Did Charismatic Christian Fury Lead to Jan 6?

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Is it true that radical charismatic fury played a direct role in the events of January 6th? It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on the line of fire. And now, here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. I am going to have a very fascinating conversation today with scholar Matthew Taylor. I'll introduce him in a moment.

This is not going to be a debate. We're going to have some areas of strong agreement and strong disagreement, but I want to give Matthew an opportunity to lay out what he believes and why, and then we will get to interact. I might take some calls at 866-34-TRUTH, but probably not because of the amount of content we have to cover.

Quick intro. Matthew Taylor, PhD, is senior scholar and Protestant scholar at the, let's see, ICJS. ICJS stands for Institute for Islamic Christian Jewish Studies. He specializes in Muslim-Christian dialogue, evangelical and Pentecostal movements, religious politics in the U.S., and American Islam, prior to coming to Dronko through his whole history here. He's the creator of the acclaimed audio documentary series Charismatic Revival Fury, the New Apostolic Reformation, which details how networks of extremist Christian leaders help instigate the January 6th insurrection.

His next book, The Violent Taken by Force, the Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, will be published in fall 2024. With that intro, I think I have your attention, folks. Let's welcome Matthew Taylor to the broadcast. Thanks so much for joining us today. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on, Michael.

My joy. All right, so, I want to lay out very quickly some areas of agreement, disagreement, and then turn things over to you. I may ask clarifying questions, but I want to allow you to present your case.

Obviously, it's going to be abbreviated compared to your documentary series and your book. So, we agree that there are dangerous extremes in some, quote, Christian nationalist movements in America. We agree that very dangerous statements were made at Jericho marches, for example, before January 6th.

We agree that the Trump prophets helped fuel the fires. We agree that there has been shoddy, conspiratorial work done on so-called NAR, but that there is a real NAR in New Apostolic Reformation that was spearheaded by Peter Weig, and we agree on that. We disagree on definitions of Christian nationalism. We disagree on how much, quote, NAR was responsible for January 6th. We disagree on some of the nature and intent of language like take the land, et cetera, and how much there's a push for a theocracy with the extent of charismatic fury. So, we're going to have lots of areas of agreement, disagreement, but please take some time to lay out your fundamental thesis in terms of New Apostolic Reformation and the events leading up to January 6th. Sure. Yeah, I'm happy to. And just to be clear, I typically say N-A-R or New Apostolic Reformation.

I don't pronounce it NAR. I find that kind of trivializes things a little bit. So, you're welcome to do that.

That's just my usage. So, let me just maybe preface it by saying I did not enter this research project with any sort of axe to grind about the New Apostolic Reformation. In fact, prior to January 6th, I hadn't even really heard much about the New Apostolic Reformation.

This was not my area. My specialization is in Muslim Christian dialogue. My first book is on radical Islam in America. So, I grew up evangelical. I grew up in charismatic churches, but this was not something that was really even on my screen. And then January 6th happened and I tried to start digging into who were the Christian leaders and what were the Christian theologies that fueled the Christian mobilization and participation in January 6th.

And I think it's inarguable that people were holding up all kinds of images and espousing all kinds of Christian ideas and Christian identities on January 6th. So, let me go do a little history then. So, the New Apostolic Reformation, that phrase was coined in 1996. It was, it came originally as a theory by this seminary professor at Fuller Seminary. I actually went to Fuller Seminary.

I'm an alum from there. And the professor's name was C. Peter Wagner. And Wagner had been at Fuller for about 20 years, 25 years at that point. He was very interested in church growth. He was very interested in this idea of apostles and prophets leading a revival, a global revival in the church. And so, he started off calling it the post-denominational church. And then his friend, Jack Safford, recently passed, intervened and said, please, don't call it the post-denominational church. Some of us in denominations want to be a part of it. And over lunch with a few other leaders, they hammered out the name New Apostolic Reformation.

And so, it starts out as this theory. And then over time, Wagner is getting prophecies, especially from Cindy Jacobs, who's very close to him, and telling him that he is an apostle and that he is supposed to help lead this New Apostolic Reformation movement. And so, he retires from Fuller in 1999 and begins, he spends really the rest of his career, he's about 70 at that point, up until the age of 80, when he retires in 2010, building what he calls the New Apostolic Reformation. And he builds a number of different institutions for that. There's about eight institutions total that he links together, all of which he's saying are part of this New Apostolic Reformation.

And there are hundreds of leaders who join up with these institutions, with these networks that Wagner is organizing and creating. And he especially has an inner core of very close mentees and disciples. He called that core the Eagle Vision Apostolic Team, the EVAT. And that was made up of about 25 of his closest prophet and apostle mentees. They called him their spiritual father.

