Prophecy or Divination: The Modern Obsession With Prophets - Bob Scott - Podcast Episode 326 - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

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   Some Say They Blundered: https://a.co/d/2cEkDyF  John and Bob explore the complex history and theology of prophetic belief systems, weaving together ancient cultural insights, biblical interpretation, and personal experiences within modern movements. They highlight the importance of context in understanding ancient texts and challenge the common approach of interpreting Scripture without regard for the historical and cultural world it emerged from. As they reflect on the dangers of unquestioned authority and selective interpretation, they expose how manipulation often replaces truth in religious systems that centralize power around charismatic leaders.  The discussion also dives into the evolution of prophecy from a communal, written tradition to a performance-driven platform. They explore why people across economic classes—especially the very wealthy and the very poor—gravitate toward prophetic voices and how this desire for hope and certainty often fuels misplaced faith. The conversation concludes with reflections on humility, personal growth, and a call to encourage rather than manipulate, pointing toward a vision of spiritual health rooted in honesty, learning, and love for others.  00:00 Introduction 03:04 Understanding Ancient Cultural Context 13:33 Why Humanity Craves Prophecy 21:03 Prophecy vs. Divination in Modern Religion 29:04 Reformation, Science, and Fear of Knowledge 42:17 The Rich, the Poor, and Prophetic Exploitation 47:06 Protestant Extremism and Modern Authoritarianism 51:02 The Limits of Ancient Understanding 54:12 Prophetic Identity and Spiritual Manipulation 57:43 The True Purpose of Prophecy  ______________________ – Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham – Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ – Visit the website: https://william-branham.org – Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg  – Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham – Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr – Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books

Transcript

00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.

00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research

00:00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host and friend, Bob Scott, former co-founder

00:00:47of the Kansas City Fellowship and author of three books, the latest of which is Some Say

00:00:52They Blundered, Breaking My Decades of Silence on Mike Bickle, The Kansas City Prophets, and

00:00:58the International House of Prayer.

00:01:00Bob, it's good to be back and to dive deeply into all of the critical thinking that you

00:01:07and I do together about prophets and ancient world, and I don't know if you've seen it,

00:01:13but I've started spinning off these just little short videos talking about some of the things

00:01:18that you and I discuss in the ancient world and how that ties culturally to what we read

00:01:23in the Bible. And I wasn't expecting such a positive feedback initially, but it actually

00:01:29took off pretty well. So in my YouTube site, you'll see a playlist that has, you know, some

00:01:34Bible history and some cultural history, etc. But yeah, I'm excited to get back and to

00:01:40talk all things prophetic.

00:01:41I actually listened to or watched, I should say, the videos because you sent me the link

00:01:46to it and I was like, wow, this is really fascinating. It's condensed, which is nice for

00:01:51people who don't have an hour or so to sit and listen and are looking for something that's

00:01:56a little bit shorter. Those are very informative. So I'm glad to be your muse. I was going to say

00:02:05when I was running a record company, even though I was the executive, I turned out to be the band

00:02:12muse many times. As we were on the bus traveling and having deep conversations, you know, I would

00:02:19come up with these one lines. They would just sort of come out of me. And the next thing I knew was

00:02:23a couple of weeks later, it was a lyric in a song.

00:02:26Yeah. Well, and I have a few different muses, right? So Cynthia and I, we've been talking about

00:02:34some of this in Charismania. Her is more from the biblical side than the cultural, I think,

00:02:40although we do go into cultural a good bit. But, you know, to critically think about it,

00:02:46you have to really, really dive deeply into the ancient cultures. And they're so complex that not

00:02:51many people are going to. And I think that's the frustration that many people have. Whenever a

00:02:56minister gets up and they're talking about whatever's the passage, especially from the Old Testament,

00:03:01they don't dive deeply into what that passage actually means based on the context of culture

00:03:08that it was written from. And there are some ministers that go so far as to say that you have

00:03:13to ignore all the ancient culture. You read the text from within the text, which you can't read any

00:03:19book like this, man. That's not the way that life works.

00:03:21I agree. I know on previous episodes, we've talked about the whole idea of perspective.

00:03:28And I think everybody understands the concept, because anytime you're having a discussion,

00:03:36you know, I think families are interesting, right? Because you can be sitting around a table

00:03:43during the holidays and talk about a story from the past. And the parents will have a perspective

00:03:50of a situation or an event that happened, right? And the kids are looking at it going, well,

00:03:57that's not what we remember, right? And then the oldest sibling will have a very different perspective

00:04:04than the younger sibling. So I think it's actually critical in critical thinking to understand

00:04:12perspective. Who is this person? Where do they fit into the story? What's their history, right?

00:04:19What is the culture they come from? How are they viewing this? Because that gives context.

00:04:27And I think we all have heard stories or heard phrases or things that were said, and we sort

00:04:34of go, huh? And the reason was we heard a statement, but we didn't understand the context because we

00:04:41came into the process late, right? And so we're listening to this statement going, huh? And without

00:04:50the context, the story where this statement or this fact comes from, it doesn't really make a lot of

00:04:57sense.

00:04:58And I came across that line of thought much further in my journey than I want to admit. Because I was,

00:05:06like many people, I was manipulated by these guys to think that, you know, in the ancient world,

00:05:11you had the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys were the children of Israel. The bad guys was

00:05:16everyone else on the face of the planet. That's how it was taught to me. And they said, you can't read

00:05:23the Bible from reading the perspective of the bad guys because that's the enemy. And that's the train

00:05:28of thought that's sadly propagated through all of these movements. But if you're American, take the

00:05:34American Revolutionary War. So you've got England and you've got the people who are revolting in the

00:05:41United States. You view England as the bad guy if you're an American, and at that period of time,

00:05:46I should say. But you can't understand the story at all without understanding what's happening in

00:05:53England that's creating this mess that we're in.

