- 21 hours ago
John examines the recurring doomsday and apocalyptic themes he sees running through Pentecostal, Latter Rain, healing revival, charismatic, and New Apostolic Reformation history. He discusses failed predictions, end-times fixation, special revelation, unquestionable leadership, information control, and the repeated cycle of prophecy followed by reinterpretation, drawing connections among figures and movements discussed throughout the historical record presented here.
The discussion follows those themes from early influences such as Frank Sanford, Charles Fox Parham, John Alexander Dowie, William Miller, Edward Irving, and John Nelson Darby through William Branham, Gordon Lindsay, Chuck Smith, Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson, and later charismatic networks. John argues that repeated emphasis on imminent catastrophe can create a culture of fear and urgency, and closes by contrasting that mindset with a life focused on loving others, caring for family, and building a healthier future.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
06:21 Early Signs of a Doomsday Cult
14:11 The Apocalyptic Roots of Pentecostalism
18:11 Six Streams of Apocalyptic Influence
22:29 Where Christianity Ends and Doomsday Thinking Begins
29:19 How the Doomsday System Works
36:12 Apocalyptic Thinking Spreads Through Charismatic Culture
41:32 How End-Times Predictions Become a Cultural System
44:05 From Pentecostalism and Latter Rain to the NAR
50:30 Activation, Spiritual Warfare, and Dominion
53:04 Escaping the Apocalyptic Mindset
______________________
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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The discussion follows those themes from early influences such as Frank Sanford, Charles Fox Parham, John Alexander Dowie, William Miller, Edward Irving, and John Nelson Darby through William Branham, Gordon Lindsay, Chuck Smith, Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson, and later charismatic networks. John argues that repeated emphasis on imminent catastrophe can create a culture of fear and urgency, and closes by contrasting that mindset with a life focused on loving others, caring for family, and building a healthier future.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
06:21 Early Signs of a Doomsday Cult
14:11 The Apocalyptic Roots of Pentecostalism
18:11 Six Streams of Apocalyptic Influence
22:29 Where Christianity Ends and Doomsday Thinking Begins
29:19 How the Doomsday System Works
36:12 Apocalyptic Thinking Spreads Through Charismatic Culture
41:32 How End-Times Predictions Become a Cultural System
44:05 From Pentecostalism and Latter Rain to the NAR
50:30 Activation, Spiritual Warfare, and Dominion
53:04 Escaping the Apocalyptic Mindset
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:40at william-branham.org, where history proves that truth, or at least their version of it,
00:46is truly stranger than fiction.
00:48I recently had a conversation with Chino Ross, and we were talking about Chuck Smith and his
00:55broad, sweeping influence of the charismatic movement.
00:58Without Chuck Smith, you really don't have a charismatic movement.
01:02But specifically, we were talking about Chuck Smith's doomsday prediction, which not many
01:08people who are followers of Chuck Smith realize is actually a thing.
01:12Chuck Smith did predict doomsday, and he issued the prediction, and then years later, he went
01:19back and he said, now it's wrong for anybody to do this.
01:22And I'm paraphrasing greatly, but I'm against people who predict doomsday.
01:27And so it turns into this weird debate that's really circular reasoning.
01:32I've mentioned the doomsday prediction that Chuck Smith had before and had private conversations
01:38through email.
01:39I think some of them are even in the comment feeds.
01:42Whenever you say this, somebody who is a strong supporter of Chuck Smith will say, no, Chuck
01:46Smith is against doomsday, which is correct.
01:50But Chuck Smith was also for predicting doomsday.
01:53And it would be like saying, if I had said for years that this was a Coke can that I'm
01:59holding in my hand, which is actually a coffee cup, if I said for years, this is a Coke can,
02:04and then one day, years later, I say, well, that's a coffee cup, and I would never agree
02:10with somebody who said this is a Coke can, you'd probably laugh at me.
02:14But what has happened in the Pentecostal movement is this system has been created for various
02:21reasons, which we've talked about in the podcast before.
02:23I'll highlight those a bit in a minute.
02:26But the system was created that enabled people to predict doomsday.
02:30But worse, once they did it, when it failed, because inevitably, it has failed time and
02:37again, when it fails, there's a redirection.
02:41And I'm one who can speak from experience about this.
02:45My family was in a doomsday cult.
02:48And by all historian accounts, if you think about Branhamism and Lateran and Healing Revival,
02:55all of this, they would not have labeled it as a doomsday cult in the ways in which the
03:02news media does this.
03:04And the problem is this.
03:06There are doomsday cults and there are failed doomsday cults.
03:11And I want to tell you, I'm here to tell you that if you get your choice of which one
03:16that
03:16you get to be born in, choose the one that is a failed doomsday cult.
03:20You don't want to be in the other kind.
03:21Because what happens is both are exactly the same.
03:24Both have a doomsday focus.
03:27One of them fails because they had a doomsday prediction.
03:31It failed.
03:32And then the focus on that doomsday prediction kind of shifted away and it morphed into something
03:38else.
03:39Then you have the other kind, which is a group who has a doomsday prediction.
03:43The prediction also failed, but the group did not fail as a doomsday cult in that they had
03:48a climactic event.
03:50So both are true doomsday cults.
03:53However, the news media will talk about the one who had the climactic event and they will
03:58ignore the one who did not.
04:00For me, that is one of the biggest problems because by doing this, by separating those
04:07into two categories, it allows the doomsday cults to continue.
04:11So, when I left this doomsday cult, Branhamism, the followers of William, Mary, and Branham,
04:17I knew that something was off about my theology.
04:22I knew that I was focused so heavily on end times that I was losing focus of the world around
04:28me.
04:28And as I started to integrate into new churches, I heard the gospel for the first time at 37
04:33years old and started going through just reevaluating everything that I believed, I came to realize
04:40that we were in a doomsday cult, but it had not yet been branded as one by the news media
04:45because there had not yet been a climactic event.