They called him their apostle. And that was kind of the molten core of the NAR, was this Eagle Vision Apostolic Team. But then he has all these other networks with hundreds of leaders that are participating. And some of those networks are also being led by the members of this EVAT group. Now, I would say there are three major ideas or paradigms that emerge out of Wagner's group that I think distinguish his movement from what we might call their fivefold ministry or charismatic movement.

Those three are. So Wagner in the 1990s becomes very interested in spiritual warfare. He develops this concept called strategic level spiritual warfare, which I think most people probably have heard of spiritual warfare.

It's the idea that there are angels and demons who are involved in the world around us. And many Christians practice spiritual warfare. Many Christians perform exorcisms.

Many Christians perform deliverance ministry. Many Christians pray and worship as forms of spiritual warfare. But the idea of strategic level spiritual warfare was you could organize campaigns of spiritual warfare. And there would be Christians galvanized and organized around these concerted campaigns of spiritual warfare. And Wagner is very interested in this idea of what he called territorial spirits, which was his idea, his way of talking about the principalities and powers in Ephesians chapter six. And he believes that apostles and prophets were generals of spiritual warfare. We could orchestrate these massive campaigns, organizing thousands, sometimes even millions of Christians around prayer and doing spiritual warfare. He trained people to be boots on the ground to bring this spiritual warfare into specific split places. They practice what they called spiritual mapping, trying to map out who were the territorial spirits over certain areas, regions, institutions.

So that's distinction number one. Second thing that really emerges from Wagner is a very particular understanding fivefold ministry. There are a lot of charismatic believers who believe in fivefold ministry.

This idea goes back to the latter rain movement in the 1940s 1950s. And there were a lot of people in the 1990s who were talking about this idea of the return of apostles and prophets. And Wagner grabbed hold of that idea and he put a very specific spin on it.

And the way that I talk about this within his phrase, but I think it's, it's, it's an accurate rendering of how he thought about it. Apostles and prophets form a sort of spiritual oligarchy that can govern these networks and non-denominational churches. Wagner was very interested in these non-denominational spaces. And this is why he's talking about post-denominational, right?

He wanted to get away from denominations. He thought that apostles and prophets could be this elite cast of leaders in the church. The apostles would build the church.

Prophets would hear from God and advise the church. And that this would be, this would inaugurate what he talked about at the second apostolic age, which he believed to begin in the year 2001 and, or yeah, 2001. And then the third idea, and then I'll, I'll pause and let you ask any questions or clarify the third idea that really emerges out of the networks. It actually is not, is not there at the start of a lot of these Wagner networks. It comes in through a man named Lance Wallnau, who I know, you know, Michael, and Wallnau was a pastor who, and a, and a charismatic apostle.

He'd already started talking about that before he met Wagner. He was already kind of interested in these apostolic five-fold ideas. And the study mountain mandate is this idea that Wallnau picks up.

He gets it from other people and then he adapts it and puts his own kind of branding on it with these mountain ideas. But the basic idea is that, that right, you have seven tiers, seven arenas of influence in society. And Wallnau says, we need to conquer every one of these seven mountains in every society in order to bring about the kingdom of God. He says the tops of those mountains are either ruled by the kingdom of God or ruled by Satan. And that we must do spiritual warfare and take real physical, real world action to take over those seven mountains in order to bring about the kingdom of God, to facilitate the kingdom of God in every society. And when Wagner hears these ideas, he meets Wallnau in 2001, gets very excited about these ideas. Wagner was kind of on the fence about whether to embrace something that was fairly popular in charismatic circles called dominion theology. And he winds up taking the seven mountain idea, working with Wallnau, Wallnau becomes a member of the Eagles vision apostolic team. And they worked together to roll out this whole campaign about the seven mountains and saying, we as Christians need to take dominion over the seven mountains. We as Christians need to conquer the seven mountains in our society. And at that point, this rollout happens in late 2007, early 2008, right after that Wagner publishes his most famous, maybe the most infamous book titled dominion exclamation point where it gives us full throated endorsement of dominion theology, links it with the seven mountains, links it with the idea of spiritual warfare. And at that point, the NAR folks get very involved in politics, get very interested, especially in Republican politics, get very excited about Sarah Palin who had grown up in some churches that had connections to these NAR networks.

And that was really the point of entry where this movement that was up until that point, more interested in reforming the church, became much more interested in transforming society. Got it. All right. So first, highly commendable to condense so much into such a short period of time. I know you've got a podcast series where you unpack this at great length. So I appreciate you being able to do that. So here's what we're gonna do.

