- 2 days ago
John and Ken examine the overlap between Word of Faith teaching, prosperity preaching, healing lines, “honoring the prophet,” and high-pressure giving culture through Ken Barriger’s experience around World Harvest Church in Paducah, Kentucky. The discussion traces connections involving Amway-style motivation, The Way International, Ed and Nancy Dufresne, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, grave soaking, slain-in-the-spirit experiences, and the broader charismatic ecosystem.
The conversation also explores how religious language can prepare people to give beyond their means, how miracle claims can become difficult to question, and why independent verification matters when evaluating spiritual leaders. Ken’s story offers a personal look at the tension between sincere faith, group pressure, healing expectations, and the need for discernment.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:18 Amway, Motivation, And A First Cult-Like Experience
06:18 Returning To Kentucky And Joining Grace Church International
09:41 Ed Dufresne, World Harvest Church, And Father-In-The-Faith Language
12:20 Amway, Prosperity Thinking, And Money-Making Schemes
18:10 Ed Dufresne’s Death And Leadership Changes
22:23 Grave Soaking, Relics, And Spiritual Power Claims
32:44 Slain In The Spirit And Learning To “Respond”
36:00 Giving Pressure And “All The Money You Make Is Not Your Money”
39:27 Honoring The Prophet And Offering Psychology
42:07 False Teachers, Scripture, And Spiritual Abuse Patterns
45:07 Healing Lines, Miracles, And Unanswered Questions
48:21 Leg-Lengthening Claims And Miracle Verification
51:41 Advice For People Questioning Word Of Faith Churches
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
The conversation also explores how religious language can prepare people to give beyond their means, how miracle claims can become difficult to question, and why independent verification matters when evaluating spiritual leaders. Ken’s story offers a personal look at the tension between sincere faith, group pressure, healing expectations, and the need for discernment.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:18 Amway, Motivation, And A First Cult-Like Experience
06:18 Returning To Kentucky And Joining Grace Church International
09:41 Ed Dufresne, World Harvest Church, And Father-In-The-Faith Language
12:20 Amway, Prosperity Thinking, And Money-Making Schemes
18:10 Ed Dufresne’s Death And Leadership Changes
22:23 Grave Soaking, Relics, And Spiritual Power Claims
32:44 Slain In The Spirit And Learning To “Respond”
36:00 Giving Pressure And “All The Money You Make Is Not Your Money”
39:27 Honoring The Prophet And Offering Psychology
42:07 False Teachers, Scripture, And Spiritual Abuse Patterns
45:07 Healing Lines, Miracles, And Unanswered Questions
48:21 Leg-Lengthening Claims And Miracle Verification
51:41 Advice For People Questioning Word Of Faith Churches
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Kenneth Berger, former
00:46member of The Way and current member of the World Harvest Church.
00:50Ken, it's good to have you on and to talk through both The Way and World Harvest Church
00:55and everything in between.
00:57I'm actually a little bit excited.
00:59I've not talked to anybody who had any connection with The Way, and I know yours wasn't that
01:04much, but I want to get into that a little bit and deliverance ministry and so many other
01:08things.
01:08So maybe if you could begin by telling everybody a little bit about yourself.
01:13Well, my name is Ken Berger.
01:14I go back in, and I live in western Kentucky.
01:17And so I'm currently 60 years old.
01:21And so I spent 22 years in the military, I've been around a lot of places.
01:28And so just I attend World Harvest Church in Paducah, been there for almost 21 years, started
01:36probably around September of 2005 when we moved back from the military.
01:40And I know we renamed the church.
01:44We first got there was called Grace Church International.
01:47We renamed it in 2012 to World Harvest Church of Paducah to kind of, I guess, mirror World
01:53Harvest Church of Marietta in California.
01:57And, of course, that was started by Ed Dufresne, and is now around by his wife, Nancy Dufresne,
02:02and their children.
02:04And so, like I said, prior to that was Grace Church International.
02:08So just to kind of give you an outline where, I guess, some of my cult-type stuff started.
02:17We joined Amway in around 1993, got into that.
02:20And we got into all the books and the tapes and the meetings and all of that type of stuff.
02:27You know, the dream, I mean, they were just always teaching us how to look forward.
02:33And the object was money, okay?
02:35I mean, it's almost the same exact plan as Word of Faith movement.
02:41I mean, it's exact.
02:43Listen to the books and tapes all the time, buy all of this stuff, do all this travel,
02:48go to all these meetings and all these trips, and it was just constant.
02:54And, of course, I got sick during that time.
02:56I got Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer and had to attend treatments, chemo, radiation treatments,
03:05for about a year.
03:06And I just kind of dwindled out of Amway because nobody really seemed to care that I was going
03:12through this at the time.
03:14Somebody did send me $300 in the mail, honestly, which was nice, and I don't know who that was.
03:19But, anyway, that was kind of like the first start of that.
03:22You know, Dexter Yeager, he was running that at the time.
03:25I mean, we even had a conference down in Atlanta, and George Bush Sr. was the speaker there.
03:31It was pretty motivating, you know, to go to that and see that.
03:34But, like I said, that was my first cult-like experience.
03:38Then, in 1994, in the spring, my wife was working with a guy that was on my team, his wife.
03:45And we were in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
03:48And so she started talking to my wife and teaching her about the way international and Bible study.
03:54And she was spending time with her.
03:56And my wife started planting seeds in me.
03:58And some of those seeds were about tithing and things like that.
04:01And so we didn't really tithe to anybody during that time, but she was telling me about it.
04:06And so I told them, I said, look, I want to go to this Bible study.
04:10I want to do this thing.
04:11Because I was having some personal struggles in my life with all the deployments and, you know, Desert Storm, Somalia,
04:16all these types of things.
04:19And so, and this was just prior to the cancer hitting me.
04:23And so I agreed to take this Bible course.
04:27And I think it was like three or four weeks.
04:30And we would do it like every afternoon for like three or four hours.