04:49William Branham died in 1965, so it's kind of hard to have one anyway.
04:54But we did have the doomsday focus, and so I began to evaluate what this actually meant.
05:00What does it mean to be a doomsday cult?
05:03And long story short, there are certain criteria, which I'll put on the screen if you're watching
05:09this in a few seconds here, but there are criteria that you can use to examine and determine
05:14is the group a doomsday cult?
05:17And again, I'm separating the two.
05:19There are the failed doomsday cult, which I'm going to be talking about in this episode,
05:23and then there are the doomsday cults with a climactic event, such as Jonestown.
05:29Jim Jones, who was also part of this movement, had a climactic event in Jonestown in the Jonestown
05:36Massacre.
05:36There's the Chakohola Forest Massacre, which we've also talked about.
05:41This is another group that was connected to all of this mess.
05:44They had their doomsday events, and people were starving themselves to get into heaven.
05:50You can go right down the line.
05:51There are the ones that have the climactic events, and those are the ones that the news
05:55media will gladly label to be a doomsday cult.
05:59But I want to talk about the ones that are not yet branded by the media, because that was
06:05my area of intent.
06:06So as I was intentionally researching what does it mean to be a doomsday cult, I started doing
06:13searches online, reading books, and trying to determine, well, what are the criteria?
06:18And you can find these lists if you go look on the internet.
06:21But some of the criteria that are commonly used to determine and distinguish a doomsday
06:27cult from a normal church, ignoring the climactic event, because that's something I set off to
06:32the side.
06:34These are some common criteria that you can use.
06:36I've titled this slide Early Signs of a Doomsday Cult, because I wanted to find the criteria
06:41that would match both the failed doomsday cult and the doomsday cult that would have been
06:46branded by the media as a doomsday cult.
06:49And the biggest one, obviously, is end-time fixation.
06:52I've mentioned in the podcast previous to this one, if you've been following, the Laterine
06:58movement, the healing revival, actually began with a series of doomsday predictions.
07:02There were these charts in the Voice of Healing magazine, and you could see how they were counting
07:07out numbers to the end of time, and they would divide it into categories.
07:11Well, that's a common issue among the revivalists because of different themes that were coming
07:18into the revival.
07:20Restorationism, God's coming to restore the end-time church.
07:23The British Israelism, God has chosen us as the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel.
07:31We are the chosen ones.
07:33You had the dispensationalism.
07:36We're at the end of the age.
07:37When you combine all of this, you really create a system that has an end-time fixation.
07:42The other one, which is a big one, is date predictions.
07:45There are usually, within a doomsday cult, there are people who say,
07:49we're nearing the end, and here's why.
07:51And for the people to come to them to seek all answers, which is what happens in these types
07:57of groups, they must have an answer.
07:59So they say, we know when it is, and if you follow us, we're the ones that will help you
08:04escape.
08:05And that's actually one of the signs.
08:07The number three is they are an exclusive people.
08:10Only this group knows how to survive.
08:13These are the ones that will be saved, the ones that will be taken, the ones that will
08:17have the escape.
08:19Also, you have to have revelation, because how would you know about the escape if you don't
08:24have an insight, a divine revelation, special revelation.
08:27So the leader claims that he or she has unique visions, calculations, secret interpretations.
08:36Honestly, if you read the early Voice of Healing magazines, what you'll find it is, it is clearly
08:41a doomsday publication.
08:42Chosen Remnant.
08:43That's another big one.
08:45Again, it all ties back to those patterns and those themes that are coming into the movement.
08:50British Israelism, you are definitely the chosen remnant.
08:55What happens is, whenever you create that idea, you have to associate the end of days with
09:02the ancient systems and patterns of Israel.
09:05And so you create things like Chuck Smith called the Moses model.
09:09It's a person who is unquestionable in authority.
09:12And that's another one of the signs.
09:14You cannot question the leader, because he or she knows how to escape.
09:19They have the special revelation.
09:20They have the date predictions, et cetera.
09:23Information control.
09:25This follows the pattern of Dr. Stephen Hassan's bite model.
09:29Information control is the eye in bite.
09:32But it seems to flow through these types of cults.
09:36They do not want you to know that there is information that you can get your hands on that
09:42will be critical of their predictions.
09:44And that's really why that exists.
09:47Even if the group is loosely following the bite model pattern, which most of them follow
09:52it almost to the letter.
09:54If they're even loosely following it, they will at least control your information at minimum.
10:00Costly commitment.
10:02I know so many people that would have such better lives if they had not joined the cult
10:09that we escaped.
10:10And the cult did not demand a lot of money.
10:12They did the 10% tithe like they do in most of the Pentecostal style groups.
10:18However, there were people who would donate above and beyond this.
10:22And nobody was really saving for retirement.
10:24Because why would you?
10:25If doomsday is at hand, you don't need your money to retire.
10:28Let's just spend it frivolously.
10:31Let's give it all to the cult, whatever.
10:34Prophecy and revisions of prophecy.
10:37And that turns into a circle of reasoning.
10:40So in the slide, you can see the circle around the calendar.
10:44Well, what happens is a date prediction is issued.
10:47And without fail, the date prediction will fail.
10:52If that's a play on words, I guess.
10:54What happens is it creates a cycle.
10:56The doomsday date fails, the group regroups, and then they choose the next one.
11:02So we were looking for this doomsday.
11:03It didn't happen.
11:05Let's recalculate.
11:06And that's really the sad part about this.
11:09You get stuck into the cycle that you just can never break out of.
11:13Once you do it the second time, once you refocus a doomsday prediction the second time,
11:19what happens is now you have set a pattern and a precedent.
11:22So when that one fails, well, let's just refocus again.
11:26So these are just nine of, you can find lists out there.
11:29There are several different lists of ways in which you can determine, is this a doomsday
11:35cult?
11:37When I left the doomsday cult that we left, the Branamite doomsday cult, the message of
11:42the hour, they call it, I started thinking through this because this is a significant
11:47problem when you compare it with the history of Pentecostalism.
