet
searches on what is today's what is Sunday sermon? And
obviously I did some keywords, like you know, keywords that
I knew would bring up naar cher is. I was
finding sermons about civil war. There were actually ministers who
(52:05):
were preaching civil war. Come Sunday for your blessed civil
war sermon. And I'm thinking, what they're.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Not talking about the one from eighteen sixty to eighteen
talking about that one.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
No, it's and so you know, and you dive deeper
and you look, and the first thing that hit me was, Okay,
is this guy connected to the thing I'm talking about?
So you have to go through the newspapers and trace
the history of the church. Where did it come from?
It's a lot of work, but you start to see
it all comes back to the same thing. And it's
not just you know, when I started this book, I
(52:38):
thought it was just brandimism. But it's not just brandomism.
You can trace it all the way back to Christian identity.
You can go before that to the political elements of
British Israelism. You can trace that back as you can
trace that all the way into England. And I did
some of that, but you start to see, like I said,
it's this thing where something is just slightlightly off of
(53:00):
the mark. The British Israelism, for example, it's just slightly off. Yes,
it's a good thing to call yourself a child of God,
and that's essentially what it began. We're the children of Israel,
We're the children of God. But it's slightly off because
then you're branding the people who aren't the children of Israel.
And so because that was slightly off, well, then they
(53:22):
added something else to it, and then something else, and
once it came into America, they added all the racism
to it, all of the anti Semitism to it. And
you can carry that forward if you want to. You
can carry it all the way up into the charismatic
movement into the nar Today. They keep adding things to it.
And what it has done is number one, it's made
(53:44):
it into this weird mess that is very destructive and dangerous.
But to the people who are outside, who don't understand
the history and understand what it is, when you look in,
it doesn't look like the same thing. So as history
is repeating itself, it looks like something entirely different. But
it's actually the same thing.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
It sounds like you're describing some sort of religious stone
soup where it's just been added to so much. I
have to say that as soon as you hear the
Naar preachers referring to us non nar folk as Amalekites,
time to.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
Run exactly, especially the ones that are carrying weapons.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Absolutely, So I guess i'd like to close with do
you have any message of hope? Is there a way
to deradicalize you came up in the movement? Is there
a way to communicate with these people, or is this
just going to have some sort of terrible ending.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Well, the sad truth is when I grew up in
this you know, obviously I grew up born and raised
in it, so I didn't know what I was in.
But there comes a point in everybody's life whenever they
go through a period of soul searching. They want to
know why why am I here? What is this world?
And why am I in it? Every single person who's
(55:03):
on the face of the planet goes through this. This
type of religion has trained people to suppress critical thinking.
And once you go through that point in your life
where you're doing the soul searching, if you're in the
movement that teaches you to suppress critical thought, You're going
to stay in the movement because you have critical thought.
(55:24):
And whenever they heap all of this political language, this
militant language in your head, if you don't have critical thought,
it just gets planted and it's sitting there and can
be activated. It's the activation that scares me because of
the sleeper cells and people who might be radicalized. But
if you teach the people to engage in critical thinking.
(55:48):
If you're a Christian, think about the Bible. Think about
the passage from the Old Testament that they're saying applies
to a Democrat or a Republican, does it really? Can
you read the whole history and context? I mean, one
of the biggest freedoms for me when I left We
read passages and I can't even count the number of
(56:09):
sermons where the guy would say, I'm going to take
this verse from this book as my context for the sermon,
and I began to realize, well, that's not a context.
You have to read the passage. You have to read
the book. And one of my biggest freedoms was to
learn and understand not just the book, but the cultures
around it. What was it talking about? Who were the
(56:31):
peoples that were being spoken of? And if it's a
lot of work, But if people were to go through
that process of just at least think about the things
that are being said, does it really apply to today
or is that something that happened long ago. Once you
start that process of critical thinking, people snap.
Speaker 3 (56:49):
Out of it. But as you're saying that, my first
thought is, and yet the Department of Education is going
by bye? So how do we get that critical thinking
out there? I wish I knew.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
Yes, that is the challenge. If they're unwilling to participate
in the education, it makes it hard.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
Absolutely, man, this has been such an informative episode. Thank
you so much. John Collins, author of Weaponized Religion From
Christian Identity to the NAR. I am absolutely gonna buy
that book. I need to know more because I feel
like this is something that everybody needs to know. This
is not a one off instance. I mean, hopefully the
(57:35):
violence will be but the fact of the matter is
that they are ammeshed in the Trump administration in government,
and they have plans and we should be aware of
those plans and know how to counter them.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
Absolutely, and the brilliant part about the book is after
this administration and the next one comes, the same things
apply because it's the same thing over and over as
history repeats itself.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
Yeah, thanks again, John Shit, you're coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
Thanks for having me.
I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Hey, I'm Adam Caralah Gillette.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Not only listening, I'm a guest, I'm a penn.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
And teller, and I am a fourth listener.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
And I am the fourth listener, and that must make
me at least the fourth listener.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
It's Dogma Debate with your host Michael Rigillio. For extra
content and to join the conversation, please head over to
Dogma Debate dot com and join our Patreon And welcome
to what absolutely promises to be a great episode of
Dogma Debate because I've got John Collins here, author John Collins,
(00:38):
and I came across John's work because of the very
unfortunate event of the shootings in Minnesota by what I would,
with my layman's terms, call a religious nutball. And I
started looking into it. And you know, I've talked many
times on the show about Christian nationalism, the Heritage Foundation
and how this all ties into what's going on in
(01:00):
America today. But I discovered the New Apostolic Reformation is
actually the movement that the gentleman I almost said gentleman.
