- 2 weeks ago
John and Bob discuss the complicated dynamics behind church scandals, arguing that accountability cannot stop with exposing fallen leaders. They examine how hero status, unchecked authority, proximity, personal insecurity, ambition, and the absence of meaningful restraints can create environments where broken leaders and broken congregations collide.
Drawing from Bob's decades of counseling experience and John's historical examination of Pentecostal, Latter Rain, charismatic, and New Apostolic Reformation movements, they explore the "man of God" model, megachurch structures, apostles and prophets, Mike Bickle, Kansas City Fellowship, IHOP, and the dangers of creating religious figures who are treated as being beyond meaningful accountability.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
03:27 Bob’s Front-Row View of Brokenness in the Church
08:03 The Danger of Telling a Single Story
12:27 Why the System—and Not Just Individuals—Matters
17:03 Power, Status, and Human Behavior
20:52 Why Megachurch Culture Attracts Dysfunction
26:21 When Accountability Restraints Fail
28:32 Predators, Prey, and Proximity
35:11 Cultural Change and the Church’s Accountability Problem
39:23 The “Man of God” Model and Unchecked Authority
43:32 Institutional Christianity and Its Vulnerabilities
46:41 Hero Culture and the Rise of Unqualified Leaders
52:10 Why Congregations Create and Feed Heroes
56:52 An Invitation for a More Honest Conversation
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
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– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Drawing from Bob's decades of counseling experience and John's historical examination of Pentecostal, Latter Rain, charismatic, and New Apostolic Reformation movements, they explore the "man of God" model, megachurch structures, apostles and prophets, Mike Bickle, Kansas City Fellowship, IHOP, and the dangers of creating religious figures who are treated as being beyond meaningful accountability.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
03:27 Bob’s Front-Row View of Brokenness in the Church
08:03 The Danger of Telling a Single Story
12:27 Why the System—and Not Just Individuals—Matters
17:03 Power, Status, and Human Behavior
20:52 Why Megachurch Culture Attracts Dysfunction
26:21 When Accountability Restraints Fail
28:32 Predators, Prey, and Proximity
35:11 Cultural Change and the Church’s Accountability Problem
39:23 The “Man of God” Model and Unchecked Authority
43:32 Institutional Christianity and Its Vulnerabilities
46:41 Hero Culture and the Rise of Unqualified Leaders
52:10 Why Congregations Create and Feed Heroes
56:52 An Invitation for a More Honest Conversation
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder
00:46of the Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books, the latest is Some Said They
00:50Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, The Kansas City Prophets, and
00:55the International House of Prayer. Bob, Christiani today is in a dumpster fire, and I don't
01:03mean that loosely. If you go look at the news and look at what's happening, it is a dumpster
01:07fire. And I'm going to try to delicately tackle something with you that we both probably should
01:15have tackled from the beginning, but I'm picturing a dumpster fire where there are people like
01:21us who are standing up with our hands up saying, this is a dumpster fire, stay back. And there's
01:25people that keep throwing fuel into that fire, and it gets bigger and bigger. But within that
01:32problem that exists, people throwing fuel on the fire, it takes two. It takes the fire,
01:38and it also takes the fuel. And what I want to tackle today is going to be a little bit
01:44delicate.
01:44It's probably going to offend half the audience. But the half who stays for the remainder of our
01:49podcast, we're going to talk about the flip side. And I'll introduce it like this, and we're going to
01:55go all kinds of directions. But Bethel, I had a conversation with Jed Hartley, and we were talking
02:01about Bethel's final admission that Sean Boltz, his prophecies weren't quite real. And the question
02:10that really came up between Jed and I is accountability. And we discussed it like all
02:15of the other personalities like me online, we're talking about the leadership should have corrected
02:20this because the leadership knew. But that's just the fire. I want to talk today about the fuel that
02:26goes into that fire, because there's more than just the leadership at fault here. And I want to tackle
02:34this in such a way I don't want to offend people. But it really takes two to tango. And it's
02:40a problem
02:41today that we have to address. And so I want to address it openly, honestly, respectably, and hopefully
02:47in a way that people can understand that it's not just the leadership that holds responsibility for
02:52holding people accountable, but it's also the rank and file member.
02:56Something that I say that offends, I want to say the naive, or the ones that kind of will live
03:07in a
03:07fantasy world, that I live in the sewer of the church. And let me explain that. I know some people
03:15are like, oh, that's gross. And I'm like, yeah, it is. It really is. So let me give some context
03:23of
03:24where I'll be coming from, just so we can set this straight. When I was, after Bible school,
03:30I became a youth pastor. And I'm 18 years old, and I'm, you know, overseeing this youth group. And I
03:39have one of the 14-year-old guys in the group come to me and goes, hey, he was very
03:45effeminate. And I
03:46said, hey, or he came to me and goes, hey, can you teach me to be a guy? I was
03:53so,
03:54confused. Like, I'm 18 years old. When you're a Bible school, I'm like, what do you mean? And he
04:00tells me this story. He goes, I'm the youngest of a family. I can't remember how many, but I have
04:05a
04:05bunch of older brothers. My mom wanted a daughter. And when I came along, she was so frustrated that I
04:14was a boy that she decided to raise me as a girl. He goes, I was put in dresses. I
04:21would play with
04:22dolls. I was put with girls. I spent my whole life that way. And of course, I'm sitting there as
04:28an
04:2818-year-old listening to something that is so outside of anything in my life that I had ever
04:35heard or seen. I was just spinning, right? I'm like, oh my God. Fast forward, seven years later,
04:44and again, everybody be gracious about this, but I'm trying to explain how I got into this.