11:52And you cannot help but ask the question, was Pentecostalism a doomsday cult?
11:59And I'm going to raise that question here, and I'm going to give you all of the paths
12:05of reasoning that I went down.
12:06I'll let you come to your own conclusion.
12:08But what I found was this, early Pentecostalism did not really match the way that it was presented
12:16in the circles that we were in, and we were a extremist group of Pentecostalism.
12:22So most Pentecostals today, those who are favorable of the Pentecostal movement, would say that
12:28Branamism went off into extremism.
12:30He went off into a cult.
12:32Many of them will actually declare him a cult leader.
12:36Not all of them will declare him a doomsday cult leader because some of the groups share
12:43many similarities.
12:45And how can you not?
12:47There are things like end-time fixation.
12:51If you read the Bible, and you understand what the Bible is saying about the return of
12:55Jesus, you are to look for the return of Jesus every day.
12:59But it's the fixation part that is the issue.
13:02It's a very fine line that you walk between end-time fixation and being in a doomsday cult.
13:09I had a friend that would say that these people are so heavenly-minded that they're no earthly
13:13good, and you have another category of people that are so earthly-minded that they're no heavenly
13:18good.
13:18And this meant simply that you need to walk down the middle.
13:21You don't need to go to either extreme.
13:23And I think that's actually a good philosophy.
13:26And you can use that criteria by itself.
13:28If they're fully focused on the end of the world so much that they're letting their house
13:34go to ruin, they're not saving for retirement, they're not planning, they're just living in
13:39limbo, you can tell that they're in the mindset of a doomsday group.
13:43And that's really, really sad when you think about it, because these people could be enjoying
13:48their lives, and yet they're forfeiting their life thinking that at any minute it will end.
13:54On the other hand, if you are walking down the middle of the road, you don't think of
13:58life like this.
14:00Instead, you think, well, it could happen, but I'm going to prepare so that if it doesn't
14:05happen, I'm prepared.
14:06I'm going to continue living my life, and I'll live a good, happy, healthy life.
14:11I've mentioned Frank Sanford quite a bit in my research, and there's actually a reason
14:15why, because as I was going through this exercise trying to determine, is Pentecostalism a doomsday
14:22cult, I started looking to see, well, who were the direct influencers of Pentecostalism,
14:27and did they have a doomsday focus?
14:30Frank Sanford is one of the first that I came across, and his group was one of the
14:35not-failed-but-the-succeeded doomsday cults, in that his group succeeded in creating their
14:43own scenario in which many people died, and you can read some of that research in some
14:48of my publications or online, but Frank Sanford had a doomsday cult, and when I began studying
14:55Pentecostalism, and I learned that Charles Fox Parham, who was by all accounts the father
15:01of modern Pentecostalism, even William Joseph Seymour in the first newsletter, he said Parham
15:07is the father of this movement.
15:09When I found out that he went to visit Frank Sanford's commune and learn from Frank Sanford,
15:16I started thinking critically about this and realizing that this just isn't right.
15:22Picture a world in baseball where you have somebody who wants to play baseball and is
15:27kind of good at it, and they're holding a bat and swinging, and they're able to hit the
15:32ball, but their technique just isn't quite right.
15:33They can't hit it as far as they want, and they hear some guy way across to the other side
15:39of the nation who holds his bat upside down and decides, that's the guy that I want to
15:46go see, the guy who holds his baseball bat upside down.
15:49Well, that's the same thing if you compare baseball to Christianity, that is the same
15:54exact thing that happened here.
15:56Charles Fox Parham heard about this guy that had a strong doomsday focus, insomuch that people
16:02were joining into his commune and giving their entire life savings, and everything about it
16:07was anti-gospel and flipped upside down.
16:10Parham says, that's the guy I want to go learn from.
16:13And then he goes to another, John Alexander Dowie.
16:17Both of these guys had a doomsday focus.
16:20Now, Sanford's was more explicit.
16:22They had all the way down, a prediction all the way down to the minute, and they were supposed
16:27to go up to the housetops, and they were supposed to be prepared because at this exact moment,
16:35I think it was 10, 20, and 30 seconds a.m., if I remember correctly, September 1909, that
16:42was the end of the world, and then it didn't happen.
16:46That's one of the guys that Charles Fox Parham went to visit.
16:49Well, he also went to John Alexander Dowie, and here's another guy who held his baseball
16:54bat upside down.
16:56People were coming by hundreds of people coming into Zion City, Illinois, and they would give
17:03their entire life savings to join into a healing home and be healed, and they began in Chicago,
17:09actually were almost ejected from Chicago, but had grown so large as a cult that they
17:16annexed Zion City, Illinois, and people were signing up for thousand-year leases because
17:22the idea was, according to John Dowie, in a hundred years, we will see the return of
17:29Christ, and if you get a thousand-year lease, it's as long as you ever need, and so he was
17:33selling people thousand-year leases, which is kind of crazy.
17:37So he's holding his baseball bat upside down, and Charles Fox Parham, the father of modern
17:42Pentecostalism, says, I want to play baseball like these guys.
17:45They hold their bats upside down, and he goes to see them.
17:49Well, that's how, I know that's absurd, and I'm laughing, I'm mocking, I shouldn't be,
17:54because it's the sad truth.
17:57There were people who did not understand the gospel or the reason that Jesus came, so much
18:04so that people were dying.
18:05In both accounts, people were dying.
18:08So as I began the process of evaluating, was modern Pentecostalism actually a doomsday
18:13cult?
18:14The other thing I had to look at was the doctrine.
18:16And I know that this is a historical podcast, I try to avoid doctrine, but when you're thinking
18:23historically on a Christian religious group, especially those with a doomsday focus, you
18:28have to some extent delve into the doctrine, and specifically you have to look at the apocalyptic
18:34streams.