I can't call this man a gentleman. Vance bolter. The
piece of Garbage, who is responsible for the shootings in Minnesota,
associates himself with the New Epistolic Reformation, and John is
an absolute expert on it. In fact, he's written a
(01:22):
book on the subject entitled Weaponized Religion. From Christian Identity
to the nar New Epistolic Reformation. We've got him here
today to teach us all about it. John, thanks so
much for joining us. Thank you for having me absolutely
so your history is you actually came up in the church.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I did so. I grew up in the Branham Tabernacle,
which many people today will not be familiar with this name,
But William Branham was the leader of the post World
War two healing Revival. So from nineteen forty seven till
his death in nineteen sixty five was a very famous
(02:01):
public figure, deeply embedded into the type of Christianity that
birthed what you're talking about. So whenever you call vance
Bolt or a religious nut, I can say, from a
former religious nut to you, I can sympathize with many
of the things that apparently had gone through his head.
(02:24):
I don't know yet exactly all the details of why
he did what he did, but what I can say
is from the limited amount of research that I have
been able to do in piece together, it is definitely
tied to the same type of religion. And I can
trace it all the way back to my grandfather's church.
My grandfather was the head pastor at the Branham Tabernacle.
(02:45):
So from this little place in Jeffersonville, Indiana, where there
is literally nothing else, here's a church that birthed this
mess that we see today.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Right, And what is this myth we see today? What
is the New epistol Reformation? I understand it's not so
much a branch of Christianity as much as it is
just an a loosis association between a bunch of different churches.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Absolutely, it is the best way to describe it is
if you take the worst elements of extremist Christianity for
several decades and create a cafeteria style religion where you
can pick and choose all of the worst elements that
you can find, piece it together. You have the New
Apostolic Reformation. There is no headquarters that is called the
(03:34):
New Apostolic Reformation. There is not a central governing body. Instead,
what we have created are several Apostolic networks wherein different
groups of different theologies and belief sets are all communicating
and organizing through different conventions and different ministries associating with
(03:54):
other ministries, So it turns into this Heinz fifty seven
type religion. But at its core you have a very
dark history that most of them have covered up. I
discovered some of that history as I was examining my
own church. What I did not know when I began
my journey was that this little church from Jeffersonville, Indiana,
(04:18):
where William Branham headquartered his ministry, it was a global ministry.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But what I didn't.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Realize is that it birthed all of these other things.
And as I'm starting to piece together all of the
different ministries that he associated with and all of the
different splinter groups that emerged from it, I began to
realize they're all kind of connected. And it wasn't until I,
like you, discovered the New Apostolic Reformation, that I could
(04:46):
even make sense of it, because they're so different, yet
all organized in such a way where they're in collaboration.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Right, do you mind giving us a little bit of
that dark history and tying it all together to so
to the world we live in now?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Absolutely so I'll try to be careful with my words
because you mentioned you might put this on YouTube. Some
of the history is so dark that if I actually
say some of the words, I get filtered on YouTube,
which has been a huge problem I had through experimentation.
I had to learn what I can say and can't
(05:23):
say about this history because it is that bad. But
in the you're familiar with the birth of Pentecostalism, I'm
assuming if you study this to any degree. But you
have the birth of Pentecostalism that's happening on the West coast,
and you have on the East coast, you have the
(05:45):
birth of the nineteen fifteen Ku Klux Klan. And at
the same time all of this is brewing, you have
this thing that's called British Israelism that is forming a
strong foothold in the United States. And all of these
pieces come together. They are even though they seem quite separate,
(06:05):
they do all come together. But British Israelism is the
notion that the British Isles and the United States were
the direct descendants of the Lost Ten tribes of Israel,
and people of that mindset believe that any of the
blessings that are given to Israel, to the children of
(06:30):
Israel in the Bible, those same blessings apply to today.
And so as they're reading through the Bible and they
find blessings of land or dominion over different nations that
they've conquered, etc.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
They apply that.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Even though the Bible is referring to something that's you know,
millennia ago, well as that is being birthed at the
same time of Christian identity. Obviously many of the people
who were in the clan, people who were in the
Klan who had the racist theology, merged in with this,
(07:06):
and over time British Israelism began to shift into a
more anti Semitic, anti Black, anti Catholic. You had all
the elements that the Clan stood against coming into British Israelism.
So then it became more than just simply we are
the children of Israel today. Instead we identify with these things,
(07:30):
these concepts, and they must exclude these other races. This
turned into pure chaos whenever the whenever the influx of
Jews started, actual Jews started coming into the nation because
Christian identity viewed those as the false Jews, so they
(07:53):
felt like the nation was being taken over by false Jews.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
So who were the real Jools? They were because they
were the descendants of.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
They can't help out they were descendants.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, interesting, and I can't help but point out that
there's some crossover with Mormonism there.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
There's a lot of crossover with Mormonism. Actually interesting.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Interesting, Yeah, these American versions of Christianity.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, exactly. The best book on it that I have
found anybody who's interested in this weird history. Michael Barkun's
book Religion and the Racist Right walks you through all
of that history pretty well. That book for me was
a gold mine. Have a partner who was going through
it at the same time I was, and we were
(08:41):
piecing together what Barkoon had in his research with what
we had in our research, and started to notice it
began to fit like a glove because we're starting to
see key concepts of what was Christian identity being embedded
into the Pentecostal movement. And at first, Glas I looked
at it and I just kind of thought, you know,
(09:03):
it's maybe it was somewhat popular back then and maybe
that's why they accepted it. But no, it actually became
core concepts became core theology probably the biggest, darkest one
that really stuck. They were teaching in Christian identity groups
that the Eve, the mother of all living, produced kin
(09:28):
by having sex with a serpent. So Cain was not
actually fully human, he was less, he was subhuman, and
through his lineage they traced him all the way through
the lineage of Ham, one of the sons of Noah,
which just happened to be believed to be the black
people in Africa. They traced this lineage and started to
(09:50):
claim that there were in today's world there were pure
people that descended from Adam and Eve, then there were
the sub human that descended from Cain and the serpent.