04:35And it was just a really in-depth Bible study.
04:37And we were really excited about it.
04:39I mean, we had Dr. Victor Paul Werewolf.
04:42I know you call him Werewolf-y.
04:44But his name was Dr. Victor Paul Werewolf.
04:47And, you know, he was, you know, linked up with George Lomza, the Lomza Bible.
04:52We had a Lomza Bible.
04:53We were studying all that.
04:55But it was just a really good Bible study.
04:58And we were just learning a lot.
04:59It was motivating to learn that much about the Bible because the church that I grew up in, I learned
05:04things.
05:05But it just didn't really learn that much.
05:07Of course, my parents divorced when I was about 14.
05:10And we just kind of, and my mother just kind of quit going to church.
05:14And so 1999, we started going to a Baptist church there in Old Grove, Kentucky.
05:23And that was a good church.
05:25And we really enjoyed that.
05:27And then in 2000, we moved away to Fayetteville, North Carolina.
05:31And we started going to Manor Church.
05:33And it was kind of an interdenominational church.
05:37I think they believed in speaking in tongues.
05:39And they would fly flags up, you know, people with the flag dancers up front, things like that.
05:43But it wasn't really weird or nothing that I could tell at the time.
05:48Everything seemed kind of normal.
05:53We became ushers there.
05:55And we, you know, we wanted to do our part there.
05:58We went there for about two years.
06:00And then, you know, we came back to Fort Campbell after our time there.
06:04And we went to, actually, we went to Fort Bliss, Texas.
06:08And we hopped around different churches there until we found one we liked.
06:11And then we came back to Fort Campbell.
06:13And we went back to the Baptist church that we'd went to before.
06:16Went there for a couple of years.
06:17Then I retired from the military.
06:19We went back to West Kentucky.
06:24And my cousin was attending this church, Grace Church International.
06:27And so my wife was very excited about going.
06:29It was kind of similar to the things that we had seen at MANA.
06:33But we really didn't know.
06:35So we were excited.
06:36And we went up there and we went to the church.
06:38And so we became members after probably just a couple of months.
06:41And we did a couple of church moves and moved out to where we're currently located there in West Paducah.
06:50And so I was an usher there at World Harvest Church and other things.
06:59So that's basically the gist of where we're at now.
07:05I've been there for 21 years.
07:07I did talk to a former church member that found out that one of the previous pastors there at Grace
07:14Church before we moved was a man by the name of Zach Strong.
07:18And he had had an affair with a lady there.
07:21And it was a big ordeal.
07:24I don't want to say a big ordeal.
07:25But his wife didn't really want this to be known because him being a pastor was his livelihood.
07:33And so I guess he left the church with over $200,000 to leave and go start a church in
07:40Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
07:41He's been to some meetings since then a few times.
07:44I mean, he seems like a good guy.
07:46I mean, I mean, everybody I mean, there's a lot of people that we see in the Christian faith that
07:51that fall from grace, even pastors and things like that.
07:57So then there was another pastor that came in after that.
08:00And they said that he was very mean and just, you know, wasn't a good person.
08:04And he left the church with $30,000.
08:07And he and he had he left.
08:09He said that was his severance pay for leaving.
08:12So anyway, it's just a little information you get over the years.
08:16But I do remember one of the first sermons that we got going to the church there in Paducah when
08:22it was in Paducah before we moved.
08:23It was it was a church about the one thing I really got from it is is who am I
08:29to correct the man of God?
08:31It was basically like everything the man of God said was the way it was.
08:35And you didn't have any part or way to correct them.
08:39And it was kind of odd because during that time, we had a church locally that, you know, when I
08:46was growing up, they called it the Jim Jones Church.
08:49This guy kind of looked like Jim Jones.
08:51And I remember Jim Jones when I was a kid and all that thing.
08:55But so this guy kind of looked like Jim Jones, called Jim Jones Church.
08:59It wasn't a Pentecostal church or anything like that.
09:02But the guy ended up taking his own life about the time that we got back.
09:08And I was all the way and I remember all the stories I heard about the church.
09:13I was like, man, this is how he did it.
09:15This is how this is a recipe that he used to do it.
09:18But I didn't wasn't really, I guess, smart enough to see that at that time.
09:24And then I started traveling a lot overseas, started working overseas and really didn't really get to know a lot
09:30of people in the church for a few years.
09:34And so so October 2012, just to back up at World Harbor Church, that's the first time I ever met
09:43Ed Dufresne.
09:44It's the first time I seen him and got to see him and his wife, Nancy Dufresne.
09:49And he came out and, of course, our pastor kind of got linked up with him during that time.
09:54He became our pastor's father in the faith, as you hear so much in the Pentecostal circles.
10:06So to back back up about just a little tidbit of information about Jim Jones, I had a guy that
10:12I was in the Army with, and he was in the graves registration in the late 70s in the Army.
10:18Of course, that is for handling the dead and the dead on the battlefield and getting them to back to
10:24the states or whatever.
10:26And he had he got called out and they had to go down to the Jonestown massacre.
10:31And he was telling the story about recovering all the 900 plus bodies there at Jonestown and how horrible it
10:39was.
10:40And he was telling very graphic stories about that.
10:43And, of course, he was like a private in the Army.
10:45And, you know, that's just a firsthand account that I heard from someone that was there.
10:50You know, there are so many different connections you've already mentioned that I want to explore that we actually couldn't
10:56fit it all into the same podcast.
10:58And I'll start with this.
11:01You mentioned how I talk about we're Willie.
11:04I did not know how to pronounce the name.
11:07And I got online and I found different people pronouncing it.
11:10And somebody actually corrected me and said that I was pronouncing it the wrong way.
11:14I was pronouncing it we're well.
11:15And I said, no, that's not it.
11:17It's where Willie.
11:18And I scratched my head because I didn't know I could find both ways.
11:22And I apparently chose the wrong one because I had the wrong input.