I've got a break coming up in a little over a minute. So I wanna say a couple of things, get some clarification, and then we'll come back to you and we'll go from there to January 6th. But first, friends, what you just heard described, whether I agree with every single point or date, I don't know many of the dates involved.

So let's just, Matthew's done the research, let's just take all the dates accurately. That's the actual NAR. That's the New Apostolic Reformation, right?

Whether it had to do with January 6th or not, we're gonna discuss that. That's the one that does exist, that I've said for years does exist, that I have various differences with. So I work with any of the people but never have been part of that full-throated NAR for various reasons. That's the one that does exist. There is the NAR of the critics. That's a shimra.

That's a conspiratorial boogeyman. This does not exist. But what you just heard described is the NAR that does exist, okay? So I wanna distinguish that from the NAR of the critics, which I always say is a fantasy. So we'll start there and come back one or two more points, then I go right back to Matthew.

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I'm actually very eager to see it. The Violent Take It by Force, the Christian movement that is threatening our democracy. So as you hear from that title, obviously some areas of agreement and disagreement. Matthew, very quickly, how would you categorize the mythical NAR versus the real NAR? So you've described the real NAR, which absolutely exists, a movement spearheaded by Dr. Wagner, the late Dr. Wagner.

How would you describe the broader conspiratorial NAR, which really does not exist? So I think a lot of this traces back to how Wagner operated and how he thought. As I mentioned, Wagner was very anti-denomination, anti-institution. He was even anti-flare seminary, where he had taught for 30 years.

After he left, he would sometimes talk about his fuller cemetery. So he was a very strong disillusionment with organized institutions. And so even though as he's creating institutions, he wants them to have a very low profile. So even if he's organizing this movement, talking about this theory, presenting these ideas, there's never an official list of who's in the NAR.

There's never an official, there's nobody has membership cards. It's very much Wagner's idea. And all these other people are kind of joining his institutions, affiliating with him, affiliating with his ideas. But after his retirement, he hands leadership off to a number of his disciples. And no one person takes over. And at that point, also the NAR starts becoming very controversial. And reporters start writing about these ideas that Wagner's doing, some of this political organizing his followers are doing. And it becomes the sort of thing that people don't want to talk about anymore. And so that usage falls out in charismatic circles. You won't find very many people today who will say, I'm, I'm part of the NAR, right?

It's very rare that you find that. But if you have all this attention that others, outsiders are paying to this, they start projecting onto it different ideas. And many of those people are not very familiar with the charismatic world, especially the non-denominational charismatic world. And so they're like, Oh, well, Wagner believed in apostles and prophets. That must be a sign that somebody's a part of the NAR. As I just said, though, there were many people who believed in apostles and prophets. Many people were activated around this fivefold ministry idea coming out of the latter reign. I mean, you had IHOP in Kansas City being founded right around the same time. You had Bethel in Redding, California being founded around the same time. Many people said, Oh, those are part of the NAR.

I actually don't think so. Mike Bickel, Bill Johnson, Chris Alton, and you, Michael, chose to remain separate from Wagner's networks, right? And I think there were a variety of reasons that people had for that. And similarly with like Rick Joyner at Morningstar, he chose to remain formally separate from Wagner's networks. There are a lot of people who are playing with these ideas in the early 2000s.

The NAR was a specific brand of fivefold ministry or the specific approach to fivefold ministry. And I think because sometimes the critics want to cast a wide net, or maybe don't fully understand, part of this is I'm actually in Wagner's archives at Fuller Seminary. He has boxes and boxes of archives.

If I can go into the actual documents, not too many people have access to his archives. And so a lot of people are reading rumors online or reading books that aren't always that clear. And they start constructing kind of fantastical notions of the NAR that I think exaggerate its spread, its reach, but that also aren't paying a close attention to the politics of the NAR, which is really my concern.

Got it. Yeah, very clear and logical explanation of how things unfold. And in terms of your own journey, Matthew, I can attest to when you and I talked by phone, we spoke at some length, a couple of times maybe, and we had a little rubbing of edges, a little confrontation. But then when I saw an article you wrote, I didn't actually recognize it. I thought, was that the same guy? When I replied initially to the article, I wasn't even sure it was you. Then when you tweeted, I thought, okay, is this the same guy? And then I dug, okay, of course, I found your name again. But when I asked you about it, you said to me that your views have evolved. In other words, the more you studied and looked at it, your views have evolved. So I can attest that you didn't come in with an axe to grind. And then one other quick question, and I want to let you get back to your narrative, which will continue from this segment into the next.

All right. So here's the other question. I tweeted a poll December 2nd. Do you believe that the spread of true Christianity in a nation will result in positive moral and cultural changes or is that mixing the earthly with the heavenly? And 83% said, of course, it will.