This weird mess. This was the core concept of Christian identity.
You either identified with Adams race or you identified with
(10:11):
the serpent's race. And so as that began to spread,
I'm starting to notice that there are more than just
the cult that I grew up in that are believing this.
This seemed to spread across several different groups, and I
began to piece together how all of those connections were made,
which I walked through quite a bit of that in
(10:31):
my book.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Right, I've heard it said the mark of Ham or
something like that, curse of Ham curse of Ham right,
And I mean, just off the top of my head,
I can't help but wonder that. So they consider themselves
better because they are the product of Adam and Eve.
But their great great grandmother on the side was having
(10:55):
sex with serpents. Doesn't seem like a very great great
doesn't seem like a great great great grandmother to me.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
But okay, it's it's such a weird thing, man Like,
I'm embarrassed to say that I believe some of this nonsense,
but that's I was taught from birth to believe this.
This was something that we were taught. Now, after the sixties,
this turned into something it morphed into something else because
(11:23):
once you started to have the race riots and the
government getting involved, you can't openly say these things. This
just isn't This isn't how it's going to be right,
So it kind of went underground. The version of it
that I grew up with. We were taught different concepts
of the same theology, but separately. So we were taught.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
That this.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Lineage that came from Cain was the evil seed. But
then we were taught that this was a spiritual thing
not a physical thing, but yet it required sex, which
those two things cannot go together. But in a halt
through cognitive dissonance, you just don't even think about that
kind of thing. So I was taught that it wasn't
a racist theology. But at the same time, I was
(12:10):
taught that you cannot have a person with black skin
to marry a person with white skin, or you would
create a hybrid person. That was part of our core theology,
and we were taught, well, that's not racist. God just
likes the different colors of the different people. He doesn't
like the mixed. So I grew up in that type
(12:30):
of theology, which is horrific. I'm embarrassed to say that, right.
But what people don't understand, and there's a point to
all of this that I'm driving at all of that
history that I have just talked about, if you trace
it all the way through to the big ministries today,
you're going to find all of them. Go back to
(12:52):
that lineage. For example. I know you've mentioned a couple
of churches on the phone that we are on the
text that we were talking about, but Joe ostein Big
Megachurch in Houston, his father John Ostein was part of
this movement. Was he anti Semitic? Did he believe Christian identity?
I don't know, but he was part of the movement
(13:12):
that did. So as you're tracing all of these people
and connections together, you start to realize that if enough
people were joined in it who did believe the dark,
sinister things, at some point everyone who's involved with that
movement had to have come in contact with those dark,
sinister things, and they had to actively make a choice
(13:35):
do I stay with this these people who believe this
horrific thing, or do I walk away? And sadly, I'm
learning that a lot of people just didn't walk away.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, And I want to get into what it is
that they believe in, what their goals are here in
America today. But I'll point out that I did come
across Paula White's name in association. I guess no one
is particularly loud and proud with their new Apostolic Reformation ties.
It's not like a badge of honor they wear. But
(14:09):
these ties are there, and they can be discovered in
Paula White, Donald Trump's spiritual advisor, who speaks in tongues
on the White House law and she is somehow affiliated
with the New Apostolic Reformation as well.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Absolutely. I mean there's so many White House in the
White House. Well, there are these pictures. You can go
on the Internet and you can find all of the
different people who are gathering around the president and praying
with him. There's some really weird characters if you know
who they are. But Paula White is part of what
was called the Prosperity Gospel. She was really big into that,
(14:47):
and I guess still is Word of Faith movement. All
of that comes from the same thing. The key figures
in the Word of Faith were organized in different various
organizations associated with Brannaman and after Branham died it turned
into the Charismatic movement and beyond. But what happened is
through Brannimism they created all these Apostolic networks, one of
(15:11):
which might be Word of Faith, one of which might
be the Prosperity Gospel, the Pentecostalism. There's different sects that
organize under this. But there was this network, this umbrella
of ministers that was created through There was a magazine
called The Voice of Healing, and this was the magazine
(15:32):
that was created to promote William Brannam and his ministry,
but there was more power in promoting all of the
other ministries and creating like a pyramid scheme of ministries.
So they would have all of these ministers in these
conventions and they would all connect together through this thing.
That organization developed and transitioned into what became Christ for
(15:55):
the Nations, which is part of our discussion we'll get
into later. Because of this, you had people who were
in the Word of Faith and the Prosperity Gospel, the
movements that birthed Paula White. You had those central figures
in this. And the interesting part about all of this
is that one of the key figures that was in
(16:18):
that epicenter whenever it began to branch out into these ministries,
was named T. L. Osborne, who worked closely with William
Brannham and openly declared at Branham's memorial service after he
died that William Branham was God sent down in human flesh.
And the interesting part of that's not the interesting part.
(16:41):
The interesting part of that is that when he said it,
and he openly said, some of you might think I'm
sacrilegious when I say this, and I'm paraphrasing greatly, But
this was God and human flesh. The interesting part about
that is, out of all of the people who would
birth the charismatic movement that were in this thing, there
(17:01):
was not a single person who stood up and said, no, man,
you can't say that. William Branham is got in the flesh.
And this man went on to create, as you know,
the Prosperity Gospel and work with several key figures and
other movements.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
And it is part of the new Apostolic reformations belief
system that there are new profits and new apostles that
walk amongst us now. And I see with that that
is the assumption that these people are in direct communication
with the creator of the universe, and he's telling them
his dictates and they are passing it along.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
And anytime you have two or three of these so
called prophets and gathered together, the way prophecy generally works
among them is somebody will say something randomly, I've witnessed
this happen. They'll say something randomly. I believe that something's
going to happen, whatever it is. I believe the Chiefs
are going to win the ballgame. Well, when it happens,
(18:01):
then you've got another prophet to back it up and
say I was with him whenever God told him that
the Chiefs were going to win the football game. And
because you have that network, there's power in that network.