04:52Seven years later, KCF starts. Mike doesn't want to do any counseling. Bob, you counsel. I'm 25 years
04:59old. Okay. I'll do it. No experience. A couple comes in with their teenage daughter. They walk
05:07through the door. My impression is, oh my God, I so got this. I know all about teenage rebellion,
05:13blah, blah, blah, blah. That was my assumption, right? They sit down. Nobody says anything. I look
05:18to the mom because the wives tend to be the ones that are really good at explaining the problem.
05:27So I asked her, what's going on? And she looks at me and goes, he likes sleeping with her better
05:32than
05:32me. I'm like, huh? I just had not sure what she was getting at, right? I go, who is? And
05:41she points
05:41to her 16-year-old daughter and him, the dad. And I am sitting there. I'm telling you, John, I
05:49just
05:50didn't know. I felt like it was an out-of-body experience. I've never heard of any of this stuff.
05:56I was so unbelievably naive, right? Even at 25, I had never heard of all this, right? So I find
06:03myself suddenly being thrust into incest, husbands beating their wives, multiple affair. Like, it's
06:12just a sewer of broken humanity. And I'm 25, 26, 27 years old, right? Then what starts happening
06:21is that we have high-profile athletes, people in the arts and entertainment world, people in the
06:29geopolitical world, other guys, right? And they all start coming. And I end up finding myself in a world
06:38of elites who have all the same problems. And I realized that the sewer just extends through the
06:47whole of society. We're really broken. And of course, what this forces me to do is I end up
06:56reading profusely. I go to every seminar I can. I have got to figure out human behavior because this
07:03stuff is so outside anything that I grew up in or had any understanding of. So I've been in this
07:12world
07:12for 50 years, to put some perspective. I have lived in this sewer for 50 years. I have a front
07:20row seat
07:21at brokenness and broken humanity as it relates to the Christian community. And I don't mean just
07:30on the congregational side, on the ministry side as well. Now, my dilemma is, and I know because people
07:39always like to know who, and here's the problem in my world, if somebody pays me for counseling,
07:44I am legally bound to not say anything. So I can tell you situations and circumstances, like I can
07:52do that, but I'm not going to name names and get into it. But I have seen the brokenness up
07:58close and
07:58personal. Why is this an issue to me? And the issue is, and it goes back to a TED talk
08:06that was done
08:07in 2009 by a Nigerian author, Chinamonde Adamichi or something was her name. And the talk she gave was
08:16the danger of a single story. And one of the things that has been bothering me, to be quite honest
08:27with
08:27you, it's, and I've just kept my mouth shut for the last couple of years, is that there is a
08:33single
08:34story out there. And the single story is church leaders abuse people in their congregations.
08:42That's true. I wrote a book about it. I understand that. What people won't talk about is what people
08:56in the congregation will do on the other side of this to help create those dynamics. Women in
09:04particular, I don't know if it's because of girl code or whatever they want to call it, but I have
09:10women sitting in my office who know firsthand what other women will do to get what they want
09:19and how ambition and how ambitious and driven they are. But nobody will talk about it publicly. So right
09:26now, nobody wants to really talk to me about this problem, because they only want to tell a single
09:32story. That concerns me. And the reason why is to your point, if we're in a dumpster fire, or we're
09:41in a
09:41sewer, how are we going to put out the fire? And how are we going to clean up the sewer?
09:46The only way to do
09:48this is to have honest conversation. I am not here to preach at anyone. I am not here to stand
09:56on a
09:57soapbox. I am here because I deal with hurting, broken people on both sides of the equation. It's
10:06the brokenness in the church isn't always because of men in power abusing naive people. In the situation
10:15in IHOP, you have Mike taking advantage of young teenage girls or young 20-year-old girls. That's a
10:25very real story. That same situation, which I didn't write a lot about, I also watched women try to seduce
10:33Mike. I could tell you hundreds of stories about how people in the congregation, driven by selfish
10:46ambition and greed, something going on, what they will do to manipulate and get what they want
10:53in unscrupulous ways. People don't want to talk about that. And yet, I have a counseling office
11:01filled with people that watch this happen all the time. But yet, right now, you can't really say
11:06anything because it's not PC, right? So, you get in trouble. That's why this conversation we're having
11:12is explosive, only because people that don't want to see the whole 360-foot view of this issue
11:22get unnerved, right? And I think part of it, and again, I'm rambling here, but I think one of the
11:27problems is that women have felt for so long that they've been on the powerless position
11:36that to admit that they have any power or any influence to create problems is not something
11:45that anybody wants to talk about, right? We want to stay in, we're victims. And yes, that's true,
11:52but there's another side to this. And all things out in the open, I had this exact conversation with
12:00somebody that's relatively famous, and we were talking about the complexities of it. And the
12:05advice I was given is, don't do this on your channel, John. You'll destroy your channel.
12:10I know.
12:10And that's partially true, but my channel is not one of these apologist channels that's looking
12:18at doctrine and all this. I'm focusing on history. The sad truth of it is this is a consequence of
12:24the history that I've been examining. And so I'm not going to attack this from a gender standpoint.
12:31It's not a male or female problem. In my perspective, this exists because of one reason,
12:37and that is the system has been designed such that the accountability is lacking, and normal human
12:45interactions, like you're talking about, they occur. I don't care if you're in the most holy,
12:50righteous sect that you think you're the closest thing to God, or you're in one that you consider
12:55apostate, you still have humans in it, and these humans have human interactions. One of the problems
13:02that I see, and I see it by a few of the different podcasters out there that I've listened to,
13:07and
13:08websites, et cetera, whenever there's an issue, such as you're describing, the issue with Mike Bickle,
13:14or there's hundreds of others, if you look out there, that have the same kind of thing.