00:05:55Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I think it's unfortunate when people are told that the Bible is the

00:06:02complete story. I mean, factually, it's probably less than 0.00001% of the story. Meaning that if any of you

00:06:17are old enough, like our age group, we all remember cliff notes. If you went to college and you didn't

00:06:24want to read a whole novel, right, for a class, you went to the store and got the cliff notes, which

00:06:30basically were the highlights, right? The key points in the book, you know, key phrases, key quotes,

00:06:39things like that. And it was a small book of less than 50 pages versus the novel that was maybe 400

00:06:46pages, right? So people don't understand that the Bible is really the cliff notes version

00:06:54of 6,000 years of human history.

00:06:59Yeah. I came across – you probably saw it too, but there was a comment that was made in one of

00:07:06the video feeds right after you made that statement. And I was watching it live. I wasn't commenting,

00:07:13but I was watching it live. And I saw the comments come in. They said, you can't call the Bible a

00:07:17cliff notes version. And the thought ran through my head, have you been to a library, man? That's not

00:07:23how libraries work.

00:07:25Yeah. Yeah. And that's nothing wrong with that, but there's a reason why the Israelis are digging

00:07:34in their country, right? And the reason is, is there's a whole lot of the story that they are

00:07:42trying to uncover that's buried hundreds of feet underground, right? And every time they come down

00:07:51another layer, they find another age. And what we find out is like a lot of these cities are built on

00:07:57top of each other. There's seven different or eight different timelines that are all built right on top of

00:08:04each other. And you keep going down, down, down, down. And every time you do, you get a bigger

00:08:09perspective, right? You get a bigger context to who was living here. Recently, they just discovered

00:08:16a whole bunch of stuff in Megiddo, which is where we get the whole Armageddon thing with the supposed

00:08:22big battle that's going to be at the end of the age. And they're discovering all kinds of things as

00:08:28they dig down. So, you know, I, I'm one of these people who, um, even though I'm studious and I'm an

00:08:39avid researcher and I'm a history and archeology fanatic, I look at myself and say, I'm still a child

00:08:48in knowledge. There is so much more understanding out there that I'm not even aware of. And we have yet

00:08:56to discover. So I just think it's, uh, the better posture of heart is humility and just say, you

00:09:05know, it's okay. We don't know. There's a lot of things about this story that don't make sense or

00:09:11there's confusion here, but I, it's, it's disingenuous to, to say that the authors of the

00:09:19Bible and the people that are telling the story don't have a perspective that's based on culture

00:09:27and their understanding of religion, um, at the time. And you, you see this all the way from Abraham,

00:09:34right? Who's leaving Mesopotamia, who is in Ur, which we still today have the temple of Ur,

00:09:43right? It's still there. You know, the place where Abraham worshiped Nana, the moon God,

00:09:49as he moves, you know, or West, you know, to this land of people that are settled there. And

00:09:56you see his understanding of God is very limited, but it's based on what he grew up with in Mesopotamia

00:10:06over the course of time. That revelation of who God is expands, right? I've put long,

00:10:13hard thoughts into exactly that. How do we get into this mass? Because like you, whenever I hear

00:10:20somebody that's telling me what they know, do I, I love to watch documentaries and like my YouTube,

00:10:26I'm, I'm sitting here watching people talk about ancient world and ancient history, et cetera,

00:10:31and religion, politics, et cetera. Whenever I hear somebody that comes out with this attitude that

00:10:39they have, they've learned all there is to learn. And now they're the expert on the subject. I usually

00:10:43shut it off because yes, I'll listen to the expert on the subject, but the best experts admit that,

00:10:50you know, this is a lifetime of learning. That's why we're here. We're, we're here to learn, to grow,

00:10:55to become better, to shift mankind in a good direction. And those are the people that I like to

00:11:01listen to. But you find some people that they really don't understand a lot of the things that

00:11:07they're talking about and worse because they present things as though it is the ultimate solution.

00:11:15Every single person listened to them will take the mistakes that they have and count it as fact.

00:11:22The other thing I like about people who are honest and open is that if they don't know something or if

00:11:27they're learning it, they'll say, this is what we know now. And we know this based on these facts.

00:11:33However, those facts may change. We may learn more as time goes on. And there's, there's so many

00:11:39possibilities for things to learn that we had no clue about that. You know, I, in fact, I was just

00:11:47reading the news yesterday and came in my newsfeed. They found this, I can't remember how old,

00:11:54thousands of years old pyramid that's under the sea, that's basically rewriting the history in a

00:11:59specific region of the world, because they didn't know this existed. They did not know that people

00:12:04here were building pyramids.

00:12:05John Greenewald Well, it's sort of interesting to me because the past is buried, right? I mean,

00:12:10this is me being philosophical here, but the past is buried underground. And as we keep digging,

00:12:16right, we're learning more about our past. But then what's even as equally interesting to me

00:12:24is like the James Webb, you know, I don't even what they call that thing. You know what I'm talking

00:12:29about? The big satellite, you know, that's got, right? It's fundamentally changed massive amounts

00:12:37of perspectives on the universe and what's out there, right? It's so fascinating to me because that,

00:12:44I don't even know how long, I think that thing's been up to, what, a decade maybe?

