Converging Apostasy: The NAR's Secret New Age Origins - Episode 166 Branham Research - 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   John and Steve examine the historical and ideological connections between the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), the Latter Rain movement, and New Age philosophies. We examine how early influences, particularly from figures like William Branham and Jane Lead, have shaped modern teachings in these movements. They delve into the blending of Christian and New Age ideas, particularly focusing on concepts like the Manifest Sons of God, eschatological perfection, and the so-called sacred purge. The episode highlights the significant overlaps between New Age beliefs and the teachings of the NAR, suggesting a convergence of these streams of thought over time.  John and Steve emphasize the dangers of these converging apostate teachings, particularly how they manipulate biblical texts to promote elitist and often harmful ideologies. The discussion also touches on the historical contexts that have allowed these ideas to proliferate, including the influence of Christian Identity teachings and their racist underpinnings. By tracing the development of these movements and their shared themes, the hosts aim to shed light on the complex web of doctrines that have influenced modern Pentecostal and charismatic movements, urging listeners to critically examine these teachings in light of their historical and ideological origins.  The Converging Apostasy: https://a.co/d/5zZiRRW  00:00 Introduction 01:04 New Age Influences in Latter Rain and NAR 04:42 Historical Roots and Key Figures 09:06 The Role of Gnosticism 12:00 New Age Integration into Christianity 17:01 Concept of Sonship and Mystical Teachings 19:03 Controversial Teachings on Perfection and Purge 23:24 Esoteric Influences and Angelic Beings 27:03 Fascination with Angels and Demons 31:02 Selection Process and Spiritual Elitism 34:46 Twisting Biblical Timelines 38:06 Political Ties and Historical Context 41:00 Christian Identity and Racist Themes 45:43 Influence of Gordon Lindsay and the Charismatic Movement 50:03 Pre-Adamic Race Doctrine 54:03 Anti-Semitic Thought and Esotericism 57:03 Theological Manipulations and Final Thoughts  ______________________ – 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

00:00:00You

00:00:31Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham historical research

00:00:35podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham

00:00:40Historical Research at william-branham.org, and with me I have Steve

00:00:45Montgomery, the author of The Converging Apostasy, and a quick outline of hands-on

00:00:51eschatology, a matter of timing and agency. And together we're discussing the

00:00:56themes of apostasy in the New Apostolic Reformation and its history. Steve, I'm a

00:01:03bit excited for today's episode because even before we had made the leap

00:01:09between William Branham into the latter reign, into the NAR, we started getting

00:01:15people who noticed little tidbits of information that I was passing saying,

00:01:20well, this sounds like New Age. This sounds like this is maybe Branham was

00:01:24influenced by New Age people. And at the time, you know, I had I really not

00:01:30studied it a whole lot. I knew Branhamism, I knew Pentecostalism, but I started

00:01:35looking into it and I was like scratching my head. You got to be kidding

00:01:38me. This really does match New Age theology. You know, if you take some of

00:01:44the names and change them, etc. And then the further I got into latter reign,

00:01:48obviously that exploded because now you've got all of these New Age

00:01:54teachers coming in and they're teaching New Age ideas, but they're

00:01:58calling it Christianity. And then you take that into the NAR and it's like

00:02:04hypercharged. The elements that were Christianity that some of the others

00:02:09kind of confused. In the NAR, it's like they prefer the New Age over

00:02:14the Christianity. Yeah, that's right, John. And, you know, generally speaking, a lot

00:02:20of people have been noticing different techniques of meditation, visualization,

00:02:26and so on that really have their roots more. And something that the New Age

00:02:33would also agree in is different mystical traditions. But yeah, what you're

00:02:39mentioning, that reminds me of Bill Britton and that bunch of guys, so-called

00:02:45Manifest Sons of God teachers, because just as Valentinus, who, as we've

00:02:52mentioned before, is so important to sort of the influences that led to the New

00:02:57Age, they have three different sets, three different versions of salvation.

