John Wimber Research Page:
https://william-branham.org/site/research/people/john_wimber
Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
Cynthia's Website:
https://cynthiaartish.com/
John invites Cynthia Artish to kick off a new series on "Charismania," starting with the research into John Wimber and his influence on Charismatic Christianity. We dive into the intersections between William Branham's religious movement and its influence on other groups like the International House of Prayer (IHOP) and John Wimber's role in shaping modern charismatic movements. Cynthia shares her personal experiences as a musician playing for John Wimber's band, offering insight into Wimber’s character and the cult of personality that developed around him. The conversation explores key themes such as indoctrination, manipulation of emotions in religious settings, and the blending of church and business models in evangelicalism. We also critically analyze how Wimber's theology influenced contemporary movements like the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), pointing to dangerous deviations from traditional Christian teaching.
Another major point of discussion is the emotional manipulation tactics often seen in both cultic and charismatic movements. The speakers emphasize the importance of biblical literacy and historical theology in understanding these deviations, cautioning against following leaders who prioritize personal experience over scripture. Cynthia’s anecdotes provide a first-hand perspective on the Vineyard movement’s musical and spiritual practices, while the host, John Collins, links these observations to broader patterns of control and deception in modern Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, specifically within groups that emerged from the Latter Rain Revival.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Guest Introduction: Cynthia and Her Connection to John Wimber
01:47 Evolution of Research into Branhamism and IHOP
03:35 Investigating John Wimber’s Influence and the IHOP Connection
05:04 Cynthia’s Background in the Vineyard and Fuller Seminary
07:13 Reflections on Music, Entertainment, and Spiritual Manipulation
10:03 John Wimber’s Teachings and Emotional Manipulation in Worship
12:08 Balancing Emotionalism with Scriptural Faithfulness
14:48 Historical Context: Lonnie Frisbee and the Vineyard Movement
18:04 The Sin of Presumption and the Danger of Wimber’s Teachings
20:40 The Evolution of Kingdom Theology and Dominionism
22:16 Teaching curriculum
21:28 Peter Wagner, Fuller Professor Church Growth
22:28 Franchising Religion
24:58 John Wimber’s Focus on “Doing the Works of the Kingdom”
27:26 Distinctions Between True Christianity and Cultic Movements
30:42 Indoctrination and Variance Between Teachings and Scriptu
https://william-branham.org/site/research/people/john_wimber
Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
Cynthia's Website:
https://cynthiaartish.com/
John invites Cynthia Artish to kick off a new series on "Charismania," starting with the research into John Wimber and his influence on Charismatic Christianity. We dive into the intersections between William Branham's religious movement and its influence on other groups like the International House of Prayer (IHOP) and John Wimber's role in shaping modern charismatic movements. Cynthia shares her personal experiences as a musician playing for John Wimber's band, offering insight into Wimber’s character and the cult of personality that developed around him. The conversation explores key themes such as indoctrination, manipulation of emotions in religious settings, and the blending of church and business models in evangelicalism. We also critically analyze how Wimber's theology influenced contemporary movements like the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), pointing to dangerous deviations from traditional Christian teaching.
Another major point of discussion is the emotional manipulation tactics often seen in both cultic and charismatic movements. The speakers emphasize the importance of biblical literacy and historical theology in understanding these deviations, cautioning against following leaders who prioritize personal experience over scripture. Cynthia’s anecdotes provide a first-hand perspective on the Vineyard movement’s musical and spiritual practices, while the host, John Collins, links these observations to broader patterns of control and deception in modern Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, specifically within groups that emerged from the Latter Rain Revival.
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Guest Introduction: Cynthia and Her Connection to John Wimber
01:47 Evolution of Research into Branhamism and IHOP
03:35 Investigating John Wimber’s Influence and the IHOP Connection
05:04 Cynthia’s Background in the Vineyard and Fuller Seminary
07:13 Reflections on Music, Entertainment, and Spiritual Manipulation
10:03 John Wimber’s Teachings and Emotional Manipulation in Worship
12:08 Balancing Emotionalism with Scriptural Faithfulness
14:48 Historical Context: Lonnie Frisbee and the Vineyard Movement
18:04 The Sin of Presumption and the Danger of Wimber’s Teachings
20:40 The Evolution of Kingdom Theology and Dominionism
22:16 Teaching curriculum
21:28 Peter Wagner, Fuller Professor Church Growth
22:28 Franchising Religion
24:58 John Wimber’s Focus on “Doing the Works of the Kingdom”
27:26 Distinctions Between True Christianity and Cultic Movements
30:42 Indoctrination and Variance Between Teachings and Scriptu
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00You
00:00:30Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham historical research podcast.
00:00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham historical research
00:00:42at william-branham.org. And today I have my very special guest, Cynthia Artish. And,
00:00:49Cynthia, I'm so excited to have you. We have, we've been chatting before the podcast,
00:00:54we've been chatting on the phone via email. And I have to say this is one of the most
00:00:59exciting podcasts that I will have been, I've ever kicked off because you and I are
00:01:05aligned on so many things. And there's so many, I feel very critically important topics
00:01:11that you and I have to discuss that are relevant to today's world, the NAR, even what I'm
00:01:17seeing in the comment feeds and my podcasts. And there's just so much to talk about.
00:01:22So thank you for coming on here.
00:01:24Thank you, John. It's a real pleasure to be here. And thank you for the work that you
00:01:28do.
00:01:29I'm so excited. We were talking beforehand about John Wember. And that's, you know,
00:01:36I've got a thousand different podcasts that I want to do with you just based off of the
00:01:40conversations. But one of the most important ones that we have to do right now is of John
00:01:46Wember. As you know, we have been researching into the background of the International House
00:01:54And my research started with Branhamism because I was in the Branham cult. And my research
00:02:00was kind of a process of evolution. It started because I had just a few pieces to the puzzle.
00:02:07And I actually started a blog years ago. I think it may even still be out there. But
00:02:12what I said wasn't quite right. But I had some of the pieces and I had a lot of the
00:02:17pieces that they had told me were factual and in fact were not factual. So as I learned
00:02:24new parts that, you know, researching history, it evolved into what it is today with Branhamism.
00:02:31I'm doing the same thing now with IHOP and, you know, a critical milestone in the IHOP
00:02:37evolution was the connection to John Wember. So I started a, you know, it's really just
00:02:43a work in progress of a page. But I started a page. I threw a video up there to get some
00:02:48interest. But it is, for me, it's the beginning of something that will come later. And this
00:02:56will evolve into something hopefully that people can use as a resource. The problem
00:03:01that I had is that I have some of the pieces of the puzzle and I understand it from my
00:03:07limited knowledge. I'm working with people from IHOP and people who came out of, you
00:03:12know, I call it the Wember cult of personality. But that's probably, that may be overemphasizing
00:03:19what it is. But it's all skewed. My perspective is skewed towards Branhamism. They're, you
00:03:26know, they're highly in favor of Wember to the extent that I called it a cult of personality.
00:03:31I wanted to bring somebody on the show to balance the scales. And lo and behold, out
00:03:37of the blue, you contacted me and you had exactly what I needed.
00:03:41Deirdre McCloskey Well, I don't know about that. But I started
00:03:44resonating. I saw some of the comments in your feed. And I just had to contact you because
00:03:52I just wanted you to know. It's not like I wanted to be on the show or anything. But
00:03:57I do see something. So I was going to say, what I have to offer is kind of like what
00:04:03I've been taught. And that is, you talk about puzzle pieces. Well, you ever get one of those
00:04:08puzzles when you were a kid that had 500 pieces? Well, in our family, sometimes for Christmas,
00:04:14you would get the puzzle pieces poured out into a baggie, and you would just be given
00:04:18the puzzle pieces. You wouldn't be able to know what the box top looked like. Right?
00:04:24So I think what we're looking at here, the better idea is to find out what does the box
00:04:30top picture look like? And then we can get some of those puzzle pieces and know better
00:04:36places where they should go. Right? So I would say, you know, I knew John Wimber. I played
00:04:44in his bands. I attended the Anaheim Vineyard for years. I'd have to look at the calendar,
00:04:50but I think it was a good five, six years. I was a musician back then. And I didn't
00:04:57know back then what I know now, so it's interesting. I have a different viewpoint. But I do believe
00:05:04the teaching that Wimber experienced at Fuller Seminary, this all came out of church growth
00:05:10studies, okay? And so, my current pastor, who just retired, who's trained me in apologetics
00:05:18for the last almost 30 years, was at Fuller Seminary at the same time and saw this. And
00:05:25so, over time, when I wound up going, you know, stopped going to the vineyard and got
00:05:30to a good church, and I got discipled and properly, you know, taught by accurate theology
00:05:37and sound theology, we in Orange County, there was a lot of us in this class that were sort
00:05:43of refugees from all of this crazy teaching in this area, which included Vineyard and
00:05:49Calvary Chapel and the Jesus Movement and Lonnie Frisbee. I knew Lonnie Frisbee, played
00:05:55in his band, so I saw a lot back then. If you were a musician and you played for free,
00:05:58you really got to see everything, right?