11:26And I've said it that way for probably five years now since I came in contact.
11:30But I did come in contact with this because this was one of these weird.
11:34It wasn't an offshoot of Branhamism, but Branhamism attracted all of these weird different sects.
11:41And that was one of the people you can find Branham talking about him on recording.
11:45So you've got all of this weirdness.
11:48And so you mentioned the Jones Connection.
11:50And you mentioned, I don't know if you mentioned it or if I mentioned it in one of the previous
11:56recordings about this.
11:57But the church that you're in, World Harvest Church, is connected to Lester Sumrall.
12:02Lester Sumrall is connected to basically the inception of what started the cascade of events that led to Jim Jones
12:10being a Pentecostal minister.
12:12So you've got all of that weirdness.
12:14And I mean, so many different ties, but the funniest of all that you've mentioned, and I really need to
12:20do a podcast about this, is the Amway Connection.
12:23There's Amway, there's Shackley, there's all these different money-making schemes, these money pyramids.
12:29It was just yesterday I recorded with another lady who came out of a similar group, and she got sucked
12:35into Amway.
12:37And I remember growing up, I can't tell you how many different people that I knew that was in this.
12:43This kind of mentality, we weren't even in the prosperity gospel side.
12:48We were in the precursor to prosperity gospel.
12:50But it bore so many similarities that there were people trying to find all kinds of get-rich schemes.
12:56Because God is on our side, and we're going to get it, by golly.
12:59And so Amway is one of those get-rich schemes.
13:02Well, if you go back before Branimism was created, the Klan itself was a money-making pyramid.
13:09The guys at the top were basically raking in millions of dollars way back in the 20s, right?
13:15So the whole thing was created from its inception as a money-making tool.
13:19But they were packing all of these different ideologies in with it, religion and all kinds of other things.
13:25Well, once you train people on that hierarchy of how money works, the hierarchy of how religious, authoritarian control works,
13:35all of it fits together in these – it's like gears and a watch.
13:40They're all spinning just perfectly in time to make everybody work and obey and obey the man of God, like
13:47you said.
13:47So all of these pieces fit together.
13:50I would love to explore all of them, but I guess we'll just pick one or two.
13:55The Victor, we're Will – and I'm trying to say it correctly this time – that church does interest me.
14:03I've not dug into it as deeply as I want and their background.
14:07But what I want specifically – and I'm going to try to get this out of you in this podcast
14:12–
14:12the framework of doctrine that they had, although it wasn't Branimism, it was something that was compatible with Branimism.
14:20And people who get into that mindset, now they're compatible with other different groups that really are working and operating.
14:29It's like where the gears – when I'm talking about the gears and the watch, they all fit together, right?
14:33You've got one doctrine that fits with this other doctrine, and now you've got this gear that turns.
14:38And I'd like to explore that just a bit, but World Harvest Church, obviously, we've got to talk about that.
14:46We moved into our new church at West Paducah in October of 2012.
14:51And, of course, Ed Dufresne was coming quite often to the church, and he was calling us –
14:57we were going to church at our one location we were sharing with the church.
15:00We were going on Saturdays and Tuesday nights, and, of course, and I actually – at times, you know, Dr.
15:08Ed Dufresne was fun to be around.
15:11He was entertaining.
15:13You know, I got to like him.
15:17So he called us the Seventh-day Adventist at one time because we went to church on Saturday.
15:23It was kind of funny, but he would laugh and joke about that.
15:27But anyway, but we moved out, like I said, in 2012, and we did our church dedication in December 2012.
15:39Well, in Dr. Ed Dufresne's travels, he had went to Alaska, and I knew his pilot, Mitch Morgan, that flew
15:46him around.
15:47And they wanted me to – they didn't want me to, but they had seen this beaver blanket up in
15:55Alaska, and it was like $10,000.
15:57And so they were telling my wife about it, and so I said, well, I was a trapper, and I
16:04came back home.
16:04I retired from the military, and I started trapping because we had a beaver problem on the farm, and I
16:08started, you know, trapping them.
16:10And I said, well, hey, I said, I could probably help him out with that.
16:14I could probably catch enough beaver to make a blanket.
16:17And to back up a little bit, you know, when I first met Ed Dufresne, I really didn't trust him
16:21because something my cousin said.
16:23She's like, I did not trust that man.
16:25And, of course, she only went for about maybe another few months and left the church, and we don't know
16:30why she left.
16:33But so I said, well, I'm just going to do this.
16:37I didn't really want to, so I'm just going to do this out of faith, you know.
16:40And so I caught, you know, 30 beaver, and I took the best 18, and I sent off and had
16:46this blanket made.
16:49And it was very beautiful.
16:51We got it in time for the church dedication, and we presented it to him in, like, December 2012.
17:00And it cost me over $1,000 just to do, and it didn't get very many people it didn't help
17:05me out with.
17:06I think our pastor helped a little bit on the cost, but didn't get a whole lot of help.
17:11And just to mention all the work that went into that outside the cost of the blanket was just to
17:16catch all the beaver and all the gas and all that kind of stuff.
17:20And so we presented it to him, and, of course, they told me and said, oh, well, if you give
17:25something to the prophet, they were calling him the prophet, you get a prophet's reward.
17:29Now, I never really knew what the prophet's reward was, but they were just telling me how blessed I was
17:33going to be by doing all of this and everything.
17:37And so that was just one thing that I did, trying to, you know, you know, I always used the
17:45term, well, you're not thinking right.
17:47You know, and I was always questioning, well, I'm not thinking right.
17:50I'm not thinking right about these things.
17:53And so I just did it.
17:55And so we became quite close to Mitch Morgan, the pilot, and Dr. Ed Friend.
18:00I was going and making trips to California, and I would go to their church out there.
18:04And so he knew me, and so I would see him, and he would talk to me a little bit.
18:09But then he died in October, just a little over a year later, October of 2013, in a plane crash.
