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William Branham Historical Research
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John and Bob ask a provocative question: Do Christians still need prophets? They trace the role of prophets from the ancient world through biblical history, the early church, the Reformation, and the development of modern prophetic movements. Along the way, they examine why ancient societies looked to people claiming to speak for God and how access to information has dramatically changed the questions people once expected prophets to answer.

John and Bob also compare biblical prophecy with modern personal prophecy, discussing prophets, seers, apostles, spiritual insight, and the desire for secret knowledge. Their conversation challenges the idea that believers must depend on a special religious figure to hear from God and asks whether today's prophetic ministry resembles the biblical models it claims to follow.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction
02:35 How Columbine Shaped a Generation of Christian Youth
06:33 Fear, Martyrdom, and Religious Indoctrination
11:16 The Psychological Pressure to Become a Martyr
16:00 Mental Health, Spiritual Warfare, and Joel's Army
22:29 Lou Engle, IHOPKC, and the Chosen Generation
30:57 The Repeating Promise of End-Times Revival
38:07 Charlie Kirk and the Return of Martyrdom Rhetoric
43:38 The Lifelong Consequences of Religious Intensity
49:38 The Leaders Move On, but the Children Carry the Cost
54:33 Financial Sacrifice, Missionary Calling, and Accountability
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Learning
Transcript
00:00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:35I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder
00:00:46of the Kansas City Fellowship and the author of three books, the latest is Some Said They
00:00:50Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, The Kansas City Prophets, and
00:00:54The International House of Prayer.
00:00:56Bob, it's good to be back and to be controversial.
00:01:01It's good to be controversial, huh?
00:01:04We have so many topics that, you know, I choose you for the controversial ones, but interestingly,
00:01:10the one that I'm doing today, I've been wanting to talk about this for a while because I do
00:01:16these episodes by myself where I bring in all of these different moving parts, pieces
00:01:20of the puzzle, and it's a connect-the-dots episode usually when I do it by myself, but
00:01:26this one really needs a second set of ears on it and a balance of discussion.
00:01:32So I'm glad that you picked this topic, but I will, I'll preface with this.
00:01:37I've been looking at many different streams of what ended up to develop into the prophetic
00:01:42movement, and a lot of times I'll put somebody's face on the website or on a podcast or video
00:01:48or whatever, and I'll get this outcry of people who are saying, no, you can't connect
00:01:54him to these people, but there's a reason for that.
00:01:58There is a mindset that developed long before the histories we're talking about, 1800s-ish,
00:02:04that continued to grow and develop, and it created a mindset that was quite different
00:02:11than what the Bible actually says, and I say this not as a theologian, but whenever I left
00:02:17the movement, I read the Bible over and over and over again, and there were things that
00:02:21you just don't pick up until you read it in the full context of what it's saying, and
00:02:26I'll give you an example of this.
00:02:27I grew up in a world that was in the Branham movement, which that's off to the side.
00:02:34But Branham was the foremost leader of the post-World War II healing revival, so you
00:02:39had all of these people who were coming into this movement listening to him as though what
00:02:43he says has authority, has value, and like many Pentecostals, he would take one single
00:02:51verse, and he would read it and preach on it and forget all of the rest of the context
00:02:56of the scripture.
00:02:57One of those that he talked about the most was this.
00:02:59Hebrews 1.1 says, God in sundry times and diverse manners, reading in the King James
00:03:04Version, spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets, and then he'd go off into
00:03:11this tangent about how powerful the prophets are and how he was the ultimate one, ignoring
00:03:16the next sentence, which says, in these last days is spoken to us by Jesus Christ.
00:03:21So there's a clear separation.
00:03:22Here's prophets in the past, and now we have Jesus, we have the gospel.
00:03:27So Hebrews, for me, was eye-opening to read it in context, not just the context of the
00:03:32scripture, which is important, don't get me wrong, but reading it under the context of
00:03:38the ancient world.
00:03:39And so I wanted to talk about that context of the ancient world and just ask this question,
00:03:44do we really need a prophet?
00:03:47You know, that's one of those topics where it's kind of like a no-go zone sign in front
00:03:52of it.
00:03:53It's almost like you can't touch that in many people's minds because, you know, that's a
00:03:58restricted area.
00:04:00But unfortunately for you and I, we have personalities that when we say no-go, that means go.
00:04:08Because we're so insanely curious.
00:04:10And so I'm just one of these personalities that if you tell me, well, I get this one
00:04:16all the time.
00:04:17Well, it's normal.
00:04:19That is the funniest word to me, normal, right?
00:04:21It's like, what is normal?
00:04:24I have traveled the whole world.
00:04:26I could tell you thousands of normals that are all very different.
00:04:30So for people that grow up in the charismatic Pentecostal kind of subculture, the idea of
00:04:39prophets is just normal.
00:04:40Like, that's their normal.
00:04:42But I can tell you as a Catholic kid, I never heard about it.
00:04:46Even as an evangelical, I never heard about it.
00:04:49I was introduced to the concept of prophets back in the late 70s when I first started getting
00:04:57pulled by different friends into full gospel businessmen, different things like that.
00:05:03And I was like, huh?
00:05:04I didn't even know there was such a thing as that anymore.
00:05:09So, you know, then that became, you know, I was in the epicenter of it right here in
00:05:15Kansas City.
00:05:15But even in hindsight, I asked myself, why do we need prophets?
00:05:22Well, I think for the sake of the discussion, and I do this with just about anything, it's
00:05:30like, we got to get to the root of it.
00:05:32Like, let's go all the way back.
00:05:33Like, let's go on our time machine and go way, way, way, way, way, way back in human history
00:05:40and ask ourselves, what was their role?
00:05:44Like, why did they become such a big deal?
00:05:46And for many people who don't have history or archaeology or anthropology background, they
00:05:59kind of read the Bible and think that prophets are kind of unique to the Hebrew culture, when
00:06:05in fact, every civilization had them.
00:06:09Like, prophets weren't unique, right?
00:06:12It's like, even now in the modern world, there's so many people want to be labeled a prophet
00:06:17because they see it as something rare, something distinguished, something that sets them apart
00:06:25from everyone else.
00:06:26Every culture had them.
00:06:28Like, this was like the norm.
00:06:30Well, why?
00:06:31So, that was always my question.
00:06:32Okay, why is this role so important to the ancient people?
00:06:38So, let's go back to a couple of things.
00:06:40One, what does the word mean?
00:06:43Where do we get the word prophet, right?
00:06:45So, the word prophet, as many people already know, comes from a Greek word, prophetis, or
00:06:52prophetis, right?
00:06:53However you want to say it.
00:06:54Which means, in the Greek, they're an interpreter.
00:06:59They're a spokesman.