00:06:00Pete and Jared laugh
00:06:01Pete So, I didn't know, I didn't know it at the
00:06:03time and God protected me because boy, I had some close calls back then. But some of my
00:06:08best friends who are musicians who played with me in those bands came to great ruin.
00:06:15Their faith came to great ruin and I'm still haunted by the loss of a dear friend. She
00:06:19didn't die, but she just went crazy with the dominionist heresy, just destructive. And
00:06:29she was in YWAM and she was doing Lonnie Frisbee. And I'm not going to blame her, but she actually
00:06:34had a lot to do with me getting roped into the whole vineyard thing. Because as musicians,
00:06:39she would say to me, come on, let's go over here, this is where the spirit is, all the
00:06:43energy and the excitement. And it was all this entertainment kind of fervor, okay? Now,
00:06:50I can say that because I worked for Disney for years and I'm a commercial professional
00:06:56musician. And I'm able to discern what's entertainment and what's therapy and what's religious music
00:07:03and you know, all these musical genres, okay? But most itinerant musicians back then had
00:07:08no idea. They just went with the excitement. So, John Wimber was all about excitement.
00:07:15And I have to also say this, he was a very friendly, nice, sincere man. I found him very
00:07:24affable, very attractive as a friendly person. You know, just comforting, really. You know,
00:07:33he had a very soft voice. He was a great songwriter. So, I respected him a lot. I thought,
00:07:41wow, this is good sounding music instead of some of the bad stuff we'd hear in Orange
00:07:45County. But I also know he was a professional musician in Hollywood. And I believe he, I
00:07:53can't remember if he was with the Righteous Brothers or the Everly Brothers, but he was
00:07:57trying to make it in the LA music scene. Like, we all, I mean, real musicians were doing
00:08:02that, not Christian musicians. I was a real musician trying to make a career doing music,
00:08:08right? And when I came to Christian music, first of all, I didn't like it because I
00:08:13thought it was crappy. I thought, wait a minute, three chords and you guys don't do any, you
00:08:16know, details in the music. It's just this droning stuff that is monotonous and boring,
00:08:26but it makes the crowd sort of into an altered state of consciousness or feeling. The feelings,
00:08:35the kids would say today, the feels are so intense, it's all about the feels. And I always
00:08:42didn't like that because I was more of a technical musician than a feeling musician. And like
00:08:48in church, I'd never raise my hands and do that whole thing that Wimber, in his church
00:08:53services it was all about singing and raising the hands and all of that, and that was supposed
00:08:57to be the spirit. And I felt like a loser because I thought, well, the spirit must,
00:09:01I must not have the spirit if I'm not doing that, you know.
00:09:05Pete You and I are so much alike, it's funny. Every
00:09:08time I talk to you, I learn something new that we're alike in. And I, you know, I'm
00:09:13nowhere near the apologist you are, of course, and I don't even consider myself to be that
00:09:17or minister or anything like this. But I did, after I left the cult, one of the first
00:09:24things that hit me, one of the first realizations was that if you're a Christian and you're
00:09:30not trying to save the lost, can you really say that you're doing what the Bible is telling
00:09:35you to do? And then that led to the next question, well, why aren't, why isn't every minister
00:09:41an apologist? Why aren't they out seeking to help people? And I was just blown away
00:09:46by this question. So I actually got involved into the apologetic scene. Back then it was
00:09:53forums, so I'd get into the forums. And when I first started, I knew nothing because I
00:09:58was, I was Brannermite through and through. But as I'm learning and growing, if there
00:10:03was a question that I could answer and I could find a good source where they could, an online
00:10:08source that they could go to, I would give an online source. And this is how I, this
00:10:12is how I learned and did it. I did it for probably two years, you know. And it just,
00:10:17I love it. It was fun, but it wasn't really what I, what I wanted to do. So I decided
00:10:24to let people who were better, like you, who were better at that than me, to take over.
00:10:28But you know...
00:10:29Darlene Flynn Well, I just want, I just want, I'm sorry,
00:10:32John. I wanted to enter, you know, put something in here. I just want your viewers to know
00:10:39my ability in apologetics is really different than what people think apologetics are. It
00:10:47comes from being discipled by some of the best ministers of the word in the Reformed
00:10:53tradition and the historical church tradition, which has nothing to do with trendy stuff.
00:11:00And so, I am an example of what Christian, all Christians should be if they're in church
00:11:07and being fed good food, spiritual food. Because our teachers at the good church would
00:11:14always say to us, it's our job to equip you, the people, to go out into the world and do
00:11:19your life, you know. And so, over time, that's why we have the confessions, you know, the
00:11:24Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, all of these old documents that when I first
00:11:30came to the good church, I was freaked out. I thought, oh no, these guys are Roman Catholic,
00:11:34and they weren't.
00:11:35Pete and Jared laugh
00:11:36And I realized church history mattered. I came to realize that, you know what, Jesus
00:11:42and his church has been around a heck of a lot longer than Chuck Smith or John Wimber,
00:11:49okay? And Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against
00:11:56it. And he certainly has fulfilled that and will continue to fulfill it. So, in answer
00:12:01to your question, if I'm not out saving the world, so to speak, you know, evangelizing,
00:12:10what do Christians do?
00:12:11Pete and Jared laugh
00:12:12Yeah.
00:12:13Well, we go to, we gather on the Lord's Day, we hear the word properly preached, we take,
00:12:20we partake of the two sacraments, the Lord instituted, the Lord's Supper and Baptism,
00:12:26we raise our families, we love our neighbor, whatever that means, you know, we live, we
00:12:36do what Jesus commanded by living his word and we follow, and I love this, the apostles'
00:12:42teaching, which has nothing to do with the silliness we see out in the field now where
00:12:47I'm an apostle, I'm an apostle. Sadly, these people are so grossly ignorant of the holy
00:12:52scriptures and how they're read. So, I would say any viewer looking at this wondering,
00:12:59get a good, get a good transcription of the Bible, like the ESV Study Bible's really reliable,
00:13:05read big chunks of scripture in context from beginning to end without stopping, it's better
00:13:10to listen to it spoken because then you're not tempted to pull verses out, and the scriptures
00:13:16will come alive and correct this mess that we're living in right now, which is really
00:13:23a bowl of spaghetti, you know, it's a lot of problems.
00:13:26Darrell Bock It is a big bowl of spaghetti.
00:13:28Darlene It is.
00:13:29Darrell Bock Which, in fact, that's one of the points
00:13:30I wanted to bring up. So, my method, which you and I have kind of discussed this offline
00:13:36a bit, my method is to, I look at the world like a balance scales, and in balance scales
00:13:44of truth, you have the good and the bad, and that's what writes history, the good and
00:13:49the bad write history. If you take away the bad, you don't learn from the history, and
00:13:53you're prone to make the same mistakes. So, whenever I left the Branham cult, and I realized
00:13:59that not just the Branham cult, but many different groups that evolved because of latter reign
00:14:04in these movements were concealing their histories, it became problematic for me. And so, I started,
00:14:13you know, I built out the website. It's a technology, it's like a technology masterpiece
00:14:20in some ways, but I built out this technology where you can find links from one thing to
00:14:26another thing simply by clicking on the, you know, the blue words on the website, and basically
00:14:31started building out this map of how things were evolving. But, instead of publishing
00:14:37heavily the positive, I wanted to balance the scales that exist out in the world by
00:14:43publishing the critical, which has, it's its own can of worms, right? Because I have people
00:14:49who see me doing this, and they think, well, every person that I publish on the website
00:14:53must be a bad guy, or I must think that they're a bad guy. John Wimber, for example. I must
00:15:00not think that John Wimber had good intentions, which, you know, I don't know him. Maybe he
00:15:06did or maybe he didn't, but I don't make the assumption. And, instead, I get people
00:15:10like you to historically tell me your opinion of whether he was a good or bad person. But
00:15:16it's just simply a way in which I can document links that intersect with other movements.
00:15:24And one of the points, which you and I talked about over the phone, I think, a couple weeks
00:15:29ago, and then you just recently mentioned, is the feels. I was in the Branham cult, and
00:15:35we had the feels, but it was the feels of impending doom and gloom and hatred and violence.
00:15:44And I grew up in a world where we were still living in the Red Scare. I mean, it was that
00:15:50kind of environment. And I realized after leaving and experiencing a real church that
00:15:56they had weaponized that fear against our minds because fear is powerful. They can keep
00:16:03you contained. They can control you. They can manipulate you. And, in the end, it's
00:16:08not the gospel. It's fear.
00:16:11And then when I began discovering the charismatic movement, suddenly � see, I'm hypersensitive
00:16:17to all of this, so I start seeing, well, they've got the same thing. They're just not using
00:16:22fear. They're using happiness or excitement or they're using �
00:16:26They use fear, too. You know, here's the thing. It's better to or more useful to categorize
00:16:33feelings, okay? Because when you study the gospel, the word of Christ, not my testimony,
00:16:42no, the gospel, which is Jesus, okay, his testimony, there is a good reason to be afraid.