18:16I think he was flying out of Texas to Wichita or vice versa, something like that.
18:20Him and his pilot, Brother Mitch Morgan, you know, died in that plane crash.
18:26So then our pastor decided to appoint deacons, and he appointed several deacons in the church.
18:34We didn't have any at the time.
18:36He was concerned about an accident happening in with him and somebody being able to take over the church.
18:42And so that's what we did.
18:47But like I said, I became close to them, and the Word of Faith teachings.
18:52And then over the years, you know, his wife, Nancy Dufresne, took up, and she was already preaching at that
18:59time.
18:59She was giving a lot of meetings.
19:00And I seen someone, I would attend their church out in California, in Marietta, before he passed away.
19:08And so she started coming out and giving meetings after his death.
19:12And so for the last five years, she's been doing a miracle crusade at our church.
19:18And she calls it the Jesus the Healer Miracle Crusade.
19:23And, of course, after listening to many of your podcasts talk about, I think it's FF Bosworth that wrote Jesus
19:29the Healer and all the connections to the Klan and just all of this stuff.
19:35I mean, it's just been – and Jim Jones, it has been – you know, I heard a guy on
19:41one of your podcasts earlier today talking about how much he learned about the Pentecostal background that he did going
19:47to his Berean church ministry.
19:51And it's just how much information is out there that we don't get through the church.
19:56You know, sometimes you like the good, the bad, and the ugly.
20:00You know, I'm a big Western TV buff.
20:03And so we know in the Bible that it tells about the good, the bad, and the ugly with all
20:08the patriarchs in the Bible.
20:10But we don't get the good, the bad, and the ugly with all the people in the Pentecostal church.
20:14They hide a lot of that, and they cover a lot of that up.
20:17And we could just spend days talking about that.
20:20So I'm going to talk about one of the ugliest, because you said it, and that's straight out of Branhamism.
20:27If you give to a prophet, you'll get a prophet's reward.
20:30Think of me, so I ran my own business for 15, 20 years, and I had different people working for
20:37me, different employees and contractors.
20:40Imagine me as a boss telling one of the employees, if you give your boss a gift, you'll get a
20:46boss's reward.
20:48And they start giving me stuff.
20:49What kind of a boss would I be, man?
20:52And that's really what he did.
20:54He presented himself as a prophet, and he says, if you give to a prophet, you'll get a prophet's reward.
21:00So everybody starts giving him stuff, right?
21:02I mean, you're living like a king.
21:05Why would you do this?
21:06What kind of a religious man does this?
21:08And that's exactly what he did.
21:10He set the pace by doing that, because now everybody's watching him do this.
21:15And then you've got all these connivers.
21:18Some of the people were truly in it, I believe, for good purposes.
21:21They really believed in God.
21:23They really were trying to do their best.
21:25But you had these other people that really weren't, and they're watching how all of this works, and they're seeing
21:31these gears move, right?
21:32Huh, you give a prophet, you give a prophet's reward.
21:35I wonder what I can get.
21:36So they start doing the same kind of things.
21:39It's my opinion, and I'll stick to my opinion.
21:43Other people might have theirs.
21:44But I believe that is how the prosperity gospel actually spun off, because people started to see how you could
21:51do this to people, and they would just freely give them their money.
21:55And so the prosperity gospel was birthed.
21:58So, you know, one of the things I emailed you about was the fact, you know, that Nancy Dufresne, and
22:04she talks about this openly, that she bought Amy Simple McPherson's.
22:08I guess it's her summer vacation home there.
22:11I guess it's close to Marietta.
22:13I don't know exactly where it's at.
22:15But she bought that.
22:16And after learning and watching many videos about, you know, some videos, hearing about grave soaking, I thought it was
22:25kind of odd that in a kind of an odd sort of way that she would buy her a home.
22:30And I can, you know, I'm a historical guy.
22:33I like history.
22:34There's a uniqueness of history.
22:36But when you go back and you study Amy Simple McPherson, the one thing that blows me away that she,
22:41like, disappeared for, like, five weeks because she was having some kind of affair with some guy, and she faked
22:49that she was kidnapped and all this.
22:51And I'm like, oh, my gosh.
22:54You know, unless you dig, sometimes you just don't find this stuff.
22:58And it's crazy that, you know, when you get around young people, it's – I'm not saying young people are
23:05dumb or anything.
23:06It's just they don't know what they don't know.
23:09And when you get somebody that's 30 years younger than you, and you start telling them stories – and we
23:13have this happen at work a lot of times where we talk to this – you know, and we ask
23:17this girl about things that she doesn't know.
23:19And so they just don't know what they don't know.
23:23And so there's so much history that can get just covered up with time unless there's something written about it,
23:30and you have a lot of documentation and a lot of your research.
23:34But like I said, she had the maybe historical uniqueness there, and I just see Amy Simple McPherson as an
23:41idol maybe in a lot of these people's minds, just like, you know, all the God's generals.
23:46All of these people are idols to these people.
23:49And I see it within my own church and how they idolize Nancy Dufresne and Ed Dufresne and others and
23:57the God's generals.
23:59And, you know, we know we're not to worship idols.
24:02But, you know, I have to go back to when I was in Iraq in 2004 timeframe.
24:13We had the opportunity to visit some biblical sites over there.
24:16Now, they claim that there was a tomb of the prophets there in Kirkuk, Iraq, and I went to it
24:21a couple of times.
24:22Supposedly, Daniel was buried there and Meshach and, I think, Hosea.
24:27And also, there's a place there called Baba Gerger, which means Father Fire.
24:31And they say that that's the original site of the fiery furnace.
24:37It's just – it's methane gas or gas just comes up out of the ground and it burns all the
24:42time.
24:42And it will be in a different location every day when you come back and you can stand right out
24:46in the middle of it.
24:47It's kind of – it's kind of unique.
24:50But I think they had a furnace there possibly if that's the site.