00:07:00They're one who speaks for a god.
00:07:03That's their role.
00:07:04Well, why did the ancient people need somebody to speak on behalf of the gods?
00:07:11Well, let's stop for a second and look at what life was like in the ancient world, right?
00:07:19So, why do people need this?
00:07:21So, let's look at the macro level.
00:07:23You have human beings looking around themselves.
00:07:26They have no concept of how big the world is that they're, right?
00:07:30They have no concept of how big the earth is.
00:07:33It just keeps going, right?
00:07:34So, they have no context.
00:07:36They look up into the heavens and they see these lights and they have absolutely no concept
00:07:41of how big these things are and how far they go, right?
00:07:46They have no perspective of what that is.
00:07:49And in many cases, they think those stars are actually the gods.
00:07:54The one thing they do know is these things that are in the sky move in a pattern.
00:07:59So, out of that comes the concept of astrology, right?
00:08:02It's like there's patterns.
00:08:04It's like there's mathematics here.
00:08:05There's predictability here.
00:08:07There's something going on, right?
00:08:09Well, what about the micro level of their existence?
00:08:13People may not realize this, but it's not until the 1500s that humanity even discovers there's
00:08:21a microorganism world.
00:08:24They know nothing about bacteria, nothing germs, nothing about viruses, nothing about DNA,
00:08:32right?
00:08:32So, there's all these things happening to them and they can't see the cause of any of it,
00:08:38right?
00:08:39Think about the Roman world.
00:08:40The Roman world was absolutely plagued by plagues, happening all the time.
00:08:46Millions of people are dying.
00:08:48What does it mean?
00:08:50So, humans are living in an existence up against forces that are so much more powerful than they
00:09:01are, feeling like they have no control, trying to figure out what in heaven's name is going
00:09:07on.
00:09:07So, the assumption is, because I can't see it, it must be the gods.
00:09:14There's deities, beings, supernatural beings.
00:09:18They're controlling all this and they must be capricious because there's really no rhyme
00:09:23or reason to some of this.
00:09:25It seems like they're like us.
00:09:27They're moody.
00:09:27They're emotional, right?
00:09:29So, what ends up happening is a whole group of people start stepping in in every culture
00:09:37saying, here's what's going on.
00:09:39The reason why this bad stuff is happening to you is because you made the gods angry.
00:09:49Therefore, give us offerings, right?
00:09:53In other words, you need to appease these capricious gods.
00:09:56And that was the role of the prophets.
00:09:59So, they were trying to tell everyone what in heaven's name is going on, right?
00:10:04Because people are looking for that.
00:10:06They're feeling powerless.
00:10:08They're feeling disoriented.
00:10:09They're lost in this massive universe.
00:10:12I mean, think this is really amazing.
00:10:14You and I are probably aware of this now, but 99% of human knowledge has come in the last
00:10:24hundred years.
00:10:2795% of all human knowledge has come in the last 50, right?
00:10:31In other words, the world that you and I live in, in terms of what we know, what we understand,
00:10:37the information we have access to, we know we are exposed to more information in a day
00:10:44than most of the ancients were in their whole lifetime.
00:10:48I'm trying to give some perspective of why an ancient person would defer to someone who
00:10:56claims to speak on behalf of these unseen deities, right?
00:11:00Because they're looking for answers.
00:11:02Well, that looking for answers, I want to go there, but I want to go a little bit deeper
00:11:06because I'm hearing what you're saying and I'm hearing it from the perspective of what
00:11:10I know now and what you and I are talking about.
00:11:13But I'm recently, as of January 1st, 2012, coming out of this destructive group that changed
00:11:20the ideology.
00:11:21So I'm also hearing it from what people might be hearing as they listen to you.
00:11:25So think about this.
00:11:26Again, this is a piece, this is a podcast for me that I'm connecting pieces.
00:11:30One of the pieces, as I mentioned, is the prophetic framework that Branham developed and many people
00:11:37joined into.
00:11:38You could see the photos online.
00:11:39You can see all of the people supporting him, the movements that were generated by him,
00:11:43et cetera.
00:11:44It was very important what he brought as terms of theology and his theology was about the
00:11:50prophetic.
00:11:51Now, fast forward, he dies.
00:11:54Shepherding movement comes in.
00:11:56When one of the five leaders of the shepherding movement was his campaign manager, it started
00:12:03to fizzle out just a little bit.
00:12:05The prophetic still existed, but it began to die down because people kind of realized, man,
00:12:11a lot of those people were quacks.
00:12:12We don't really need those guys.
00:12:15And then John Wimber comes along and he goes with Mike Bickle, Kansas City Prophets, and he's
00:12:22touting them as prophets.
00:12:24Now, granted, his mindset was nowhere near William Branham.
00:12:27I've never really claimed that, but he's uplifting the notion of a prophet.
00:12:32At the same time, you have Chuck Smith, and I'm going to give Chuck Smith a little bit of
00:12:37grace here.
00:12:38He came out in, it might have been Charisma Magazine, and he said that the model that they
00:12:44had in Lateran, the prophets, that model is wrong.
00:12:48And I'm paraphrasing greatly, but he says something to the extent that, but we still have the gifts
00:12:54and the gifts include prophecy.
00:12:55He says that.
00:12:56But then think about what he does later.
00:12:58He circles back to the Moses model, which was created by the framework underneath him.
00:13:03And so combined, those two themes began to develop what would eventually turn into NAR's
00:13:10prophetic movement.
00:13:11Think about this.
00:13:13When all of this began, and all of this framework that was building from it began, it turned
00:13:19into what you might call a personal prophet.
00:13:22We are personal prophets.
00:13:24You can come to us.
00:13:25In fact, they would do this.
00:13:26They would go in these little rooms, and they would give you fortune telling, basically.
00:13:29Here's what's going to happen.
00:13:30This is personal in your life.
00:13:32And that's largely how it spun out of control into this theme where you have to have all
00:13:38of these spiritual coverings, et cetera.
00:13:40Now, take that back to the ancient world and think of the difference.
00:13:44When you read the Bible and you read the major prophets, you read the minor prophets, very
00:13:50few instances, in fact, I'm not thinking of any at the moment, did an individual go to
00:13:55the prophet and say, hey, what's my future?
00:13:58Because they would have been stoned for this.
00:14:00What you instead have is you have a kingdom with a multitude of people, and the king is
00:14:07looking, or the judge was looking for wisdom as to how to lead God's people.
00:14:12And so he would communicate with the prophets, and the prophets would give them the best
00:14:17insight.
00:14:17Can we go to war?
00:14:18Are we going to be invaded?
00:14:19All of these things.
00:14:20It was all about the people, not an individual personal prophet.
00:14:25So this individual personal prophet that we have today has no scriptural basis whatsoever.