00:16:48In the scripture, the Christians are called God-fearers. And it's correct to be afraid
00:16:54of God because you know what? God can strike you dead. The scripture says he is the owner
00:17:00of life and death. He is the judge. He is a consuming fire. This is why whenever I see
00:17:08the charismatic guys go, oh, fire, fire, and I go, oh, don't do that! Because in the Bible,
00:17:12fire is a judgment motif and whenever the Lord shows up with fire in the scriptures,
00:17:17it's not a good thing. It's not, okay? Right? It depends. The little flames over the head
00:17:24and the apostles, that's different, but you don't want to go there. And this is why it
00:17:30is a hermeneutical problem, people reading the scripture just any old way, okay? But
00:17:37the whole point is to understand, I mean, we're here today as believers of some sort
00:17:43for a reason. The Lord owns the world and all the cosmos. He is not, he is not like
00:17:50he's presented in these charismatic groups. I had to laugh once when one of the charismatic
00:17:55guys over at Calvary Chapel of all places said, I have the word of knowledge. God is
00:18:00telling me that Ralph is here and Ralph in the audience somewhere, wherever you are,
00:18:05the Lord wants you to know you're loved or whatever. And I thought to myself, wait a
00:18:10minute, who is the Holy Spirit if he needs help?
00:18:12Pete Yeah.
00:18:13Mary-Anne Isn't he God? Like, the Holy Spirit is going to tell this leader in this meeting,
00:18:19find Ralph, I can't find him. That's when I started noticing the plot holes back in
00:18:25the day. Now, I wasn't strong enough or able enough to be an apologist back then, but I
00:18:30remember these moments, like with John Wimber, when he stood up in the congregation with
00:18:36the Bible in his hand and he was in one of his, what I call cute tirades. He was a very
00:18:43nice man, but he would do these long, drawn out, emotionally driven speeches. They're
00:18:52not sermons. And he held up the Bible and said, this is not where the Spirit is. Not
00:19:00in this book. The Spirit is here. You know, and his point was in the experience, right?
00:19:05Pete Yeah. You know, whenever I see what's happening in the charismatic movement, I see
00:19:12the fear too, but what I was trying to say is they are capitalizing on the same strategies
00:19:18that almost all cults use. If you can get into the emotions and you can manipulate the
00:19:24emotions, you can manipulate the mind. And so I began to be concerned with this because,
00:19:31you know, that's common. If you get into even some of the five-step help groups, they will
00:19:37try to use techniques to enter your mind and help you overcome whatever it is that
00:19:42they want. But that's the agenda. They have an agenda of helping you, and in many ways
00:19:48that can be good. But then the churches, when they do it, I have to question, well, what
00:19:52is the overall agenda? Where is this headed? And so I'm often, as I'm publishing work on
00:19:58my website or in my videos, I'm often looking far beyond the point in which I'm publishing.
00:20:05I'm looking at where did it end up? Because for me, when the Bible says it's by your fruit,
00:20:10you'll know them, the way that I map out my strategy of connecting all of these dots is
00:20:16I see what the fruits are and then trace backwards from that. So for example, back to John Wember,
00:20:24I see that the NAR exists, and I can't say that Wember is the creator of this by no means,
00:20:31but I see that he's an intersection point, and I want to know why. What brings all this
00:20:36together? And I see things such as Wember did not create the Kingdom Now Theology, obviously,
00:20:43but he's working with men who were developing the Kingdom Now Theology, and this grew into
00:20:48the mess that dominionism and theocracy, all of the mess that exists today, there's an
00:20:55intersection point, and I want to know why. And one of the...
00:20:59Well, I can tell you why, okay? From where we're sitting over here, it's not like I know
00:21:04everything, it just so happens I was sitting, I was located in a certain area and saw certain
00:21:08things, and we need to compare what's going on. And in the university, as far as I remember,
00:21:15because I have professor friends that were there, okay, so you can verify this. When
00:21:21you're in a university and you have the opportunity to create a new curriculum, which was the
00:21:27church growth curriculum, right? He stood to make a lot of money off of that. Now, I'm
00:21:36not saying he thought one day, I'm going to make money and I'm going to do X, but any
00:21:42academic knows if you want to rise above your pay grade and your power position, you create
00:21:49a new curriculum. It's the same thing in my business, you know, I teach HAARP, I'm one
00:21:56of the top pedagoged HAARPists in the world, okay, in my category. So, I do know, yeah,
00:22:03I can make a lot of money if I can duplicate my curriculums and pass it on to learners,
00:22:09you know, my students, my proteges, and they now become, you know, salesmen, so to speak.
00:22:17You know, they're spreading that curriculum, right? So, we see this with the Saddleback
00:22:24and the purpose-driven stuff. I know for a fact that Rick Warren sold franchises, well,
00:22:30still does, to churches to learn this curriculum. You get a package of data, you know, information,
00:22:37and you start teaching their curriculum in your church. And there are thousands of purpose
00:22:42churches, like Calvary Chapel. Calvary Chapel is a franchise. Every person who wants to
00:22:49make a vineyard or a Calvary, they have to sign a license for copyright, you know, the
00:22:55Dove logo or the name, whatever, and go along and agree to the curriculum for that franchise.
00:23:03I don't care if it's a Tasty Freeze or a Calvary Chapel. I mean, it's funny but not funny,
00:23:10but it's true. Years ago, when I was going to Calvary and left, and I went to another
00:23:17Calvary and there was, okay, there was another problem I saw apologetically that the pastor
00:23:23was doing. I called the main office Calvary, which is in Costa Mesa, thinking, oh, they're
00:23:29the leaders and they should know about this grievance or this question that I have. And
00:23:33the person in the office told me, we don't have anything to do with that other church
00:23:39over by you, the other Calvary. You need to talk to them because each minister owns their
00:23:44own Calvary. It's a business. They own it. So, Greg Laurie, he is the CEO of his corporation.
00:23:55Just like Chuck Smith, he is the CEO. That's why there was a big fight over Chuck Smith's
00:24:00multi-million dollar estate when he passed away, okay? Same thing with Vineyard. Now,
00:24:08when you get a different person like John, I knew Chuck Smith also, okay, and John and
00:24:13Chuck were different, okay? But I also know that John Wimber was a human being and a sinner
00:24:22just like the rest of us. And I would say his sins that affected others was the sin
00:24:29of presumption. And that's what, if people want to talk about sin and wrongdoing, let's
00:24:35get real here. The sin of presumption, let me see if I can read my little description
00:24:41here because I want people to understand. The sin of presumption is basically what any
00:24:46charismatic stuff does. He says, here's a John Wimber statement. He says, the kingdom
00:24:52is about doing just as much as teaching, period. If you aren't doing the works of the kingdom,
00:25:00the message isn't complete, period. I pray the vineyard never stops taking the risks
00:25:06of the kingdom. Okay, John Wimber, right? Well, just on its face, you know, I respect
00:25:13the context, but just on its face, that's pietism. The works of the kingdom? Now, I
00:25:19want to simplify for everyone here. On this earth, there are only two religions. Two,
00:25:26just two, okay? Let me explain. There's either what God does or what man does. That's it.
00:25:33Those are the categories. Now, what John Wimber just said is pietism. It's what man does.
00:25:40I was there when he was all about urging us to do the stuff. And like you, John, I sat
00:25:48there feeling so bad for myself. I thought, man, I don't have the spirit. I don't feel
00:25:55the stuff, whatever. I even got goaded into doing tongues and it was so fake. You know,
00:26:02because I knew, right? And like I said, I never raised my hands and did all the stuff,
00:26:09you know, had the emotional expression, except I was gobsmacked when he said don't trust
00:26:14the book, right? You see what I mean? This emotionalism leads humans into thinking what
00:26:24people do, what men do, men and women do. That's where God is. And that's not true.
00:26:30I mean, anybody can go on a hike in Yosemite or some amazing natural place and know, or
00:26:36a natural disaster, by the way, and know the Lord who is the governor of everything. That's
00:26:44where he is. This world belongs to him, right? So, John Wimber claiming that the Holy Spirit
00:26:51is only here in this warehouse building on a certain street in Anaheim was nonsense.
00:26:59It was his opinion. And that's the sin of presumption because he led all of us to think
00:27:04that was real. And he did it with his affable, friendly, a lot of people say he was so humble.
00:27:11Well, let me tell you what false humility is, okay? When you violate God's word for
00:27:20whatever reason, I mean, I don't know his motivation. I just know, I can see and I know
00:27:26because I test the scriptures, he was violating God's word and then explaining it away, okay?
00:27:33And at one time when I went to the Vineyard Leadership, years later, I was really troubled.
00:27:38I thought maybe I could make sense of it. It was more of a cathartic thing for me. I
00:27:42said, are we ever going to study theology or apologetics? And they said, no, we're
00:27:48just going to follow the Spirit. Well, that's Gnosticism.
00:27:51Pete Yeah.
00:27:52You know, now we are in dangerous land because who can say whatever can say anything?