00:03:05And so people like David Ebal, who's also Christian identity related, he calls it

00:03:13the third salvation. So I know that any of our listeners who are, say, charismatic

00:03:19or just evangelical, they would understand the idea of Passover as born

00:03:27again, becoming a Christian. And then Pentecost, of course, is filled with the

00:03:33Holy Spirit, with the evidence of speaking in tongues. That's the way a lot of people

00:03:37word it. And then there's this third experience in God, which is the Feast of

00:03:43Tabernacles, which is to say that God would fully tabernacle or inhabit the

00:03:50physical body, and this would be the glorification of the body. The problem

00:03:55with that is that in all these systems of thought, this occurs prior to the

00:04:02return of Christ. So you had this idea of a group of people, the elite of the

00:04:09church, becoming either perfected, elite, complete in Christ, and then having this

00:04:19third experience, which will allow them to rule and reign with Christ or for

00:04:28Christ before his physical return, and then to, as we mentioned before, carry out

00:04:35the sacred purge. So I think it's just kind of worthwhile to do a quick

00:04:41reminder of who influenced who, because it is so, it's like a spider's web of

00:04:48information. So to keep that straight, I can say this, on the Christian, so-called

00:04:55Christian side of the converging apostasy, you have, if you go all the way

00:05:00back when, you've got Valentinian Gnosticism that influenced Jane Leed. Of

00:05:07course, she was in the 17th century, a mystic in the 17th century. Then Jane

00:05:12Leed influenced several of the lattering prophets, and so this is getting more

00:05:18around the time of William Branham, and he's coming along and influencing

00:05:24also the lattering prophets. Then the lattering prophets have influenced the

00:05:30NAR, and that's where there's sort of a crossover, because certain folks like,

00:05:34say, Rick Joyner, Bill Hammond, some of the older figures, Bob Jones would have fit

00:05:42in this category. They have sort of a foot in the lattering, in the NAR, and so

00:05:48that, yeah, there's a sort of blurring of that stream of teachings. But then if you

00:05:56go on to the non-Christian or, quote, esoteric side of the converging apostasy,

00:06:02you again start with Valentinian Gnosticism, but in this case, it would be

00:06:08the influence that he had on Helena Blavatsky, who's so instrumental in

00:06:13getting a lot of the ideas that would later inform the New Age movement. Of

00:06:20course, she founded the Theosophical Society and did a lot of her writings.

00:06:261888 was the Secret Doctrine, which is a real seminal text, almost like the Feast

00:06:33of Tabernacles by George Warnock was a seminal text for the lattering. So then

00:06:39from Blavatsky is in the early 20th century on to the mid-20th century, you have Alice Bailey,

00:06:49and she's pretty much the one who started using that term, New Age, consistently,

00:06:55not just in a generic way. We're talking about a new epic, a new way of doing things. Now,

00:07:02she's very specifically saying something that's an eschatological goal or ending point of all

00:07:11these paths of knowledge, and Gnosis would be the way they would say it. And so through both

00:07:20of these paths, the influence of the end-time order of events on the Christian side of the

00:07:26converging apostasy and those on the New Age side are already aligned in many respects, which

00:07:34comes as a surprise sometimes when you find it. But you can add to that, they're also becoming

00:07:41more aligned. And that's why I refer to these two streams of apostasy as converging. I think

00:07:49another good source besides you and me, John, is Bob DeWay. I've mentioned him before. His last

00:07:55name is spelled D-E, capital W-A-A-Y. So he's seen the similarities between folks like, say,

00:08:05Bill Britton, who's square in the manifest sons of God latter reign, influenced by Jane and Lee

00:08:11heavily. He sees the relation between those folks and Alice Bailey's teachings. So he's a good

00:08:21source. But when I first ran into this next source, I was just blown away. It's really

00:08:27astounding stuff. So this is Good Seed Publications, and it's run, it's a website run by Terry and

00:08:37Taiki Crisp, C-R-I-S-P. And they are really interesting, and I think somewhat significant,

00:08:46example of converging apostasy. Why? Because they're influenced by Jane Lee's disciples

00:08:53in the latter reign, and Alice Bailey's disciples in the New Age movement.

00:08:58Darrell Bock Right. Whenever I began understanding

00:09:02what Gnosticism was, you know, the idea that there's a secret knowledge nobody else has,

00:09:09and it was this weird blend of pseudo-Christianity of the era, I began to be curious how that came

00:09:17about. Why was it so accepted by the early Christians? And I was deep into that study,

00:09:23and was recommended a book by a – I was on a plane trip, on a business trip, and I happened

00:09:30to sit next to a psychologist, and he and I talked all kinds of, you know, cult-related

00:09:35information, and he recommended a few books for me to read. I've mentioned a couple of

00:09:40them on here already, but one of them that, for me, really laid the framework of the architecture

00:09:47of how you can enter New Age into Christianity. And he had me read A Hero with a Thousand

00:09:54Faces by Joseph Campbell, which, you know, if you don't know this book, and you're

00:10:00fundamentalist Christian, this book will probably be very offensive to you, but if you can –

00:10:05Yeah.