00:12:48I'm not even sure. But it's like every month you hear this, oh my gosh, we just, you know,

00:12:55learned this and all of our theories about that are wrong. And, you know, and so there's this

00:13:01constant flux in the scientific world about the universe and how we got here. And so I find all

00:13:10that fascinating. So I, you know, I'm there, it's, it's interesting. It's like we, one of the things

00:13:16I've, I've figured out about humanity is, is we're curious about our past. We want to know where we

00:13:22came from, right? Which is where the, you know, why the Bible becomes such a key foundation for

00:13:29Christians. But then to where we want to go today on prophecy, we want to know the future,

00:13:35right? So it's like, we want to know the past because we want to know who we are and where we

00:13:41came from. And we want to know the future. And so one of my questions, what, so I'm, I'm trying not

00:13:48to be, um, put you on the spot here, but one of the questions that, um, has kind of been rattling

00:13:54around in my brain recently is why are people so consumed by prophecy? Exactly. In other words,

00:14:02what, what drives us? The reason I'm asking is because when you get into the subject of prophecy,

00:14:09you're stepping on very sensitive territory here. You know, people get very emotive and emotional

00:14:19and, and highly, you get some, some very intense conversations, but there's something in the human

00:14:28soul that, uh, well, and we, I want to be careful here because they did a little research and found

00:14:35out that only 45% of our population even believes in prophecy. So we're not talking about most people.

00:14:42We're talking about less than half of the people even believe that prophecy is a thing, but why is

00:14:48it a thing? What is it in human nature that we need to know? You know, I've thought long and hard

00:14:54on that because for me, I'm studying the cults and the history of the progression of cults.

00:15:01And as far back as you go, you're going to find a cult leader. You're going to find him turning,

00:15:06he or she turning destructive. And you're going to find the thing that attracted people to them

00:15:11was that they claimed that they could speak from God or speak for God. One of those two. And it goes

00:15:17all the way back through time. And honestly, I think that's why so many people don't believe in

00:15:22prophecy because here's a bad person. They're doing bad things to people. And they claim that

00:15:29they're speaking on behalf of God. And you can take that all the way back literally to the garden

00:15:35of Eden. People want to become more than humans. They want knowledge of good and evil, just like,

00:15:42you know, the Satan, the serpent tipped at even Adam, and they want to become more than they are.

00:15:48But more than that, they want the knowledge, not just of good and evil. They want the knowledge

00:15:54of their future and their outcomes. And so sadly, this movement that Branham was just one cog in this

00:16:04massive larger wheel, they turned the word prophecy into what the ancient Bible, what the ancient

00:16:12Hebrews called divination and fortune telling. It was predictions of the future so they could

00:16:19like peer into this crystal ball using the prophet's head so they could see, okay, what's going to happen

00:16:25to us, good or bad? And I really never thought about that until it was probably two or three years after

00:16:34leaving. I was talking to some ministers and they were talking about prophecy. I think we're at lunch or

00:16:40something like this. And I'd never really thought about what I believed about prophecy,

00:16:46but they were discussing the ancient prophecies in the Old Testament in preparation for a sermon,

00:16:52I'm sure. But they were talking about how the prophecies, even though they did have a future

00:16:56aspect to them, the majority of the prophecies that we have in the Old Testament are actually

00:17:02more focused on things that had happened rather than things that were going to happen.

00:17:08Usually, if it was a thing that was going to happen, it was because they had either kept

00:17:14the Mosaic law and these blessings would come, because they have upheld this section of the law,

00:17:19or the curses that were coming, war, famine, drought, etc., because they had failed in the law.

00:17:26So, literally, it was in the past you have failed or you have succeeded according to the Old Covenant,

00:17:33and so, therefore, your future isn't an unpredictable future. You know that you failed,

00:17:39you know that these curses are coming, and here God is declaring the curse that's coming according to

00:17:44the law. And during the course of that conversation, it just suddenly clicked that what we believed as

00:17:52far as prophecy wasn't really prophecy according to the Bible, but it was prophetic according to the

00:17:59way that the ancient pagan religion saw prophets. Well, something that people may not realize is

00:18:08do a little research on the timeline of the prophetic books,

00:18:14right? So, if you think, I mean, theoretically, you know, based on some people's beliefs,

00:18:22you know, there's 4,000 years that the Old Testament covers. Now, of course, if you start

00:18:30with creation and all that, it could be much longer. But, you know, if you just start, you know,

00:18:35based on certain genealogical timelines, there's at least 4,000 years there, at least, right?

00:18:42But the whole prophetic focus, like all these books, are written in the last eighth of that time period,

00:18:57right? It's the 500 years before Jesus. Well, no, I shouldn't say that. It's a, it's, yes. So,

00:19:06you're talking about a time period. So, what was going on? So, my question always is what, you know,

00:19:11it's like, you don't see, you know, prophecies, you know, at the time of Abraham or, you know,

00:19:17very little at the time of Moses or even, you know, you see a little bit with Nathan, but these prophetic

00:19:24books that talk to the nation, right? When do they start appearing?

00:19:30Yeah. Yes. But they're appearing at a time, which is really interesting, where there's great turmoil

00:19:37in Israel, right? The 10 tribes in the north are under attack from Assyria. They're then taken into

00:19:46captivity and scattered all over, you know, the northern part of the Middle East. And then 150

00:19:53years later, you have the Babylonians coming in and taking the last two tribes, Judah and

00:20:00Benjamin, right? Back to Babylon. So, what's happening is you suddenly now have a group of

00:20:10people who have been told that they are God's chosen, right? They've built this temple. They

00:20:18see themselves basically at the center of everything, like everything revolves around them, right? The

00:20:25nations of the world, you know, are supposed to come worship at their temple, and suddenly it's all

00:20:31gone. So, what you see happening is the prophets, in many cases, are trying to encourage the people,

00:20:40God's not done with you, this isn't over. But they're not only doing that, they're explaining why

00:20:46this happened, right? So, to your point, they're going back and saying, listen, you didn't obey,

00:20:54you know? You know, this covenant that God made with you was conditional on your behavior,

00:21:00and you didn't behave. And so, therefore, he took it away from you. But he's going to give it back,

00:21:06right? I mean, I'm oversimplifying all this, just because we don't have time to get into all the

00:21:11details. But so much of it, right, was about explaining the past and getting people excited

00:21:20about the future. So, one of the things that I, you know, in my question of why, because I'm thinking

00:21:29even in the modern world, why people see, the people that are, seem so consumed with prophecy.