00:14:32And the book of Hebrews, when I started reading it and reading through, we have a new high
00:14:36priest.
00:14:37In days gone by, we had prophets.
00:14:39Now we have Jesus.
00:14:40That separation was literally a separation between the ancient world of prophets and the modern
00:14:47world where we're living under the new covenant.
00:14:49So to bring it back to the prophetic movement like they did, you're actually taking people
00:14:55back into the old covenant.
00:14:56But beyond that, it's a twisted old covenant because it's a personal prophet for fortune telling.
00:15:03In my research on the prophetic, I can't find any professional prophets in the Old Testament.
00:15:09What's interesting is when you ask, well, who were these guys and what did they do?
00:15:15Most of them were farmers.
00:15:17In other words, there was a few, maybe like Isaiah, who may have been in a government position.
00:15:24But there's not a role of a full-time prophet like in the modern world.
00:15:30Like we see it like a ministry, right?
00:15:33There's nobody that's running around making money being a prophet.
00:15:39But they make their money farming or whatever.
00:15:42Like you go into these different guys and they'll even say at the beginning of their prophecies
00:15:47because it's actually somebody else writing it down for them.
00:15:51So-and-so, who was this or was that?
00:15:54And there's little clues in there.
00:15:55I can't find any that were actually had a ministry, a prophetic ministry.
00:16:00I find them speaking, right?
00:16:04And telling people their perspective of what they think God's saying.
00:16:08But they all have other jobs.
00:16:10So the whole concept of the prophetic ministry as an itinerant thing is kind of interesting to me.
00:16:18Because I never really challenged it before.
00:16:21One thing that is interesting is, you know, you see this prophetic role in these cultures.
00:16:27And let's focus on Hebrew culture.
00:16:31But what happens when Jesus shows up?
00:16:35Because now you have somebody who's actually claiming to be the son of God.
00:16:42And he's the ultimate prophet guy, right?
00:16:45He's the one guy telling everyone what God's saying.
00:16:50So he's functioning in the role of a prophet, right?
00:16:54He's doing the same thing that the ancient guys are.
00:16:57But he's got a message that's very different from a lot.
00:17:01I mean, some of it's very similar.
00:17:02But then there's a lot of things that are very different, right?
00:17:04Well, then he dies in 33 AD.
00:17:07So between 33 AD and 100 AD, right, I call it, you know, the era of the apostles, right?
00:17:16So you have these 12 guys that traveled with him who then spread out around the known world.
00:17:24And they are telling people what God's saying.
00:17:28And they're saying it resides in this Hebrew prophet whose name is Jesus, who is the son of God, and
00:17:36he's the Messiah, and he's come to save the world.
00:17:39And they're taking this message all over the world.
00:17:41So what are they doing?
00:17:42Let's go back to the original definition.
00:17:45Are they interpreting the will of God?
00:17:47Are they being a spokesman?
00:17:49Are they speaking on behalf of God?
00:17:51They're doing all the same things that a prophet is, but now we're calling them apostles, right?
00:17:57Then what happens after 100 AD?
00:17:59They're all dead by then.
00:18:01So from 100 AD to 325, I call that the era of chaos.
00:18:08And the reason is the apostles die, there's no institutional structure, and everybody and their brother claims to be a
00:18:17prophet now again, right?
00:18:18They're all speaking on behalf of God.
00:18:21You get guys like Montus, right?
00:18:23They have all these little sects.
00:18:25It's absolute chaos.
00:18:26And this is what people may not totally understand.
00:18:29There's a good 250 years there of absolute theological chaos until this Roman emperor, whose mom is a Christian, decides
00:18:40to go,
00:18:40So what, like Vince Lomagardi, what the hell's going on out there?
00:18:44If you've ever seen the old NFL clip of Vince, like he's confused.
00:18:49So he brings everybody together.
00:18:51They have this big conference in Nicaea, and we get the Nicene Creed, right?
00:18:58So now what God's saying is codified into 12 principles, right?
00:19:04This is what God's saying.
00:19:05Then in 380 AD, you have a Roman emperor now who makes this the rule of thumb for all of
00:19:14Rome, right?
00:19:15And then in 451, you get a guy called Pope Leo the Great.
00:19:21And you know what he says?
00:19:23He says, I speak for God.
00:19:25I'm the Pope, and what I say is what God's saying.
00:19:30So I'm being very, what's the word here?
00:19:34I'm not being very historical in my terminology, but I'm just trying to get through this, but getting people to
00:19:40understand.
00:19:40So suddenly now, around 500 AD, we have one person who the world is looking to who is speaking on
00:19:49behalf of God.
00:19:50He's now the prophet.
00:19:53Now, they call him the Pope, but he's functioning in the same role again.
00:19:58Is he not telling us what God's saying?
00:20:01Is he not interpreting the will of God for us?
00:20:03Is he not telling everybody that's under his jurisdiction what God wants to do?
00:20:08He's that guy, right?
00:20:10So now you have absolute corruption.
00:20:12So for the next 1,000 years, this thing goes from bad to worse, to the point, right, where we
00:20:19get to the 1500s,
00:20:21and you've got a corrupt business guy with mistresses everywhere, having orgies in the Vatican, and this thing's out of
00:20:30control.
00:20:31Like, it's the whole thing has just lost its way.
00:20:33So the prophets, or the prophet guy, is off the rails.
00:20:40So then what ends up happening, in around 1521, there's this group of lay guys who believe that God showed
00:20:50them.
00:20:50So they now are functioning in the role of a prophet, and they come to Martin Luther, and they go,
00:20:55hey, this thing's out of control.
00:20:57They call them the Zikai prophets, right?
00:21:00If people have heard of Amish, Hutterite, Mennonite, those are all descendants of the Anabaptists, right?
00:21:09So they're fighting Luther.
00:21:12Luther hates them.
00:21:14And what ends up happening is Luther ends up getting them all killed, but the world that you and I
00:21:22live in, or the world of evangelical Christianity,
00:21:25it's identical to what these guys stood for, and somehow Luther ends up being the hero, and nobody's ever heard
00:21:32of these guys.
00:21:33But they were, but again, who are these guys?
00:21:36They're not professional ministry guys.
00:21:39They're like the Old Testament guys.
00:21:41They're all guys with other jobs.
00:21:43But they see something, right?
00:21:46So then there's this whole battle again, right?
00:21:49Again, you've got all these religious leaders, but what's happened now is the guy speaking on behalf of God,
00:21:55who used to be these freelancers, are suddenly now institutionalized, right?
00:22:02They're Catholic priests.
00:22:05Then what happens?
00:22:06You have the Reformation, and you see all these other characters that develop.
00:22:11But nobody's saying they're prophets.