That would be my view. You expect Christianity to impact slavery, impact segregation, impact other injustices, et cetera. You know, I've preached Jesus revolution for decades saying, but I've said, put down your sword, take up your cross.

This is, we changed the world through the gospel. Do you differ? And in that sense, we get involved with everything, including politics, but we're not primarily political. So just generally speaking, and I want to let you get back to your narrative.

Do you differ with that? Do you have a problem with that idea that revival often brings cultural reformation or that the spread of true Christianity through a nation should result in social change, cultural change? I think I am more wary than you are, Michael, of the way that Christians functionally operate in society. And that, I mean, I'm a scholar, I'm a historian of Christianity. I would say the crusades were also part of Christianity. I would say that the inquisition was also part of Christianity because Christianity is something that humans have made.

It is, it's a religious tradition that humans have built. Now you can talk about the religion of Jesus, the principles of Jesus. And as a Christian, as a committed Christian, I believe in Jesus.

I am fine with Jesus and Jesus's influence and his approach to the world. I get very wary when Christians start saying, we have a plan for society and we're going to orchestrate this and do this. Now I've read your book, Michael, the political selection of the church.

And I know you probably might not like this characterization. I would say that the position you stake out in there would be what I would call a soft form of Christian nationalism, non-aggressive. It's sort of a revivalist form of Christian nationalism. You want to see revival come to America and you want to see the American culture transformed, but from a grassroots from the ground up, right? That through evangelization, through, um, Christians being good Christians, that will affect American society. And I think there's plenty of room in American pluralism for your views, but I worry very much about the views of some of your friends and the ways that they have weaponized theology, the way that they have weaponized politics and weaponized prophecy, and then the way that that played out on January 6th. Got it, got it. All right, this is setting the good stage, so the next segment you'll be able to speak at length again.

It's a longer segment. So, uh, and Saf, the way you describe Christian nationalism in your podcast to me was so broad that, yeah, I would be part of that as well, and there's a debate as to what it even means. Uh, but your definition of Christian nationalism concisely would be what? Right, well, I think there's two ways of thinking about Christian nationalism.

One is about the origin of the United States, and then we're talking about American Christian nationalism. There's other forms of Christian nationalism that are not particular to America, but in the United States, there, there is the belief that America was founded by Christians and for Christians will be one dimension of Christian nationalism. And then the other dimension is more around policy and law, that Christians or Christianity should be privileged in the United States, should have pride of place to structure how American society functions over and above other religious traditions or secular perspectives. Got it, and, and if, let's just say there was 90% of America professed to be Christian, should there be any type of privileging of that, the faith of 90% of the country, if that was the case?

I think you can have that argument about other countries. There are many countries that have established religions, including established Christianity. In the United States, particularly since the 1960s, we have had a separation of religion and state and a growing religious pluralism, right? Growing religious diversity, growing people who don't want to identify with religion. And I think that that is part of our culture, as part of our tradition, part of our politics, part of our constitutional order in the United States. And I'd be very concerned about Christians who say we want to tear down that separation of church and state, because that was put in place by the founding fathers, both to protect the church and to protect society from over-aggressive religious people. All right, so, so perhaps in a separate broadcast, if desired, we could discuss these larger issues, Christian nationalism, Christian roots of America, separation of church and state, etc.

The way you describe it, me having a soft form of Christian nationalism, that doesn't insult me at all, the way you describe that. In any case, we're going to come back, and now Matthew's going to lay out his thesis as to how the NAR movement, leaders of the NAR movement, were directly responsible for January 6th. Michael Brown here, friends, with a very, very sober announcement. We're living in different days. We're living in different times. The battle has come to us, and like it or not, every single one of us, we are in the line of fire today. And friends, there is an all-out war today against the Jewish people. There is an all-out war like there was before the Holocaust to annihilate and destroy Jewish people, and God has positioned us with the line of fire on the front lines to do two things that are very, very critical. One, to speak the truth about Israel, to speak the truth about anti-Semitism, to push back against the destructive lies, to push back against false theologies, to stand strong and tall and say this is what the Word says, and this is what reality is. And then, with that, friends, we also reach out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

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Get on the Line of Fire by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm speaking with Matthew Taylor, his documentary series, Charismatic Revival Fury, the New Apostolic Reformation, and his book will come out fall of 2024, but it can be pre-ordered beginning in January, The Violent Taken by Force, the Christian movement that is threatening our democracy. So Matthew, I want you to get into your your main thesis and obviously what your book and podcast are about.

For those listening and saying, Dr. Brown, you got to push back, but we'll get to interact. We definitely have differences, but we do share a lot of concerns and what I want to say about January 6th and then turn it over to you, Matthew, is you know the debate about the day itself. I refer to it as the stormy of the Capitol. You say insurrection. People say there was no stormy of the Capitol. There's no insurrection. It was all Antifa. It was all the feds.