00:21:36I think there's a couple of things here. One is fear. Absolutely. Right? At the core of us,

00:21:44as humans, we often feel very small and powerless when it comes to the forces of nature and creation,

00:21:54right? We feel like we don't have a lot of control. And I think often people find comfort

00:22:03or soulless in prophecy, right? It's like, I need to know.

00:22:09Darrell Bock Right. And there's another aspect to this,

00:22:12because I've thought long and hard about this as well. Whenever Branham started preaching prophetic

00:22:19in the Lateran movements, in front of all of these people, some of whom read their Bibles,

00:22:26and I'm surprised that nobody called him out on this, he divided the seven churches of Asia Minor,

00:22:33in the book of Revelation, into seven church ages, which was dispensationalism,

00:22:38so that he could be the king of his dispensation. That was the strategy. But when he did this,

00:22:44he said, God only sends one prophet per age. And he walks you through the timeline of the Bible.

00:22:52And, you know, I believed it. Even long after leaving, I never thought to question,

00:22:58was that even true? But he would say, in this age, we have me, your high priest prophet. And then he

00:23:05would walk you back through all of the ones. And when he's preaching the Old Testament, he's talking

00:23:09about the great prophet Abraham. And there's nowhere, at least to my knowledge, there's no

00:23:17prophecy of Abraham in the Bible. And so I started scratching my head thinking about that. And then I

00:23:23started thinking about the fall of the temple, the Babylonian invasion. That's the point at which

00:23:31I was reading, and it hit me like a brick wall. I'm reading, and it says, in the days of King Darius,

00:23:36from prophet A. I'm reading prophet B, and it starts out, in the days of King Darius. And I'm like,

00:23:43wait a minute, these two prophets are in the same age. How does that work?

00:23:46Wow.

00:23:47So my worldview just exploded at that point. I realized that he was manipulating us. But in that

00:23:56came an even greater understanding for me. So you have this explosion of prophets, Zechariah,

00:24:04all of the people. There's a list of them, actually, on my website, if you type in prophet,

00:24:09and their timeline of prophecy. There's this explosion of prophets right there after the Babylonian

00:24:16invasion, just like you said. But think about what happened. Culturally, prophets did not operate

00:24:23like they do today. The prophets of old didn't get out on stage and say, pass the tithe baskets and

00:24:29give me your money. And oh, by the way, this prophecy that I had weeks ago, months ago, a year ago,

00:24:36just happened to be fulfilled. And the audience says, well, which prophecy is that? You never told us.

00:24:41That's right. I never told you. I prophesied a year ago that yada, yada, yada.

00:24:46It wasn't like that in the ancient world. Either the prophets wrote it down themselves, which I think

00:24:53was not quite common, or they had scribes that would write it down for them onto the scrolls.

00:24:58And so they would carry the scrolls. And this is literally your means to prove that God actually

00:25:04spoke to you, because here's the thing that was written beforehand, and here's what happened.

00:25:09This is the prophecy. But when Babylon invaded the temple and burned everything in it, brought it down

00:25:18to rubble, think of what was held in there, all of the prophecies. So what we have left, and the reason

00:25:26it seems like an explosion, is because the people who were there after all of this was burned and

00:25:32destroyed, we have some of what remains of their prophecies. Anything that happened before, we

00:25:38don't. And that's the other aspect of learning how culture works and how to apply culture to the

00:25:45Bible. From Adam until the Babylonian invasion, I'm certain that you had a heck of a lot more

00:25:53prophecies and prophets, but we don't have access to that because most of it was destroyed.

00:25:58Well, again, perspective is always interesting to me, right? Because as we've been talking

00:26:04about, but I find it fascinating because when you read the books that are written by the

00:26:10priestly sect, the temple is everything, right? It is the center of Jewish culture. And yet we

00:26:19get to a time period where somebody goes into the temple, and it seems like it hasn't been used

00:26:27in decades, and they find an old scroll and open it up and go, what's this?

00:26:34Yeah.

00:26:35And a lot of people have speculated it was Deuteronomy, right? Which was, you know, the

00:26:40whole thing. But I'm just saying it's sort of interesting because there's these little

00:26:45clues, you know, sometimes that are in one or two verses that if you're not looking for

00:26:51it, you don't see it, but you're going, wait a minute, they don't even know what this

00:26:55is. Like if the temple was such a big deal, right? And it was just 24 hour, seven days

00:27:03a week, 365 day a year, you know, functioning, you know, center of Jewish culture. Why is

00:27:14it they don't, it's like they're going into the temple and it's all dusty and they find

00:27:20old scrolls that they don't even know what they mean. I mean, that would mean these are

00:27:23generations, right? If you don't know what this is, this isn't a couple years, this is

00:27:29generations of, of we've forgotten. So I'm just saying, I think there's some things in

00:27:35here that we got to be really, really careful of. But, you know, continue on with this whole

00:27:41thing about prophecy. One thing that that's fascinating to me is that the whole concept

00:27:46of prophecy as we've been talking about was a common everyday occurrence in the ancient

00:27:54world, right? It's like every culture had prophets and prophetesses. Every leader had a council

00:28:05of people that functioned in some sort of foretelling, some sort of, you know, claiming that they're

00:28:14speaking on behalf of the gods. This was common, right? What seems to have happened, because

00:28:21now we're down to only like 45% of the culture even, you know, will embrace prophecy. Well,

00:28:28a lot of, I think, what happened was the whole, you know, what's interesting about the 1500s is

00:28:35we have the Reformation, right? We have Martin Luther, there's a religious Reformation. But what