13:19The problem is they want to make it where it's newsworthy. And how do you do this? You say,
13:25this is a story. This person, go back in time and look at when this began. This was a pattern.
13:32This
13:32was a history. And they don't come out and say it always. Some of them do, but most of them
13:37won't come
13:38out and say, but they're trying to lead you to the conclusion that this person did this whole
13:44movement for that one reason. But for me, that's problematic because what it's doing is it's
13:51distracting from the system that enabled them to do this in the first place. Think back to how
13:57Latter Rain began. Latter Rain began with a bunch of complete scoundrels. I'm not going to say they all
14:04are, but you can look through the ones I've identified. These people had a motive and an
14:09agenda that wasn't really aligned with the gospel. But you had really, really good people who also came
14:16into this, that their one intention was to bring people closer to God, and they truly believed they
14:21were doing the right thing. So you had this mixture of good and evil in the movement. Well, even among
14:28the
14:28good side, these are people who have normal human hormones, normal human interactions. Take somebody
14:35who got their hands laid upon them, and they suddenly were endued with this power that they never
14:41anticipate, never expected. Take me as an example in business. I've mentioned this in a recent podcast,
14:49but when I was jumping through the tiers of leadership, I went all the way from an entry-level
14:55developer up to CIO at some firms. I made the leap way too fast, and sometimes I knew it when
15:02that
15:02happened because I was out of my element, and I kind of had to learn my role. Well, there's that
15:08period of learning where you're uncertain, and then suddenly you get certainty with the experience.
15:14But I had leaped forward in ways that I probably shouldn't have because I didn't have the experience.
15:19After I got the experience, I did fine. So I was able to do it, but not everybody
15:24can do it, and that's on the business side. Now take that from a religious standpoint.
15:30Take a religious leader who suddenly said to them by one of the other leaders,
15:35you are a leader of this movement. You're going to govern people. You're going to be a leader
15:41leading people to Christ. Well, what if they're uncertain about even their own faith? What if they're
15:45uncertain about, like you mentioned, there are people that have problems in just simply their
15:52their raising and their maturity that lead them down pathways where psychologically they're a mess?
15:58I have known people that were that kind of mess in a leadership position in the church.
16:04So what happens when a person who's got psychological problems encounters somebody who's
16:10opening up to them more than they should because they see them as a church leader? They're confessing
16:15their sins and what if that person has a particular problem with one of those sins? That's the point
16:21I'm driving at here because psychologically they're going to be vulnerable to the church leader while
16:28the church leader themselves is also a vulnerable person and then that connection is made. Whose fault is
16:36this? Who is held accountable for this? Number one, the parent of the person who might be opening up
16:42should take a step back and say, really, is that is this the person I want my child around?
16:47But then you also have leadership that is enabling this. Did they get the proper training? Are they
16:52psychologically fit for the ministry? There's so many questions that I have and none of them in this
16:58type of movement can really be answered. Well, one thing for me that was kind of eye-opening,
17:04and again, it's my naivete was that when I got in to the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, and I
17:15saw
17:16what these guys had to deal with in terms of the onslaught of female attention, women who saw wealth,
17:27saw stature, whatever, and went for it, right? And what they would do to get that, right?
17:34Then I'm in the music world, and I'm like, I see it again. I'm like, oh my gosh, what people
17:42will do
17:43to get close to power is wild. Like, it's really wild. I mean, everything from subtle to aggressive,
17:53right? I've seen the whole spectrum of this. What's crazy, and this is sad in a way to me,
18:01there's no difference. I'm telling you, I have a front row seat. There is no difference between what
18:08happens out there in these other sectors, athletics, arts and entertainment, geopolitical,
18:15and business that doesn't happen in the church. It's the same exact thing. And I can say that now
18:22after 50 years of working in all these different things, I've seen the same dynamics. Why? To your
18:30point, because we're all broken. The reality of it is, is that the Christian community is filled with
18:38broken and dysfunctional people who are only saved because of the mercy and grace of God.
18:45It has nothing to do with how great we are, right? So again, to your point, one of the things
18:52I point
18:53out in my book is that when Harvard Business School is analyzing Fortune 500 companies, CEOs,
19:03and people in high profile positions, they discover something. A huge percentage of these people
19:11are psychopath narcissists or sociopath narcissists. And this was just a shock, right? It's like,
19:21wait a minute, from a psychology point of view, this is a dysfunction. Like, this is a problem.
19:28Well, how is this problem suddenly so prevalent in a certain type of role, right? Well, guess what?
19:38That same thing carries over to megachurch pastors. And I know, because I have been in these circles,
19:46and the same sociopathic narcissism that you see in guys leading big organizations,
19:53you see in the church world. It's not any different. You can put words on it, right? You can put
20:02religious
20:03terminology on it. You can create an environment around it. But, and I'm going to say something that
20:09will offend people. You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. That's an old, you know,
20:15what do you call it, idiom or whatever. But that, it's underneath it, when you strip away the
20:21verbiage and the culture underneath, it's the same thing to me. It's just, it's not any different.
20:31So, I think sometimes because of the fact we want it to be different, we know it's supposed to be
20:38different, right? We, in our brains, kind of want to live like that's what it is. But it really is.