00:22:15It's all theological, right?
00:22:17It's all the word of God.
00:22:19It's all battles.
00:22:21I mean, very few people are standing there going, God said.
00:22:25What they're saying is, God already said, and now let's interpret what he already said, right?
00:22:33It's like nobody's coming up with hardly anything fresher than these guys until, and this is where it gets interesting,
00:22:41we've already done this.
00:22:42I think we did two sessions on this, until the 1830s.
00:22:46So this is where people have to kind of contextualize, ladder reign, all these kind of things.
00:22:52These things actually, their birthplace is in the 1830s.
00:22:58And you start getting people like, you know, what's his face?
00:23:04The men, Joseph Smith, right?
00:23:07Revelation from God, you know?
00:23:10What's his name?
00:23:11So you get the Mormons, the Church of, not Scientology, what is it?
00:23:18Christian scientists.
00:23:19Yeah, Christian scientists.
00:23:21But again, these are all people now who suddenly, after years of these institutional, hierarchical guys speaking on God's behalf,
00:23:32are suddenly now popping up in all these little sects again.
00:23:36And we're sort of back to where we were from 100 AD to 320.
00:23:41History's repeating itself, right?
00:23:43It's like we're going outside the institutional structure now, and we've got all these freelancers.
00:23:48And this thing just keeps going and going until we get to what, you know, your history, which starts, you
00:23:55know, in the, what, 1930s, 1940s, and that whole thing.
00:24:00But that just didn't pop up out of nowhere.
00:24:04That was something that started happening.
00:24:06But still, in all of that, the big battle is the evangelicals go, well, why do we need prophets?
00:24:14We have the Bible.
00:24:15We have the written word of God, right?
00:24:19But here's where this, the other reason why this is intriguing me.
00:24:25The reason why so many people default to these prophetic guys is because they want to know, how do you
00:24:35want to say, they're ignorant of information, right?
00:24:39That was the whole reason why prophets became such a big deal.
00:24:43People were ignorant of information.
00:24:45They didn't know why.
00:24:48Well, in 2000, what was a government Department of Defense project called the Internet suddenly becomes public, right?
00:25:02It becomes the public information highway.
00:25:04Remember that?
00:25:05Information highway.
00:25:06So, 26 years ago, we were all, I guess you could call it Pandora's box.
00:25:13I don't know what you want to call it.
00:25:14But suddenly, every human that had access to a computer or a device has access now to information.
00:25:23Like all the things that the ancients were going to these prophetic people for to get information as to why
00:25:31this was happening.
00:25:31Suddenly, now, do we need them?
00:25:35And this is a big question I'm struggling with, right?
00:25:38There's virtually, I mean, if in my world right now, everybody's falling in love with ChatGBT.
00:25:45It's like answering everything.
00:25:48And so, it's one of the things I predicted in my book six years ago that AI would end up
00:25:56being like the biggest prophetic voice.
00:26:00Like it's going to be telling us all why things are happening, right?
00:26:05So, this is where I'm wrestling in my head since every person has access to all this.
00:26:13Like, why do we need these guys?
00:26:16Like what purpose do they serve?
00:26:18And I'm not saying they don't.
00:26:20I'm just in my brain right now.
00:26:22I'm in this space where I'm like, what is this role?
00:26:25Is it relevant?
00:26:27Do we even need these people?
00:26:29Or is this just one of these things where we've always done it this way?
00:26:35Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started?
00:26:38Or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New
00:26:47Apostolic Reformation?
00:26:48You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:26:55On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,
00:27:03John McKinnon, and others.
00:27:05With links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:27:10You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
00:27:16If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the
00:27:22top.
00:27:23And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or
00:27:28watching.
00:27:29On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:27:34I want to go back to something that you said because as I was reading the Bible for my own
00:27:40and reading the ancient culture,
00:27:42while also understanding the modern world and the differences between cultures,
00:27:47I came up with this question that's in the back of my mind.
00:27:50I've never answered it, but I'll lead you up to the question and I'll ask you.
00:27:56It's essentially what problems were solved.
00:27:59Think about the ancient prophets and think about the ancient world.
00:28:03There were things that they could not see, yet they were highly intelligent people.
00:28:08They knew things about nature we don't know today.
00:28:10Things about the stars and planets that we learn, you know, in the modern world relatively recently.
00:28:16But yet they did not have the tools that we have.
00:28:20So, for example, they could not see a microorganism.
00:28:24But you might have a prophet who prophesied that somebody would have a demon get, you know, infect the person
00:28:31or whatever.
00:28:32They didn't understand the concept and the they didn't understand the concept of the microorganism.
00:28:38But the prophetic came in symbolism and a very vague interpretation.
00:28:45When you read some of the prophecies, they're quite vague.
00:28:48So the interpretation of a microorganism might have been a demon.
00:28:52We've talked about this many times.
00:28:54But think of beyond that.
00:28:56Plate tectonics.
00:28:56It's an unseen force.
00:28:58Unseen force.
00:28:59Think about the plate tectonics.
00:29:00We know what causes an earthquake today.
00:29:03In the ancient world, the earthquake was that the gods were angry.
00:29:06That's literally what it meant.
00:29:08Throwing a fit.
00:29:09Throwing a fit.
00:29:10You've got infectious disease.
00:29:12You've got genetics.
00:29:13You've got all of these different things that we understand today.
00:29:17And we don't really need a prophet to tell us why.
00:29:20Right.
00:29:20In fact, we can predict an earthquake.
00:29:22Right.
00:29:23But think about this.
00:29:25When you read the prophets, again, it's not a personal prophecy.
00:29:29It's not, hey, your grandmother might overcome this disease.
00:29:33It's more about your rulers are corrupt.
00:29:36You are exploiting the poor in your civilization.
00:29:40Judgment is coming because you're not heeding my advice, me being God.
00:29:45The alliance you have with this other nation, that alliance is going to fail.
00:29:49Stop trusting Egypt over and over.
00:29:52Babylon is coming.
00:29:53All of these different things that now we have agencies that take care of many of these things.
00:29:58We have spies that can tell us if the modern Babylon is coming.
00:30:02And that's why everybody's freaking out about Russia right now.
00:30:05We know what's happening in Russia.
00:30:07Think of the ancient world without the television, news, radio, media, all of this stuff.
00:30:11They're this country way over there.
00:30:13How would we know?
00:30:15Well, to your point, it's like the ancient world was all oral.
00:30:18I mean, the amount of stuff that was written down, I mean, there's very little that survived.
00:30:25There are a lot of stuff that's on clay tablets, right?
00:30:27But even in that, you know, historians struggle because so much of what you find turns out to be like,
00:30:35you know, business stuff, right?
00:30:38And the actual why stuff happened is very hard to find, right?