00:27:58Pete We talked earlier about the converging apostasy,
00:28:02the podcast series that I'm doing with Steve. And you were talking about how this has always
00:28:08existed. This has been, you know, apostasy for ages. Once I started into the apologetics
00:28:14scene and I was learning what is Gnosticism, I didn't even know until I left the Branham
00:28:20cult. I began to see traces of it in threads throughout the religion itself. And one of
00:28:27the things that really hit me like a brick wall was the indoctrination. Because we were
00:28:32indoctrinated with loaded language and different themes that kind of sound biblical, and you
00:28:40can find little passages of verses that if you really stretch them, you can make them
00:28:46kind of fit the agenda. And then I would find many of them are rooted in Gnosticism. And
00:28:51this was very problematic to me. And one of the things that I came to understand is people
00:28:57who are indoctrinated like this, whenever you give them the actual true biblical meaning
00:29:06of whatever is the concept that they're trying to understand, they don't hear it because
00:29:10they're hearing the loaded language when you talk. And they don't see the difference because
00:29:15they think their loaded language is the Bible. And I recently, I had a conversation with
00:29:21somebody recently about John Wember and the kingdom theology, and I faced this exact problem.
00:29:27Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is within you. And if you read just simply basic Christian
00:29:34principles, that means an entirely different thing than what Wember taught and what Branham
00:29:40taught, Latter Rain, all of these guys, and especially the kingdom now nonsense. But the
00:29:45problem is because people who are indoctrinated with each one of those various individuals
00:29:52of cults of personality, their perspective is based off of the cult of personality rather
00:29:58than focusing on just the Bible, just what the Bible says. So I had this trouble trying
00:30:04to explain this. What I'm seeing, and I'm going to let you explain it far better than
00:30:11I ever could, what I'm seeing is that it is the variance within what they're teaching
00:30:18and what is actually in the Bible. People are building upon that variance and turning
00:30:23it into far more destructive themes. And so one of the sections of the page, the John
00:30:29Wember page that I have, it's talking about the kingdom now theology and how he was working
00:30:34with others to develop this, and it grew into the kingdom now theology. What I was trying
00:30:41to say there, I probably should expand a little bit further my thought, but my understanding
00:30:46of what has happened is Wember did not teach kingdom now, but the variance between what
00:30:52he taught and what is actually in the Bible, it could be used by others for destructive
00:30:57purposes and they did. So maybe you could speak a little bit about this.
00:31:02Dianne Rehm Right, okay. Well, there's a couple things
00:31:04you mentioned that I think we need to look at. First of all, the teaching of the kingdom
00:31:09is in scripture, okay? And better theologians and historical theologians for thousands of
00:31:18years, going back to Augustine, further than that, Old Testament. I mean, I have to remind
00:31:24myself it began in the garden, okay? That is the temple of God in the garden. But we
00:31:30see this theme throughout scripture. And it's what we would call, you know, those of us
00:31:37who study this, the biblical historical model, which we call it the two kingdom model. It
00:31:44means we have the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God. And Christians have dual citizenship.
00:31:51You know, we live in this real world on earth, okay? And we have citizenship where we live,
00:31:57real lives that have agency, okay? And so, there's that category. And then the category
00:32:05that we are also citizens simultaneously of the kingdom of heaven, you know, of God, right?
00:32:12And in my notes here, I always have to remind myself the kingdom of God is both present
00:32:17and future. Both and, it's not either or. Now, throughout church history, we see these
00:32:24two categories being fought over, okay, all the time. In fact, I have to remember the
00:32:30funny thing is, it's actually humorous. Jesus is teaching his disciples in Matthew 24 and
00:32:37he's telling them those scary things. Remember where he says, you know, not a generation
00:32:42will pass and this temple will be, you know, leveled, right? Now, imagine you're a Jewish
00:32:48man. You have to think of it like this. That's all, their whole world is the temple, is Israel,
00:32:56you know, the people of the land. And here is Jesus, this rabbi, saying, okay, guys,
00:33:02in a generation, none of this is going to be here and you're going to have to run for
00:33:05your lives. That was radical to them. And the disciples right there, you had to wonder
00:33:11what they looked like, like, uh-oh. What do we do? And they say to him, oh, you know,
00:33:18basically, oy, what do we do, right? And Jesus tells them, basically, don't worry about that.
00:33:25I'm telling you these practical things, okay? Now, here we are 2,000 some odd years later
00:33:33and we try to make sense of all those historical things that have happened between Jesus and
00:33:38us. And we can benefit from those studies because what we see again and again and again
00:33:45is enthusiastic Christians, those would be the charismatic kind of Christians, that for
00:33:50whatever reason don't have self-control. They don't read the word of God. If they do, they
00:33:55don't care about it. If they do care about it, they twist it to their own devices. The
00:34:00Bible talks about all of this. This is nothing new, okay? But we Christians are warned in
00:34:06the New Testament, over two-thirds of the New Testament is warnings about these false
00:34:12teachers. And I love 2 Peter, if you just go through any book, go through 2 Peter, the
00:34:17whole book, read the whole thing, beginning to end, and you're good to go. I mean, if
00:34:21you are, if you have a fairly rational mind and a third grade education and you just read,
00:34:29you're going to understand a lot there. And so, we're not left without any instruction
00:34:36and that's why I can point to teachers like John Wimber and say, for whatever reason,
00:34:42you know, nothing personal, okay? This man is culpable. By God's word, he is culpable
00:34:48for misleading all these people. Innocent people, experimenting, whatever you want to
00:34:54call it. I remember John improvising like a musician with his spiritual stuff. Well,
00:35:00I don't know if it's, maybe this, I'm thinking, wait a minute. You know, I'm reading the Bible
00:35:05for myself at the time and I realized pastors and overseers in the Bible have an incredibly
00:35:12burdensome responsibility. God is going to hold them accountable. It's not a little thing,
00:35:18it's a big deal. And for somebody like John Wimber to get up there and make it casual,
00:35:26like we're all at some sort of potluck and kumbaya and we're all just trying to, no.
00:35:31The Christian faith is tied to a book. The Christian church is supposed to be the place
00:35:39of the truth, not the dialogue. And that's what Wimber and church growth were part of. It's this
00:35:49dialectic nonsense that is very dangerous. Peter Drucker, thank you very much, former Nazi, came
00:35:55over and started teaching this business model, okay? And the person who really latched onto it
00:36:03was Rick Warren. And of course, when Rick Warren came out with his stuff, and by the way, I played
00:36:09over at his church enough to know how his curriculum worked, okay? Rick Warren, I don't
00:36:15know if they still have it, but they have Roman Catholic theologians teaching their theology
00:36:19classes at Saddleback, okay? So, it's all tied together and it all goes like this. We men,
00:36:27whoever we are, it could be Paul Cain, it could be John Wimber, it could be Chuck Smith, I don't
00:36:32care. Name it. You know, and sadly, I think Johnny Mac has some hints there too. Anytime you get
00:36:38John MacArthur, anytime you get a rock star Christian leader, there's great danger because
00:36:49now we are all tied into their kingdom building, whatever it is, whatever they think it is.
00:36:54Peter Yeah.
00:36:55Mary-Anne Okay? And Jesus' church is not that.
00:36:59Pete Yeah.
00:37:00Mary-Anne If it's big and exciting and all and new,
00:37:03that is not the church of Christ. It isn't. And Jesus said it best. When Pilate asked him,
00:37:10are you a king? Jesus says, yes. Well, my kingdom is not of this world, as Jesus answered. To a
00:37:18Roman governor, for crying out loud. And it's like, I want to say to Christians, what part of
00:37:24what Jesus said don't you understand? Jesus was clear. He is not vague about that. And these
00:37:33kingdom builders, these entrepreneurs, that's the right word, okay, they are fleecing the flocks,
00:37:42like the scripture says, and leading them into a ditch and ruining their faith, you know,
00:37:48shipwrecking their faith, I think the scripture puts it. And it is such an egregious crime in
00:37:53the face of a holy God. And one day, he is going to deal with that. Which is, if I were, back then,
00:38:02I didn't have the, you know, the ability to do it. But nowadays, I do it. Whenever I run
00:38:07into a church leader innovator, because I play the harp, okay, for a profession. And I play
00:38:14everywhere. I'm a commercial musician, so I play for the Mormons, I play for the Jehovah Witnesses,
00:38:20I play for hospice. You know, the harp is a powerful instrument as a solo instrument, right?
00:38:27And I've had quite a few adventures. And I had a Lutheran chaplain at a hospice say to me once,
00:38:33he came over to the harp, and he says, oh, you must be an angel. And I said, you need to talk
00:38:37to my husband about that one. I'm not an angel. I said, this is my instrument, you know, and it's
00:38:42great, I love it. Well, he starts telling me about God and I asked him, oh, you're the chaplain here,
00:38:49you're ministering to people who are dying? And I said to him, what do you tell someone,
00:38:54I'm very curious, sir, what do you tell someone who's dying? What kind of hope can you give them?