It was this and that. Let's just put the worst construction on it, okay? Let's say it was everything in its worst way that was being reported and the way people have looked at it rather than try to argue about what actually happened. So for those who don't, who believe that even calling an insurrection is an exaggeration, etc., we're not going to debate that right now.

So Matthew, the floor is yours. And let me just say, I have spent months of my life in the last three years homing through the actual social media of people who are there, the pictures, the videos, everything that went on that day. So I can give you a very detailed breakdown of what was going on, how it worked. I am perfectly comfortable calling it an insurrection, perfectly comfortable calling it a riot. Yeah, and I have not.

I have not. So we just go ahead. So the background here is that in the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump affected a real shift in evangelical politics. And one of the ways he did that was through cultivating charismatic celebrity leaders. And he did this through Paula White-Cain, who was his own spiritual advisor who reached out to a lot of people that she knew. And many of the leaders from Wagner's NAR networks got in on the ground floor of the Trump campaign in 2016, including especially Lance Wallnau. And Lance Wallnau was in meetings with Trump in the fall of 2015. He is the one who popularized this idea that Trump is a Cyrus.

He claims that that was a prophecy that was given to him, to Lance. And after that, he had the whole circle of Wagner's inner circle, these Yvette people, who all banned around Trump and become in some ways the vanguard of Christian Trumpism, using theology, using prophecy, using spiritual warfare to vindicate both the campaign and then the presidency of Donald Trump. And by the 2020 presidential election, as you know, Michael, there were hundreds of charismatic prophets, many of them tied to the NAR, but some who are not part of the NAR, who prophesied that Donald Trump is going to win the 2020 election. And this became this groundswell. And everyone was saying, all the prophets are in agreement.

Everyone is in agreement that Donald Trump is going to win this election. And when he refused to concede to Joe Biden, when the election was called for Joe Biden, almost all of the prophets, there was a handful that renounced or retracted their prophecies, but almost all of them said, we are waiting to see God's miraculous intervention because now God has to do it. And in that season between November, 2020 and January, 2021, January 6th, specifically, you had the mobilization of this massive spiritual warfare campaign and Wagner's inner circle, not totally concerned.

We're all working at it kind of separately. I'm not saying this is some grand conspiracy or something, but they all believed that Donald Trump was destined to be president. They all believed they needed to mobilize Christians pray and to do battle, to put him back in office. And so they organized Jericho marches. We saw the main one was in Washington, DC on December 12th, 2020, but there were multiple Jericho marches in many of the state cap, swing state capitals. You had Dutch sheets, who was one of Wagner's key disciples who, um, used his, um, give him 15 podcast as one of the main Christian propaganda mechanisms for promoting Donald Trump, Lance Waller and Dutch seats collaborated on a show called flashpoint that millions of people were downloading and watching that was created in the fall of, um, uh, 2020.

And by January, 2021, there were like 30 million downloads and watches of this show, flashpoint hugely popular flooded the charismatic media space. You've had people like Cindy Jacobs and Lou angle and I think these massive Jericho marches and, and, and, uh, prayer and fasting all to see Trump reinstated and not spiritual warfare campaign speaks on January 6th, Cindy Jacobs, another equals vision, apostolic team member, Becca Greenwood pay on and Lance wall. Now we're all in Washington, DC on January 6th, Cindy Jacobs and Becca Greenwood were doing strategic level spiritual warfare over the capital and organizing that and the rhetoric in that campaign, the spiritual warfare campaign was incredibly dehumanizing to Democrat, to Republicans that they deemed on loyal to Donald Trump. They said those people are inspired by demons. Those people are filled with territorial spirits. Those people are betraying our country.

One of Lance Waller's close associates, Johnny Enloe even said, Donald Trump would be in his rights to execute anyone who is keeping him from reclaiming the presidency, right? That is the level of rhetoric. And it reached a high boil right before January 6th.

And then those people showed up on January 6th. And one of the major markers of the spiritual warfare campaign and actually goes back a little earlier than that campaign was the appeal to heaven flag. And in 2013, that sheets again, a disciple of Peter Wagner's was given this flag. And he believed that this flag, which was a revolutionary war flag was a prophecy about the restoration of America's prophetic destiny that became a symbol of how do you use spiritual warfare to reclaim America, to, to transform America using again, these paradigms with the Southern mountains and dominion theology. And on January 6th, you see double, maybe even hundreds of these appeal to heaven's flags in the crowd of people who are still in capital, including on the front lines where you can see people using these appeal to heaven's legs to beat the line of Capitol police officers, right?