The people look up to these people as spiritual authorities.
They look at up to them as the absolute truth
on absolute ultimate decisions on scripture and truth. So whenever
(18:26):
they have that level of authority, there will believe anything
they say.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Right. And at some point, you know, I mean all
of evangelical Christian Christianity, which was once somewhat a political
became political, and the New Apostolic Reformation is part of
that movement where they believe that they should be I
mean we're talking about the Seven Mountains movement as well.
(18:52):
I mean this all ties in which is the belief
that there are seven categories to which Christianity he should
be at the top of the mountain, that is to say,
dictating ruling, that is government, entertainment, society, law. I can't
remember all seven off the top of my head, but
I mean this is not benign, but rather very active
(19:14):
in our society. And we're witnessing what happens when they
gain power.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Oh yeah, absolutely, we're witnessing more to the point, we're
witnessing history repeating itself, and it's repeated itself multiple times,
which I also cover in the latest book. But the
Seven Mountains, for example, William Brannam and his mentor, whose
name was roy E Davis. Roy E Davis was the
(19:41):
second in command of the nineteen fifteen KKK, and he
was one of the original people who signed the contracts
and the constitutions for the clan, etc. When the Klan
was exposed as a terrorist organization, and I think it
was nineteen teen twenty four ish when it was exposed
(20:04):
as being a terrorist organization, it kind of disbanded and
the shift of power, interestingly came to Indiana, where my
hometown is. When this happened, they started to form different
organizations to try to regain control. One of those organizations
was called the Supreme Kingdom. And this was emerging at
(20:26):
the same time they were having all of the debates
on evolution and fundamentalism, and they were branding any Christian
who wasn't a fundamentalist against evolution as being a false Christian,
much like today the New Apostolic Reformation brands anybody who
doesn't agree with their political policies as a false Christian.
(20:46):
Their intent was to regain control of the education system
because they were teaching evolution. They wanted to gain control
of the government because they believed that the false Jews
had taken over the government and so it was allowing
this evolution to come in. They were trying to persuade
people through media and even they even got into the film.
(21:10):
I don't know if you know that history. The Klan
was producing videos and had movie films that were played
all throughout churches. So if you go through all of
the Seven Mountains in the Seven Mountain Mandate, they were
actually doing this in what was called the Supreme Kingdom,
which was a very short lived organization. But what happened
was even though their organization was short lived, the movement
(21:34):
itself began to spread and this began to invade what
became the fundamentalist version of Christianity.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Interesting when was that that the Kingdom movement was happening.
Is that the fifties or no much earlier. I imagined
school a rocky trial.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Right, This would have been in the twenties.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
Twenties, okay, and from there, I mean you mentioned that
college that mister Bolter went to in what was that Houston?
Or is that Dallas?
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Dallas?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Right?
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Christ for the Nation's Institute.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Right, And so I mean that seems to me to
be some sort of central hub of the New Apostolic Reformation.
I mean, is that would would you say that that's
an accurate description of it?
Speaker 2 (22:26):
Well, that's the difficult part, right, Nobody can tell what
the New Apostolic Reformation is because the nar itself also
can't tell.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
What it is.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
There are all of these Apostolic networks, and so yes,
it is a central hub, but there are more central hubs,
and which one is more central than the other one? Right,
You've got this spider web going across the globe of
all of these things. But what I can say, so
in that history that I mentioned with William Branham, healing
(22:57):
revivals swept across the world, and they're going all across
the different continents with all of these ministries, and they're
teaching divine healing, they're teaching elements of Christian identity doctrine,
they're teaching weird things that in today's world Christians would
just look at and say, what in the world is
(23:17):
this nonsense? But As they're spreading this, they start to
birth what became known as the Deliverance Ministry, and so
ministers were coming in being trained how to cast out
demons and being trained, more to the point, what a
demon was, which gets really funny if you understand it.
(23:39):
I have a book. I should have got it out
for this podcast, but I've got a book of one
of these training manuals for deliverance ministries, and it's talking
how to cure the demon of hiccups and different different
nonsensical things, man like there was a demon of cataracts,
and you pray this certain prayer, it becomes almost like
(23:59):
a casting a spell if you're a shaman or something
like this. Yeah, this is spreading across the globe. They're
teaching ministers how to do this. This grew into the
Voice of Healing, which started for Branham's ministry began to
form an organization with a hierarchy where they're training and
(24:21):
establishing ministries and giving them quite fictitious backstories. I'll just
say it like that and you can take with it
what you will. But they created stage personas essentially, and
these stage personas began to collaborate together to form deliverance seminars,
and so if you came to one of these seminars,
(24:43):
they could teach you how to cast out the demon
of cataracts or the hiccups or whatever is the thing
that they're teaching. So Gordon Lindsay, who founded Christ for
the Nations, was William Branham's campaign manager through all of
those years, from the late nineteen four up until I
can't remember what year he left, but they were collaborating
(25:04):
together and they were holding In fact, I just got
one in my email today another advertisement for Branham and
Lenzy and a few other guys holding a deliberan seminar
to teach these people how how to cast out demons.
After Branham died, people were still familiar with this process,
so they kept coming to Lendsey. And I want to
(25:26):
say it was the seventies, nineteen seventies he created Christ
for the Nations.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Interesting. I just the whole casting out of demons and
curing cataracts and hiccups. It strikes me as odd that
there can't have been any successful results to these other
than Charlatan's and having inside men that were claiming it.
(25:54):
But I just you know, if any other product was
on the market with zero results, it would fade away.