00:39:01And I'm not kidding, John. He said, I tell them that Jesus loves them and has a wonderful plan
00:39:06for their life. On the deathbed. And I said, well, sir, what about the gospel of our gracious Lord
00:39:15dying on a Roman cross, shedding his blood for all of our sins before a holy God, that we might
00:39:21be saved from God's wrath and join him forever in paradise? And the Lord paid it all. What about
00:39:28the gospel of Jesus Christ? And he looked at me kind of startled and he says, well, we don't take
00:39:34the Bible seriously, do we? And I found out later, because that shocked me, I thought Lutherans were
00:39:41biblical. You know, I was learning too, and I hadn't learned enough yet. And I went back and
00:39:47checked his name tag or, you know, he had a department there in the hospice. He was one
00:39:52of the liberal Lutherans, right? And so, I began to learn that this apostasy is everywhere throughout
00:40:02the entire church. There is no respecter of, I mean, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. And it's
00:40:11all about abandoning and fighting against the truth of Christ. Now, the moral things, I will
00:40:19say this, everybody likes to get distracted about all these moral infractions that these false
00:40:24teachers do. And that's why I think they defend Wimber, okay? As far as I can tell, Wimber was
00:40:32a good man. I don't know of any, you know, conspiracy, I don't know of any scandalous
00:40:40things that he did. He wasn't, he didn't look greedy, you know, I don't think he looked greedy
00:40:45at all. He didn't act like that. He had a wonderful family, you know? He wasn't doing
00:40:51anything morally wrong that I could tell. I have no beef with him on that. But I would tell anybody
00:40:59who is searching here, I would say, wait a minute. Christians are told to judge mostly the church,
00:41:06by the way. We judge the church, the leaders in the church, not the world, okay? And we're
00:41:11supposed to judge their theology, their teaching. And that's hard to do. I know when you're a new
00:41:17Christian, you've got to study and that's a pain in the head. You know, it's a pain in the head,
00:41:21a headache, literally. Okay? And then you may not have resources, you may not enjoy reliable
00:41:29discipleship at your own church. You know, there's a lot of fragmentation, right? But that's the
00:41:36template the scriptures give us. And yes, out of that bad theology flows all of this, you know,
00:41:45moral sin. And oh my gosh, we would be cataloging these moral sins till the Lord comes back. Is
00:41:52there any end to it? There's no end to it, is there? Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal
00:41:58movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter
00:42:04reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn
00:42:10this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On
00:42:16the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley,
00:42:22Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions
00:42:29of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related
00:42:36to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking
00:42:42the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or
00:42:47video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research,
00:42:52we want to thank you for your support. Immediately people are going to accuse me of connecting to you
00:42:58because of the music, and I'm going to clear the air right now. Of course I did. Absolutely.
00:43:02Darlene Flynn Yeah. We're musicians.
00:43:03Darrell Bock We're musicians. That's what musicians do,
00:43:06right? But yeah, there's so much to unpack there. Like I said before, it's not that I'm for or
00:43:13against any person. I'm just simply documenting what everybody else refuses to document so that
00:43:19this history is preserved for the future. And you mentioned so many things that I'm actually going
00:43:26to have to go back and listen to this after we record it, because I want to build out some of
00:43:30those pages on my website. But you mentioned the Nazi guy, for example. And believe it or not,
00:43:36that's connected directly to everything that we're talking about. I just published my book,
00:43:40Weaponize Religion, Christian Identity to the NAR. And there was a American Nazi guy who
00:43:50got his commission apparently allegedly directly from Germany, and he started working with Amy
00:43:56Semple McPherson. He started working with Charles Fuller. The Fuller University exists largely
00:44:02because of this guy. And people have to understand it's not that I say Charles Fuller is a Nazi,
00:44:09but he's working with the most notorious Nazi figure in the United States. Were they aligned?
00:44:15I don't know. I can't say, but I can tell you where they were speaking at conventions together.
00:44:20And then I see John Wimber out of this university. He's working with Fuller Institution,
00:44:26I should say. He's working with C. Peter Wagner. They were networking. Does that mean Wagner
00:44:31influenced them? I don't know, but I can see they're working together. It's an intersection
00:44:35point of history. And where it ends up is exactly what you said. These people are building
00:44:42institutions. And we talked right before this podcast, we talked about how America is basically
00:44:49recreating the Corinthian problem that existed back in Paul's day. So they're doing the same
00:44:56thing. And when I see somebody who is so respected that a group of people will try to conceal his
00:45:03history, for me, I want to know why. Why are they doing it? Why do they want to conceal it?
00:45:10And I use the phrase cult of personality because in many ways they try to emulate what Wimber
00:45:15created. That phrase itself isn't that bad. You've got the Justin Bieber cult of personality,
00:45:23right? It doesn't mean it's destructive, but my fear is if you take all of the historical
00:45:28examples of people who build a framework around a human being as a cult of personality,
00:45:36I have seen very few that did not end up into a destructive nature.
00:45:40They always do. So, let me, you said something there, John, I want to pick up on. This word
00:45:45cult. Let's talk about this word cult. This is going to be a little, you know, risky,
00:45:50but I'm going to go for it. Okay. In studying apologetics, I just, you know, we have some
00:45:57great teachers, you know, Michael Horton, Kim Riddlebarger, I mean, these are people you can
00:46:01look up. And they're the textbook writers, okay? And so, there's this word cultus, which is where
00:46:08we get our word culture from. So, I want to just let everybody know that word cult is not a bad
00:46:15word. Now, we think it's bad today because we've had these horrible experiences like Jim Jones,
00:46:21and we now have this phrase, you know, drinking the Kool-Aid. And I studied the Jim Jones cult
00:46:25and stuff with Dr. Martin, but the word cult is not a bad word. It identifies the created world
00:46:33that the Lord created, the culture. So, men create culture. Societies, you know, humanity,
00:46:41as history progresses, creates culture. And in the Old Testament, we see that in the very beginning
00:46:49where you have Adam and Eve, they leave the garden, you know, they commit sin, they commit
00:46:54treason to the Creator God, and they get kicked out of the garden. They're in exile, okay? They're
00:47:00in the land of Nod, and that's, the land of Nod is not Eden, okay? And then we see life continue
00:47:07for these people. They grow their families, and then we see a fork in the road where we see the
00:47:13children of Seth, which is the child of Adam and Eve, and I think it's Lamech, okay? He's
00:47:21another tribal leader. So, the people of Lamech, they build a city. And then it says in the
00:47:27scripture that the family of Seth, they trust the Lord. So, we see this category distinction
00:47:35in the Old Testament as history continues. And so, the city dwellers, I mean, nothing against cities,
00:47:41but I think what it's pointing to is the, what happens to humanity when they build cities.
00:47:47They build things like the Tower of Babel. What's the Tower of Babel about? It's mankind saying,
00:47:53hey, we don't need God, we need to touch God, we're going to be our own gods. I mean,
00:47:57we go off the rails. We always do, right? And then there's a small remnant of people who fear God
00:48:04and respect God, like Job, and say to the Lord, though you slay me, yet will I trust you.
00:48:12So, there's a very, very important plotline in the Old Testament that brings us to the
00:48:17New Testament, which if you crash through the New Testament and keep going in human history,
00:48:22brings us to today. But one thing that the charismatic folks miss is the warnings in
00:48:29scripture that say that the canon is closed, like in Revelation. I always marvel that they
00:48:35skip over that, you know? It's a really bad thing for anyone to add anything or take anything away
00:48:41from God's book. Why don't we look at that verse? They don't want to look at that verse,
00:48:45but they're going to yank all these other verses out of context.
00:48:48Pete Yeah.
00:48:49And it's like, we have a book for a reason, because it's the record of God's own self-revelation.
00:48:57The Bible is not about us. It's not about me. It's not about you, John. And thank goodness
00:49:02it's not about John Wember. It's not about charismatics. It is about how the Lord
00:49:08saves a people for himself through his own Son, the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth,
00:49:16who was born of a virgin in a Jewish, you know, village as a poor person and lives a human life,
00:49:25perfect, which you had to wonder what that looked like when he was a kid,
00:49:29perfect, in order to become the prophet, priest, and king of all the prophecies in the Old Testament.
00:49:37The Rode to Emmaus tells us that, that the entire Old Testament is about Jesus.
00:49:42It is not about the stupid dominionism, whatever. It's not about any of that. It's about Jesus,
00:49:48full stop. He says it's all about him. So, every page of the book is about Jesus Christ,
00:49:56every single page, right? So, when anybody walks in the door, and it's always going to be somebody,
00:50:02you know, I don't care who it is now, you know, all the new false teachers that are copying the
00:50:07old false teachers, you know who I mean? It's uncanny. They have like a pre-canned curriculum,
00:50:12all they gotta do is rebrand it, right?
00:50:13Peter Yeah.
00:50:14Mary-Anne And it's a money machine. It's just a money
00:50:17machine because human nature is so vulnerable. We are fallen creatures. Advertising companies know
00:50:25this. And also in my work, I work for advertisers and they pay me a very good wage to come into a
00:50:32studio and play music for an advertisement that's going to sell a zillion products.
00:50:38And advertising is lying. It's telling little fibs to get people to buy things they don't need,
00:50:46okay? And it's all about emotional manipulation. So, this thing that we're looking at with like
00:50:52John Wimber and the NAR, now the NAR is interesting to me because I am astonished
00:51:01that we have the technology that we do to verify these claims. You know, like everyone
00:51:06has a cell phone, right? And they say, okay, we're raising the dead. Hey, show me a video.
00:51:11Pete Yeah.
00:51:12Mary-Anne I mean, really? If I can, yeah. So,
00:51:16we don't see that and then we see really, I think, such ridiculous things like glitter
00:51:22being sprinkled out of the upper, you know, my husband is a stagecraft designer. He's a tech guy.