20:47It's not really like that. It's kind of like there's a fantasy in our minds. Now, we're at a
20:54point right now at a crossroads here where there's a lot of decisions got to be made in terms of
21:02why this
21:03is happening. Why are we seeing this? Well, one of the things that is causing this
21:11dynamic is why do we have megachurches?
21:15I mean, this sounds funny to think this through, but the very concept of an institutional megachurch
21:23means you got to have a dynamic, right? Personality, right? You can have smart guys, right? Well,
21:33they go to theology school and they're boring as heck, right? They might be really smart with
21:39theology, but nobody really wants to listen to them unless you're a seminary student and then
21:42you're forced to. We don't want to listen to that. We want to listen to somebody that's dynamic.
21:48Well, guess what? With that dynamic personality comes some serious issues behind the scenes to
21:58your point, right? One of the things I realized is that ministry for certain broken human beings
22:09is like a moth to light. It is like this is low-hanging fruit.
22:17For me to get a position of power and authority and influence and be somebody because all I got to
22:28do is talk, right? And the business role, I got to produce, right? I have to have a bottom line.
22:34On the football field, I got to make plays, right? In music, I better produce songs, right? So in the
22:42ministry, I guess you got to have good sermons, but I'm just saying it's a great place. It's sort
22:47like radio personalities, right? If you're really good at talking, you get an audience, right? But
22:54it's shallow. It's super shallow. But where I get concerned about it is then that type of personality
23:03attracts, if you're male, a certain kind of female. And again, close your ears if you don't want to hear
23:12this, I'm just going to go there because it's my world. But that kind of guy is an aphrodisiac for
23:21a
23:21lot of women. They get very stirred up about it. And I have watched this and in the same way
23:31that
23:31the guys may have an addiction to this, there are females that are addicted to that and it becomes a
23:38giant crash zone. And I see it all the time. It's sort of like some sort of a game where
23:45everything's
23:45crashing into each other. That's my front seat of the church world. A lot of dysfunction and
23:52brokenness, right? Crashing into each other. And the reason I want to have this conversation is
23:59because we don't talk about it. Therefore, it just continues to be covered. You know what I mean?
24:05It's like, we don't want to talk about it. It's always those guys fault, right? It's always the
24:10guy in the pulpit. Well, yeah, they bear probably most of the responsibility, but there's a whole lot
24:16of stuff happening on the congregational level towards that. That's also creating these scandals.
24:23And again, I've seen it up close and personal. I have seen the hunt. I have watched it. I have
24:30watched
24:31situations because of my sixth sense about things. I have sat back and watched whole scenarios that I
24:39knew were going to happen and just watched this whole thing take place. And I knew that these two
24:45things come together over here is going to be a problem, right? And again, once you understand the
24:52nature of something, it's easy to begin to kind of extrapolate out where this is going. And
24:59unfortunately, it just takes age to get there. You know, you get older and wiser and you see
25:04some of this stuff. So my whole point here is, is that we just need to be careful here in
25:10telling
25:10a single story. There's not a single story. Yes. Some of these guys were predators. Some of these guys
25:20were prey. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression
25:26of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe
25:31movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham
25:37Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the
25:45compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others,
25:51with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources
25:58and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to
26:03contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the
26:08top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
26:14to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your
26:20support. I'm not giving an out for people who did something horrific. You look at each one of these
26:26people, yes, they did something horrific. Yes, they should be held accountable. Yes, they were in the
26:30wrong. But think of it like this. So I've done a lot of things in my life. I've done everything
26:35from
26:35auto mechanics to construction to IT. I don't know if you've ever done this. You probably have, Bob, but
26:41in construction, there is a concept when you're building something that needs to be erected that could
26:49cause damage, you create restraints. And I have seen cases where you're leaning something really,
26:55really heavy up like this, and you create multiple constraints or restraints so that when it begins
27:01to fall, if one restraint breaks, the next one holds it. And if that one breaks, the next one,
27:06the next one, the next one. I have been in situations where I've watched it go snap, snap,
27:10snap, snap, snap, and the whole thing come tumbling down. Well, what they're trying to do in this type
27:17of church environment, they're trying to erect something that is all-powerful, but with only one
27:24single restraint at the top. When that one snaps, the whole thing comes tumbling down. That's a
27:30problem for me. And this is the same movement that is built on these restorationist themes that says
27:35the mainstream church is apostate, and all of their rules of governance and man's laws that they
27:41have created, we reject them. So we're going to build this massive tower of power, and we're going
27:48to put one restraint at the top and ignore everything else. Well, everyone who allows this
27:53is like me trying to erect something without the proper restraints. If one breaks, think of the
27:59accountability layers that you should have in place to go from the point of somebody's being
28:06elected to be pastor to, oh my gosh, look what they're doing to our children. Every single check
28:12and balance that should be in place along the way, every step of accountability is missing.
28:17And for me, that is a historic problem. That's not even a-
28:20Yeah, I think you're right.
28:21It's not a Mike Bickle problem. It's not any of these other guys that have been in power.
28:25If you don't put those restraints in place, you share the responsibility. That's the point
28:31I wanted to make.