00:10:05Look past and understand what this man is saying, he's not an atheist, but he is very

00:10:12good at laying out the elaborate scheme that was replicated across all mythologies, and

00:10:20their similarities, and where it gets a little bit uncomfortable is sometimes he edges towards,

00:10:26you know, how those relate and are similar even within Christianity, which now you have

00:10:33to decipher what's truth and what's not. But if you can understand the concept that

00:10:38he's creating in this book, he's basically laying out the notion that all of these pagan

00:10:44religions had a physical, or a mystical and a metaphysical function. It can't operate

00:10:51without that to be a mystic religion, and usually there was the idea of the cosmos in

00:10:57it, there was usually a sociological function, and anyway, he goes through all of these layers,

00:11:04to define what establishes a mythology. And Gnosticism was the merging of all of these

00:11:10mythologies into Christianity. The part that was eye-opening for me is whenever – there's

00:11:17some chapters where he's dedicated to describing the similarities between Christianity and

00:11:22some of the pagan mythologies. Well, if you think of the Gnostics, they could take that

00:11:28interface where there were similarities between the two, and now they could make it appeal

00:11:33to Christians, because these Christians came out of these pagan religions, and they see

00:11:38something that is somewhat similar, very much like the people today who have left a cult,

00:11:44and they get, you know, sucked into another cult, because they're so similar. And that

00:11:50really helped me to understand what this was, how New Age came to be in Christianity, and

00:11:56the whole thing just – the doors just opened up by reading this book, Hero with a Thousand

00:12:02Faces.

00:12:03Yeah, I'm not familiar with that book, but I have seen Campbell doing different shows

00:12:11on PBS and so on, and reviewing some of his other works. As you were saying that, there's

00:12:17some of the writings of Carl Jung, looks like it's spelled Jung, but it's Jung, you know,

00:12:24the disciple of Sigmund Freud. He was pretty much what you would call a Neo-Gnostic, and

00:12:32highly influenced by Valentinus and some of the other Gnostics. So, yeah, in that same

00:12:39vein, sure enough, we have The Crisp, Tyche and Terry, and they show this merger as you're

00:12:49speaking of, John. And so, I would say, how are they really related to the latter rain idea,

00:12:57which is more the straight ahead – well, not straight ahead, but more on the Christian,

00:13:02so-called Christian side of things. One way that they're sided with the latter rain is that they

00:13:08say some things very clearly, similar to what you hear from the NAR. They talk about the restoration

00:13:18of the offices of the modern-day apostles and prophets, and this is one of the many truths

00:13:24that were revealed during the latter rain, according to them. Of course, some folk in the

00:13:29NAR that are not aware of the latter rain think that they're the only ones that have done this.

00:13:33Well, not entirely true. And actually, like I said, some of the older folks in the NAR,

00:13:40it's just a continuation of the latter rain. And it seems like I mentioned that in one of

00:13:47our podcasts. Who was it? It was one of the NAR folk who was encouraging one of the early

00:13:55latter rain folk that we will have to re-dig the wells of the latter rain. In other words,

00:14:03a continuation of some kind of ideas. And another thing that Chris talked about,

00:14:09and of course, you'll relate to this, John, is they say, quote, God raised up men like

00:14:15William Branham in the ecstatic years from 1947 to 1952, which is, of course,

00:14:23when the latter rain was getting rolling. And in their writings, this is another connection

00:14:31between latter rain and NAR, they define the term sonship as something that's kind of like

00:14:39NAR-ish eschatology, meaning perfection, dominion, and purge through human effort or human agency

00:14:49prior to Jesus Christ's literal physical return. And that is highly, highly problematic. Not only

00:14:56is it so-called false doctrine, if we get to the sociological aspect, or just how that impacts

00:15:04society, if there was a group of folks who thought they were the elite, taking dominion,

00:15:10or the seven mountains, and then seeing themselves as the instrument of God to purge, cleanse society,

00:15:19that's a problem. And another way that they talked about, or pretty much put themselves

00:15:26in the camp of the Jane Leed-influenced latter rain prophets, Bill Britton and George Warnock,

00:15:32is that they say Britton and Warnock are, quote, worthy of double honor in teaching

00:15:39the foundations of what they call sonship message.

00:15:43Pete Right, and I think it's very good to point out that whenever many of these themes come in,

00:15:49they're using actual passages from the Bible to reinforce it. So, it sounds biblical,

00:15:55and you have to be very careful to understand the context of the passages that they're introducing.