18:35So I have just listed on the screen here, if you're watching the video version of this,
18:42I've listed six streams of influence, and yes, some of them may not have been influencers
18:48that modern Pentecostals would consider significant.
18:52But remember that modern Pentecostalism from its inception was a blend of cross-pollination
18:59of ideas.
19:00It becomes questionable as to was there a core doctrine, because the way that it spread,
19:06where a Pentecostal evangelist would go into a different sect and try to convert that sect
19:12into Pentecostalism, or go into a holiness sect and try to adopt them as Pentecostal, all
19:19of the streams of influence for each sect that they visited was coming into the modern Pentecostal
19:25movement.
19:25So you have people like William Miller, who is the indirect Adventist background for the
19:31group, he expected Christ's visible return, and there would be a resurrection, judgment,
19:38and the purification of the earth.
19:40So he had a doomsday date.
19:42Some of the other apocalyptic streams would not be considered doomsday groups, because
19:48they did not really have a doomsday date, but they did have direct doomsday focus and
19:54influence.
19:55Edward Irving, he did not have a date, but he linked restored prophecy, healing tongues,
20:01and the apostles' preparation for Christ's return.
20:05I believe it was towards his death.
20:07He may not have been directly involved in creating that doctrine, but because of Irving,
20:12we have that doctrine.
20:13John Nelson Darby, also indirect, pre-millennial influence.
20:18He did not have a date, but he systemized the imminent coming.
20:22So you had the tribulation, Christ's public return, and the millennium with Darby's influence.
20:28And obviously, Darby had the dispensational ideas that really built the platform and framework
20:35for this.
20:36Charles Taze Russell, you have to think of him a little bit outside of the group.
20:40He was a contemporary.
20:41But remember, again, there were apocalyptic streams coming into modern Pentecostalism.
20:52So you can say that he was a cross-pollinated influence, but he expected the Gentile rule
21:04to end, and the world kingdoms would fall, God's kingdom would be established, and that
21:09created the sect that exists today.
21:13Dwight Moody, revivalist background.
21:17He is another one that had no date, but it was an imminent return.
21:21And this was a strong influence on evangelical Christianity.
21:25In other words, they were saying that it is imminent.
21:29We don't know the date, but we must be active in evangelizing so that we can create the scenario
21:36that will enable Christ's return.
21:39If you follow what is taught out to its logical conclusion, it was an action that you must
21:44do, and that spread the evangelical themes.
21:47R.A.
21:48Torrey, higher life background, taught the spirit baptism.
21:51This was definitely an influence on Pentecostalism, but he was teaching that the spirit baptism
21:58was power for this evangelism, so you could combine that with the Dwight Moody stream, and
22:03he expected Christ's return also without setting a date.
22:07But as you can see, each one of these had a similar focus.
22:11Maybe they weren't destructive.
22:12Maybe they were.
22:13Some of them were, definitely.
22:14But when you think of these streams, you've got this stream of apocalyptic influence that's
22:21coming into the Pentecostal movement, and it does have an effect.
22:25I know that by now, many of you are asking the same question that I asked myself as I
22:29was going through this.
22:31Well, how really does that differ from Christianity in general?
22:35Take people like Billy Graham.
22:37Billy Graham teaches that Christ's return is imminent, and he doesn't set a date.
22:42Does that mean that he is a doomsday preacher?
22:45And in my opinion, I would say no, although there are some other issues with Billy Graham
22:50that we've done, we've covered in our research.
22:53But Billy Graham did not set a date.
22:56It was not imminent.
22:57He said that biblical signs suggested Christ's return could be near.
23:01But he is one of the people who warned against setting a date, and to my knowledge, he never
23:06actually set one.
23:07I would not consider him as doomsday focused.
23:10From what I have heard of Billy Graham, he was one of the ministers who preached that
23:15Christ could return, but we should live our lives as though we may live it until we die.
23:21Tim LaHaye.
23:22He's another person who gets into the questionable scenario, but he popularized this rapture to
23:29millennium sequence.
23:30And for people who are unaware who he is, think left behind in the left behind series.
23:37He's one of the people who definitely had an influence into modern charismatic movement
23:42with the imminent return doomsday focused themes.
23:47But I would not consider him really a doomsday preacher.
23:50He just popularized the framework for a rapture to millennium sequence.
23:54And he also rejected the day and hour calculations.
23:58But think about the framework that these two men have developed, which could be easily incorporated
24:04into a group that is destructive.
24:07Christ's return is imminent, says Billy Graham.
24:09We're going to imminently have a rapture, and we will soon see the millennium, says Tim LaHaye.
24:15Hal Lindsey.
24:15I would never call Hal Lindsey a doomsday preacher, but think about the flames that he
24:20began to fan when he said, this is the generation.
24:24Beginning with Israel in 1948, we could witness the culmination of the end times.
24:29That was exactly what was taught in the doomsday cult that I was in.
24:32We began with 1948.
24:34That's when the so-called angel visited the so-called preacher, the doomsday leader, William
24:40Branham.
24:41And we believe that that was the generation.
24:44I grew up with my parents telling me, this is for our generation.
24:48We're the ones to see it.
24:49That's exactly how Hal Lindsey was teaching.
24:52But he is another person who did not have a doomsday date, no exact day for this rapture.
24:57But he did set a time period, so it actually puts him in the gray category.
25:02John Hagee.
25:03He's one in a long line of men and women who I would consider to be an indirect doomsday
25:10preacher.
25:11And what does that mean?
25:12It means that this is a person who is afraid to say, I'm going to tell you when the end
25:16is near, but instead, I'm going to indirectly tell you when the end is near.
25:21He started suggesting that the 2014 to 2015 blood moons signaled a world-changing event
25:29involving Israel.
25:31And yes, you can say, well, that's not a doomsday prediction, but think about all of the other
25:35doctrines that he's teaching that involve Israel.
25:38If you understand what the man is saying, he's saying that it is doomsday, but he's not going
25:42to come out and tell you that between 2014 and 2015, we're going to see the end of days.