24:52But anyway, the chaplain that was there, the Catholic chaplain that was explaining about the – why Daniel was there
25:02and all of that.
25:03But, you know, one of the stories that we heard that the Bath Party back in the 60s or whatever
25:08it is, they came in and they got the coccyx bone, the tailbone of Daniel.
25:12And they pulled that out of this tomb and all these big natural disasters started happening and it really scared
25:20them and so they put it back.
25:22And then you have – you know, we're talking about gravestocking.
25:24Then you have the story in 2 Kings where it talks about where Elisha, they buried him in the tomb.
25:30This guy died and they put him down within the tomb and he connected with the bones of Elisha and
25:35he was brought back to life.
25:37And then – so I don't know if there's – then you have Moses where it talks about how his
25:45body was to be – his gravesite was to be secret and God buried him there.
25:49And it was to be secret, not to be a – like a shrine or a religious idol for them.
25:57I'm just assuming that.
25:59And you'll see a lot of other things about bones in the Bible like, you know, Daniel's bone – or
26:04Joseph's bones was brought out of Egypt.
26:06But that was just something that he asked him to do because he was a son of Israel and he
26:10just returned to Egypt to the promised land – or not Egypt, to Israel.
26:15And so there's – I don't know if there's something in ancient, you know, culture that's something about the bones
26:21or of prophets.
26:24I haven't done a lot of research in that.
26:26I don't know what you know about that.
26:28I've mentioned a few times on the podcast that I'd love to go over to Louisville, Kentucky.
26:32I live just right across the river.
26:34So I can soak on Colonel Sanders' grave and learn how to make better fried chicken.
26:39But it just simply doesn't work.
26:41You know what I mean?
26:44I've studied it a little bit, but not from the Christian aspect because this wasn't – this isn't really a
26:51practice that you find a lot of in Christianity.
26:54You do – if you read through the Bible, you've mentioned some passages.
26:57There are some that kind of sound like this, but usually it's with the ancestral cults.
27:03In the ancestral cults, they worship the dead.
27:06There's all the celebrations and you can get blessed by the dead.
27:12It's one of the reasons why some of the horror films will talk about the dead and they come back
27:19to haunt you, all this kind of stuff.
27:20Well, that comes from that lineage.
27:22It doesn't usually come from a Christian lineage, but it is fascinating.
27:27And what happened is during the spiritualist craze in the United States, as everybody's trying to communicate with the dead,
27:35and this actually gets quite popular.
27:37Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came over to the United States to do seances, and that's why we don't have so
27:43many, you know, Sherlock Holmes books.
27:46But it was a widely popular craze, and there were certain people who tried to capitalize on that for the
27:53benefit of – or the so-called benefit – of Christianity, one of them being William Branham's mentor.
28:00And we have evidence that William Branham himself went to one of these spiritualist camps.
28:04So you can see it's kind of merging and evolving.
28:09Well, the way it shifted was that Christianity can do these things because the ancient spirits of evil can do
28:15these things.
28:16If they can do it, we can do it too.
28:18And it just kind of evolved into this weird thing where now you see people – you've probably seen the
28:22videos of – they come here to Jeffersonville, and they'll soak on Branham's grave trying to catch something.
28:28And one guy says, ooh, I feel the power, or something like this, and I've been there.
28:33I know that you don't feel anything when you're there, but there are people that do it, and there are
28:39people – frequently I'll drive by that pyramid tomb, and I'll see people either bowing down, praying to it, or
28:44all kinds of weird stuff.
28:46Although it has decreased a bit now that it's become known that this was a cult.
28:52But it doesn't seem to be a Christian practice, I guess, is the bottom line.
28:55Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter
29:04reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
29:09You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
29:16On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,
29:25John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
29:30You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
29:37If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the
29:43top.
29:44And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or
29:50watching.
29:50On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
29:55You know, I was watching some videos about Benny Hinn, and he goes and visits Catherine Kuhlman's grave quite often.
30:03And so, I don't know if he lays down on the grave or not.
30:07It didn't show him doing that.
30:09But he's even said, I think he even said in the video that he goes there and visits quite often.
30:14And you have to wonder, why does he go visit her grave?
30:17I mean, I don't know.
30:17But it just seems kind of odd.
30:21So, I do know that Benny Hinn is kind of his Southwest Believers Conference.
30:26He has been going there with Bill Johnson from Bethel.
30:32And, of course, Kenneth Copeland, they're all there together.
30:36And, of course, Nancy Dufresne is attending that.
30:38And I was watching the one where Kenneth Copeland, he said that, you know, he was going to die at
30:44120 years.
30:45I think his birthday is December 6th.
30:48But he predicted that he would not die until 120 years, December 6th, 2056.
30:54I think that is the actual date that he predicted.
30:58So, but anyway, it's just some very interesting things about the bones and things like that or frequenting places.
31:07We know that people like to go to the Holy Lands and walk where Jesus walked and visit those sites.
31:11I mean, I can see that.
31:14But it was kind of odd because, you know, when you watch Kenneth Copeland, he's always talking.
31:19He'll be talking and he'll say, oh, Father, you know, what's that you're saying, God?
31:24And it's like God's talking to him up there while he's preaching.
31:28And so it was kind of funny because we've had several.
31:34We had Jerry Savelle come to our church a couple of times.
31:37Of course, he died here a few years ago.
31:40But Nancy Dufresne ended up getting his plane that he had.
31:46And so he was always up there telling stories about giving and how he gives here and give there and
31:55how he's giving planes away and all this stuff.
31:57And all this stuff was just like a psychological preparation to get people to give in the end.
32:03And it's just all it's just they talk so much about money.
32:07But anyway, I thought it was kind of odd that, you know, Kenneth Copeland being so spiritual and having discernment
32:13and all this thing.
32:15He kept telling Nancy Dufresne that when he would meet with her that you need to get a plane, you
32:19need to get a plane.