00:30:43But, again, how did information move in the ancient world?
00:30:48There's no television.
00:30:49There's no radio.
00:30:51There's not even newspapers.
00:30:52Nothing.
00:30:53There's no books.
00:30:54So, information moves, what, orally, which is where profits step in, right?
00:31:01But information, right, all of that stuff moves orally, and then there's, you know, we get into the whole Reformation
00:31:10thing, and the Catholic Church is controlling the information, right, all the way up until the 1500s.
00:31:20So, whatever the Pope prophesies or says, that ends up being the Word of God.
00:31:26But this was interesting because in the 1500s, there's this massive battle between the Catholic leadership and Tyndale and the
00:31:35guys that are trying to take the, you know, the written words and translate them into English to get that
00:31:43information into the hands of the laity, right, the everyday guy.
00:31:48I mean, there's a massive battle over this because the religious leaders want to keep that information isolated from everyone
00:31:55else so they can control the paradigms and perspectives of the masses, right?
00:32:01So, these guys who all end up dying, right, to do this, end up being the first group of people
00:32:09that actually take the information from oral only into an actual written form.
00:32:15Like, now, to your point, we have the internet now.
00:32:18Like, all of this is already there.
00:32:21So, what is somebody going to prophesy that isn't already there?
00:32:25You know what I mean?
00:32:26It's like, it's already there.
00:32:28We already know God's plumb line.
00:32:30We already know what God's saying.
00:32:32We already know that where we're off the beaten track, right?
00:32:37We know where we've diverged from God's heart when it comes to the poor and broken and all the different
00:32:44parts of this puzzle.
00:32:45We already know.
00:32:46There's nothing new here, right?
00:32:49And so, that's, again, so why do we need prophets?
00:32:53Right?
00:32:54It's like, what are they going to tell us that we don't know?
00:32:57Well, the only thing they can tell us is maybe a why, but the problem is, who are they?
00:33:07Like, why do they think they know the why?
00:33:11We already know the what.
00:33:13It's all very clear.
00:33:15We know the moral, ethical plumb line of the kingdom of God.
00:33:19There's nothing new here.
00:33:21So, this is where, you know, I think where, to your point earlier, I think in order to stay relevant,
00:33:29this thing migrated into, oh, a prophet's the guy that meets with you individually and gives you a word from
00:33:36God, right?
00:33:37Because what are they going to say from a macro level that hasn't already been said, right?
00:33:43They're not going to come up with something new here.
00:33:46So, then that's, okay, well, let's take it down and make ourselves indispensable because individual people want to do that.
00:33:54And we know that that's not just uniquely true of Christians.
00:33:58There's a reason why people are into astrology.
00:34:02There's a reason why people go to fortune tellers.
00:34:05There's a reason why the rich people all hire these people and pay them lots of money, right?
00:34:11So, there's still this human need to know why, right?
00:34:16I need to know why.
00:34:18I need to know why, right?
00:34:20So, we're still struggling with that.
00:34:22But then, you know, I ask myself here, like, who are these people that claim to know the why?
00:34:29And why do we think they know?
00:34:32I've been studying this for over a decade now, trying to understand why do we need a prophet?
00:34:39I've been going through this through various examples because this is a big question for me.
00:34:44I came out of a movement where the prophet was the king.
00:34:47Yeah.
00:34:48Think about this.
00:34:49A different kind of pope.
00:34:51Exactly.
00:34:51A different kind of pope.
00:34:52Pope Branham.
00:34:54I believe, and this is my opinion.
00:34:56This is me just wading out into opinion so you can take it or leave it.
00:34:59My opinion as to why the prophetic movement shifted towards fortune telling is this.
00:35:05Think about the ancient world.
00:35:07Think about what you remember of the New Testament prophets.
00:35:10Old Testament prophets, I should say.
00:35:12Think about how an Old Testament prophet came to prophesy to Israel, most cases, because they had done something wrong
00:35:21and judgment is coming.
00:35:22But think about what is contained within those prophecies.
00:35:25You have Israel who's gone through war and then famine and then drought, political collapse, exile.
00:35:32You have all of these things and they're trying to understand what happened in the past.
00:35:38And they're broken down.
00:35:39What has happened to us?
00:35:40God must be angry with us.
00:35:42And then a prophet explains what happened to them.
00:35:46Now, compare that to the modern world.
00:35:48If those same scenarios existed, which we don't have it nearly to that extent, but we do have miniature of
00:35:55these.
00:35:56War comes, famine comes, whatever comes.
00:35:58We've got a lettuce crisis, crazy things like this.
00:36:02If a prophet were to stand up and say, you have a lettuce crisis because this bacteria got in your
00:36:08lettuce in the fields in Mexico.
00:36:10Not a single person is going to care because they can go right to the news and they can get
00:36:14it, man.
00:36:16So you don't really need.
00:36:17Like, duh.
00:36:19Yeah.
00:36:20I mean, you don't need it in the same way.
00:36:22But yet, here's where it gets interesting for me.
00:36:25These guys, because they're trying to frame themselves after an Old Testament prophet,
00:36:31they try to do a fortune-telling style prophecy in the Old Covenant style rule set, mindset.
00:36:40And so you have these two worlds that begin to collide.
00:36:43Yes, it kind of resembles the Old Testament, but it also resembles a fortune teller.
00:36:49Yeah.
00:36:50In my experience, and I think I've mentioned this before, is there's a lot of wannabes.
00:36:55There's a lot of things going on whereby there's people who are desperately needing to be the center of attention.
00:37:05And so they create something to make themselves feel significant, right?
00:37:13It's being driven by a lot of that.
00:37:16So I'm going to share something.
00:37:20I've got to be careful here because I have a consulting business, and when guys come to me, it's private,
00:37:29right?
00:37:29So I will never share names or whatever.
00:37:32But here's something that shifted this whole prophetic thing for me as well.
00:37:37I can't tell you how many men, a few women, but I predominantly work with guys,
00:37:44who have come to me and their success is rooted in something that was a spiritual experience.
00:37:56Whether it was a dream they had, a weird download that just came spontaneously, like out of nowhere, right?
00:38:07Or something that just was like, oh my God, this isn't me.
00:38:14The reason they come isn't because they need me to tell them what happened.
00:38:20They already know.
00:38:21They already got this in this spiritual insight because that's exactly what it is.
00:38:27It's like for some reason God directly through the Holy Spirit inspired them.
00:38:34What they come to me for is context.
00:38:38Like, why?
00:38:40Like, right?
00:38:41So I don't function like a prophet.
00:38:43I'm just like a signpost on their highway of their life going, okay, you know, this is what this is.
00:38:49This is a sign to this, this, this, this, right?
00:38:51I help them contextualize it.