25:48He indirectly says it so that he comes out unscathed.
25:53Jack Van Impey.
25:54As you can see, according to the chart, if you're watching the visuals, you can see that
25:59this is edging closer and closer and closer towards a doomsday cult.
26:03I would not say that he's a doomsday cult leader, but think of the repeated projected windows
26:08in which the rapture, the end time sequence is coming near.
26:12This is a man who's just literally crying.
26:14The end is nigh.
26:15The end is nigh.
26:16The end is nigh.
26:16But he's not standing out with a picketed sign on the street corner saying the end of
26:22the world is near and wearing these strange clothes.
26:25But he has popularized the idea that we should think of the world as coming to an end soon.
26:31So as you can see, there is a fine line that you walk between what is Christianity and what
26:37is a doomsday cult.
26:39Very, very fine line.
26:40And in fact, if you are in the evangelical crowd or you are in the Pentecostal charismatic
26:45crowd, you're thinking, well, I didn't hear anything wrong with what these guys are saying.
26:50They're just preaching that Jesus is coming soon.
26:53The end is near.
26:55But it's not quite that simple.
26:56As you can see, there's a scale.
26:58And that last slide, for those of you that are viewing, you got to witness that scale
27:03as it's edging from healthy towards very unhealthy.
27:08Doomsday focus.
27:09The end is near.
27:10What happens is when you teach it like this, even if your intentions are correct, even if
27:15you have good intentions and you're not trying to create a cult, you have people who really
27:20don't understand the theology enough to know that what you're trying to say is just simply
27:24Jesus is coming, but they take it a step further because they're in the congregation and they
27:29start to connect the dots.
27:31When you're talking about apocalyptic themes, they start to connect political events to the
27:36apocalyptic themes, or they start to connect things that are happening that just makes
27:41them uncomfortable.
27:42This is a very sad world we live in.
27:44I'm so glad that the end is near.
27:46And then you stop living in the world that's around you.
27:50I believe sincerely that each one of these people, if they were to, instead of framing
27:56it the way that they are framing it, the end might be near would be a better way to say
28:01it, but simply teach it like this.
28:04The end might be near, but you really need to do good in this life because your children
28:09may still be here.
28:11And we don't know when it is coming, but let's make a better world for your children to live
28:16in.
28:17Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of
28:22modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe
28:28movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
28:30You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
28:38On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles
28:43Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio,
28:50and digital versions of each book.
28:52You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
28:58movements.
28:58If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute
29:04button at the top.
29:05And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
29:10to or watching.
29:11On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
29:16I was 37 years old before I left the Doomsday Cult following William Branham, and I'll never
29:22forget thinking when I left, how did this happen to me?
29:26I'm a smart person.
29:27I had no idea what they did and how and why, but I looked at myself as the problem.
29:34I should have known better than all of this.
29:37But then, years later, I started to realize that it wasn't really me, and there were some
29:43other smart people in the group.
29:44There were doctors and attorneys, and like me, there were several IT people.
29:49There were really intelligent people in it.
29:51So, I started to look beyond that and try to understand what happened to us and why.
29:59And interestingly, it kind of fell into my lap by happenstance, but I started to notice
30:05the system.
30:06I was looking, sadly, at just the religion itself, at the central figure, thinking that,
30:13how did this country bumpkin, or this, I guess I should say this person who pretended to
30:18be a country bumpkin, how did he convince everybody to get this doomsday mindset that
30:24we had?
30:25And I came to realize that it wasn't him.
30:28It was the system, and it took a lot of moving parts to make this happen.
30:32So, for those of us who were intelligent, who were in the group, we didn't really stand
30:38a chance, because they used technology against this, although it was, you know, older technology.
30:44They used strategy.
30:45They used psychology.
30:46There were so many different elements to it.
30:49And it got to the point where I began to realize that this problem predated what I was
30:56in, but then it accelerated quickly from the group that I was in because of the latter rain
31:03movement, and just to give an example, and I'll throw it up here on the screen, this
31:08apocalyptic influence in charismatic culture is the slide that I've called it.
31:14Branham was influential to what happened in the charismatic movement, but in ways that
31:20many people don't think about.
31:22For example, whenever you think of William Branham and you're a historian and you say
31:27he was a doomsday prophet, you say 1977, because this was the date that he declared that by
31:34revelation, by divine inspiration from God, he said, that the world would end and he could
31:39see nothing past.
31:41When it failed, his following said, well, he predicted it.
31:44He did not actually prophesy this.
31:46And what they actually gave was a way that they could divert the focus of attention from the
31:54fact that this was a failed doomsday prediction and try to create the element of confusion.
32:01I guess that's the best way to put it.
32:03But when I started to examine that confusion, I realized that 1977 wasn't the first time that
32:09he did this.
32:10You can go all the way back.
32:12He's got dates from 1948, 1954 through 56, 1962, 1975.
32:21Literally, any moment that you can scare the people into thinking the world is going to
32:26end, give me your money.
32:27That's what Branham did.
32:29And he was not the only one to do this.
32:32But the point I want to make is he died in 1965.
32:36He carried, he planted the seeds that carried expectations of doomsday forward.
32:42And these multiple times that he predicted that the world would end, people just wanted
32:48to refocus.
32:49Okay, that prediction failed.
32:51What is the next calculation?
32:53What's the next one after this and the next one after this?
32:56And it wasn't until I discovered the Christian identity research that I've been doing, it wasn't
33:02until I discovered that Gordon Lindsay was highly influential in the Christian identity
33:06world, and Lindsay was using the same types of strategies.
33:11You can open up the early editions of Voice of Healing, and you'll find Gordon Lindsay is
33:17predicting dates and running math and statistics and calculations and world history and trying
33:23to combine it into this theme that says the apocalypse is upon us.
33:28Where it got scary is when those two people connected, now you have two people doing it, and they
33:35created a network of people who are doing it.
