A New Chapter for William Branham Historical Research

The next stage of the Leaving the Message / William Branham Historical Research platform is now live.

When the website began in January 2012, it was simply a personal tool for taking notes and asking questions. Though our family had left the high-control group known as "The Message," I still believed Branham to be a "prophet"—but I also understood that he had made failed prophecies, even by his own admission. During a difficult period involving both personal and technological challenges, the first version of the website launched under the domain name "Seek The Truth." Over the next decade, as the research archive grew, it was rebranded as "william-branham.org," with William Branham as the focal point of the research. Soon after, we realized Branham was the linchpin connecting countless other high-control groups and forms of Christian extremism, and we began shifting toward a platform that researched each of those connections and allowed people who had escaped from those groups to share their stories.

The original technology was designed for a small interest group: those who might be considering joining "The Message." It was designed to run at minimal cost, under minimal load, with the basic features necessary for those seeking information to access it. After the research expanded into many different categories, the technology simply could not handle the load. Traffic increased dramatically, and interest was far greater than anticipated. Over the past few years, we have seen traffic and costs for the website and related systems range from 2,400% to over 18,000% higher. The cost and load became unsustainable, and it was time to upgrade. With the volume of data and the complexity of automated systems required to maintain a variety of social networks and data processing while operating on a minimal budget, the upgrade process took more than two years.

At the same time, the complexity of the research data made it increasingly difficult to navigate. The spiderweb of connections between the different groups researched was uncategorized and very difficult to search. Since the original design had Branham as its only focal point, none of the categorization made sense for multiple groups with multiple central figures. We needed a system that could handle many different groups, many different connections, and many different data sets.

There was also a legal aspect to consider. We now support a worldwide audience of people recovering from high-control groups, many of whom are contributing hundreds of resources to help others leave and recover, while we operate with only a handful of volunteers and no staff. Keeping up with documentation and current laws also came with costs and time demands, both of which limited the upgrade process. Fortunately, we have had very good legal experts working with us on a volunteer basis to help others; without them, we would not have been able to continue.

The first stage of the upgrade is now live. The new system leverages several new technologies to process the data, enable our contributors to categorize information more granularly, and provide a tool that can help even more people leave and recover from high-control groups. The initial data migration is now complete, and most of the documents have been successfully placed in their proper categories with associated research pages. The "Research" link now navigates users to the categories, where they can find specific groups and eventually submit new groups to contribute data for. Our "Partners" page now separates the podcasts by partner/co-host for partners with podcasts, and we are in the process of adding the tagging necessary to fully categorize all podcasts.

We want to thank everyone who has worked so hard to make all of this possible, and we invite others to contribute so we can help as many people as possible leave and recover from high-control groups. We need support in several areas, including financial support, editorial assistance, legal review, social media, and related volunteer services. If you were in a high-control group and have services to offer, please let us know.