This is not like, well, this is, this is far from the violence. It's right at the heart of it, right? And Dutch sheets. He was not there in January 6th, but he called into the Capitol, right? He called in by conference line with Cindy Jacobs and was prophesying and doing apostolic declarations over the U S capital. He was on a conference call and on that conference call, as he and his friends are watching, they're, they're saying, Hey, look at all of the appeal to heaven flags. That's the sign that God's going to redeem America.

Right? So there was a very, very close connection. Now there were a lot of things that went into January 6th, right?

The proud boys, the oath keepers, there are all kinds of people who showed up who had nothing to do with the NAR or charismatic Christianity, but the dominant form of Christian spirituality that galvanized and electrified the crowds on January 6th, not necessarily the people who went into the Capitol, the people surrounding the Capitol was charismatic and was driven, I argue by these NAR ideas. Got it. All right. So here's, here's where we agree. And let me just do this shout out, cause I'm going to send the podcast to Lou angle, to Cindy Jacobs, to Lance Wallnau, to Dutch sheets and ask if they have any differences. They're, they're welcome to come on the air because like I said, my goal was not to debate you today. And I wanted to make sure you got to lay out your views because I know as a scholar that you've, you've done your homework. We may differ on certain things, but I know you've done your homework. So I, I did not bring you on so I could have a contentious broadcast and cut you off all the time. So I hope you feel you're getting your viewpoint out clearly.

Yeah. And I really do appreciate it, Michael. And let me be clear. I have asked to interview all of those people. I've interviewed Becca Greenwood. I requested to interview all those other people. I would be thrilled to talk to them. I'd be happy to talk to them.

Got it. But they have, they've ignored my request. So I've interviewed Cheon and Becca Greenwood. I've interviewed people who know, but maybe other people who were there on January 6th. But the folks you just named have all ignored my request.

Got it, yeah. So I don't know Becca at all. The others I know, some closer than others.

Che, of course, I know. And I've had differences in different theologies. Some I've worked with closely.

Cindy, I should mention, also sent it to her. Some I hold in high esteem, etc. So, in the midst of differences.

So, in any case, I'll do that and I appreciate you saying that. So, let me make a couple large statements and then get very specific. I've been around talk about revival, reformation, spiritual warfare.

I've been part of Lou's call events where we gather for 12 hours of prayer and fasting. And whether you would agree with the rhetoric, right, say our views of abortion, I don't know, I'm not going to get into where you stand on these various things, but you are a professing Christian, that hasn't changed. So, you know, our views of abortion, etc. But it's always been clear it's not the Republicans or Democrats we're fighting, it's spiritual powers.

Satan wants to destroy everyone and we see abortion as the taking of the most innocent life and therefore we stand against it. But it's always been the language of prayer, of spiritual warfare. And the people that I know, I had a good number of friends that were there January 6th and they genuinely believed that the election had been stolen and they were praying for the overturn of the election and I was deeply, deeply concerned. As you know, at this point, I'd published things, I'd said things about all the prophetic agreement and where it was going and the degree that Trump was being looked at as a political savior, hence my book, The Political Seduction of the Church.

But everyone that I know was there was absolutely mortified by the storming of the Capitol and the events that unfolded, especially by any violent acts. Now, in your view, it's a natural progression. I get that. You've laid that out. But everyone I know that I've ever talked to over the years, lands of seven mountains, it's never been about a top-down takeover as much as through the Gospel, we infiltrate and impact every area of society until, as the light of the world, we can shine brightly for the good of America, for the good of all citizens.

So, we've got a couple minutes before the break, but that's, to me, the biggest breakdown. In other words, even people I know with the appeal to heaven flag would have been mortified if it was used in the ways that you described. So, do you think that I'm just living in complete denial of the reality here or that people did go further than intended? I think you're living in some denial of the reality, Michael, if I can be so bold. Yeah, and I think you're living, yeah, my view is probably the truth is somewhere between us, that I may deny more and you may see more. But either way, go ahead, go ahead.

Let me read you something. This is from a memo that Lance Wallnau sent to his fellow NAR leaders in 2008. This is right in the middle of the Lakeland outpouring, if you remember that this is before any of the scandals broke about Todd Bentley.

So, this is kind of right at the apex, right at the height of the Lakeland outpouring. And this is what Lance Wallnau wrote to his fellow apostles. He says, we come now into this era of the apostolic. The apostolic is all about a final governing presence in the body of Christ. In other words, the apostolic is a colonizing force that reproduces the culture of a conquering kingdom. So, Jesus is the apostle who comes from heaven to colonize earth with heaven. There are seven spheres that shape nations, seven realms that control the minds of the multitudes. The apostolic assignment is to take those spheres and bring them under the dominion of the embassy of heaven, the kingdom of God. That's Lance Wallnau. That is how Lance Wallnau talks about the seven realms. You can hear dominion.