And yet to this day we have people casting out
demons and laying hands on and healing. At that time
in the seventies, when he's mentioned specifically, because you talked
about the racist roots of the movement, I'm thinking of
(26:17):
Bob Jones University or Roberts University, which are all segregated
at the time. I guess it was in the nineteen
at the time of the Civil Rights passage that they
had to integrate. And I'm wondering if they are as
affiliated with these movements as well. I mean, obviously they're evangelical.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
There are some I have yet to publish all of
the connections on my website. It gets overwhelming at times.
But so here's another interesting fact, and to piece it together,
I need to give you some back history. I think
I do cover this as well in the book in
much more detail. But we talked about the fundamentalist movement,
(26:56):
the Scopes Trial, all of this stuff. Well, this birth
a movement in the United States where they were really
actively trying to push out evolution. And there was a
man by the name of Gerald Burton win Rod, and
he was just a humble, not very not very rich
(27:22):
minister from Kansas, and he goes and has conference with
Adolf Hitler in Germany before it became Nazi Germany. Okay,
I don't know what happened. Nobody knows what happened. But
he came back with a lot of money, a lot
(27:43):
of money. And he also came back with a book
called The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which
is one of the most anti Semitic books.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
In history, and a forgery, if I'm not mistaken completely,
and a forgery.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
It's it's a crazy, crazy history. Came back with Christian
identity this book.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Right, it was Russian intelligence working for the royal family
at the time. I think, thanks so yeah crafted it,
which is interesting because the Russians and the Germans were
enemies at the time. But I guess if hey, if
you're writing anti Semitic, semitic books, ye I gotta, I gotta,
I gotta dive in. I am Hitler after all.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah. Well, there was a big movement in politics. There
was a I'm drawing a blank on the guy's name,
but there's a famous politician that stood against the evolution
and he became known as he was nicknamed the Defender
of the Christian Faith. So when Rod comes back with
all of this money and this anti Semitic book, and
(28:46):
he creates an organization called the Defenders of the Christian Faith.
And he's working with one of the key figures who's
touring with him as Charles Fuller, a Fuller theological seminary
which produced C. Peter Wagner, who is the one who
named the New Apostolic Reformation. So there's connections in that direction. Well,
(29:09):
there's another interesting connection also out of Germany. There was
a man by the name of William T. Freiri von Blumberg,
who was William Brandham's campaign manager. He was the adopted
cousin of Werner von Blumberg, who was avid homosexual. So
(29:29):
here you have this movement that is largely against homosexuality,
has been for decades led by a homosexual man taking
touring ministers around the globe. The ministers who are with
him know that he's openly a homosexual, and he is
working with the Fellowship Foundation. He is one of the
(29:51):
directors of what became the Fellowship Foundation. If you're not
familiar with this, they're called the Family. They hold the
National Prayer Breakfasts for many, many years, big influence on Washington,
d C. It's a crazy history. If you go down
that Rabbit trail.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
Wow, he was the Brothers that is popular to this day.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
That exactly exactly a tent exactly, it's that same one
that we're talking about. He was on that board, but
he was also on the board of directors of Bob
Jones University. All of these men were collaborating. And that's
the hard part for people to understand because here you
have the Fellowship Foundation, which doesn't seem to be Pentecostal.
(30:34):
They're holding prayer breakfast. Here is Gerald Burton Winrod, who
is holding services for Amy Semple McPherson in the deep,
deep in the heart of Pentecostalism as it's being birthed.
Here's a man from you know, is.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
That at the Angele's Temple right here in Los Angeles
that that.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Was happening exactly Angelus Temple.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
I'm five blocks from there.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
As we and it gets really crazy. I mentioned this too,
is just casual facts that you just wouldn't believe that
are happening. So win Rod, because he came from Nazi
Germany and he's spreading this anti Semitic nonsense. They labeled
him the Kansas hit Hitler, and that was his nickname,
the Kansas Hitler. He was spreading Nazism throughout the United
(31:22):
States basically the week the very Sunday after the Night
of Broken Glass, whenever all of the Jews were, you know,
their buildings destroyed, et cetera. The very Sunday after this mcpheerson, yes,
Crystal not Amy simple macpherson had him take over her
pulpit to show her support for the before the Nazi guy.
(31:47):
And that's deep in the heart of Pentecostalism being formed.
So you have all these connections. You can't say that
Pentecostalism is Nazism. But here they did this very very
bad thing in their history. What you do with this, right.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
Beats me. What do they do with this? They just
bury it?
Speaker 2 (32:07):
I would imagine they bury it. They certainly do. And that, honestly,
that's what has established a pattern. You have things that
are so bad that, like I said, some of the
things I can't even say or YouTube will block us.
That bad of things in the history, And what do
you do with this? You have to just simply try
(32:29):
to forget it and walk on. And that's what the
pattern that has been established. They just do not want
their history to be uncovered. And once that pattern was established,
now you have people who are in the prophetic movement.
If their prophecies fail, if they prophesy Trump will be
elected right this coming election and then he doesn't, well
(32:51):
then they just forget about it and absorb it and
move on, because that's what the movement historically has done.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Sure of course, that's uh, that is how cognitive dissonance works.
You pay attention to the hits and you ignore the misses.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
So the kind of sort of brings us up to
the movement as it stands today, which is no longer
happy to be an a political movement as they were
at one point, but rather a very political movement. In fact,
they want to I mean, it seems to me they're
very anti democratic. They would like to have a theocracy
(33:29):
of sorts in America. They believe that Trump is their man.