33:38Gordon Lindsay went on to found the Christ for the Nations Institute, and he trained people
33:43how to do this.
33:44Maybe not in the same way, his doomsday prediction seems to have faded out in the 50s or 60s,
33:51but he carried the theme of influence that we should focus on the apocalypse forward.
33:57The reason I say this is if you look at the charismatic movement, as it went into the charismatic
34:03networks, you had themes that were being published in books and articles and charts.
34:10Dispensationalism was making its way into the culture, and this turned into a cultural problem
34:16for the charismatic movement.
34:18There was a period of time where leaders of the charismatic movement were not using date
34:26focus, but were instead using apocalyptic focus.
34:29And that focus made its way into the publication, the education, missionaries going out into
34:36the field, these healing evangelists.
34:38Christ for the Nations Institute was not teaching people how to predict doomsday dates, but they
34:44were teaching people how to focus on the end times and to specifically focus so much intently
34:52on the end times that you kind of started to lose focus of the reality.
34:56And we've covered that in the podcast that I'm doing with Pia Hugo and I.
35:01Once you lose touch with reality and you get into the spiritual warfare realm, you start
35:07to see things like witches flying around Airbnbs that just simply aren't there.
35:11I'm going to tell people they simply are not there.
35:14But it all starts with this that I'm talking about here.
35:18Once you have that focus and you start publishing education manuals, bringing students in, well, they
35:25think that this is real.
35:26This is this must be real.
35:28We must focus on the end times.
35:30So Christ for the Nations Institute isn't a doomsday cult.
35:34I'm not saying this at all.
35:35But they carried forward the legacy of Gordon Lindsay, who also was carrying forward the
35:41legacy that he worked with Branham.
35:43And many of those themes he was carrying forward.
35:46Branham after Branham died, Lindsay was publishing books.
35:49Will Elijah come again?
35:51Because the movement referred to William Branham as the Elijah of this day.
35:56Well, that theme, once Branham was removed from that picture, the theme and focus and intent
36:02on the apocalyptic conclusion of the world is still kind of there.
36:08And the reason I say that is go forward just a bit and look at the charismatic voices that
36:14are coming across the broadcasts and television books.
36:18You've got David Wilkerson, 1973, The Vision.
36:21He's talking about the economic, social, environmental, and religious upheaval.
36:27And again, there is no exact return date in this book, but it's talking about the apocalypse.
36:34So people are focusing on the apocalypse.
36:37In 1982, Pat Robertson told his CBN contributors that God has assigned to CBN in these last days
36:45a ministry of John the Baptist to prepare the way for Jesus' second coming.
36:50So 1982, everybody's thinking this is it.
36:53They're going to, at CBN, dedicate the ministry of the second John the Baptist.
36:59And this was, he was quoting a prophecy about him from another person.
37:03But it continued in 1984, he continued to develop that theme.
37:09And people were thinking, this is the end time.
37:11We are seeing the last days and CBN is going to have the main guy.
37:16What's really interesting about this is he had taken that almost directly out of Branham's
37:20playbook.
37:21Branham told his followers that God had declared from the heavens that this is my beloved prophet,
37:27hear ye him.
37:28He's coming to, like John the Baptist, pave the way for the second coming.
37:32So although Pat Robertson, I don't think he said it was him himself, he was declaring
37:37that CBN is going to produce the guy.
37:40And you continue forward, Chuck Smith.
37:43Chuck Smith, he wrote a book, I think it's called Future Survival.
37:47And in this, he anticipated that the rapture would happen before 1981.
37:53So you have these charismatic voices that are all declaring the end is coming right here,
38:00right now.
38:01But then it doesn't happen.
38:03And the problem is, they're just some of the voices.
38:07There are multiple voices doing the same thing.
38:10So people think that this is a normal thing.
38:13As I mentioned earlier, the baseball bat, you go to see the guy who's playing baseball with
38:18his bat upside down.
38:19Well, now it has become part of the culture that everybody holds their bat upside down.
38:24This must be normal to hold your bat upside down.
38:27And for me, I just took a step back and I looked at the system because this system was
38:35breeding this type of mentality.
38:37We must be certain about the end, but we must also have a leader who can tell us everything about
38:45the end.
38:45We must have a leader who is in direct communication with God and they know the answers.
38:50And for me, that is the biggest problem.
38:53People say that I'm out to get Chuck Smith whenever I mention his name.
38:57But if you think about what Chuck Smith is doing, it's no different than the others.
39:02They're all doing the same problem.
39:05They're trying to be more than they are.
39:07They're trying to be the answer to the people.
39:10And the problem is when you're doing this, you have to make stuff up because you're not
39:15the answer to the people.
39:16And for me, that is problematic.
39:18Why would you even want to do this?
39:20And I'm not just picking on the Pentecostal charismatic movement.
39:24This goes much broader.
39:26If you look in evangelical culture, look at Hal Lindsey.
39:30Hal Lindsey in the great planet Earth in 1970, he started connecting the same dots that
39:37were connected in the Pentecostal charismatic movement.
39:40He said the theme of 1948 as Israel's nation is being born, he said, now we're in the final
39:47generation.
39:48So while he did not have maybe a date prediction like some of the others that we've been talking
39:53about, he put it into a unit of time, which is still the same type of problem.
39:59We're in this last day's unit of time and you just can't do this.
40:04Why would you come up with this type of answer?
40:06What happens when you're wrong?
40:08That's the thing that none of these guys think about.
40:12The problem is whenever you combine all of the voices that are saying, this is it, this
40:17is the big one, this is the time that we are at the end, it starts to create a cultural
40:23pathway that evangelical society, charismatic society, Pentecostal society, they can all feed
40:30off of each other.
40:31And as I've mentioned, there are multiple streams that lead to this problem, but it began in
40:38my opinion with dispensational millennialism, Israel, the rapture, tribulation, the second
40:44coming.
40:45Once you start down the pathway of creating these themes that we can connect the dots between
40:50our generation and Israel's generation.