00:38:53My point here is God seems to do just fine talking to people without prophets.
00:38:59So that's another thing for me is like, wait a minute.
00:39:03I mean, we all have stories where we feel like God spoke to us or something spoke to us because
00:39:11we ended up having, you know, that's what I've said this before on this show.
00:39:16I think every mother has a prophetic inkling because they know stuff, not naturally, but instinctively about their children when
00:39:26they're in trouble.
00:39:29Like, somebody or something is talking to them.
00:39:32They don't need a prophet to tell them their kids are in trouble, right?
00:39:36Or their husband's in trouble.
00:39:38Or, I mean, you've heard stories of people saying, don't get on that flight, right?
00:39:44They had something happen where they were just had this sixth sense.
00:39:47Don't do it.
00:39:48Or don't get on this road, right?
00:39:50And then there was a massive pileup.
00:39:51I mean, there's thousands of stories where people have had their own spiritual experiences.
00:39:58So then I ask myself, okay, if this is happening all the time, why are we defaulting to these people
00:40:05who somehow think that they're special and God only talks to them?
00:40:10Anyways, I know I'm being sacrilegious here and I'm probably exaggerating a few things, but I'm just trying to make
00:40:16a point here, which is you get into certain religious subcultures and their normal is to default to somebody who
00:40:27claims to be speaking for God when you don't need somebody speaking for God.
00:40:32He's speaking directly to you, or you can go read what he's saying, or you can get on the internet
00:40:39and figure out why things are happening.
00:40:41Like, all this is already available to you.
00:40:44Why do we default to these people?
00:40:47Why do we still do that?
00:40:48It's almost like it's like this, I don't know what you call it.
00:40:52It's like a dysfunctional dance that we keep dancing to and we keep deferring to.
00:40:57I think some of it's rooted in our own insecurity.
00:41:00It's like, we don't think God can talk to us or we don't think we're worthy enough or whatever, so
00:41:06therefore, I got to default to the guy who's at that next level.
00:41:11I watch these guys come through Kansas City over and over and over again and position themselves as they're on
00:41:18this other plane, right?
00:41:20And we all need them because they have a unique insight into things that you don't.
00:41:24Now, to quote one of my favorite intelligent people, the Bible is the CliffsNotes version of history, which is something
00:41:33I'm quoting you over and over and over again.
00:41:37So, here's another thing that not many people think through as it relates to prophets.
00:41:42When you're holding in your hand the Bible and you've got the Old and New Testament, you have this handful
00:41:47of books by prophets.
00:41:49And there's this instant frame of mind that you get because you're holding a Bible and it is the authoritative
00:41:55word of God as it's preached in many pulpits.
00:41:59It's usually preached such that these were the only prophets to Israel, but these are only the ones that we
00:42:06have scrolls that have survived.
00:42:09There were true prophets, I'm certain, that we don't have scrolls that survived.
00:42:14But think about this.
00:42:16There were also false prophets that we don't have the scrolls that survived.
00:42:20And that's why you look at, I'm drawing a blank on the passage, I think Deuteronomy 18, maybe 13, Jeremiah,
00:42:29there's different books and passages that tell you how to identify the false ones from the true ones.
00:42:35Because there were false prophets among Israel.
00:42:38So, think about everything that we have said.
00:42:40Balaam, wasn't Balaam one or somebody like that?
00:42:42Oh, yeah.
00:42:43You can go all the way through.
00:42:45And Balaam's kind of interesting because I've read some theologians who say he was a true prophet, but he went
00:42:51astray, which is, it's a little bit odd.
00:42:54I'll just say that.
00:42:54Hmm, where have I heard that before?
00:42:57Well, it all depends on your model of the prophetic.
00:43:00But anyway, all of that aside, think about that exact problem.
00:43:05You had people in the ancient world who were commoners, like you and me, who weren't the kings, who weren't
00:43:12the judges, who didn't have the prophets in direct communication with them, watching the false prophet lead the entire kingdom
00:43:20the wrong direction.
00:43:22Like we have in our politics today, they would be asking the same question as you and I, why do
00:43:27we need those prophets?
00:43:28And they're talking about false prophets.
00:43:31Now, the interesting part about that, the similarities, because you and I are talking, having this discussion because in our
00:43:37world, there are false prophets.
00:43:38So thinking on the other side of the coin, if there is a false and there is a true today,
00:43:45why are the false so much outnumbering the true?
00:43:49And why do we not have one single scroll or book or whatever you want to call it, where there
00:43:55is actually a full kingdom level prophetic insight into what is coming that has written down before the event and
00:44:06then fully described the event?
00:44:07Why do we not have one in existence today?
00:44:10I have looked hard.
00:44:12I've looked long.
00:44:13I've read through many histories.
00:44:14You can find many people that say, this prophet is true.
00:44:17This is a true prophet.
00:44:18Well, you go look it up, and what they say is so incredibly vague that you could literally apply it
00:44:23to anything, and it's not in the same quality of prophetic as the Old Testament.
00:44:28Why do we not have one in existence?
00:44:31In my wrestling with this over the many decades, one thing I've separated out is there's two people with the
00:44:40same kind of, we'll call it knowing gift, if we can do it, prophets and seers.
00:44:47And what I mean by that is I am aware of people that have a sick sense about things, and
00:44:54the reason I call them seers is because they see things, but you don't even know they exist.
00:45:00The seers.
00:45:02And the reason are, is they're highly sensitive people who have giant radars in their soul, and they're super antisocial
00:45:13because they can't be around people because they get overstimulated and whatever, so they're reclusive.
00:45:18And they live this existence isolated from the rest of humanity just so they can keep their sanity.
00:45:26But they do see things.
00:45:27So I am not denying the fact that there is not a spiritual dynamic where people are getting revelatory spiritual
00:45:36insight into things.
00:45:37As I just explained, what's even crazier is in the business world and the music world and all these worlds
00:45:44that I'm a consultant in, I've heard zillions of stories about guys getting revelatory supernatural, whatever you want to call
00:45:54it, all the little terms you want to do.
00:45:55But something outside of themselves comes into them, right?
00:46:00You know, people don't, maybe not, do not know that Paul McCartney woke up with the song Yesterday already written.
00:46:09He literally never thought about it.
00:46:12He got it while he was sleeping, right?
00:46:16I know so many stories, like you know that as a musician, right?
00:46:20There's the song you craft for 10 years and then there's the one you write in three minutes.
00:46:26It's just when it happens, right?
00:46:28I see it all the time.
00:46:30I see it in Hollywood all the time.
00:46:31I see it in the business world.
00:46:33So I'm not denying that there's not a spiritual reality here.
00:46:38My bigger issue here is why do we default to a very small group of men or women who we
00:46:47think somehow or another are telling us things we don't know and they're 95% of the time wrong.