00:28:42comes along with the religious Reformation is this quest to discover God, right? We have all these

00:28:50prophecies, you know, we have these books about who God is. But suddenly now there's a whole group

00:28:57of men who want to understand God through creation. So they began doing experiments. And we end up having

00:29:04the development of science, right? We have Mendelssohn playing with plants, right? We've got Galileo and

00:29:12Copernicus looking at the universe. You know, we've got, you know, later you end up with guys like Isaac

00:29:18Newton, right? Discovering gravity and all these things. These are all really godly guys. These are all

00:29:25men who are in on a search for understanding God. These aren't atheists, agnostics. These are not

00:29:32people who hate God. They actually love God with a passion. They're trying to understand Him. But

00:29:38what seems to have happened is, and then we talked about this even a few weeks ago about, you know,

00:29:45when Van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria, right? In the 1500s. You know, suddenly there's this whole

00:29:55world that opens up to everyone that, oh my God, there's a microorganism world of bacterias and viruses

00:30:01and DNA and genetics. And all this time we thought that spirits and God and the capricious gods were

00:30:08controlling everything. And now we're discovering that there's this whole unseen world that's

00:30:13controlling things as well, right? So we've been through this shift, right? And so it's curious to me

00:30:19because we, you know, we went through this whole shift and now we're back here and we're in 2025 and

00:30:25there's still this fascination with the prophetic, right? So people kind of put some context to this.

00:30:34Everything that's going on right now, whether it's the fall of IHOP, whether it's the exposure at

00:30:42Morningstar, if it's Daystar, like there's this litany of ministries that have all sort of been exposed

00:30:50right now. And there's this pain, there's this disillusionment, right? That's kind of

00:30:57entered into a certain segment of the Christian community. Well, everything you're feeling right

00:31:04now, if you're a part of those groups or you're disillusioned, is exactly what the Jewish people

00:31:09were feeling as they were being led away in exile to Assyria and they were being led away in exile into

00:31:16Babylon. And so in many ways, right now we're in a cultural situation where we have a lot of

00:31:25Christian exiles. There's tens of thousands of people right now that feel exiled, right? They're,

00:31:34you know, they had all these prophecies about what this person, right? And the thing that all of these

00:31:44ministries have in common was they had a persona, right? They had a star, you know, they had a

00:31:51personality that attracted people and the whole ministry was centered around. Have you ever wondered

00:31:59how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned

00:32:05through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

00:32:11You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,

00:32:16william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of

00:32:23John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others with links to the paper,

00:32:30audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various

00:32:36people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can

00:32:42support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like

00:32:48and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of

00:32:53William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

00:32:57You know, you were talking earlier about the James Webb telescope and how it's mapping out things that

00:33:03we never thought that we would know and understand. And it's fascinating to me in many ways, and I'm

00:33:11probably going to go a million different tangents, but I was studying just the universe in general.

00:33:18How vast is this? And what did we know back? What did they know back in the 50s during the latter

00:33:24reign versus what do we know now? And in the latter reign, there was this weird, there's this weird

00:33:31doctrine that went out that if an angel were to start flying to Mars, it would take them a million

00:33:37light years to get there, because they had no no concept of distance. And that people actually believe

00:33:44that nonsense. And now we we have a rover up there on Mars, right. But whenever, whenever I started

00:33:51discovering what they have learned now, I was listening to, I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson,

00:33:57and he was explaining, we know the distance from the earth to the moon, we can calculate this without

00:34:06even going there, because we have a constant, which is the speed of light. When the light hits the moon,

00:34:12we know exactly how long it's going to take to get to us. And that is constant. It's,

00:34:16it's a mathematical constant in the universe. And he went on to say something that I'd never thought

00:34:22about. These stars that we see in the sky, by the time the light travels at that constant from the

00:34:31star, which is, it's like a sun in another galaxy. And it travels all through the galaxy and hits our

00:34:37eyes. By the time it has hit our eyes, so much time has passed because of that distance, which is

00:34:43constant, that the star itself has probably burnt out at that point. The stars only last so long. The

00:34:50gases only last so long. And I never really thought about that. The universe as we see it doesn't even

00:34:57exist when you look out there, because most of it has already died and passed. Yeah, it's mind boggling.

00:35:03It's mind boggling. And yet, the scientific theory, as people are trying to test and learn,

00:35:14and you create a theory, it's a supposition. It's not like you're saying, here's the answer.

00:35:18Here's my theory. Now let's go try to prove it. And you usually prove it in the opposite direction.

00:35:24Let's prove that my theory isn't correct. And so this creates a huge problem in the religious world,

00:35:31because you have not just in the NAR today, or charismatic, latter rain, Pentecostal leaders,

00:35:38these people who are controlling the narratives, they don't like science, because if they have

00:35:45made any statements that science can disprove, then now science is their enemy. And this time and

00:35:53time again throughout history, you can see this happening. But I came to understand that, like you

00:35:58said, many of the people who, some of them were executed for their scientific theories,

00:36:05they were good Christian men and women. They believed it. They just wanted to understand the

00:36:10world that we live in. And I came to understand that even when you're reading the Bible, you're

00:36:18reading it through the eyes of somebody in their perspective and in their worldview, which

00:36:24may not at all match the worldview we have today. And many of the things that we read, to them,

00:36:31it might not have even been that important, that single phrase, whatever it was. It was just part of

00:36:37the narrative that they're trying to get you to understand a concept. And that was really difficult for

00:36:42me to learn and understand, because there were phrases that are meant for us to learn a concept from

00:36:51the Bible. But there are also phrases in the Bible that are, the sole purpose is to support the phrase

00:36:57that they want you to learn. And they write it from their worldview. That, it took me forever to

00:37:03understand that, because we were taught this notion that every word was exactly pinned by God and 100%

00:37:10perfect. And the thought hit me, again, I think I was in, maybe even with the same group of ministers

00:37:17had this discussion during a lunch, but they were talking, there's different genres in the Bible.