28:32Well, something, again, I'm speaking from my heart as things are sort of popping up in
28:38my soul, but I've noticed that proximity is a problem. And what I mean by that is I can't
28:45tell you how many guys in the ministry have had affairs with their secretary. You'd think
28:50by now we'd have figured this out, right? It's always, it's not always, but so many times
28:55it's either the church secretary or the choir leader, right? And I've seen on both sides of
29:02this, depending on what's going on. Why is that, right? Because they're working together. You know
29:06how many, how much, what we call it, out of bounds sexuality happens in the workplace because of
29:13proximity? I'm just saying there's just a dynamic that happens, right? And it happens outside the
29:19church world. It happens inside the church world. And you know, you see this all the time, the
29:25traveling secretary, right? She's, you know, you know, this was in the Mike situation, right? Oh,
29:30let's go to Europe, right? Let's do these trips, right? Well, the wife's at home taking care of the
29:35kids. Guess what happens, right? This happens over and over again. Probably the group that I think,
29:42and again, there may be stories that I'm not aware of, but the group that I noticed that seemed to
29:49handle this the best was the Billy Graham Association. I mean, it was a different generation,
29:55right? It was the generation above us, but they had, to your point, very strict boundaries
30:01about what was allowed or whatever. But when they traveled, it was, it was just the guys,
30:06right? It was Cliff Barrows and Billy and, you know, and the team, right? They, you know,
30:14you know, probably back in, you know, in the modern world, they would go, oh, they're misogynist,
30:19right? They don't let women in. But they, I think they understood that there's problems,
30:25right? It's like just things happen. And so they were protecting their integrity, right? Because again,
30:33everybody, so there's, you know, we talk about predators and prey, right? The two Ps. The reason
30:41I bring in a third P, which is proximity, is because it's not always predator and prey.
30:49Sometimes it's just proximity, right? Two people having, you know, difficult situations in their
30:56marriages or their own brokenness, and you put these two things together and boom, it happens.
31:02So not that, again, this is why I'm saying there's not a single story here. There's a lot of
31:09things that are behind these scandals. And I feel like right now there's a single narrative out there
31:15that, you know, church leaders are bad, therefore it's all their fault and everything that's going
31:21on right now, let's all dump it on them, right? And I'm like, okay, I can see why. I understand
31:29why.
31:29I just, I had three counseling meetings this week and everybody's angry at the leaders, right?
31:35And it's not just angry, they are evil. Like, I mean, I am, you know, they are evil. And I
31:42get why
31:42you feel that way. I understand when you've been disillusioned, when you've been betrayed, when you've
31:47been stabbed in the back, your world is crashing down, but it's emotive, right? These are emotions.
31:53They're not necessarily the full story here. And that's where I kind of hope today we can kind of
32:02expand our thinking. I would, you know, I don't know if you're out there, but if there's a female
32:07out there that's willing to have this conversation, who's had experiences, you know, dealing from the
32:15female side of this, it would be interesting to have that conversation on here because it's right
32:21now, it's just you guys doing this. But I know because I've had many conversations with many of
32:27you women in my counseling office and you, there's whole things out there that you don't talk about.
32:34It's like, you'll talk about it with your girlfriends, you know, but you don't, it's, and I
32:40understand why, right? There's a sense of we're betraying, you know, girl called we're betraying
32:45the other women, but man, you know, you know, these stories, you watch them hunt your husband
32:51down. He watched them, right? You saw what was going on. And so that's all I'm, I really,
32:57I think if, if you guys can hear my heart in it, it's like, Hey, can we just have an
33:03honest
33:03conversation that we are really a broken community of dysfunctional people that got a lot of
33:10problems and it's not just one group of people. I think we all have issues that we, we need to
33:17deal with. And if we could be honest about it, I think the non-Christian community would actually
33:24have more respect because they're having honest conversations in graphic manner right now. One
33:31thing that's kind of freaking me out to be quite honest with you is this whole podcast world. I've
33:37been listening to some of these podcasts that are out there and the graphicness of these
33:45conversations are freaking me out a little bit, right? Because again, you and I were caught between
33:51two generations. My grandparents, you never brought this up there. I mean, money, sex, and religions were
33:58three things that did never get discussed in public, right? That was, if you're German, verboten,
34:06right? It was like, in my German family, it was like, verboten, you do not talk about those three
34:10things in any public setting, right? Then our generation came along and we kind of loosened up
34:17a little bit, but man, the kids now, it's just all like out there. I mean, I'm like driving in
34:23my car
34:24getting embarrassed, you know? It's like, he said, like, then my brain starts going, is this
34:31too much? You know, it's like, what's the balance here? Because like, what's the word TMI? Like,
34:37this is, I don't know if I want to know this, right? So this, we're kind of having one of
34:40those
34:40conversations right now, except for the thing that I'm doing is I'm not, I've shared two stories. I
34:47could share a thousand more stories. We're staying away from the graphic, R-rated actual
34:55stories of this, but I think everybody that's been around a little bit can read between the lines.
35:01We don't need to go into all the details. You've all seen it. You've all witnessed it. You've all
35:05experienced it in your own life, so I don't think we need to go into the details, but we got
35:10a problem,
35:11Houston.
35:11Houston. So let's talk just a moment about cultural shell shock, because this actually is
35:16part of history, and believe it or not, it ties what you just said on the tangent to the rest
35:21of
35:21the overall story.
35:22Okay.
35:23Just to remind everybody who's unfamiliar with me, I grew up in a sect that was literally stuck in the
35:311950s. We dressed like the 50s. We listened to sermons that were recorded in the 50s.
35:36We listened to preachers that were preaching about those sermons as though they were today's fresh
35:41manna, and we were stuck in the 50s. Literally, when you walked in the building of the Branham
35:47Tabernacle, right there on the bulletin board was a photograph of the Beatles and says,
35:54we do not allow our men to cut our hairs like this. Literally stuck in the 1950s. That's the
36:01world that I grew up in.
36:03Wow.