00:46:55Yeah.
00:46:56I guess where my heart is here and so people understand what's driving me.
00:47:02I'm not here to tear anything down.
00:47:03I'm not, you know, trying to, you know, make anybody look bad.
00:47:08What's really driving me is a little bit of a mosaic kind of mentality, which is let my people go.
00:47:15I just don't like seeing masses amounts of people, especially young people, because that's where I've seen it the worst,
00:47:24which is that 18 to 30 year old bracket where they're so desperate because they don't know who they are.
00:47:32And they don't really understand the world yet.
00:47:34And they just flock to these people who claim to be prophets.
00:47:38Right.
00:47:38And they abdicate all of their their own relationship with God.
00:47:45It's like they default to this spiritual or this person claiming to be this man or woman who speaks for
00:47:52God.
00:47:54And it's like, why?
00:47:56Why do you need to default to that?
00:47:58It's all there for you yourself.
00:48:02They're not going to tell you something that's not already there.
00:48:06There's nothing new here.
00:48:08So are they prophets?
00:48:10Well, they are the one sense because they're they're proclaiming.
00:48:13Right.
00:48:14So see or see.
00:48:15But most of them are reclusive in my world.
00:48:18The prophets are the one like to stand up and talk about it.
00:48:21Right.
00:48:21It's oral.
00:48:22They got to, you know, they're, you know, proclaiming as it were.
00:48:26And so that's why we're more familiar with prophets than seers.
00:48:31But we've all saw.
00:48:32I'm telling you, we all have.
00:48:34So everybody listening to this podcast can go back and and and can recount a story or multiple stories of
00:48:44where they saw for themselves.
00:48:45So why are you then trying to advocate to somebody else?
00:48:52So what's driving me is just encouraging people, please, you know, don't underestimate yourself in your own relationship with God.
00:49:02You don't need to abdicate to religious leaders to tell you what to do.
00:49:07It's all there for you yourself.
00:49:10You can go straight to the source.
00:49:13Not only the straight to the source person, but straight to the source material.
00:49:17It's all right there.
00:49:18I want to circle back again to something that you said, because it is important and it matches the reason
00:49:25why I was going through all these questions in my head.
00:49:27You talked about we only have this handful of famous prophets, and that's usually where you go to.
00:49:33You go see the prophet either on stage and they hold a convention and you give them your money.
00:49:38Old Testament and New Testament prophets weren't like this.
00:49:41They were usually poor and it wasn't on demand prophecy.
00:49:46It was God spoke through them when God spoke through them had nothing to do with them doing a stage
00:49:51act.
00:49:52But think about this.
00:49:54Many of the stage act style prophets did exist in the New Testament, but you don't read about them.
00:50:01If you read what Paul is saying and you understand what Paul is saying, it takes that whole model that
00:50:08they've created today and it puts it right on its head.
00:50:11Because Paul is saying, don't trust them.
00:50:14Take two or three of them and see if they align in what they're saying.
00:50:18Yeah, and I'm paraphrasing.
00:50:19You can go read it.
00:50:20He's saying, judge the prophets because we don't trust these guys.
00:50:24So literally you have a movement that is coming out of the old covenant.
00:50:28They're coming out of the mindset where God in sun-dry times and diverse manners in the past spoke through
00:50:34the prophets.
00:50:34And now he's speaking through his son, Jesus Christ.
00:50:37Well, Paul is taking that as his marching orders and he's saying, we're shifting away from this.
00:50:43We may still have some valid ones, maybe, but make sure what they're saying is true because we don't trust
00:50:49these guys.
00:50:50That's literally what he's saying.
00:50:51But the model for today isn't that.
00:50:54It's you must trust these guys.
00:50:57Yeah, exactly.
00:50:58Well, I mean, can you think of anyone in the New Testament that was more significant to answering the why
00:51:08questions than Paul?
00:51:11I mean, if we're looking for somebody that's telling us the why behind God, right?
00:51:18What God's saying.
00:51:21I mean, this sounds terrible, but I think Paul even rivals Jesus in the amount of revelatory information explaining who
00:51:32God is.
00:51:33I mean, so much of our paradigms about who God is, what the church is, whatever, it's all Paul.
00:51:41So, is Paul a prophet?
00:51:45You know what I mean?
00:51:46It's like, so this is another thing where I get kind of, I mean, again, I hope this isn't bunny
00:51:53trailing here, but it's like these terms, you know, he's an apostle, he's a prophet, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:52:01I see them less as, you know, institutional hierarchies and a whole lot more about skill sets.
00:52:08You know, it's, you know, is he an iron welder?
00:52:12Today he's an iron welder.
00:52:13Tomorrow he's a carpenter, right?
00:52:15In other words, it's like Paul's like more prophetic than anybody in the New Testament other than Jesus.
00:52:23Like he's giving us more revelation about who God is and what God's saying and where this is all headed
00:52:31than hardly anyone else, right?
00:52:33Then we see, you know, we have the revelation of John, right?
00:52:38So, you know, John's just got the two books, right?
00:52:42But is John not a prophet?
00:52:45Well, he's also an apostle.
00:52:48You see what I mean?
00:52:49Where I'm going with this, it's like he's, and this is why I've said to people, apostles are missionaries.
00:52:55Apostles are people who are taking the message out to the masses.
00:53:00They've been traveling all over the world.
00:53:02You know, they went to India and Asia and Turkey and they're all over the place, right?
00:53:07They're spreading this message from this little community of people in the Middle East around the world.
00:53:14They're going, they're out.
00:53:16They're ambassadors is what the word really means, right?
00:53:19They're representing the kingdom of God.
00:53:22But then Paul's writing these letters that are just telling us all who God is and why he does what
00:53:27he does.
00:53:28And, well, that's what we all say prophets do.
00:53:31So it seems to me he's a prophet.
00:53:33And then John's up there telling us, you know, what we need to be careful of and where we're going
00:53:39off the deep.
00:53:40Well, is he not a prophet, right?
00:53:43So anyways, this is, these are thing I wrestle with this all the time.
00:53:47You know, I don't want to be sacrilegious.
00:53:49I don't want to demean things.
00:53:51You know, I don't want to be that guy, but I'm also going, well, what's the point of this?
00:53:57And the reason I ask that is, is that, I guess, at my age now, nearly 70, there's so many
00:54:04things in my life that were important during a decade, but now they're what?
00:54:09Obsolete.
00:54:10They don't need it anymore.
00:54:12Well, why is it?
00:54:15If that's true about just about everything else in life, are prophets obsolete?
00:54:21You know?
00:54:22Why do we need them, right?
00:54:24And I'm not saying we don't.
00:54:25So just so people understand, I'm not going there and saying, oh my God, let's get rid of prophets.