00:37:23Some of the things in the Old Covenant, for example, is how not to get mold in your hut.

00:37:30And you can't really say that God wanted us in today's world to divinely understand how not to

00:37:36get mold in the hut of an ancient world. But it was for the concept of, you know, try to live clean,

00:37:43you know, the greater concept. So there's a lot to be learned, if you can understand that

00:37:49people, as time progresses, people also progress.

00:37:54Well, I have all the answers for you.

00:37:56Really?

00:37:56Yeah.

00:37:57Beyond the curtain of time.

00:37:59There you go, brother. Everything you need to know is right in here.

00:38:03For the audience who's in the audio only feeds, he's holding up William Branham with this

00:38:08photograph that says beyond the curtain of time, which is one of Branham's most famous alleged

00:38:14visions. He apparently peered into the underworld and saw the souls before they were to make it to

00:38:19heaven.

00:38:20You know, as you know, my favorite word is why. I need to understand why. And so I'm very curious

00:38:27about the why in the human soul behind prophecy, right? I can understand, I understand a lot of it

00:38:35in the ancient world because people felt totally out of control, right? That's why it's interesting

00:38:43because the gods are all given human attributes. And the phrase that you hear always about the gods

00:38:50were they were capricious. In other words, they get mad, they throw fits, they have jealousy, right?

00:38:57So we gave all of the gods these human attributes. It's one of the things, I mean, I'm going to get

00:39:04myself into trouble here, but I might as well just go ahead and say it. I think the Bible has a

00:39:12limited perspective on God.

00:39:16Wow. You're going to kill me in the comment feeds, man.

00:39:19Well, and here's why I'm trying to explain this, is that you're talking about the God of creation.

00:39:25You're talking about a being who spun worlds, right? Who's so much bigger than anything that a

00:39:34human can even imagine? The Bible is the best we can do, right? This is, it's everything that's

00:39:41written is written through a human that has limitations. There's no way that God can unload

00:39:51all of who he is into a human being. I mean, even in the Old Testament, when an angel showed up,

00:39:58everybody was peeing in their pants. They were so terrified. Can you imagine the creator of the

00:40:03universe? I just, and the reason I say that is, again, it's about having a teachable spirit and

00:40:11realizing that, you know what, as much as I know, I probably don't know most things. Because I think

00:40:17death is going to be an absolute mind-blowing experience when we get outside of the physical

00:40:24world, right? Because everything we see, hear, and know about God is all based on the physical,

00:40:31our physical world. And I think once we die and get outside of this physical world, we're going to

00:40:38realize that we had a puny God. Like, he is so much greater than we could have ever imagined.

00:40:47In fact, to put this in perspective, 95% of all human knowledge has happened in the last 100 years.

00:40:55So, I mean, put that into perspective. That's something, again, people don't really,

00:41:02you know, get a perspective on this. So, the reason why this is all important is, if you realize,

00:41:09I think that's part of the reason why there's less and less interest in prophecy. Because I think

00:41:15that with more knowledge of our created world, our scientific world, right,

00:41:20there's been a tail off. Because I think in the ancient world, it's like everyone's consumed with

00:41:28it. It's like the norm in everybody's daily life, right, is because they don't know what's going on.

00:41:36Exactly.

00:41:37That same fear, right, that need to know what's going on, has stayed even in our modern world. And I think

00:41:46so much of prophecy, or the need that we have to hear prophecies is based on this fear of what we

00:41:54don't know. This need to, you know, we don't like surprises, right? So, we kind of want to know what

00:42:00the future is. I think that's part of it. I think another part of it, honestly, is faith, right? People

00:42:06want to know what to believe in, right? They want to have faith for something. I think those are all

00:42:13really important things. But something, again, another weird dynamic I've noticed about prophecy

00:42:20is if you look at the scale, or are you looking at the whole thing, that there's two groups of people

00:42:28that have way more interest in prophecy than the third group. And it's the rich and the poor.

00:42:37This is, again, this is me observing, researching, looking at this, you know, over the last, you

00:42:46know, few hundred years of prophecy. And what's fascinating is when you go to Africa, or you

00:42:53go to third world countries, all of these preachers are prophesying to the poor. Because the poor

00:43:02need hope, right? They're looking for faith. And they're so vulnerable. And it really gets me,

00:43:09how do you want my dander up? Is that like a really old phrase? No, because I have a passion

00:43:15for poor people. And the thing I hate is watching them being taken advantage of. And you could go to

00:43:21Africa, and I'm just not picking on Africa, but it's so prevalent there that the wealthiest preachers

00:43:28are all guys who stand up and claim they're prophesying to the crowd. They're speaking for

00:43:34God. And the poor who have nothing are all giving them what little bit they have in hopes for that

00:43:42miracle, right? Doesn't that remind you of the whole ladder rain tent revival, right? All these poor

00:43:49people, right? Giving what little bit they had in hopes that God will intervene, right? So that's half

00:43:56the equation. The other thing, which I learned from Paul Cain, well, I first discovered it with

00:44:00Nancy Reagan. I don't know if you remember this, but Nancy Reagan used to have a seer come into the

00:44:07White House all the time.

00:44:08Wow.

00:44:09Go back into it. It was kind of interesting. I remember it was really kind of controversial

00:44:14because they were supposedly this, you know, Judeo-Christian culture. But she'd have these

00:44:19little seances, right? She'd have the, what do they call those? The psychics. That's the word I was

00:44:24looking for. She'd have this psychic come in and they would do readings, right? So this really

00:44:29fascinated me. So I asked Paul Cain about it. And he said to me, oh, Hollywood and that whole

00:44:36political world, the wealthy people, they all want access to it.