36:03I left this world. I started attending mainstream churches, and I had shell shock. I really,
36:10really did. I'm in Sunday school. Just to give you a taste of my shell shock, I'm in Sunday
36:16school, which was the most amazing thing ever, because we always had Sunday school talking
36:20about doomsday and weird things, but they're walking us through the historical context of
36:25the Bible. And suddenly, the lady next to me, she starts talking with excitement about what
36:31she had read in the Bible last night, how it applied to this, that, and the other. And I'm
36:35thinking, your women are supposed to keep silent in the churches, because that was the mentality
36:43of the 50s, right? Now, that's the church. Let's for a moment separate the context. Within what
36:51you're describing with Billy Graham and the men's meetings, the men's movements, it was
36:56a man's world in the 1950s. That's why part of the shell shock existed for me. In the 50s,
37:03you go to the workplace, and it was male-dominated. It was male-led. And there was this glass ceiling
37:08for the females, and that was wrong. I'm not going to say that it was right. It was wrong.
37:13But what happened over time is they started to make women more equal. Women started getting
37:18rights. And there's a huge problem that exists when you do this. You have the personality thing
37:24that we talked about earlier. Men are attracted to women. Women are attracted to men. What do you
37:30do with this? Well, it had to adapt. So eventually, you had an HR department. We're going to govern
37:37how you interact. And if something goes out of line, we have, if you go back to my tower
37:42of constructing something huge, we're going to put all of these checks and balances in
37:47place. So if one rule breaks, the next one will catch it. And we're going to basically provide
37:52accountability. That's your HR department. Take the flip side of this. Lateran emerged,
38:00started to claim that all the religions are apostate. We don't like the rules. We don't like
38:04their man-made governance. We especially don't like the fact that there's a committee over groups
38:09and regions of people. We don't like their HR department. That's essentially what's being said
38:15here. So all of these groups began to develop. And in Pentecostalism, it was kind of weird
38:22because Pentecostalism itself was not progressing in the same rate of speed as the traditional
38:29church because of all of this. But then along comes John Wimber, C. Peter Wagner. We're going
38:35to bring this to an explosive thing. We're going to bring church megachurches. We're going to
38:41cause the church growth movement. So suddenly all of these people who were in the, maybe
38:47not 50s, but a lot slower mindset, were now suddenly thrown into this big realm of, oh
38:53my gosh, we've got men, we've got women, we've got all of these things. And they didn't yet
38:59have the time nor experience to put all of the things in place that the traditional church
39:04had. So where the traditional church had all of these straps that are holding the leaning
39:08tower of whatever you're building, suddenly the Pentecostal charismatic church, all we
39:13have is this leadership at the top and they really don't have any accountability. So culturally
39:18they had culture shock and they did not know how to handle it.
39:23Darrell Bock I remember having a conversation with Paul Cain about this and he used the word
39:26man of God model. That's the Pentecostal world, the man of God model, right? There's a single
39:32person who has the anointing, has the calling, right? And they were given unprecedented power
39:41and authority over everyone else. And to your point, that just opened Pandora's box because
39:48it became the, you know, it's kind of like the fox in the hen house, right? It's like suddenly
39:54you've got a guy who's got this dynamic personality who underneath has got his own maleness and his
40:03own brokenness and his own insecurities and whatever, who's got no one around him that can
40:10hold him accountable. And so therefore when temptation or these opportunities happen, they're
40:18all over it. And we know based on the Lonnie Frisbees and the Augustina Colas and all these
40:24stories, the amount of sexual abuse that went on wasn't just strictly with women. It was with men
40:31too, right? There was that dynamic. And so I think you're right. I know that the more established
40:42denominations have an accountability structure. I mean, this happened in England with a sole
40:48survivor in that whole world. I mean, it went through the Anglican church, right? But that was
40:53after it happened, right? It was after, while it was going on, there wasn't, right, any checks and
41:03balances. I had this conversation with somebody this last week about Mike Bickle's situation because
41:11I noticed kind of mid, it kind of, how do you call it? The penny dropped, I guess, is the
41:19phrase I'm
41:19thinking about, the mid-2000s when I realized that every time that Mike got in trouble, he got a word
41:27from God he needed to leave and go start something new in a different part of the city or in
41:35another
41:35city. And every time a group of people tried to hold him accountable, he constantly came up with
41:44a new word from God or a new calling to go do something, whatever. Like, he resisted. And the
41:50reason was, is that he had gotten, and this is what was so sad, is the prophetic guys, this is
41:59interesting. Again, this is my observation, so this is my perspective. The prophetic guys, thinking
42:05that they were encouraging Mike, right, to press into what God had called him to, didn't realize
42:11they were feeding the ego of a sociopathic narcissist who then believed he was at a different
42:23strata, a different level than everyone else. So, therefore, no one could hold him accountable.