00:51:29We work for Disney. We know all about these little glitter cannons you can put up in the
00:51:33ceiling or a fog machine or any special effects device that you can use to create some sort of
00:51:39experience, right? And people are so gullible. I mean, that's what actually makes me afraid,
00:51:47is the gullibility of the populace because I think, uh-oh, we're not doing well.
00:51:52Pete Absolutely.
00:51:53Mary-Anne We're not doing very well. And I think of circling the wagons and what does that mean?
00:51:58I can't go to the grocery store because people are just, I don't know what's going to happen if
00:52:03I leave the house, right? But the religious hucksters, I mean, these people are religious
00:52:09hucksters. I think John Wimber meant well and I think he sadly was one of many, he's not the only
00:52:17one, but he was very successful at his own research and his own building of a business,
00:52:27and it is a business. I mean, his estate is making money off of all these movies now.
00:52:32I mean, he's a copyrighted author, he makes royalties off of all these praise songs.
00:52:38And by the way, the theology in these praise songs is all Gnostic. It's not good stuff.
00:52:44Pete Yeah, no, it's not.
00:52:44Mary-Anne I mean, it's very romantic and it's not biblical, that's the problem.
00:52:50And so, and by the way, if you ever study the scriptures, in the scriptures we are told how
00:52:56the church is to worship, and we do not see such a person as a worship leader being a musician.
00:53:02We don't see a category for worship leaders. We see the minister of the word, the overseers,
00:53:07the elders, you know, the teachers that are under heavy accountability with the Lord,
00:53:14okay? And we don't see all of these adjunct, you know, this, what is it called? My husband
00:53:22does all these installations for churches, that's the other thing. My experience is in my household,
00:53:27my technical husband who is a sound engineer, lighting designer, his business for the last
00:53:3220 years has installed systems for all these megachurches. And believe me, we have stories
00:53:38to tell because when you're in there hanging lights or speakers from the ceiling and the
00:53:43pastor walks through the building leading a group of investors talking freely about the money he's
00:53:51making, you know. That's why I can say if I want to, I don't want to go after these guys, but I
00:53:56know it's a business model, okay? And so, people who are attending this thinking, oh, God's there,
00:54:03it's like, no. One of the churches I left years ago was at Calvary Chapel and my best friend
00:54:12stayed and she was shocked when I said, Donna, I'm leaving the church, this church,
00:54:16the Holy Spirit is not here. And she had, she gasped like, and I said, look, that guy is up
00:54:22there on the stage scaring everyone. It was during Y2K, you know, probably before you were born, John.
00:54:29And he was, he's well known today, I won't name him, but the man is still fear-mongering and
00:54:36making money off of it. And he's in the political scene now and I don't know why his non-profit
00:54:43isn't yanked. Because he's using his many thousand visitor, you know, members to make
00:54:50money off of all this. And, you know, it's appalling, but we're going to see more of it,
00:54:56I'm afraid.
00:54:57Pete It's terrible. One of the best things that
00:55:00ever happened to me happened by chance and this, it seems to happen often in my life that people
00:55:06just kind of fall into my lap when I need the most. And I was on a business trip and I was
00:55:12flying back home and the guy seating next to me just happened to be a, I think he was pretty well
00:55:18respected in the psychology community. I can't remember his name, but he, you know, through the
00:55:26course of our conversation, he learned that I was in a cult and he learned what I was doing,
00:55:29trying to help people who were in cults. And he recommended that I read two books. And to this day,
00:55:37a lot of what I do, I can trace back to some of the themes that I got from this guy and his
00:55:43explanation of them. He had me read Propaganda, which if you're a psychologist, great book. If
00:55:50you want to learn how the church is manipulating your head, these mega churches, read Propaganda
00:55:55because it, I read it and it was like, oh my gosh, they did this to me for 37 years and I had no
00:56:01idea that they could do this. But it talks about how you can, for good or bad, you know, it's not
00:56:07always necessarily bad to manipulate people if you have the right agenda that kind of came out
00:56:14wrong. But the book explains how you can use different techniques to make people come to your,
00:56:21to come to the decision that you want them to, I think is how the author puts it, which is,
00:56:27it's good to learn, but then you can also see how that can be abused.
00:56:31And then the next one he made me read, which you may laugh at me for this, but
00:56:37I still, I go back to it. He had me read Hero with a Thousand Faces. And the book,
00:56:43it has a lot of things that, you know, you're not going to agree with everything that you read in
00:56:46the book. But what it gave me was so critically important. It showed how not just the ancient
00:56:53religions, but even some of the modern ones, they use the same themes and build upon them in
00:56:59different ways. And how the techniques that are used to build those religions are even used in
00:57:07movies, like Star Wars, I think, is one of the ones that mentioned.
00:57:10Deirdre McCloskey Love Star Wars.
00:57:11Darrell Bock Yeah, I do too. In fact,
00:57:13every episode's got the Millennium Falcon right here. So we, anyway, we talked about
00:57:21about exactly this, and he started explaining the Hero with a Thousand Faces. And I'm like,
00:57:26no, no, the Coltiscape wasn't like that. Well, then he described the structure, and oh my gosh,
00:57:32it is exactly recreating the structure that is not a Christian structure, right?
00:57:38So I began to develop that, and into the research that I do, I started looking at the people that
00:57:46I'm examining and trying to figure out the variance is what I'm interested. What is core
00:57:52Christianity, and what is the variance? What do they teach that is just slightly extra-biblical,
00:57:58but pretty close to the mark, and what direction is it headed? And if you can find that difference
00:58:04Deirdre McCloskey Wait, you can always,
00:58:06I have to interrupt you. You can always find it, because remember the categories I gave
00:58:10earlier? There are only two religions on this planet. One of the best teachers I ever had said
00:58:17that to us one night when we were looking at the list, the endless list. And in apologetics,
00:58:24you have evidential apologetics, which is the Josh McDowell stuff, which is very interesting.
00:58:30You know, all these evidences and all that. That will, that is not helpful because you get this
00:58:37list that never, never ends. And it just never ends! And now, the good news for me,
00:58:44kind of good news, bad news, I live in Southern California. And here we are the epicenter of
00:58:50religious weirdness. Everything happens here. We have the Jesus movement, we have, you name it,
00:58:56we have it here. And one of our teachers said once in apologetics class, he said, you know,
00:59:01you got a blender, right? And you put all these different religions in there and these different
00:59:05ideas and you push the button. That's Southern California. And so, pulling that, you know,
00:59:13separating that is impossible, okay? But he said, never forget this. We have two religions on this
00:59:20planet. Two, only two. The religion of God and the religion of man. That's it. No matter what
00:59:27new name you want to give it, Hinduism, Pantheism, this is called worldview study, you may know.
00:59:33There's only six worldviews, I think it's six. Ronald Nash, great teacher, get the book on
00:59:39worldview. There's only six categories of thinking healthy humans can do. And they think in categories
00:59:49unless they're mentally ill and that's why people are mentally ill because for whatever reason,
00:59:53their brain is not functioning correctly. You know, it's not ordered, right? It's disordered.
01:00:00So, humans have a, we're religious creatures, that's who we are. We cannot escape being
01:00:09religious. We venerate something. And in the Bible, that's idolatry,
01:00:16okay? That's the category, idolatry. So, I would say, called personality, that's idolatry. You know,
01:00:22one of many. So, in the scriptures, in the Ten Commandments, we're told to have no other gods
01:00:27before us. Well, when we value some person and we start treating that person like they
01:00:34are the be all, end all, the voice of God other than Jesus, you know, look at the two categories,
01:00:43getting back to the two categories, they're better expressed in the Roman Church because today,
01:00:50uh, our teacher said, never underestimate the power of Rome because their message is
01:00:56Jesus plus whatever. Works. Okay? Jesus is not enough. What he did is not enough. We need more.
01:01:04And they want to rule the world, so they're behind, you know, their agenda, the Jesuits and
01:01:09all of that is a fascinating study because they're still here. You know, and that's why I think I ran
01:01:14into, you know, Roman Catholic theologians over at the Saddleback Church. Pete Yeah.
01:01:19You know, and the nice theologian that I met, because he liked the harp and I saw his little
01:01:25name tag, it said, Father So-and-So Theologian for whatever, and I thought, oh, that's so
01:01:29interesting. And he goes, yes, I teach church history. And oh, that's interesting. Why are
01:01:33you at Rick Warren's church? Oh, I have to teach them. Because I was marveling. I was thinking,
01:01:39I was just so, you know, surprised by that. And he said, well, I'm here to teach everyone church
01:01:44history. Well, okay, fair enough. But how much you want to bet he was teaching with an edge,
01:01:51you know, favoring Rome, you know? I get it. Now, I'm a Protestant. That's why we're,
01:01:57you know, we protest against Rome. That's why we're Protestants. We say Rome is wrong,
01:02:03okay? And that Jesus is enough and that he paid for everything and it is Christ alone that saves
01:02:10sinners, not the stuff that we have to do. And that's why getting back, you know, circling back
01:02:15to the comment of Wember here, he says, if you aren't doing the works of the kingdom,
01:02:23and I'm thinking, uh, the Bible doesn't teach that.
01:02:26Pete No.