00:16:01And it's almost like a witch's brew. They've got a verse here that they combine with this

00:16:06verse in this other book, and you mix it all together, and now you've got the sonship.

00:16:10And I remember, as I was trying to deprogram from this, it was very difficult because I would try

00:16:18to remove things that were unbiblical, and I would still hang on to other things that

00:16:23were also unbiblical because I thought it had some sort of foundation in the Bible.

00:16:30But you have to understand that the versions that they're teaching are hypercharged with the notion

00:16:37that there's a mystery that only they can present, and that's the new agey part of this.

00:16:43So, the sonship, they want to teach you that the sonship is more of a mystery than this book

00:16:48reveals in the text, this book being the Bible. And therefore, you have to understand their

00:16:53version of it, and with that version, you too can become more than you are. It's always a

00:16:59more than you are, like a carrot on a stick, you know?

00:17:03Pete Yeah, and that

00:17:06tells very nicely into the next little section I have here is how are the crisp affiliated with

00:17:14new age teachings as opposed to just lateran teachings? Well, both of them really talk about

00:17:21some form of perfection, and so they start quoting people. Actually, they quote Helena

00:17:29Blavatsky, which is a bit unusual, to say the least, for somebody who's claiming to be in a

00:17:35in-time Christian ministry. They also quote Alice Baty, and I can't really list, it'd take too long,

00:17:45all the folks that they do quote, but one who did a very seminal writing for new age thinkers is

00:17:54Levi H. Dowling and his Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ. That was written in 1908.

00:18:01So, quote, this is what Dowling says,

00:18:04What I have done all men can do, and what I am all men shall be.

00:18:11Okay, so, you know, you're going to hear that in many, many locations,

00:18:16but it's just very interesting that these folks are, they got one foot in the new age and one foot

00:18:21in so-called sonship teachings. They also say that they have occasionally come across new age writers,

00:18:29interesting, who make reference to Romans 8, and that is where the manifestation of the

00:18:36sons of God quote, comes from. And of course, yes, John, that is in the Bible, but the problem is,

00:18:43if you look at that scripture in Romans 8, and think that that would be fulfilled prior to the

00:18:48return of Christ, then you have that quote, hands-on eschatology that I keep on harping on,

00:18:56which is perfection, dominion, purge, because all of that stuff will come through the sons of God

00:19:03prior to Christ returning. And then they say something that sounds a bit ironic to me,

00:19:08but they say, because of this teaching, some might misconstrue that they equate the beliefs

00:19:17held in the new age movement with those of sonship. Yeah, it's just almost humorous if

00:19:23it wasn't so sad. And why is that so though? And they say it's because both new age writers and

00:19:32sonship ministries see the manifestation of the sons of God as a culminating event in history.

00:19:40And I don't know if you saw this in Wesley Swift's writings, but maybe I brought that up before, but

00:19:47yeah, other than being a Christian identity teacher and an absolute racist, Swift did refer

00:19:55to the manifestation of the sons of God as similarly the culminating event for history.

00:20:01Darrell Bock Another thing that they like to do is they

00:20:05mess with the timelines. You were talking about how they were going through the chapters of Romans,

00:20:10and one of the things that was hard for me to grasp is the fact that if you read the Gospels,

00:20:16it's telling the story in a timeline. And we read the Bible, we read the New Testament and

00:20:23read the Gospels after the crucifixion and after the resurrection of Christ.

00:20:29But many of the stories are happening before this happens, and Jesus is speaking to the Jews who

00:20:35are under the old covenant law. And so when he's talking about a mystery that's to be fulfilled,

00:20:41he's obviously talking about himself to any person who's not influenced by this new age mess.

00:20:47But because that timeline has been shifted and these guys are trying to twist the timeline in

00:20:53your head, they will say that now he's referring to another mystery, and usually that mystery ends

00:20:59up to be whatever's the minister who's teaching the New Age theology. But if you understand the

00:21:06timeline of the Bible and understand that there is a progression of time that's being established

00:21:12in the Gospels, it's very easy to see what these guys are doing whenever they manipulate your heads.

00:21:17William Sturkey Yeah, when you talk about timelines,

00:21:21the first thing that popped into my mind is something that anybody who's trying to do a

00:21:26reasonable exegesis explanation of Scripture, you know, not trying to insert stuff in it that's not

Converging Apostasy: The NAR's Secret New Age Origins - Episode 166 Branham Research

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