32:20And he didn't even know that, you know, that she was going to get Dr. Jerry Savelle's plane.
32:26You know, you would have thought he would have known that if he was that spiritually connected.
32:29But, you know, there's there's several things that Nancy Dufresne quotes, you know, that I've that I've heard over the
32:37years.
32:37She always uses the quote is how you respond.
32:40All right. And so and that's what's going on with the service, whether it be healing, whatever it is slain
32:45in the spirit.
32:47And you're experiencing the flow of the spirit.
32:49I remember going to her church and she would go down the aisles and grab the everybody would join hands
32:56and she would grab the hands of people.
32:58And when she grabbed the hands, everybody would fall out in the seats and I would be holding my hand.
33:02I'm like, I wouldn't fall out. So I was like, what's what's happening?
33:06Why? You know, why is why am I not feeling something or what?
33:09You feel like a jolt of electricity is going to go through you.
33:11And so and so she kept I kept thinking about that.
33:14It's how you respond. And so I remember one time in our church, the hands were laid on me and
33:19I thought, well, I'm just going to respond.
33:21I'm just going to fall back and let them catch me.
33:23And I did. And I felt no different or whatever.
33:25But the people were observing and they said, oh, boy, you were really slain in the spirit.
33:29You were just slain out. And I'm like, man, how far from the truth is that?
33:35You know, they just it's like people see that and they believe it.
33:39And so, you know, I just kept thinking, hey, I wasn't responding correctly.
33:45And so I just kind of learned that that's just kind of a word of faith Kool-Aid, you know,
33:50that that they put out there.
33:53You know, another one that she always commonly says is money is always the issue.
33:58And I see this as a double sided issue, because I think the biggest problem with money issue is on
34:04their side.
34:04OK, because you have the money and they want it and they're going to do whatever they can to convince
34:11you to give it by the end of the service.
34:14And I mean, they're going to do different tricks to try to get you to do that.
34:18We at the deliverance conference last or deliverance conference at the Miracle Crusade last year.
34:27She there was a guy who was playing the keyboard up there and he said that he had gotten fifty
34:32thousand dollars for his.
34:35I'm working for Dufresne Ministries for, you know, for, I guess, pay, you know, fifty thousand dollars.
34:41We're going to have this thing called the double up offering.
34:43And I think it's on like that Thursday, Wednesday or Thursday.
34:47So you're going to save your offering and you're going to give double the amount for the offering.
34:51And so he had this fifty thousand dollar check and he gets up there on the keyboard.
34:55He says, hey, he says, I got this fifty thousand dollars.
34:58I'm going to give this fifty thousand dollars back to the ministry and I'm going to add fifty thousand dollars
35:03to that.
35:05And I mean, it's just constant brainwashing of people to get them to give money.
35:10And I mean, that was just a blatant thing to get people to give money.
35:14And what one of the things that really got to me was she got up there and she was to
35:21me, it was like she was bragging.
35:23She's like, I have four houses.
35:25And I'm like, oh, wow.
35:27And so so what am I why do I need to give you any money if you got four houses?
35:32And but they don't ever tell you what they do with the money.
35:36I mean, I don't know.
35:38But I mean, I guess she's got the house there, Marietta, that she originally had with with Dr.
35:42Ed Dufresne and she has an Amy Simple McPherson's home and she has a house in Texas.
35:48And I think to be close to Kenneth Copeland and I'm not sure where else she has a home.
35:54But but she always uses that term money is always an issue.
35:58And I think, like I said, it's it's always seems to be a very issue.
36:02Another term that she says all the time is all the money you make is not your money.
36:07OK, and she uses that all the time, like, hey, you should give us your money.
36:12It's just it's a constant psychological preparation of the mind that all your money is not your money.
36:18And so you need to give me your money.
36:20You need to offer your money.
36:21And this is not just the tithe because we're supposed to tie through our local church, you know, which we
36:26do.
36:27But they want everything above and beyond that.
36:32So, you know, one of the things that she said during the one of the church services was, yeah, if
36:38you're giving an offering, if you don't have anything to give, just put an empty empty envelope into the offering
36:44thing.
36:45And so I'm thinking, well, well, how does that work?
36:48So if I know that John John over here, he's having problems financially.
36:52And I look over and I see John putting something in the offering.
36:55Hey, John's having a hard time financially.
36:58He's believing for a breakthrough financially.
37:00So if he's going to give, well, I'm going to definitely give.
37:03And so I'm going to give.
37:04And so it's just like I said, it's just psychological preparation.
37:07And that's really the gimmick, right?
37:09If you can convince the people that the money is not their own, that it's God's, but then also convince
37:15them that you are the interface between God and man.
37:18Well, you give God your money.
37:20You're going to give these leaders the money.
37:22A gift to a prophet gets a prophet's reward.
37:26It's really the same exact concept.
37:28They just spin it in different ways.
37:31And, you know, I still go back to what kind of person does this.
37:34I could never have done that in any situation I can think of.
37:39I would never have done that in normal situations.
37:42But more than that, if you're outside of the church world and you're in a situation like this, I mentioned
37:47my employees a few minutes ago.
37:50Picture yourself as the employee and your boss asked you to do this.
37:54You're going to be like, heck no, man.
37:55You can pay me if you want.
37:57I'm not going to pay you.
37:59That's the mindset.
38:00That's the critical thinking that you have when you're not in the church environment.
38:04But in the church environment, you shut off all critical thinking.
38:07And more than that, they want you to shut off critical thinking.
38:11They want you to block your critical thought.
38:13Because then if you can block their critical thought, you can get right into their pocketbook.
38:18Yeah, and that's where the comment is, hey, you're not thinking right all the time.
38:21And so, you know, I was always wondering why I wasn't experiencing all of these manifestations of the spirit.
38:30I mean, I really didn't understand.
38:31They would explain it.
38:32Of course, they'd say it's how you respond.
38:34You know, am I supposed to go running around the church?