01:02:27Mary-Anne And he doesn't say it outright in
01:02:31that statement there. He doesn't say I'm going to hell if I'm not doing it. But I'm sorry,
01:02:35we live like, whenever I say the Vineyard or the Pentecostal groups, they teach a bifurcated
01:02:47Christianity. They, I don't know if they know they're doing it, but that's what it is. That
01:02:53means there are the haves and the have-nots in Christians. Me, I'm a poor, loser Christian,
01:03:00I can't speak in tongues, you know, I have less than the Holy Spirit than my friend who goes
01:03:05boba la shamba, you know? And it's like, no. We have, we Christians, true Christians have been
01:03:12given everything in Christ. Everything. Everything. And that right there gives us a lens to
01:03:21look at all the extra stuff that these people are imposing on us, and that's why I left that Calvary
01:03:26church because the minister was saying, well, you have to do this to get that, and you have to,
01:03:31and I thought, wait a minute, I'm reading the Bible, and it's not even matching what he's
01:03:35saying. And not only that, he's kind of mean about it. You know, he's really angry and yelling. I
01:03:40always wondered, why do they have to yell when they're up there? You know, like, what is that?
01:03:43Darrell Bock If I were to hear a motivational
01:03:45speaker and they started yelling at me, I'd get up and walk out. But we do it in the churches,
01:03:49why do we do it?
01:03:50Debra Right. It's like, what is that about,
01:03:52you know? But now I know. So, it's interesting, though, that, you know, the two categories,
01:03:59the religion of men is always about them, it's always has sex in it somewhere, okay? And it's
01:04:08always about fame or some sort of elevation of that person, you know? That's where we get the
01:04:15cult of personality. But it doesn't have to look like that. I've been in a lot of Christian praise
01:04:21groups that had that going on, and you know this, John, if you've been in a band. A band is like a
01:04:25miniature government, you know? There's always got to be a leader and other people in there and
01:04:31it's either democratic or autocratic, right? So, you know, I don't put up with the autocratic stuff
01:04:39unless I'm in a symphony. You know, I've played in a symphony and I gotta say the conductor is
01:04:43the head cheese there. We got 150 people here that need to play music together, so we need that.
01:04:49But I find it very interesting that all these other problems like NAR, okay, we're going to
01:04:57continue to see that. And we need Christians to be catechized, that's not a Roman word,
01:05:03that is a Protestant word, and it means we need to learn the curriculum of the scriptures and each
01:05:10individual family member of that church needs to be equipped. That's why we see this destruction.
01:05:19It's so heartbreaking to see the devastation left behind from Wimber in this case and all we have
01:05:27right now, and I think it's because of the marketing of the new films, you know, the whole
01:05:31Lonnie Frisbee thing. When I saw that marketing, I just shook my head and thought, man, you know,
01:05:36I'm pretty sure that it looks like Greg Laurie's behind it. He's very much an opportunist,
01:05:44it's all about money to him and everything, and I'm pretty sure these guys justify their
01:05:50business decisions using God. You know, God brought this about and I should do this,
01:05:57I heard that a lot in the Calvaries. So, the Calvaries are connected to the vineyard
01:06:01things because they have a similar template in that the business model or the, I'm sorry,
01:06:09the leadership model, if you don't know this, have you heard of the Moses model?
01:06:13Darrell Bock I don't know what it is exactly,
01:06:15but I have heard it.
01:06:16Linda Well, here's what it is. It's autocracy.
01:06:20So, here's how it goes. In the New Testament, we see a Presbyterian model of governance in the
01:06:29church. It's got a Presbyteros, you know, the original language. It's got the elders are
01:06:36overseeing the minister of the word, and the minister of the word is the preacher, okay,
01:06:41on the Lord's Day. Now, it's funny but not funny, but if the preacher, for whatever reason, starts
01:06:47off-roading when he's talking, it is the responsibility of the elders to remove him
01:06:53or, you know, to intervene, right? So, there's accountability.
01:06:57But in the Old Testament, in the Moses model, you see Moses, the leader, the great leader that led
01:07:03the children of Israel out of Egypt, right? And he was the authority under God. And then he gets
01:07:13into trouble because he has human limitations. He's going, Lord, your people are driving me nuts,
01:07:19you know? And the Lord says, get some, you know, get some help. And so, he picked 70
01:07:26helpers to help him. But notice the power, the organization chart, you know, who's at the top,
01:07:34God, and then it's Moses, and then it's his people. Well, that's what Chuck Smith adopted.
01:07:39And Chuck Smith came from four-square Pentecostalism,
01:07:43okay? That's his background, he's from four-square, Amy Semple McPherson and all that.
01:07:48Okay? Now, whether he did it, I don't think he was nefarious, I think he did what he knew,
01:07:54you know? And so, that's his model. And we used to call Chuck later Pope Chuck
01:08:02because he was the one, I mean, think about it. He was the evangelical version of the Pope,
01:08:10right? And now, I haven't kept up on this, but I'm guessing it's Greg Laurie now.
01:08:16Because when Pope died, or Pope, when Chuck died, there was this fight, there was this fight over,
01:08:22this power struggle over who was going to be the new Pope, right? And I guess it's Greg Laurie,
01:08:27I don't know, I couldn't keep up. It was so much drama. It was like, my gosh. You know,
01:08:32like you said, they were just devouring themselves, right?
01:08:36Pete Yeah.
01:08:36Mary Beth So, but look at that model.
01:08:39That is not in the New Testament under the new covenant. We're still under the new covenant,
01:08:44which is not like one of those baseball contracts. God's holy covenant is a big deal.
01:08:51And that's why a true church has that template in place because that's Jesus' church. He did that.
01:08:59He organized that and instituted it. That's the word. He instituted it. So, whenever we get any
01:09:05person saying, oh, God, I love God, I love Jesus, and he told me I should start this church, and
01:09:11then they start doing things to, they take out a license for a non-profit, anybody can start a
01:09:15religion. Anybody can. And say anything in this country and that's, I think that's the problem.
01:09:21Pete Yeah.
01:09:22Mary Beth I mean, it's a good thing. It's a good thing and a bad thing,
01:09:25you know, and I don't know if we're ever going to fix it. It's, I love having the freedom in
01:09:30this country for false religions, if they're safe, you know, that's my requirement. If they don't
01:09:35harm anybody, I will, you know, support the freedom of religion because I want the freedom
01:09:45to worship God in the way I believe, right?
01:09:48Pete Yeah.
01:09:48Mary Beth And now we see that threatened,
01:09:50and I'm going, uh-oh, this is, in church history, every time that happened, when you mingle
01:09:54government with religion, it doesn't go well, ever.
01:09:57Pete Never, never.
01:09:59Mary Beth And I just go, you guys, have you even?
01:10:01Pete That's –
01:10:02Mary Beth It's like, yeah! And so, and that's why
01:10:06Jesus, I mean, we have to add Jesus in here because Jesus' response to all the diversity,
01:10:12I mean, he is the Lord of all the cosmos. And his mission here when he was here on earth
01:10:19was to fulfill the covenant because his church are the people of the covenant, the new covenant,
01:10:27which is the same covenant. I don't know if anybody knows how covenants work,
01:10:31but they're similar to living trusts, you know, legal documents, where the old covenant,
01:10:36you don't wipe that out. It's not gone. It's still there, but the new covenant overlays it
01:10:42and fulfills it.
01:10:43Pete It's like an addendum.
01:10:44Mary Beth Right, right. And it's the authority
01:10:48that we operate on, but there still is a relationship because Moses was saved the same
01:10:54way we're saved today. He looked forward to Jesus and trusted in him. It's not that he did,
01:11:01I mean, my goodness, it's not a list of to-dos that we have to do because Jesus taught, that's
01:11:09why he taught all of the parables, and his disciples basically said, who can even do that
01:11:14list? Nobody, we're lost. We can't do it. And Jesus' point was, now you're getting it.
01:11:20Pete What you say is so eloquent and perfect. I
01:11:22wish you had have written that page that I have on John Wember and not me. But it
01:11:27Mary Beth Well, we're all learning here, and you're,
01:11:31and you know, when I read, I think I saw the video, and I also read your work, and I understood
01:11:38by comparing it, I thought, oh, you're out there and bless your heart, you're just studying
01:11:44and learning. You're learning facts. You're doing research, right? So, somebody like you,
01:11:50you have no input from a personal experience, right? Which is correct. Good research is always
01:11:58done with reliable, verifiable sources, right? So, like, my claims here, you know, anybody can,
01:12:05look, John Wember is now dead. He now knows whatever, you know, and I don't know his heart,
01:12:12I want to believe that with all the mistakes he made, I know the Lord redeems his people.
01:12:19I don't know John's, it's not for me to know what his heart is.
01:12:23Pete No.
01:12:23Mary Beth So, I don't know his final destination. I do know what he said was damnable.
01:12:28Pete Yeah.
01:12:29Mary Beth Was really, really, you know, big ticket item, not little things,
01:12:33big things, okay? Same thing with Chuck Smith, by the way. Chuck Smith was on record denying
01:12:40the physical resurrection and that's a big deal. And so, when we see these leaders age,
01:12:49and get older, and then somebody in my group said, you know, when they get that old and they
01:12:55start talking heresy, they need to just be put out to pasture, go golfing, get off of the state,
01:13:00stop teaching, right? But I think the Lord's instructions in the word are enough, they're
01:13:07sufficient. Everything I've learned is from the scripture. I am not, even though I'm under the
01:13:13authority of leaders of the church, you know, men, real elders, real pastors, I really am.