40:53And we can then predict when the rapture is coming, the tribulation is coming.
40:58We can throw all these charts out there that look like we're intelligent people.
41:03There are people who think you are intelligent and think you're intelligently or divinely inspired
41:09when you create these charts and maps and graphs.
41:12I'll guarantee you that's why Gordon Lindsay put the charts in The Voice of Healing.
41:16Once you see a chart, you're thinking, okay, this person has really thought this through
41:20or he's been divinely inspired to think this through.
41:24They must be correct.
41:26And that's really the problem here.
41:28Let's just follow the pathway down from one single person in the 80s who had his baseball
41:34bat upside down, Edgar Weisenau.
41:37If you follow this pathway from dispensational millennialism, go through Hal Lindsey, his
41:44mass marketing of his prophecy that we're in the final generation, people begin to build
41:50on this.
41:51Take it through Chuck Smith, Colin Deal, others.
41:54Chuck Smith came from the Lateran movement.
41:57The Lateran movement had the same type of focus on Israel from 1948.
42:01He already had that expectation.
42:04When this book comes out, I don't know if he read it or not, but if he did, it's compatible
42:09with what he's saying because it's part of the cultural system.
42:14We have a cultural system to predict doomsday.
42:17Once you set that expectation and then you have multiple voices who may not even be directly
42:24influenced.
42:25There's no proven direct influence of any of these people that I'm talking about, but you
42:30can see how the pathway goes.
42:32Edgar Weisenau, he started saying that in 1988, this is when the end is going to come.
42:38So he came in a breeding ground of end day prophecy from the 80s and says 1988 is it.
42:46Well, once this happens, it goes into publication and distribution and he starts to sell more than
42:533.2 million copies distributed all throughout the Christian world.
42:59And then later in wider circulation, Christian bookstores pick it up.
43:03Churches begin to discuss it.
43:05Religious networks begin to broadcast it.
43:07This becomes a widespread problem.
43:10And again, you can't point it to any single individual.
43:15This is a problem that they all should take ownership of because it's flowing through their
43:21voices.
43:22They're all voices in the same type of culture.
43:25Lester Summerall, he's a separate Pentecostal stream.
43:28He's in an apocalyptic stream, but he's voicing many of the same themes.
43:32And if you go to my Jim Jones research, you'll find his name is right there in the culmination
43:39of what would eventually lead to Jim Jones joining into the latter rain movement.
43:43Jones is another person who obviously had a doomsday prediction, and he is one who had
43:49a climactic doomsday with his Jonestown massacre.
43:53So this is a systematic problem.
43:55It's not that I'm pointing out any individual, but this is a huge, huge problem.
44:01Here's where it gets just a little scary.
44:03One thing I noticed about these doomsday predictions, when a person predicts a doomsday date, the movement
44:10actually grows just a little bit bigger.
44:12What happens is the person predicts doomsday, and there will be people who disagree with
44:18it, and it'll cause a schism, and you'll see a splinter group break off of the main
44:22trunk.
44:23Well, that splinter group will grow and develop, but because it is part of the same system,
44:29they repeat the same patterns.
44:31And as those patterns repeat, either with the person who broke off initially or with some
44:36of their descendants, what you end up with is eventually an apocalyptic focus.
44:41And when that apocalyptic focus continues to develop, it eventually will breed somebody
44:47new who predicts another doomsday date.
44:50In other words, you will have a new doomsday cult.
44:53So Pentecostalism, as we've mentioned in the previous podcasts, and partially in this
44:58one, it evolved because of doomsday predictions.
45:02But then at the Azusa Street Revival, there were many prophecies about the imminent doomsday.
45:07You can read through that in the newspapers.
45:09There's documents and books about this.
45:11So when the Latter Rain movement developed, it developed off of the main trunk of Pentecostalism,
45:18and it caused such a schism that the Assemblies of God denounced the whole Latter Rain movement.
45:23So then birthed the post-World War II healing revival.
45:27Gordon Lindsay, William Branham, the voice of healing, well, that developed into Latter Rain
45:33restorationism.
45:351948, this is it.
45:36Restored apostles and prophets, laying on of hands, in-time harvest.
45:40All of these themes are culminating into an apocalypse that is about to happen.
45:47And then, because of that, and largely because of Voice of Healing, suddenly you had these
45:53transmission networks.
45:55You had independent charismatic ministries who were either receiving the publication or
46:01the literature or the books or just simply went to one of the revivals and heard one of
46:06the revivalists.
46:06They started to transmit, and it started to evolve into this network of people who had
46:14apocalyptic focus.
46:16What's really interesting is when C. Peter Wagner branded it the New Apostolic Reformation,
46:22that's the part that he left out.
46:23He said, we have these themes already.
46:26And he said, this isn't something new.
46:28It's not something I have created.
46:30It's just something that I'm noticing.
46:32But he failed to notice the most significant element of it, and that is the doomsday focus
46:37or the apocalyptic focus.
46:39They were focused on the end time.
46:41The end time was imminent.
46:42And that was actually what was being transmitted through all of these networks.
46:46So, Wagner branded it the New Apostolic Reformation.
46:50He started networking with contemporary apostles and prophets who had the same ideology.
46:57In other words, they all had this focus on the coming apocalypse.
47:02Were they doomsday cults?
47:04Were they doomsday prophets?
47:05Not necessarily.
47:06But they're part of the system that breeds this type of thing because it does have the
47:13doomsday focus.
47:14So, because of all of that, you begin to see all these NAR-associated themes coming into
47:20the movement, many of which were replicated across all of the networks that had evolved
47:27from a doomsday-themed cult.
47:30Make no mistake, Branhamism was at the core of this, and Branhamism was a doomsday-focused
47:36cult.
47:37Gordon Lindsay was platforming him.
47:39He was taking him to voice of healing conventions that would eventually develop into Christ for
47:44the Nations.