38:37Am I supposed to start dancing all crazy?
38:40And it's just like you feel like, and I've heard a lot of people in the comment section, I read
38:45that, where people say, hey, you have a lack of faith because you don't experience these things.
38:49And people are damaged by that.
38:51A lot of people are leaving Christianity because of that, those instances, you know, that, you know, we're talking about.
39:00You know, one of the things that our pastor, he used to always give, we would have a pastor coming
39:07down.
39:07He was from New Albany, Indiana, by the way.
39:09And I find that quite ironic that he is a word of faith preacher in New Albany, Indiana, which is
39:15right next to Jeffersonville, where William Branham started.
39:21And I found that kind of ironic that that's the location there.
39:26But anyway, he would give he would always talk about honoring the prophet.
39:31And how are you going to honor the prophet when he comes here?
39:34And it's a psychological preparation.
39:35It really comes down to the offering.
39:38You know, your mind starts wondering, well, how can I honor the prophet?
39:41Well, I can give him some money.
39:44You know, that's the easiest thing and let him do with it what he wants.
39:47And so you always hear that.
39:50And, of course, you'll hear, oh, you can give a you can give a hundred dollars and you'll be blessed.
39:55If you give a thousand dollars, you'll even be more blessed.
39:59And it always seems like a lot of times in these offerings, they really like the thousand dollar offering.
40:04You know, of course, they're going to have to change that to something because of the way, you know, it's
40:11getting, you know, the cost of things.
40:13But, I mean, I've just seen a lot of written a lot of notes on these things.
40:19And like I said, your podcast have opened my eyes to some areas and just what I've experienced in life.
40:26It just seems like there's just I mean, you know, it come to me that the American people are probably
40:31the most scammed people on the face of the earth.
40:35With just all the scammers on the Internet and phone calls and things like that and our churches.
40:41I mean, it is with with the word of faith movement, with all the people down the Pentecostal line.
40:46I mean, we were just scammed so much.
40:49It is really pathetic.
40:53And I guess that's I mean, I just look at them as the modern snake oil salesman.
40:57And, you know, I've heard you talk that before and I've come up with that on my own in my
41:01own mind.
41:02But it's good to, you know, when you start watching some podcasts and things to know that what you're thinking,
41:11your critical thinking is in line with lots of other people.
41:16OK, it's very comforting that you're not crazy, that you're thinking is, you know, right, that it's it's in line
41:24with with normalcy.
41:25That's one of the beautiful things, I think, about the social media.
41:29None of this really would have existed before you had all the people listening to podcasts and the Facebook where
41:34people are commenting.
41:36It's ironic to me that once that began to happen, you started seeing preachers who are preaching against Facebook and
41:42against Twitter, these kind of things that that's the devil.
41:45That's where the devil gets you.
41:46Well, no, that's where people can communicate and they can each learn to critically think together.
41:52That is the devil that they're referring to.
41:54Well, I like, you know, General Roth, you know, sometimes he talks about the scriptures and how they, you know,
42:02misrepresent scriptures, how they do that.
42:05And you go back and the one that they use quite often is it's talking about the false prophets and
42:11the false teachers that are coming to steal and destroy.
42:15It's not really talking about the devil.
42:16I know that stuff is of the devil, but they use that scripture that it is, you know, that's the
42:21devil they're talking about.
42:21But it's talking about the false teacher and the prophet.
42:24And in a sense, it's talking about them.
42:27They're telling you about them, but they're deflecting that it's the devil.
42:32And so that's just kind of how I see that.
42:36You know, and for me, one of the real things that I see is just devastating.
42:41When you look back at the way all of this began, we've talked about the spiritualism that entered into it.
42:46You've got the moneymaking schemes that's entering into it.
42:50You've got the mindset where the people are there to serve the leadership instead of the opposite direction.
42:55It's one of the things Channel Ross hits pretty hard, I think, whenever he's talking.
43:00Well, in that environment, they don't really care so much about the people who are in need.
43:04Yet it was a healing revival attracting people who are desperately in need.
43:09These are the people who are in most need in the country.
43:12And they're coming into these things being told that if you believe, if you positively confess, you can be healed
43:18of all these diseases and afflictions.
43:21And the batting average of the actual healings was like 5%.
43:24It was next to nothing.
43:26But you have all of these masses of people coming, believing that if I can just get my family there,
43:31they won't die.
43:33Things like that.
43:34And yet people did die.
43:36And for me, that is just devastating to think what a family would go through.
43:40Yeah.
43:41You know, they always use that scripture where the woman with the issue of blood, if I can just touch
43:46the garment, you know, his garment, I can be healed.
43:49And they use that scripture a lot.
43:51Yeah. And that's just like these people traveling for long distances to these healing meetings where these people, they say
43:59they have special endowments to heal certain things.
44:02And and so they travel there.
44:04And I think that requires a lot of faith to come there.
44:08I mean, obviously, they've spent a lot of time in sickness with their problem.
44:13It may be I mean, even if, you know, when I went through chemo and radiation for a year, I
44:18mean, that was a long time for me.
44:19I mean, that's a long time.
44:20It was it was quite miserable.
44:21And so when people go years with this issue, I mean, they're looking to get healed and they have the
44:26faith to get healed, but they don't get healed.
44:29And they say, well, it's your lack of faith.
44:31You know, we have two people in our church that's been for probably 10 years or better.
44:38And the one boy has been he's been crippled since birth.
44:42I mean, he can't function at all.
44:44I mean, he can't speak.
44:46He can't see.
44:47He can't hear.
44:48I mean, he is just an invalid.
44:50And we have another guy that was injured in an accident.
44:54I think he was 25 years old and he was injured, had an injury similar to what Christopher Reeve had,
45:00you know, falling off the polo pony.
45:02And he can walk sometimes, but it's just very hard for him.
45:06And but they go up to the healing line many times.
45:10And we're just about every time we have a special meeting where, you know, a healing line is formed and
45:16they'll go up.