01:13:19And it's properly instituted, so I'm not just winging it here. Everything I say has to be
01:13:25accountable and God help me that I've delivered the information I know to be true, as far as I
01:13:32know it, okay? But the proper compassion on false teachers, I mean, there is a point for compassion.
01:13:41Right now, we see great risk and danger in our nation with all this political stuff going on.
01:13:47Pete Oh, absolutely.
01:13:49Mary-Anne The proper attitude is,
01:13:53the adults in the room, so to speak, we're not going to advocate for violence. We're not going
01:13:57to advocate for vengeance. You know, vengeance is mine, says the Lord. The Lord says he is going to
01:14:03sort out the wheat from the tares. That's his business, his job. And this whole thing, this
01:14:09whole confusion with the NAR, this is an eschatology problem. And I want everyone to know
01:14:16here, because it's true, eschatology is not a little added category we desire to study or not.
01:14:24Every Christian is driven or led by their eschatology. So, my view of eschatology
01:14:33is my view of scripture. It's cohesive, coherent. It's not about the Lord coming
01:14:39back. You know, I'm what they call an, I can't even say this, an amillennialist.
01:14:43I agree with the scriptural description of what, like, Paul's view of the end days,
01:14:50Jesus' view of the end days. And it's not for me to say when that is, and I'm so okay with that.
01:14:57We have a lot to do. It's like, look, that's what he does. He knows what he's doing.
01:15:02Our job is to live at peace as far as it is in our power, is to deliver the message
01:15:10of the holy gospel to sinners, which is the mercy of God to save sinners is sacrificing
01:15:18his only son on a Roman cross who rose from the dead on the third day. And by that message,
01:15:25he regenerates the souls of dead people. You know, we're dead in sin. That's the miracle,
01:15:32that's what's so ironic about NAR. They're running around looking for these signs that are fake.
01:15:38And yet, the greatest miracle on this planet at this moment is when the heart and soul
01:15:46of a dead person is brought to life by the Holy Spirit by trusting alone in the gospel of Jesus
01:15:53Christ. That's the miracle. And you can't see it, can you? It's not, usually it's not wild and
01:16:01crazy, like Paul, he gets knocked off his horse, blinded by a lightning bolt, whatever that had to
01:16:05look like, that had to be dramatic, you know? But today, it's not the way we think. It's not
01:16:14walking an aisle and praying a prayer. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful it wasn't the beach
01:16:22conversions we had at, Calvary Chapel did these baptisms at one of the famous beaches down by
01:16:29Laguna Beach here on the west coast. And you know, the Jesus people would go out there and
01:16:35get baptized and all of that, and now I wonder how many people really were saved. The Lord will use
01:16:42man's efforts, which is a miracle. He does that. But that's up to him. I don't see how anyone can
01:16:50walk around and pronounce, you know, Roman Catholics. There are true believers in the
01:16:57aberrant Church of Rome, and they're everywhere. But we're not told to go around and check
01:17:04everybody's, you know, spirituality. We just don't do that. We have enough to do. And so,
01:17:12Wimber's curriculum was all about motivating people to get out and do stuff. And so, it's
01:17:19pietism, which is anti-Christian. You know, it's all about man doing whatever.
01:17:28And I'm really sad because I know time went by and some of the friends that I had there that
01:17:35I thought were believers, they're atheists now. You know, we now know that these kinds of religions
01:17:43alienate people and they become sort of inoculated to the gospel where they want
01:17:48nothing to do with it. And it's so heartbreaking. I wish I could meet them and say,
01:17:58the Lord has not changed. Humans always do bad things and people that speak for Christ
01:18:05do criminal things, but that is not who the Lord is. We need to get to know who Jesus is
01:18:10and we always know him through his word. And that, I think that's, well, I know that's why
01:18:17John lifted the Bible up and no, it's not this. It's this other stuff. And that's when I knew,
01:18:23I'm at the wrong address. I need to not be here.
01:18:25Darrell Bock Yeah, for me, like I said, I take the fruits
01:18:30because Jesus said, by the fruits you'll know them. I take the fruits of whatever was created
01:18:34and then I trace it backwards and I see all of these milestones. And people like Wimber, for me,
01:18:41I don't know if he was a good man or a bad man. I didn't know the man. And for me, that's totally
01:18:45irrelevant. I look at it more like for a period of time, he had a steering wheel and he turned
01:18:51it slightly. Now, whether he intended to go the wrong direction or not, I don't know, but he
01:18:56turned it slightly. And then other people carried it forward and then they turned it even further.
01:19:01And in the end, you've got, like you said, the mixture of politics and religion, which is the
01:19:07most dangerous thing in the history of the world that we have and see today. So I see this as the
01:19:12fruit. Can I say that Wimber created this? Not directly, but he turned the wheel, and he's one
01:19:19of the men who turned the wheel, and why did he do it? So from here, where I go, and I did the
01:19:24same thing with the Branham research. Every figure that I introduce into the website, I take the
01:19:30assumption that if they're in this cult of personality that is trying to conceal information,
01:19:36I want to know why, and I don't really trust the facts that have been written by the historians
01:19:41that are in favor. So I start a page, and it's nowhere near complete. In fact, you'll probably,
01:19:47I think people have actually found a few either grammatical errors or I think one place I chose
01:19:53the wrong footnote. But from there, the page gets developed, and if there's anything that's
01:19:59just blatantly false, I usually issue an apology and say, you know, I mischaracterized so-and-so
01:20:05here. I haven't really seen anything like that. It's mostly there's differences in opinion of
01:20:11what he intended, which that's irrelevant to history. But I build out the history, and I,
01:20:17as people contact me with information like you're doing, and I've actually have some other people
01:20:21who were in the Wimber groups that are sending me things that I can use, I build out the information,
01:20:28and that leads to another figure and another and another, and pretty soon you have this roadmap of
01:20:33how all of this turned into the NAR, which is what I'm building out. So I'm excited to, this is the
01:20:40early stages of that journey, and I'm excited that you're joining in with me to do this.
01:20:46Darlene Well, it's surprising. I didn't think
01:20:50my experiences, I mean, it's not that I ever thought it would contribute to anything. I'm
01:20:54very happy to help. I'm just glad in a way if just some of the people that I saw ruined,
01:21:03shipwrecked back in the day might be restored, it would do my heart good to know that might
01:21:09be possible. It's, to live, as you know, being in a cult, the wreckage that had to have been,
01:21:20that is in all cults, the wreckage. You know, the emotional feelings of people, the relationships,
01:21:27you know, families, you know, I'm just so grateful I was not hurt worse. You know, I was
01:21:34involved, but I saw family groups, you know, my former, I've been married twice, my former
01:21:39husband was in the vineyard, a leader in the vineyard, and of course, that went south because
01:21:44of it. So, the Bible is true when it says that these false teachers shipwrecked the faiths
01:21:52of those who are vulnerable, you know, who don't know how to discern. So, being a Berean is a big
01:21:58deal. And I'm glad you're doing this work, John. I really wish you well in it. It's important.
01:22:05And I don't know, I don't think the, I don't know how someone who is enamored of a person,
01:22:17like in this case, John Wimber, or Chuck Smith, whatever, you know, these people,
01:22:21especially attractive people. You know, John Wimber was attractive in the sense that he was,
01:22:27he had a kindness about him, a friendliness, you know, and being a good musician, you know,
01:22:33all of that.
01:22:34Pete See, I would've connected with him just because of the musician.
01:22:37Mary-Anne Oh, my, you know, I knew him and I know you
01:22:40now and I think we would've jammed together. Really.
01:22:44Pete Absolutely.
01:22:45Mary-Anne It's, and I just think he, his experience,
01:22:51and I don't know why he went to Fuller, but I think that's where he got tainted with that stuff.
01:22:57Pete Yeah.
01:22:57Mary-Anne Because the whole kingdom heresy is actually
01:23:03a twisting of the kingdom teaching in the scripture. So, there is a proper way to understand
01:23:09the kingdom and there's an improper way. And like I said, the two categories, you know, the man
01:23:14religion, they're always going to exploit Christianity for their own gain. That's the
01:23:20end game there, you know, their own gain. And yeah.
01:23:25Pete And as sad as it is, and I've experienced this
01:23:28even working with the Wimber people, whenever people are doing this for their own gain and
01:23:34they've manipulated a group of people, it's very difficult for them to see that it was for their
01:23:40own gain. And they always look, especially the charismatic personalities, they really want to
01:23:46see them as a good person. I'm the same way. I want to, I look for the good in all people. So,
01:23:51it's very hard for me to see somebody had taken advantage of me. But anyway, this is the beginning
01:23:56of a journey. I welcome you on board and this is going to be exciting. We're going to get into some
01:24:02good things. So, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out
01:24:07on the web. You can find us at william-branham.org. For more about the dark side of the NAR,
01:24:13read Weaponize Religion, From Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and soon Audible.
01:25:13you