00:44:40Oh, yeah.

00:44:41He goes, if I wanted to sell my soul, he goes, I could have been wealthy many times over. He goes,

00:44:47I had so many high profile business people, Hollywood people, you know what I mean? That

00:44:53all wanted access, you know, to this secret knowledge. And that opened my eyes to a whole

00:45:02nother world, right? Where this ties back in, of course, is you get into Amy Semple McPherson.

00:45:08You see what I'm talking about? Right in the middle of this very interesting time, she's there

00:45:13and she's the biggest drama queen there is. As a matter of fact, just for the fun of it,

00:45:19you see that clarinet sitting behind me? It was played at Anglis Temple.

00:45:24Oh, wow.

00:45:25But you know who owned it? Nellie Quinn, Anthony Quinn's mom. And she played in the orchestra

00:45:32there at the temple. And so Anthony Quinn grew up there. Like he was a part of the orchestra when

00:45:41like he started playing real young, but their whole family was involved with her thing. And then

00:45:47he gave it to Paul and Paul gave it to me as a thank you for helping him move back in the 1980s.

00:45:55But I've actually gone and done some research on it. And it's got a serial number that's so old that

00:46:02it predates 1910. He tried to claim that it was played at Azusa Street. I am not,

00:46:11convinced of that at this point. Um, because you, there's no records. It's, it's got a number on it.

00:46:18That's basically B one 89, which is just really early. You know, it's a, it's a, a, a Bundy, uh,

00:46:27it's basically a, it's a, out of Paris. It's wood. It's like, uh, Ebony. I let John Wimber play it

00:46:36and he couldn't play it because he said the fingering on it is so old. I guess clarinets

00:46:42have gone through three different renditions and this, and this one's the second rendition,

00:46:47all these Hollywood people prophecy, you know, that, that whole world. And so I'm just fascinated

00:46:56by how you have these two sides of the economic, you know, spectrum, the wealthy and the poor who

00:47:05have, um, an above average interest in prophecy. Going back to another thing you said. So, and also

00:47:15because you've already blown up the comment feeds with all, you know, people who will hate you for

00:47:20whatever, whatever it was that you said before, I'm going to blow it up even further because I have

00:47:25a Catholic friend and I can just say that and everybody's going to drop off right now. They

00:47:30won't continue listening because this movement was so anti Catholic. It's unbelievable. But

00:47:36after it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that there are good Christian people

00:47:42in Catholic churches and they believe differently than us. I'm not in agreement with the Catholic

00:47:47church in many ways as my friend is not, but here's where it gets really interesting. So the NAR today,

00:47:53they have merged this political union and alliance. That's much like we had with the Catholic church,

00:48:00where the priests were in bed with the government and they were like the dynamic that you just described,

00:48:07keeping the poor people poor. They were introducing a lot of legalistic manmade rules and dogmas

00:48:17to establish this and maintain it. Martin Luther came and he basically said, no, we're not doing

00:48:23this. It's by scripture alone, by scripture alone. And his position was not to exclude everybody

00:48:31from looking outside of scripture and looking at culture and science and understanding.

00:48:35It was literally, these guys have bad doctrine that's not in the Bible. We don't want it. We just

00:48:41want the doctrines that are in the Bible. And I started the Protestant Reformation. Well, I was having

00:48:47a conversation with my Catholic friend and he said, John, a thing for you to understand as you're going

00:48:53through your development, he understands like I do, that it's a lifetime of learning. He said that

00:49:00Reformation, while it may have been good, there are extremes with it. So people today have taken the Sola

00:49:07Scriptura extreme that that literally meant that you have to learn scripture by scripture,

00:49:13only by scripture, understand it only by scripture, and you can't look outside the Bible.

00:49:18And that's turned into Christian extremism. What's interesting, and he didn't say this,

00:49:23but I'm going to say it. What's interesting is as it has progressed towards that Christian extremism,

00:49:29it has digressed back to very similar to what Martin Luther stood against in the world today.

00:49:36You have these political leaders who are in, you know, Nancy Reagan may have had her mystics,

00:49:41but look at what we have today. You've got these NAR guys that are just right in bed with the

00:49:47political elite. You've got a whole political structure called the family. This call, I think

00:49:53it's called the Fellowship International. That's in connecting political politicians to religious

00:49:59leaders and helping cover up a wide array of sins, just like the Catholic Church had. So we basically

00:50:06have digressed back to what Martin Luther stood against when we created the Protestant Reformation.

00:50:12And where that gets interesting and ties to this whole conversation we're having

00:50:16about prophecy. Those specific leaders do not want people to go outside of that

00:50:24sola scriptura extremism because anything that they find as the world progresses and knowledge

00:50:30progresses that defies what they have said about this concept that they're teaching, it disproves them.

00:50:38It makes their whole establishment fall and crumble. So they will cut you off if you try to go outside of

00:50:44just simply look at the Bible, only look at the Bible, put these blinders on your eyes where you can't

00:50:49see anything else. And oh, by the way, I'm going to, just like the Pope, I'm going to dictate what you

00:50:55read from it.

00:50:56Darrell Bock Well, to contextualize my comments about the Bible, and I've shared this before, it's 15 centuries

00:51:04after the last book, after the last book in the Bible is written before humanity even is aware that

00:51:12there's a microorganism world. And so that's my point. My point is, is nobody in the Bible has a revelation

00:51:21of the Creator and this whole segment of His creation, right, which controls so much of our modern world.

00:51:30They don't know anything about this. They don't know, right? And so it's, it's, it's, it's,

00:51:38though it's not me slamming them, it's just putting, contextualizing this to realize where it, you know,

00:51:46there's a, there's certain aspects of this that we've, you know, that humanity's understanding of our

00:51:53Creator and who He is and what He's done is way beyond any of the Bible authors.