Putting PAULA White into the White House certainly was a huge,
you know, gift to them, I would imagine, and they're
feeling rather empowered right now.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Absolutely, who hardly interesting. It's interesting if you know the
history too, because while they will say that they have
been lifelong Republicans, if you go back in their history,
because of this history that I'm talking about, whenever Franklin
Delano Roosevelt was in office, the party actually flipped the
(34:07):
side that was taking the fundamentalist group that it actually
was the Democrats and the Klan was all embedded into
the other side. And then they kind of flipped because
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But you're right, they have stood
off and they've tried to pretend to be a political
But I was just having this conversation early earlier today
(34:30):
in another interview. Here's what you have to understand. When
you're on the outside of this movement looking in, it
looks to be a political And if you were to
go visit one of the sermons of the people who
are preaching, you would say, well, they're preaching about this
subject in the Bible. There's no politics here. I grew
(34:51):
up in it. I grew up in the side that
was on the inside, not the outside. What the movement
has been doing for decades. Whenever they want you to
vote against somebody, you can't really say, don't vote for
so and so in a religious setting, because there are
laws that prevent this.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
You don't do this.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Exactly, which is why Trump wanted to overturn this right.
There are so many laws against it, you can't openly
do this. But what they have done is insidious. What
in the way that the cults have loaded language around
certain key doctrines, they will also load language from the
Bible for different political parties. So they may be talking
(35:37):
about Ahab, for example in Jezebel, Well they will brand
one candidate or the other to be Ahab, and then
they'll go preach this series on sermons on Ahab. So
if you're outsider who's walking in and you're hearing a sermon, well,
it's about Ahab, It's about the Bible. This isn't politics.
But every single person sitting there knows exactly who they
(35:58):
are talking about.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Interesting, but I feel like he goes beyond that, even now,
just the violation of the Johnson rule into where this
is an actual grab for power on a national level
that you know, in my more hyperbolic moods, I might
say resembles the Handmaid's Tale or something like that. I mean,
(36:23):
an actual theocracy in America, which is what I believe
they dream of if you know from my limited research
compared to yours.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Yeah, absolutely, and they've dreamed about it for decades. That's
that's the part that for me. As I'm going through
the research, I'm just blowing away every single fact that
I uncover, Because before Amy Simple McPherson's movement began, there
was another movement in Zion City, Illinois, a man by
the name of John Alexander Dowie who is one of
(36:54):
the greatest con artists known to world history, and he
he was going across the name. He actually stole his
first church in Australia. But as he's being kicked out
of the country.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
I walked through this.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
In one of my books. It's called Militant Christian Extremism.
Examination of John Alexander Dowie. But he stole the church,
and as he's running from countless crimes that the government's
at when he.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Say stole a church. Sorry, I've just never heard that
that actual sentence come out of somebody's mouth before. So
could you explain what you mean?
Speaker 2 (37:31):
It's the funniest story, man. I'm going through his actual writings.
The man he's well respected in Pentecostalism, believe it or not.
But he's going through all of his writings and in
one place he seems to be maybe he's got Alzheimer's
or something. He's got some problem where he's opening up
far more than he should. And he's talking about the
(37:53):
sins of his past, and he starts talking about it. Well,
I have a curious mind. I want to know, what
did you do?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Man?
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Why are you writing about this? So I went and
pulled I want to say, I read over one hundred
thousand newspaper articles as many as I could find to
write that book. But he starts attending a church, becomes
embedded with all of the people that he's well respected,
(38:21):
such to the extent that the minister takes a leave
of absence for being when he was sick. So he
goes out on his hiatus and says, well, you will
you handle my church. Well, while he was in there,
he overthrew everyone and started chastising people who didn't adhere
to his supreme authority, to the extent that he stole
(38:43):
the church, which is it's one of the craziest stories ever.
But this led to all kinds of rioting, et cetera.
Long story short, he fled the country. He comes to
the United States and pretends to be a faith healer.
And he's carrying around satchels of these legs, letters that say,
in this other city or even in this other country,
(39:04):
I healed so and so, and here's their testimony. So
he's reading these and people come give him tie his money,
et cetera. In ten years, he amassed ten million dollars.
In eighteen ninety. This is in today's money, it's a
half a billion dollars. He literally took over Chicago to
(39:26):
the extent it was. They did not know what to
do with him. They couldn't convict him, they couldn't kick
him out. There were hundreds of thousands of people coming
to see him. They finally moved to Zion, Illinois. And
this was a country inside of our country at one
point in time. So this became the prototype for everything
(39:48):
that I'm talking about, this just weird divine healing mess.
It grew to such an extent that he controlled Illinois politics.
If he said vote for this guy, and all of
his cult did well swayed enough votes, he literally could
could steer the politics. And he realized the power that
he had and so he created the Theocratic Party to
(40:10):
try to take over Washington and take over the nation
and failed, but he did try.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
That was the actual name of the party was the
actual name of the party was a Theocratically or at
least they're honest and up front. I'll give him that.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Well, this became the backbone for what we see today
because everything that I've mentioned in all of these very strange,
odd stories, they're all connected if you know where to look.
So John Alexander Dowie his commune was Zion City. In
that city is where Gordon Lindsay was born, the founder
(40:46):
of Christ for the nations in that city. Uh his
leader of his director of music was a man by
the name of F. F. Bosworth who mentored William Brannam
in the Healing Revivals. So all well, everything that he did,
right down to he claimed to be the return of
Elijah the Prophet. John Alexander Dowie did well. When he died,
(41:10):
William Branham starts to claim that he is the return
of Elijah the Prophet, and the New Apostolic Reformation starts
to claim this weird notion that the Elijah spirit is coming,
and what they were doing in. I don't know how
they phrase it, but like in type John Alexander Dowie
was the Elijah for his day, William Brannon for his day.
(41:32):
Now it's the people. Now, we're all who have this
apostolic authority are claiming the spirit of Elijah. So all
of this is connected. But it's so weird to think
of all of the different nonsensical stories that I have
just told you.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Absolutely, and I mean again, the whole idea of modern
prophets and apostles is just I mean, it's you're just
so open up for Charlatan's. Do you feel like that
that's part of it? Because I mean obviously our friend
from Australia who took over Illinois was an admitted Charlatan.