He is talking about a colonizing force that we, and that Sheets very much mimics this, that Sheets uses the idea of exclastia, the assembly of the believers, and says exclastia is a colonizing force. Got it right. We got a break.

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Make sure you use the code BROWN25. All right, so Matthew, just coming back to you. You're familiar with post-millennialism. You're familiar, for example, with Jonathan Edwards believing in the 1700s that the Great Awakening could lead to the establishing of the Millennial Kingdom. That there are many Christians who believe that the Gospel, this is, you know, non-charismatics over the centuries that believe that the Gospel will spread through the whole earth until the whole world basically comes under the Kingdom of God, after which time Jesus will return.

You could say that someone like Lance, this is not to defend it, but just to throw it out, you could say that someone like Lance has a post-millennial theology that he ties in with apostolic ministry. What's that got to do with violent takeover? I imagine that would be his response or something like that.

So your take. Well, and just to be clear, Lance Wallnau was not at the Capitol to do prayer and spiritual warfare. Lance Wallnau was at the Capitol to speak at a rally that was supposed to happen at 1 p.m. alongside Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert and Doug Mastriano, and that rally got canceled on January 6th. And so Lance Wallnau observed what people were doing at the Capitol, observed the rioting, and then went back to his Trump International hotel room and then broadcast live that night on Flashpoint. So he was not there as a spiritual leader per se. He was there as a political activist.

He was there to promote the cause of Trump overthrowing the election. I understand that. I was just referring to his quote, that's all, because that's where we ended that last segment. Couldn't that quote be... I think that I would say that Lance Wallnau is much more dangerous than Jonathan Edwards.

I'd have to go back. I've never seen Jonathan Edwards or read Jonathan Edwards talking about Christianity being a colonizing force that takes over earth from heaven. That's the rhetoric of these Dominion theology folks. That's the rhetoric of Peter Wagner. That's the rhetoric of Dutch Sheik. That's the rhetoric of Lance Wallnau. And they keep talking about this stuff. This is not something that died down after January 6th. Just a couple of weeks ago on Flashpoint, Lance Wallnau said that we can anticipate in 2024 that anyone who's opposing Trump is because they have gone into a place of irrationality and we're going to hear demons speaking through them.

That would do it too. And so this rhetoric that demonizes other people. So Michael, you're Jewish, right? And if you think back to the medieval period where Jews and Christians are living alongside each other in Europe, there's all of this Christian theology, all of this anti-Judaism, some of it coming out of biblical exegesis, some of it coming out of wild prophecies, some of it coming out of conspiracy theories. It was all being propagated through the Christian communities of Europe. And periodically, those groups would then rise up and commit a pogrom and massacre a bunch of Jews.

It wasn't that every person espousing that theology or those ideas committed actual violence, but the ideas fueled the violence. And that's my argument about what's happening on January 6th. No, I get that.

I get that. You've articulated it very well, Matthew. So do you know what my most translated best-selling book of all time is?

I do not. It's Our Hands Are Stained with Blood, The Tragic Story of the Church and the Jewish People. It is on the effects of anti-Semitism in history in the Church.

It was written with tears. As I said, it's my most translated book. So everything you just said, from the pogroms to the Inquisition to the Crusades, you trace it back to the early demonizing of Jews in the 2nd and 3rd century, to Chrysostom's seven sermons against the Jews, to Luther's demonizing of the Jews, et cetera. As a new believer, that was the first book a rabbi gave me to read, basically to refute the idea that Christianity could even be true at all, was look at Church history. So I'm very sensitive to that.

And that's why, when I started talking about Jesus' revolution, like a broken record, I said we're talking about overcoming evil with good, hatred with love, lies with truth, et cetera, the power of the flesh with the power of the Spirit. We don't intimidate for these very reasons. And as Jews, we're always concerned about any type of theocratic movement, because it always, we end up in the bad seat somewhere.

We're the bad guys one way or another. So I'm super sensitive to all that. And, look, did you grow up in churches singing the hymn, Onward Christian Soldier?

Was that one you sang? I certainly did. Okay. Obviously, we never thought anything militaristic with it, right? But at the same time, I was never comfortable with referring to gospel crusades like my friends were, because of history. And to this moment, we may even disagree on Israel's war with Hamas right now, aspects of it, but to this moment, I talk about how wrong theologies about Israel and the Jewish people lead to anti-Semitism. So I'm super sensitive to that. It's why I constantly explain and couch things, et cetera. One of my books coming out, let's see, due out in about a year, has the title, Hearts of Compassion, Backbones of Steel, and one of the chapters is we must humanize rather than demonize our opponents. So, I deeply differ with LGBTQ activism, but I constantly talk about our fellow humanity, our shared lives, Jesus dying for all of us, et cetera. So, I'm sensitive to all this, and I 100% get that people on the fringes in particular are going to make the wrong jump.