00:54:31I'm just saying, what's their point?
00:54:34What role do they fill anymore, right?
00:54:38You know, it's like right now, you know, we're in the middle of, you know, we're in a time period
00:54:45in our country, very similar to the 1960s, right?
00:54:50And there's a lot of polarization, people from very different points of view, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:54:57Like, where's the prophet?
00:54:59Like, where in the Old Testament, those guys would be, you know, standing in the town square, screaming at the
00:55:08top of their lungs, this is what, you know, this is where you deviate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
00:55:15No, we got guys standing in churches, giving people personal prophecies.
00:55:22That's like, but, you know, and again, you know, part of the reason why I think we don't see the
00:55:31Old Testament guys is to your point, those guys all had other jobs.
00:55:35They were self-sufficient.
00:55:36They were farmers.
00:55:37They were whatever.
00:55:38They had their own jobs.
00:55:39Being a prophet wasn't their money-making career.
00:55:44It was something that came out of them, but they were all self-sufficient, right?
00:55:51They didn't need an itinerant ministry.
00:55:54As a matter of fact, most of them were odd and weird and lived on the fringe and people rejected
00:56:03them.
00:56:04And the truth about it is that it was only hundreds of years later before anyone really understood how right
00:56:11they really were.
00:56:12They weren't popular, right?
00:56:15Which is, again, the antithesis of the ministry model that we've got right now.
00:56:19I want everybody to like me.
00:56:21I want people to show up, right?
00:56:24I want people to like me so much that they give me an offering.
00:56:29You see where, again, where I'm going with this, it's like the whole thing is twisted to it's all about
00:56:34me and I've turned this thing into a company, a business, a ministry, a money-making thing.
00:56:44And all of these guys that I know of that were very effective in what they did weren't anything like
00:56:51that.
00:56:52So how do we get there?
00:56:56So I think you understand because you've been talking about this earlier in the show, but it's like I just
00:57:02think we're – it's like we haven't been sober-minded.
00:57:08It's like we haven't – we're so afraid to sit down and ask hard questions.
00:57:16And in my experience as a consultant and a counselor, it seems that the only time people want to ask
00:57:24those questions is when we get to crisis, right?
00:57:29Whether that's in family situations, work situations, it's like it's the status quo and nobody wants to challenge the status
00:57:37quo.
00:57:37And then when the status quo crashes and burns, now we go, huh, right?
00:57:43I've had the best conversations in the last two years because of the meltdown at IHOP.
00:57:50Suddenly now – and I've had people say this to me.
00:57:54I've had people get mad at me and say to me, why did you not speak up earlier?
00:58:00And I said, I did.
00:58:03You just didn't listen or you didn't hear.
00:58:06And why didn't you hear?
00:58:09Because you had a paradigm and perspective and a set of glasses that you saw me as the problem.
00:58:17Because the things that I was saying to the group of people that wanted to hear about it forewarned all
00:58:24this 20 years ago.
00:58:26Now you want to have that conversation and, you know, I'm like those old guys, right?
00:58:30It's like suddenly now, what I said 20 years ago, people were like, oh, well, wait a minute.
00:58:35Now we want to talk, right?
00:58:37So it's only in the crisis when people are disillusioned and that they're willing to let go of the status
00:58:45quo, right?
00:58:46The thing that's been their security, the thing that they're holding on to.
00:58:50And you try, well, before that disillusionment comes, people are hanging on to that so hard that if you try
00:58:57to peel their fingers off of it, they'll attack you.
00:59:02It's not worth it.
00:59:04It's like, I don't want to have those fights.
00:59:07So you just wait, right?
00:59:09And now everybody's asking those questions that they should have been asking 20 years ago, but they didn't.
00:59:17Well, we're asking them now, and the funny part is I don't think we've answered them.
00:59:22I think the one thing, like I said earlier, I think if people could walk away with something from our
00:59:28podcast, it's just to come to a realization that, hey, God talks to you.
00:59:34Like you have your own spiritual revelation.
00:59:37You have all kinds of things that have gone on in your life or the hand of God.
00:59:41Don't, don't, what's the word?
00:59:44Don't short sell yourself.
00:59:47Don't abdicate who God made you.
00:59:52Don't defer to people who claim to speak on God's behalf.
00:59:59Everything you need to hear from God is already accessible to you.
01:00:03Everything that you need understanding in is out there.
01:00:08And if it ain't out there, we don't understand it.
01:00:10And so for somebody to stand up and claim they do, I doubt that it's actually the truth.
01:00:17So I just want people to not, you know, underestimate their own self-worth and their own thing and keep
01:00:24abdicating to this group of people that's coming along claiming that they've got something special.
01:00:31And you need me and you need me so much that you need to give me money.
01:00:36I mean, it's the same thing.
01:00:37I mean, there's nothing new under the sun here.
01:00:40I mean, this is the same dynamic that Jesus was wrestling with, with the priests in Jerusalem, who were all
01:00:45telling the poor people, you got to keep coming up here.
01:00:48You got to give us your last cent.
01:00:51You got to keep buying offerings.
01:00:52You know, they're all living in the big, you know, million-dollar mansions around the temple, you know, fleecing the
01:01:00poor people out of their poor, sorry, out of their money, all with one worldview.
01:01:08We're the mediators between you and God.
01:01:11So you come pay us and we'll talk to God on your behalf.
01:01:16There's nothing new here.
01:01:17The crazy thing about it, though, is Jesus had a real problem with that, right?
01:01:23Because he saw it as usury.
01:01:25He saw it as oppression.
01:01:26He saw it as, you know, as manipulation.
01:01:31And he called them what?
01:01:33Basically, stinky tombs that got painted.
01:01:36It's like, you guys are rotten to the core.
01:01:39Wow.
01:01:39And what's he going after?
01:01:42That whole thing.
01:01:43We're special.
01:01:45You know, the people that park themselves between the people and God.
01:01:49I mean, there's nothing new here.
01:01:51This is the same story that's been going on for thousands of years.
01:01:54Well, hopefully we've said something that can help somebody think through this problem.
01:01:58And maybe somebody can give me the answer in the comment feed.
01:02:01So thank you so much for doing this.
01:02:03Okay.
01:02:04Exactly.
01:02:05We've opened up Pandora's box.
01:02:07Now we have to figure out how to close it.
01:02:09Box open, exit, stage right.
01:02:13Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:02:17You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:02:19For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion,
01:02:24From Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:02:26Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:02:58We'll see you next time.
01:03:08We'll see you next time.
01:03:30We'll see you next time.
01:03:33We'll see you next time.
01:03:35Bye.
01:03:35Bye.
01:03:36Bye.
01:03:36Bye.
01:03:36Bye.

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