47:44They were networking large groups of people, many of which were evangelists and ministers,
47:50who would carry back those doomsday themes that Branham was presenting to their churches.
47:56Were they all doomsday cults?
47:58Not necessarily.
47:59But those apocalyptic themes that flowed from the doomsday cult was actually flowing into
48:05the churches.
48:07So, again, when you see Peter Wagner, he's noticing all of this network, but because he
48:13himself is part of the system that has the apocalyptic focus, he doesn't recognize the
48:18dangers of that network.
48:20That's really the problem here.
48:22There's danger in the water, but people were continuing to swim.
48:26So, think of how all of that began to evolve and began to transform itself into what we see
48:32today.
48:33All these NAR-associated themes, the fresh revelation, apostolic government, the territorial
48:40spiritual warfare, all of these things began to combine with all of the apocalyptic focus
48:47from the previous decades of people, and suddenly you have an imminent catastrophe.
48:53We must have an apostolic government.
48:56We must have these spiritual warriors to fight the spiritual warfare because it is imminent.
49:02We must have a way of escape.
49:09So, what you're actually seeing when you look at the New Apostolic Reformation, you're seeing
49:14the stages of development of a doomsday cult when it gets to the point where it is in crisis
49:21mode, and that crisis mode is the scariest part.
49:24When people start to fear the end is coming, the end is near, the end is closing in on us.
49:30That's the point where it gets into very critical states.
49:34People start to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do and say things they wouldn't ordinarily say
49:39because catastrophe is imminent.
49:42We see the world is closing in on us.
49:44What do we do?
49:45We must have a way of escape.
49:47And if you go back through time and you look at the different types of doomsday cults,
49:52I mentioned earlier you had the failed doomsday cult.
49:56That's the one that if you have to pick one, you want to be in that.
49:59Or the successful doomsday cult, that's the one that has the climactic event.
50:04Those who were successful in creating their own climactic event did so because they felt
50:11like the world was closing in on them.
50:13The end of time was closing in on them and they had to have an immediate way of escape.
50:18How else do you escape?
50:20But through things that are just so problematic, I won't even mention on this podcast.
50:26It is some scary stuff.
50:27It really, really is some scary stuff.
50:30With that type of mentality, suddenly you have to have what we see in the New Apostolic Reformation
50:37today.
50:38You must have activation.
50:40The end is coming.
50:41Oh my gosh, what do we do?
50:43We must have a way of escape.
50:44We must suddenly activate.
50:47How do you do this?
50:48In what way do you do this?
50:49That's one of the things that really sets the New Apostolic Reformation apart from some
50:55of the other doomsday focus groups in the past.
50:58We have imminent catastrophe.
51:01The world is closing in on us.
51:02But think of the themes that flow through NAR today.
51:06We must have spiritual warfare because the world is closing in on us.
51:10The end of time is approaching.
51:11We must claim dominion because the end of time is coming.
51:15We must do something.
51:17We must be activated.
51:18We must prepare for the kingdom because the end of time is nigh.
51:23We must be activated.
51:25When you combine all of those elements, what you have is the recipe for disaster because
51:29people take things to extremes that they never would if they did not feel cornered.
51:35That really is the problem here.
51:37There are people who simply feel cornered because they have this system in their programmed in
51:43their indoctrinated minds and in their indoctrinated minds, they have to have a way of escape.
51:49Some people will go to the extent, well, what about the leader?
51:52Suddenly this leader is falling to sexual sin or immorality, whatever it is.
51:57Oh, no, I'm unprepared.
51:59The world is coming to an end.
52:01What do I do?
52:02Where do I go?
52:03I must activate even further.
52:04And you have a new breed of people who emerge from this.
52:08So what happens is that mentality, that system flowing through all of these stages of history
52:14that I've talked about leads people into a level of insanity.
52:18And that's what we're dealing with.
52:20That's why you see things like Charisma magazine focusing on star gods, the coming alien invasion.
52:28And people think, well, that's wild.
52:30That's new.
52:30That's crazy.
52:31But if you go back into Gordon Lindsay's years in the latter rain years, they were publishing
52:36things about the UFOs in much the same way.
52:39It's a level of insanity.
52:41They're focused on trying to understand how the world is coming to an end so that they
52:46can accurately predict it to people and keep the people where they have a means to escape.
52:52And they themselves don't even know that they're wrapped up in this apocalyptic mindset.
52:56It is a level of insanity.
52:59So hopefully this clears up why some of the insanity exists in the minds of the people.
53:06I went through all of this.
53:08These were many, many stages of research for me.
53:11I went through all of this just simply trying to unravel what was in my head so I didn't
53:17feel like I was programmed with insanity.
53:20Because I will assure you, once you're in this apocalyptic mindset for any period of
53:25time, you're going to start to feel crazy.
53:28And you're going to say and you're going to do crazy things because you feel like the
53:33world is closing in on you.
53:34You have no help.
53:35You have no answer.
53:36For me, I took my family out of that.
53:39I transplanted it into a church that we had never heard the gospel once, not one single
53:46time.
53:46For 37 years, I was in the Branham religion.
53:50But we did hear this doomsday focus continually.
53:53Once we got away from the doomsday focus and once we just simply heard the gospel in its
53:59simplicity, much of that unraveled for me.
54:02I started to look at the world much differently.
54:06It was instead of a message of, oh my gosh, the world is about to end.
54:11Jesus is about to come.
54:12Am I ready?
54:13That type of fear tactic that they throw at you.
54:17It instead become, how do I make the world a better place?
54:20How do I love my neighbor better than I did today?
54:23How do I make this a place that my kids will grow up and have nice, healthy lives?
54:29Your focus changes.
54:31And that mentality that you were indoctrinated with can change.
54:34But you've got to pull yourself out of that.
54:37So hopefully I've said something that can pull somebody out of that.
54:42If you've enjoyed the show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
54:45You can find us at william-branham.org.
54:48For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion
54:52from Christian Identity to the NAR.
54:55Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
55:24To be continued...