(42:10):
But I don't know if this is something you'd be
comfortable answering. But like you mentioned Joel Ostein and Paula White,
I mean they just scream Charlatan to me. Do you
think these are deeply faithful people or do you think
that these are people for whom a grift was taught
to them, passed on from previous generations and then that
(42:32):
is the tradition there and they're not in a Christian tradition.
They're in a grift tradition.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
It's a very complicated question. Having grown up in this
ministry and understanding how things work. There are people who
are truly grifters. Have so William Brannam, beyond the shadow
of doubt, we have uncovered enough information about him. He
was a grifter. He fully was lying through his teeth.
You would go to one city and claim one thing,
(43:01):
go to the next city and claim something different, very
much like the snake oil salesman that you see in
Bonanza or raw Hide, any of these old shows. So
there are people who are truly grifters. Those people, because
of the way that they have the charismatic personality, they
attract other people, and in a faith healing type of movement,
(43:24):
you usually attract people who are struggling mentally or struggling
physically with a sickness or mental condition. Those with the
mental conditions are the ones who are most susceptible to
this because as they come in and they start to
believe this, they'll believe pretty much anything to get the
(43:45):
demon out of their head. So they're held captive by
fear that they actually have a literal demon in their head.
Well because of the mental health issues. They too sometimes
see visions because of the mental health issues. So they'll
start to prophesia, etc. And then you start to see
this pattern where their prophecy it's not from God, it's
(44:08):
from this mental condition. It doesn't come true. But if
they ever strike one of them right by accident and
have ten false prophecies, but have one of them just
hit the mark. Because everybody's in this condition where they're
looking so hard to find something to make their life better,
they'll grasp whatever was the thing that happened that was correct.
(44:30):
So there are people who are in it who truly
believe that they have this power, this gift, and they
have some kind of mental condition instead. Well, then it
gets more complicated than that, because now those groups of
people have all produced offspring, and the offspring was raised
like this. I was one who was raised like this.
So I look to all of this mess and I
(44:52):
believe when this guy says he's a prophet, because this
other guy believes he's a prophet, and this person who
has the spiritual experience, think about the fact that they
have mental health issues, I think, instead, well, wow, God
did the thing that they said God did so I
wouldn't consider myself to be a con man even though
(45:13):
I believe this thing. But it produces a cycle. A
It produces this cycle wherein people people have offspring that
support the ministry itself, and it ever evolves and keeps growing.
It keeps growing in the nonsense because as the nonsense continues,
(45:35):
more nonsense is added to it with offspring to support
the nonsense. If that makes any sense.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
That does make sense, and it makes me wonder. Now
bringing things up to the Bolter guy again, his actions
on the surface seem like he was suffering from mental conditions.
Those are not the actions of a stable person, but
they could also be the actions of a true believer
(46:04):
who it was, not mentally compromised, but actually buys into
every sermon he's heard and the message is coming out.
And at which point it's like, does it even matter
anymore if it's mental illness or if it's a true believer?
And is there even a difference? And should is it
crazy to say? Should we anticipate more of this? I mean,
(46:29):
is this the fervor the movement is experiencing right now?
Because they truly see this, whereas from my research again,
they see new prophets New Apostles walking amongst us. I
assume from what I read they also see devils walking
amongst us. The enemy is here as well, and that
(46:50):
the spiritual battle is now. That this is of course
like all religious groups, they say the end times is now.
The battle that has been brewing and it's canaenable is
right here right now, and they are in the thick
of it. Is that an accurate way to look at it?
Should we be anticipating more violence on the part of
(47:13):
the New Apostolic Reformation.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
If history has any say in it, I would say
that absolutely if you look through that just the history
that I've mentioned, which is only going back to the
nineteen hundreds, and I'm certain you can go before this.
This is a cycle that continues, and as I said,
it continues with more nonsense as it goes. But the
(47:37):
thing that you have to really understand is there's another
component to it that may be playing a factor. We
don't know yet what happened with Bolter. Well, more of
that information will come out in the investigation. But you
have to also consider radicalization. When you're in this type
of movement, many many people are radicalized, and the sad
(48:01):
part is that many people don't realize that they're radicalized.
Some of the doctrines that they're spouting off the we
need to claim dominion, the end time's coming. We need
to be preparing for this battle that's coming. We're going
to take arms and fight for this battle. It is
radicalized to the point of growing up. One of the
(48:22):
things that Jesus said that I really found to be profound.
Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. And
whenever I would get into a situation when people would
you know, in school, people pick on you, well, my
kingdom's not of this world. They can pick on me
when people misuse me, mistreat me. My Kingdom's not of
(48:43):
this world. I'm looking for something better. I never wanted
to fight back unless I had to, and only whenever
you have to. That was my mentality because that was
kind of what Jesus taught. But what this movement has done,
they have radicalized two point where they see the kingdom
as something they need to claim for themselves forcibly and
(49:07):
the way that they're doing it from what we said
in the beginning of this podcast, where they're taking Bible
versus and they're applying it to today, whenever it should
have been applied to the historical children of Israel. Anybody
who has been radicalized with that frame of mind, what
happens is the more it's preached, the more they're talking
(49:31):
about how we need to stand up, we need to fight.
They use very militant words in their sermons. Will people
go home and read the Bible thinking about those militant
words that were used in the sermon and then start
reading about the actual battles that happened with ancient Israel
where there were countries conquered, where there were people claiming
(49:55):
dominion of other people. This is a thing that if
you read the Old Testament, actually see this playing out well.
To the person who's been radicalized, what's the trigger that
connects them from the sermon that they heard with all
of those militant keywords to the actual Bible that they're
reading where they say, oh, well, this is what I
need to do. I need to step up and do this.
(50:17):
I'm going to be the one. I'm going to be
the one to fight for our freedom, to fight for
our dominion these people. There are many people who are radicalized.