42:29Because no one was his equal. You see the trap here? So, I don't think they realized what
42:36they were doing, right? They thought they were encouraging Mike. What they were doing was
42:42feeding his brokenness and creating a monster in a way, right? Because they were feeding this
42:48side of him that most people didn't see. And it just got worse and worse and worse to finally,
42:54I know, I mean, I was explaining to someone this week again that the whole reason IHOP came to be
43:02was because the leadership at his previous church at Metro Christian Fellowship was trying to hold him
43:09accountable. And suddenly, boom, no, I got to go start my own thing. So, that's a telltale sign when you
43:16see that suddenly he's got to leave, got to go do it, right? That's a telltale sign. Somebody does not
43:24want to be held accountable. So, you know, what that looks like for the future, I don't know. I got
43:33to be
43:33honest with our audience in that I play my cards on the table here. I have a real problem with
43:40institutional Christianity. I just, I'm not saying it hasn't been helpful, but it's the institutional
43:50side of it has created so many problems. And one of the things you have with institutional driven
43:59Christianity is you need money, right? To keep the machine going. And then that creates all kinds of
44:07compromises and structures and hierarchies and all these things that end up feeding into the worst of
44:15us, right? They feed into our brokenness. And, you know, where the early church model, where it was
44:24they were meeting in homes and it was, you know, it was smaller groups of people, right, that were
44:30relating and caring for one another. You didn't have all this. And so this is, I don't know where I
44:38stand. I just, I'm just being honest here. I just, I look at it and I can see, you know,
44:45you know, some
44:45benefits on the one side, but I also see some huge vulnerabilities, right? And so when I hear everybody
44:52cheering on the new mega church in town and look how many people are going to church, I'm not real
44:59excited about that. It doesn't really float my boat because in my brain I'm going, yeah, but now
45:06you've, you know, you've unleashed a whole bunch of vulnerabilities because of the brokenness in
45:14people, not only on the ministry side, but on the congregational side. It's like you've opened
45:22those mega churches, you're opening Pandora's box.
45:25So in full transparency, if you read through the comments, people will say John is so heavily
45:30against the charismatic church that he will only defend the mainstream. Or they'll say things like
45:36John is, John is against the gifts. John has actually never said what he is against. I am against things
45:42that cause people to become victims. If you want to, if you want it all out in the open, that's
45:47what
45:47it is. I'm not in any way defending reformed theology, for example. That's another one of
45:54the comments. John is a reformed theology guy. I don't know that I am, but that's what they say.
46:00And it's because of this. I like to go to the specific doctrines that put people at risk and
46:07say that here's why they're at risk. I like to go to the specific things that are missing from
46:13Pentecostal charismatic movement that mainstream church does have. And it is kind of working.
46:18But it's not that I'm saying you need to leave this and go to a mainstream church.
46:22The point is there are ways to fix this mess that you have created. Here's a better way. And one
46:29of
46:29the things is this, which actually brings us in full circle back to the very beginning. I know it seems
46:35like Bob has went this direction and I've gone the other, but to bring it back to a close, it's
46:40this.
46:41There are people who, because of the way the movement has been structured, get a hero complex.
46:49And worse, for there to be a hero, there have to be people who regard them as such. It takes
46:56two.
46:57The way that the movement has been set up, these people can quickly rise up into leadership roles
47:02who never should have been there in the first place. Look at some of the leaders that have
47:07recently fallen. Some of these people, all they had to do was get on stage in some mega church and
47:12say, this is our new apostle. Well, who's the one who checked those apostles' credentials? And I know
47:18everybody who heard me say that are thinking, okay, these leaders, these apostles who are electing other
47:23apostles, they're in the wrong. But what about every single person of the thousands of people that's in
47:29the congregation, which one of those stood up and said, okay, show me his credentials? Show me where
47:35he's fit to be an apostle. And number one thing that's missing of an apostle, show me where they're
47:42doing the role of an actual apostle and show where they meet the biblical qualifications.
47:47Darrell Bock To your point, this has always been one of my problems with that whole apostolic thing.
47:53What does Paul tell us in Corinthians about his experience as being an apostle?
47:59How many times was he stoned? How many times was he beaten? How many times was he rejected, right?
48:06In other words, there's this whole side of this story that somehow has gotten so sanitized
48:13in our modern world. But again, this is the root of institutionalism, right? In other words,
48:19we've got these big institutions, and we look at it like this structure. But if you go back to the
48:25original apostoling, these guys died. They all got martyred. They all got killed. They were into
48:36situations where, you know, and I talk about this in, well, actually, I've got some more books I'll have
48:44to come out with where I kind of talk about some of this stuff. But every time, you know,
48:51these guys preach the gospel, you either have the political community, you have the business
48:56community, or you have the religious community all attacking them. And the reason I bring this up is
49:03because I went through the book of Acts and asked myself a question. Whenever the Holy Spirit moves and
49:08there are signs and wonders, what's the result? They go, oh, 5,000. They get thrown in prison.