00:52:00It's not good or bad, it just is. And so you just have to factor that in there. I mean,

00:52:06if you think about how much in our modern world now centers around the unseen world of microorganisms,

00:52:15DNA, genetics, right? It's just every day you're reading about it. I mean, our whole medical structure,

00:52:22right? Psychology, all of it is all based on something that didn't even begin to be discovered

00:52:31until 15 centuries after the Bible's last words were written. So that's my point is, is, and,

00:52:39and, and what happens in another 1500 years? What will our, what will humanity understand then,

00:52:46you know what I mean, about our Creator? And we've got a chance to get off our little planet and go out

00:52:51there into this universe, you know, that the futurists all dream about. So I just, I just think we have to,

00:53:00you know, to realize that God is, you know, this, the, the God that Abraham understood,

00:53:09or I should say, Abraham's understanding of God was significantly less than maybe a King David's

00:53:16version of him, right? Because the understanding of God grew over time. And that's my point in all

00:53:23this. So, um, I want to be careful here because, um, I don't want people to misinterpret my, my comments.

00:53:30Darrell Bock Well, definitely they will, but there's, there's a lot to think about here and there's a lot to

00:53:37really, it's not a concept that you're going to learn immediately if you've been manipulated by one of

00:53:42these groups. It took me seven, eight years before I could even think that way because they have so

00:53:48indoctrinated you with this fear of critical thought and to apply critical thought to the Bible,

00:53:55especially it's a, for a lot of people that have been in these religions and are escaping,

00:54:00it's the situation where you're literally looking between heaven and hell and you're walking down that

00:54:06tightrope between the two. So a lot to think about.

00:54:09Dr. Justin Marchegiani One of the things, I've got two concerns. One, I still see this on social media

00:54:16where we've got ministries right now that are positioning their, um, you know, their ministry,

00:54:28the public's perception of them as being someone who speaks, who God speaks to specially,

00:54:36and they have special inside information. So even with everything that's going on, that's still there.

00:54:44And that concerns me because I think for both of us, what we've seen is hundreds of years of people

00:54:51being manipulated by that, right? You know, people standing up saying, I have this special revelation,

00:54:59you know, follow me, support me, I will lead you to the promised land, I have understanding, others don't,

00:55:06right? And they build a whole ministry and money-making operation based on their secret knowledge.

00:55:14Dr. Justin Marchegiani And this isn't new. It started, you know, as we've talked a few weeks back about the

00:55:20whole time period between when Jesus left and, you know, the Council of Nicaea where you have all these

00:55:27people all claiming that they have inside information and they know, you know, who God is and what God's

00:55:34saying. So, um, that's one whole aspect of this thing. I just, um, you know, I'm just, I'm just

00:55:42concerned, you know, and I think, I think this whole prophetic thing is, is upside down. It should be a tool

00:55:51to serve others and it's become a sensational media manipulation. You see what I mean? And it's,

00:56:01it's interesting because every time I hear it, it always focuses on reinforcing how special that person

00:56:09is. You see what I mean? And the reason why this is important to me because motive, what's underneath

00:56:16this thing, I think is important. And whenever I see, you know, guys standing on a stage who are using

00:56:24prophecy, right, to reinforce their special place and God's purpose, I just get a yuck inside. Like

00:56:34there's something inside of me that goes, this is illegal. This is, this is manipulative. This is

00:56:40using a gift in the wrong way, right? It's all about me, right? It's all about turning the attention

00:56:47to me. Um, I don't want to say too much, but, um, I think Paul said we all can prophesy.

00:56:58And so I believe I can, but when I do it, I do it when no one's around one-on-one with people.

00:57:08I'll, I'll, you know, I think I've shared this with you before. I've stood in the grocery store.

00:57:13I'm checking out. I suddenly get this thing, this download in my spirit about the cashier,

00:57:21you know, and, and just say something as sweet as, you know, I know things are tough right now

00:57:27at home, but God's got your back on this. He's going to get you through all this. And then you

00:57:32see the tears coming down, right? Just me and her, you know, this word of life for the

00:57:43moment and gone. And that woman, you know, has now got something to hang on to, to get her through.

00:57:50I think that's what it's about. It's about encouragement and exhortation. And it really

00:57:55needs to be done more on a personal level in an encouraging way versus standing on a stage and

00:58:02going, Hey, look at me, look at me. It's all about me. You know, put your money in the plate.

00:58:07Well, your way is a lot better than mine, man. Usually when I prophesy,

00:58:10it's about the Kansas city chiefs and as, as happened in the last super bowl, I totally,

00:58:15totally missed it. But, uh, so much to think about. Thank you so much for doing this.

00:58:21You know, I just, like I've said to you before, you know, there's, you know, disillusionment,

00:58:26it's a hard thing to walk through, but sometimes it brings us back to gut check time. And

00:58:31we can kind of look at all this stuff and go, what is this really?

00:58:35Yeah. And I think right now there's a lot of hurting people out there and I hope we can,

00:58:39we're encouraging the people. That's really what I hope the takeaway is from our, our dialogues,

00:58:45even though we sort of get into some kind of wild stuff.

00:58:48Yeah. I hope so too. I think there, there are people that will understand what we're saying.

00:58:52There will be people who don't, but that usually happens in my podcast. So I'm okay with it.

00:58:59But, uh, yeah, so this, this is fun. A lot to think about. Hopefully people can reflect and,

00:59:04and maybe grow a little bit on the inside. Thank you for doing this.

00:59:09But if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

00:59:13You can find us at william-branham.org. For more about the dark side of the new apostolic

00:59:18reformation, you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon,

00:59:24Kindle, and Audible.

Prophecy or Divination: The Modern Obsession With Prophets - Bob Scott - Podcast Episode 326

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