It doesn't mean that many people will act out upon it.
But it's like the sleeper cell suicide bomber. All it
takes is that one statement that triggers that thing in
(50:39):
their head where they go off and do something destructive.
I don't know if that's what happened with Bolter. We
won't know until the investigation. But I can say that
many of the people who are associated with the movement
that he said he's from, which is the movement that
I came from as well, many people in that are radicalized.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
Right and the people that they listened to the sermons
that they're listening to. Do you think that there's a
stochastic element to them where these people are aware of
the fact that their flock can be right, can be
triggered into acting. Is this something that you think they're
actually trying to brew?
Speaker 2 (51:22):
When I was writing the book, I was mortified at
some of the things that I was reading. I just
wanted to see and what I sing in history, am
I seeing it playing out today? Once I got to
about halfway through the book, I wanted to know where
am I going with this? Am I going towards the
(51:43):
political side of the nar Am? I going to the
individual individual churches? And so I just did some internet
searches on what is today's what is Sunday sermon? And
obviously I did some keywords, like you know, keywords that
I knew would bring up naar cher is. I was
finding sermons about civil war. There were actually ministers who
(52:05):
were preaching civil war. Come Sunday for your blessed civil
war sermon. And I'm thinking, what they're.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
Not talking about the one from eighteen sixty to eighteen
talking about that one.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
No, it's and so you know, and you dive deeper
and you look, and the first thing that hit me was, Okay,
is this guy connected to the thing I'm talking about?
So you have to go through the newspapers and trace
the history of the church. Where did it come from?
It's a lot of work, but you start to see
it all comes back to the same thing. And it's
not just you know, when I started this book, I
(52:38):
thought it was just brandimism. But it's not just brandomism.
You can trace it all the way back to Christian identity.
You can go before that to the political elements of
British Israelism. You can trace that back as you can
trace that all the way into England. And I did
some of that, but you start to see, like I said,
it's this thing where something is just slightlightly off of
(53:00):
the mark. The British Israelism, for example, it's just slightly off. Yes,
it's a good thing to call yourself a child of God,
and that's essentially what it began. We're the children of Israel,
We're the children of God. But it's slightly off because
then you're branding the people who aren't the children of Israel.
And so because that was slightly off, well, then they
(53:22):
added something else to it, and then something else, and
once it came into America, they added all the racism
to it, all of the anti Semitism to it. And
you can carry that forward if you want to. You
can carry it all the way up into the charismatic
movement into the nar Today. They keep adding things to it.
And what it has done is number one, it's made
(53:44):
it into this weird mess that is very destructive and dangerous.
But to the people who are outside, who don't understand
the history and understand what it is, when you look in,
it doesn't look like the same thing. So as history
is repeating itself, it looks like something entirely different. But
it's actually the same thing.
Speaker 3 (54:05):
It sounds like you're describing some sort of religious stone
soup where it's just been added to so much. I
have to say that as soon as you hear the
Naar preachers referring to us non nar folk as Amalekites,
time to.
Speaker 2 (54:22):
Run exactly, especially the ones that are carrying weapons.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Absolutely, So I guess i'd like to close with do
you have any message of hope? Is there a way
to deradicalize you came up in the movement? Is there
a way to communicate with these people, or is this
just going to have some sort of terrible ending.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
Well, the sad truth is when I grew up in
this you know, obviously I grew up born and raised
in it, so I didn't know what I was in.
But there comes a point in everybody's life whenever they
go through a period of soul searching. They want to
know why why am I here? What is this world?
And why am I in it? Every single person who's
(55:03):
on the face of the planet goes through this. This
type of religion has trained people to suppress critical thinking.
And once you go through that point in your life
where you're doing the soul searching, if you're in the
movement that teaches you to suppress critical thought, You're going
to stay in the movement because you have critical thought.
(55:24):
And whenever they heap all of this political language, this
militant language in your head, if you don't have critical thought,
it just gets planted and it's sitting there and can
be activated. It's the activation that scares me because of
the sleeper cells and people who might be radicalized. But
if you teach the people to engage in critical thinking.
(55:48):
If you're a Christian, think about the Bible. Think about
the passage from the Old Testament that they're saying applies
to a Democrat or a Republican, does it really? Can
you read the whole history and context? I mean, one
of the biggest freedoms for me when I left We
read passages and I can't even count the number of
(56:09):
sermons where the guy would say, I'm going to take
this verse from this book as my context for the sermon,
and I began to realize, well, that's not a context.
You have to read the passage. You have to read
the book. And one of my biggest freedoms was to
learn and understand not just the book, but the cultures
around it. What was it talking about? Who were the
(56:31):
peoples that were being spoken of? And if it's a
lot of work, But if people were to go through
that process of just at least think about the things
that are being said, does it really apply to today
or is that something that happened long ago. Once you
start that process of critical thinking, people snap.
Speaker 3 (56:49):
Out of it. But as you're saying that, my first
thought is, and yet the Department of Education is going
by bye? So how do we get that critical thinking
out there? I wish I knew.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
Yes, that is the challenge. If they're unwilling to participate
in the education, it makes it hard.
Speaker 3 (57:13):
Absolutely, man, this has been such an informative episode. Thank
you so much. John Collins, author of Weaponized Religion From
Christian Identity to the NAR. I am absolutely gonna buy
that book. I need to know more because I feel
like this is something that everybody needs to know. This
is not a one off instance. I mean, hopefully the
(57:35):
violence will be but the fact of the matter is
that they are ammeshed in the Trump administration in government,
and they have plans and we should be aware of
those plans and know how to counter them.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
Absolutely, and the brilliant part about the book is after
this administration and the next one comes, the same things
apply because it's the same thing over and over as
history repeats itself.
Speaker 3 (57:57):
Yeah, thanks again, John Shit, you're coming on the show.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
Thanks for having me.
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