45:17And it's been several times that they'll pray over them and they'll they'll pray, you know, be healed in Jesus
45:24name.
45:26And but then they'll say, well, what you need is a miracle.
45:30And that's the hardest thing I haven't been able to understand or why I thought any healing was a miracle.
45:36And they'll explain it like, well, not just every healing is a miracle.
45:40And so I have a hard time wrapping my head around how they explain that.
45:45But these I mean, these men are still in the wheelchairs today.
45:49And I mean, I hope they get healed.
45:52I would love to see that.
45:53I mean, I would love to see them get up and walk normally.
45:56I mean, that would be a great thing.
45:58I mean, what what glory could God get from that?
46:01You know, seeing that those things really bothered me.
46:04And worse, you found that they were giving examples of people who were healed who actually weren't so that they
46:10could boost your faith so that you would give them the money.
46:13And then you could you could feel like you're going to be healed because this other guy was healed to
46:18find out that the other guy wasn't was just devastating.
46:20I remember when I was going through the newspaper articles, just reading some of the accounts, even the most famous
46:27healings in the movement, the person died of the diseases that they came to be healed of.
46:33And when I when I discovered this, I was like, this this just can't be right.
46:37Why are they telling people they're healed when they're not?
46:39But and it all comes back to if you can convince the people to believe and not believe in God,
46:45but believe in you as the healer.
46:47There's no telling what you can do to this person.
46:49They're always telling stories in their meetings and things.
46:51But they tell stories about how people that have, you know, pins and rods and screws and stuff in their
46:58body, how they'll just dissolve and how some person had like a rod in their back and they prayed over
47:05them and they went to the doctor and there was a hinge in there where the rod was.
47:09So it would bend and, you know, just outrageous claims like that.
47:13But there's no there's no proof.
47:15There's no x-rays.
47:17There's no doctors coming in and saying no affidavits that are written, no witness statements or anything to verify any
47:24of this stuff.
47:25I mean, I hear all the stories all the time, but it's just telling the story time and time again
47:30doesn't make it true.
47:32And but I've never witnessed any of this stuff except, you know, I did witness the leg lengthening one time.
47:40And there was a guy, he was about 90 years old in our church, and he went up and he
47:44said and so it was a minister there.
47:47And and I actually I was standing there and I seen the leg lengthen and I told a friend of
47:52mine that I work with later.
47:53I said, hey, yeah, I seen this.
47:55And he goes, no, you know, that's a trick.
47:57He says, there's got to be something to that, some kind of trick or whatever.
48:00Well, then listening to your podcast, if that's an old magician's trick, you know, and of course, magicians, what do
48:06they do?
48:06They pass around all their tricks to fool people.
48:09And of course, so then our pastor was like, well, at the last healing crusade with Nancy Dufresne, that she
48:17imparted to me a, you know, an endowment to lengthen legs.
48:26And so he says, is anybody in here?
48:29And he hadn't used it.
48:30And he kind of said, I haven't used it.
48:32I've kind of it's been six months ago.
48:35I haven't used it at all.
48:36And so he called people forward to lengthen legs.
48:39And when I heard that, I was like, oh, man, this is this is the trickery or whatever.
48:43But there was a young man that did come forward and he had had a parachute accident.
48:50And he had, you know, army, we called it a, you know, a partial malfunction where you don't have any
48:55lift capability.
48:56You come in, you crash down and he injured his one leg and he had a bunch of surgeries.
49:02He got processed out of the army.
49:04I'm sure he got 100 percent retirement on that.
49:08And he said he went through all these surgeries and had to take, you know, medication, drugs, you know, for
49:14the pain.
49:15But he went up there and our pastors, you know, didn't know anything about it.
49:19But, you know, supposedly he was healed.
49:21And I hope he was healed, you know, and not to take anything away from him.
49:28But but but the leg lengthening thing, you know, I did an Internet search later on and I found that
49:3360 to 90 percent of people that said to have one leg longer than the other.
49:39OK, now, most of the time, it's just minimal amounts of inches that it's, you know, a difference.
49:46Some may be one inch or more.
49:49But, yeah, I wish that really turned me off right there when, you know, he said that and not not
49:58to discredit the healing for the young man.
50:00I'm happy and I hope that is is true and accurate and good.
50:04So do you have any advice for people who are trapped in this kind of movement and can't get out?
50:10Either they can't critically think or they're just simply they can critically think, but they're afraid to escape.
50:16What advice would you give them?
50:18I remember when we first joined the church and the pastor got up there and talked.
50:21One of the things that he advised is for us to not follow any other doctrine or talk to anybody
50:28else from another church to, you know, you know, don't listen to any other preachers, anybody outside your camp, basically.
50:37And and I think that's dangerous.
50:40So I would think that if you're if you have questions about what you're being taught, you know, one thing
50:47that I did learn in Dr. Victor Paul Wirbel's teachings is he says that it's always fine to ask questions.
50:57OK, you can ask questions and it shouldn't be a problem.
51:01And and so but with questions here, I mean, you're they always have the same answers to come back with.
51:09But I think you need to go to another pastor from another denomination and ask them some questions about what
51:17you're thinking.
51:18And of course, there's there's so many podcasts on these days and YouTube videos about this type of thing.
51:24I would say that there's probably a lot of people leaving the word of faith church churches and others.
51:32But just seek guidance from another source.
51:36You know, when I was in the military, any time we collected intelligence information, we had to do multiple sources.
51:43We had to get two or three sources to verify information, just like in the word it says two or
51:49three witnesses.
51:51You know, in the Bible, you have to get two or three witnesses to verify something.
51:55And so that's what I would advise someone to do.
51:58Well, it's very good advice.
51:59Thank you so much for doing this.
52:01Thank you, John.
52:02Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
52:05You can find us at william-brannum.org.
52:08For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to
52:14the NAR.
52:15Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
52:45Weaponized Religion from bubble.
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