49:15They get beaten up, right? They get rejected. They get run out of town. Like, where's that part of the
49:22story, right? So when I see a guy, you know, that's invading a secular culture and putting his life on
49:32the
49:32line, that's where I might go. Now, that's an apostle, right? But somebody that's, you know,
49:39making $250,000 a year, sitting in a cushy office, going to big, you know, conferences where lots of
49:47people are cheering them on, that's a star. It's not an apostle. I'm sorry. This is just me being blunt
49:56here. You know, I'm looking for the guys who are laying their lives down. That would be my first
50:02credential of an apostle. Darrell Bock Well, and not to go too deep in theology,
50:06I'm not going to preach to you, but if you go to what is the book of Acts, it says
50:10when Judas was
50:11being replaced, for you to be an apostle, you had to witness the resurrection. Which one of these
50:16apostles today have witnessed the resurrection? You can't really go down that path. But the point
50:22I'm trying to make is this, apostle becomes a hero status in this type of movement. If you're in
50:27the new apostolic reformation, that's the hero. In the movement I escaped, the prophet was the hero
50:33status. But each one of these groups that have developed, they have a hero status, and the hero
50:39gets up there without checks and balances, and they don't have the restraints. But there are people,
50:45to your point at the very beginning of this, there are people who are just so wired to seek after
50:52a connection with the hero. They will do anything to make that connection, male or female. This is
50:58not a gender problem. Darrell Bock Across all sectors. That's just not a church thing,
51:01right? It's all sectors in life, right? Darrell Bock Exactly. But to the point you made
51:05at the beginning, which this is, everybody's going to say John's politically incorrect in saying this,
51:10I'm going to say it. Whenever somebody has that attraction to a hero, and they're of the opposite
51:17sex, male or female, I'm not going to put a gender qualification, you can be a man who's attracted
51:23to a female hero. When you have that attraction, and then you're put in close proximity with the
51:29people, and you don't have all of those restraints, like I mentioned, that keeps you from doing
51:35something you should not, and both sides are vulnerable, there's all of these things that is
51:40the perfect storm. When you have all of those things happening, suddenly there's a fall,
51:46and the leader has fallen, he's fallen with a person who's vulnerable, or a female, a male or
51:53female who is vulnerable. The problem is that there are all of these things that when they all come
51:59together, when the stars and planets align, you suddenly have a leader who's fallen, but who's the
52:05one who checked all of those restraints to make sure that they never got to that position in the first
52:10place? John Dickerson I try to address this in my book. One of the dynamics that creates this
52:15problem is the insecurity in the people in the congregation, or in anything else. In other
52:23words, when you need a hero, it's because you're missing something inside you. In other words, you're
52:28looking for someone to give you something that you don't have. I'm sorry, but I've been doing this for a
52:37long time. So I've seen it, again, across all these sectors, just because we're insecure people. I mean,
52:45it's just who we, it's part of the brokenness of humanity. So we're looking for these leaders
52:51to give us something, oops, sorry, that we don't have. In the case in my book, I talked about Mike's
52:59transaction was, I'm special. Therefore, if you associate with me, you can be special too. So he
53:05was selling significance. That was the trade-off, right? Other people, it's selling success, right?
53:12Join us. I'm successful. You can be successful, right? In other words, you're not successful on
53:16your own. You're not special on your own. You're not any of these things on your own. You're a big
53:21vacuum inside. Therefore, come hang with me and I'll fill that need in your soul. So we actually,
53:30this is where I was trying to go with this whole thing, is we are creating our own brokenness in
53:37the
53:37congregation is creating the environment for a lot of this, where we then end up falling all over
53:45ourselves and idolizing these heroes, to your point, right? We want heroes to fill
53:51something that we don't have. If we were all actually on our own journey with God,
53:57if we all went on our own journey with God and we were getting our needs met from Him and
54:02we were
54:03at a place in our lives where we felt, you know, I know who I am. I know God. I
54:10have a relationship
54:10with Him. Great. You don't need somebody then to keep feeding your insecurities, right? So that's my
54:18whole point here is that we're, we in the congregation have to take some responsibility
54:24for our own spiritual health and quit creating these heroes, right? Because we're feeding broken
54:33men and women, right? We're feeding their brokenness by us needing them, right? And or what we end up
54:44doing is, is so there's, there's that side. So we're feeding from them, right? It's almost like
54:49we're leeches, right? We're, we're emotional or spiritual leeches. We're trying to, or what happens
54:55is, is then you get into the other side of this, which I've seen is that I want something. So
55:00therefore
55:00I'm going to seduce whether again, male, I'm not making this a male or female thing, but I'm going to
55:05seduce or manipulate my way to power because I want that power. So some of it is in, is filling
55:12a need
55:13for significance. Some of it is just greed, selfish ambition and greed. I want, I want status and
55:19stuff, right? In order to get status and stuff, I need to position myself. And that's where it all
55:25gets so weird. And we get into these situations where you have the emperor with no clothes scenario
55:31where everybody's telling the leader how wonderful they are, even though we all know, you know,
55:37and buck naked, right? It's like, this is all these little dynamics that you see. Well,
55:43when you see that it's because somebody wants something and we've all seen it, right? You get
55:48to the point where you get to be our age and it's kind of like, I'm sorry to say this,
55:52but I'll be
55:53sitting in meetings and I'm watching it. And I just sort of go, Oh, gag me. It's so gross.
56:00You know what I mean? It's just, you know, and everybody else is just kind of sitting there and
56:04I don't know if they're oblivious to it or what, but I'm just sitting there going, Oh,
56:07this is so gross. So there's a part of me that I go, this is gross. There's another part that
56:14makes
56:14me mad. Cause I'm going, Oh my God, this is a wolf. Like, or this is a wolf. So this
56:19person is
56:20like, they, you know, cause I've seen it all. Like I have seen whatever, or then there's the other
56:27person is just naive and it's like, just clueless. And I'm like, come on guys.
56:34Well, in full transparency, I would love to have status and stuff, but thankful to you and podcasts
56:41like this that are so controversial that you actually work as a constraint to keep me from
56:46getting my status and stuff. Hopefully our controversial podcast has helped somebody.
56:52I hope so. And again, this is just the beginning of a topic that's got layers to it. And so
56:59forgive
56:59us if we didn't say things properly or we, we weren't balanced or whatever, cause this is just
57:06a conversation to flush something out that I hope we can have more conversations. And honestly,
57:13I would really love if some of you women, cause I have talked to some of you and I think
57:19you have
57:20some stories to tell that I think the audience would very much value. So talk to John.
57:29Absolutely. And this is Bob and John completely uncut.
57:34This is that raw, untamed and unbalanced. Thank you so much for doing this.
57:42Totally.
57:44Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
57:47You can find us at William-Branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new apostolic
57:52reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on
57:57Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
58:44And this is a production of the NAR. Available on the NAR. Available on the NAR. Available on
58:48Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. And this is a production of the NAR. Available on the NAR. Available on the NAR.