And that— But hold on, just one second, Michael. Please. Is Lance Wallnau on the fringes? The Dutch sheep on the fringes?

No. Is Chayon on the fringes? Because they're using that rhetoric. Cindy Jacobs uses that rhetoric.

Oh, no, no. I recognize that. My point is, I don't think, to my knowledge, that any of them were anything but appalled by what happened on January 6th. I'm saying people on the fringes will go too far with that beyond what people intend. As for some of the language used, yes, some of it has deeply concerned me. I quote it in the Political Seduction book.

You know that. So, your view is that the—spell it out—did the people say the Lance Wallnaus, the Dutch Sheets, the Cindy Jacobs, in your view, did they want at any point for there to be an attempt at the violent overthrow of the government, or is that a logical conclusion that people came to based on what they said? I would say—I want to be fair, and I'm fair in the book, I'm fair in the podcast series to say, I don't think that they intended—that any of those people intended physical violence to happen that day. And, in fact, afterwards, Cindy Jacobs and Chayon and Paula White and Dutch Sheets all condemned the violence. To be clear, though, Lance Wallnau didn't condemn the violence.

He actually came on the next day and said, all these people out there are condemning the violence. It was Antifa that did it. I don't condemn the violence, it was Antifa.

It was left-wing activists. And, to my knowledge, he has never condemned the violence. So, he claims it has nothing to do with it. So, the willingness to condemn the violence. Even in Chayon's condemnation, he said, I'm a pro-life pastor and I condemn all forms of violence, which is not true. He condones spiritual violence. He condones using this very violent, amped-up rhetoric of strategic spiritual warfare. So, no, my argument is not that these people kind of plotted behind the scenes and manipulated reality and were conspiring to instigate and create the Capitol Riots.

Donald Trump caught the Capitol Riots. These folks provided the spirituality. They provided the soundtrack of spiritual warfare that drove many Christians to show up that day and many of the manifestations of Christianity we saw. So, when you have, there are theorists, people who study political violence, and they talk about that when you see an outcropping of violence, when you see an outburst of violence like we saw on January 6th, that's the tip of the iceberg. And underneath that is the discourse, the rhetoric of violence, the belief in violence, the affirmation of violence that is undergirding and supporting all of that. I'm talking about, I think, beginning our leaders contributed directly to building that iceberg.

Got it. Building this Christian sentiment of we are at war with our culture, we are at war with our enemies, and we are inspired by demons. We need to stop them.

And we need to show up. We need to be boots on the ground on January 6th to stop them. And I don't think that they, I'm not accusing them of committing physical violence. I'm accusing them of being spiritual war bongers.

Got it. So, a quick response would be, I know folks involved in missions around the world, and they would say there's an area of spiritual stronghold here, we're doing battle with that, but that predates NAR. You know, these are things I can document centuries going back, people praying in different areas and believing there's a stronghold of this or that, and that's what we're battling. You go to Daniel 10 for a passage that would support some of this, and of course, Ephesians 6, and that this is to set people free because they are captive to the devil. Therefore, there's a battle to set them free. I'm fine with that. I find that scriptural.

I don't have an issue with that. And I do believe there is a cultural war, a cultural war going on. I mean, there's an assault. I get assaulted day and night verbally, ideologically. I have friends who have lost jobs because of their Christian moral views, et cetera, not even imposing on others just what they held. So, I do see that we're in a war, and that we're pushing back, but to me, I could preach this for a million years, what I preach and teach, and it's going to result in people laying down their lives for their enemies and doing good to those they hate. That's going to be the outcome.

It's going to be the opposite of a political movement that tries to overthrow the government or stormy the capital. So, I do believe that there is language that can be used, even Matthew 11, 12, the violent taking by force. I would preach this. I was a new believer.

It may not be the most accurate translation, as you know, but I've heard that all these years. That hasn't been problematic, but I absolutely find many things in the current movement to be problematic and a concern, and we share that. So, I think you've laid things out. We're out of time, but I think you've laid things out fairly for everyone to hear and consider. Those who were mentioned by name, you're all welcome to come on my show, but dialogue with Matthew, all those that were mentioned by name, dialogue with Matthew.

Hey, we're out of time. Let's chat right after the broadcast, okay? Sure. Sounds good, Michael. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Another program powered by the Truth Network.