NAR Brainwashing: A History of the "Tape Church" Movement

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-Brandham.org and with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of Christian Gospel Church and the author of Come Out of Her My People. Well Charles on the agenda for the episode today I have studied it very carefully and I've come to the conclusion that in this episode you will probably be making fun of me. We're talking about the tape churches and that's largely what my family was a part of and whenever you take whenever

you're in it you don't recognize it but it's odd because you have conversations with people who are Christians and they go to normal churches and they ask so what's your church like? Now growing up for me we went to tape churches that were both physical buildings where everybody would dress up and their Sunday best and go sit in the pew and the preacher would come out and he would say today we're going to have the sermon on such and such and press play my brother and we would all sit there and like I don't know wax figures and we would listen

to a recording but other times we had what was called a home tape church so we would sit in the in the house we would also dress up in our Sunday best so so here I am a kid dressing up in my you know best clothes and I go sit down and I'm in the on the couch or in the recliner and we're listening to a recording and I'll never forget in high school one of my friends was very overly religious in fact I'm looking back he was probably also in a cold but a different one and he asked me he asked me where I go to church on

Sunday and I kind of described what my family did on the couch and in the recliners and he just couldn't believe it man it's like this is so weird now that's why you're in it you don't recognize how weird it is other than the the conversations but after you step out and especially if you watch movies about the Germans and the Koreans the Chinese the brainwashing of people and there's even a whole genre of sci-fi about how you know how the people get together and they either play the recordings or they show the video clips and

It is a brainwashing technique, but pure plain and simple. It is a brainwashing technique. Then you look at it and Charles, I hate to say it, but this gets really, really scary when you think of it in that aspect.

It is something else, John. It sure is. The whole tape-playing stuff is the main sect of the message. They're motto. I don't know. Would it be fair to say their motto has stopped being Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, yesterday, today and forever, and now is just press play? I think.

I'm pretty sure you're right. I have actually seen, so I have family members who are in the tape churches now. I have one family member in particular, not going to name his name, but when he got married, I want to say, I know it was on the wall.

I've seen the photos of it, but I want to say even the wedding cake was the triangle press play button. In their marriage, it was like, yes, we're being brainwashed and we're going to eat a wedding cake of being brainwashed.

It is pretty serious. It is pretty serious. Across the message, the fight over just press play, it is a massive fight in the message to this day over just press play. Being a tape church is controversial within the message to this day. It is a really big deal.

But the origins of that fight go all the way back to what we're going to talk about today, John. All the way back to the late 60s. We've got a really important episode today.

One, I think, will be especially interesting to people who came from the message like you and I have. Over the past few episodes, we've been exploring the four primary issues behind the first major schism in the message community, which happened in 1968 and 1969.

And we're continuing that story today. And today, we're finally getting to issue number four, which is, as you are alluding to, John, it is the, in my book, I call it the rise of the tape church or the birth of the tape church.

And so that's what we're going to talk about today. And then the actual schism that ensued when that finally began. And let me just quickly recap the first three issues for our listeners today before we jump into this fourth one.

So before William Brandham died, there were already two factions in the message community who were divided over implementing private gift rooms in the church. That was part of something we called church order in the message. Then after William Brandham died, the return ministry beliefs were introduced, which is essentially the belief that Brandham would rise from the dead and complete as unfinished work.

So that added another layer of disagreement. And the people who were already anti-gift room anti church order also became anti-return ministry, right? And so they're getting to have more than multiple disagreements with the main set.

And then after that happens the third issue arises, right? And the midst of all that, Billy Paul makes the hostile takeover of the brown tabernacle. And his hostile takeover is against that... same group, which is anti-church order, which is anti-return ministry, right? And so now that group has three major grievances with the main sect. Okay? And when Billy Paul made that hostile takeover, when that third issue appeared, emotions got really high. And I think from that point, there was no, there was no avoiding the schism. And as all that unfolded, you know, it's a little bit of a complex situation. You have some churches that are anti-church order,

anti-return ministry, and outraged at Billy Paul. That would be people like Warren Meneville, like Raymond Jackson, like Ernest Fulcher, like Bill Paderos, people on that side of things. Then you got churches on the opposite side of the spectrum, who back at that time in the 1960s, they were pro-church order. They were pro-church ministry. They were supporting Billy Paul.

Those would be men like Earl Martin and Jack Palmer and Paul Brewer, right? Then you got churches that are taking up a middle ground over these issues that have developed kind of nuanced views in the middle. Those would be the men like Joseph Holman and Lee Vail and Perry Green.

And then when this fourth and final issue takes place that we're going to talk about today, it started a schism where the preachers who were at the exact opposite end of the spectrum from Billy Paul and Lee Vail, you know, and Earl Martin, those people all broke away and they formed the second sect of the message. And that was the first major schism after William Brandham died. And here's how it happened. From 1966 up through 1971, Billy Paul was basically tightening the screws and really solidifying his control over the four central institutions of the message. And the Brandham tabernacle is one of the four central institutions of the message.

A lot of the assets, a lot of the property and finances were controlled by the tabernacle, and especially more so back then. And it was during Billy Paul's time tightening down control that the final issue came up that caused the first great major message schism.

In my book, like I said, I labeled this section, I think I called it the birth of the tape church, John, is what I called it. And the implementation of the tape church became the final straw that broke the camel's back. And in today's episode, yeah, we're going to talk about the events that led up to the creation of the tape churches. Because when William Brandham was still living, tape churches were not a thing. That wasn't a thing. And even when he died, tape churches were not a thing. It only started in 1969 and 1970 that tape churches started to really become a

normalized thing in the message. Before that, all the church services were built around a life sermon from a living breathing preacher. But the tape churches started to change all that, right? tape churches started to build their services around playing a recording of William Brandham.

And today, yeah, we definitely want to talk about how that got started and how that finally caused that first major schism in the message community. And the thing I want to emphasize, I've talked to multiple leaders of the NAR.

today. And, you know, I'm not going to give their names, but they're connected to big ministries such as Morningstar, IHOP KC. These are big names I have spoken with. Who visited my grandfather's church, which is a tape church, which we're going to be talking about today. They witnessed the people all sitting in the pews being brainwashed. These are people who did not grow up in a tape church. So they knew, you know, when you walk into one of these places, you see all the people sitting there listening to this recording from the 60s, and the guy screaming like a Nazi on the recording. Their eyes are glazed over.

Their eyes are glazed over. It is extremely obvious that this is a brainwashing camp. Whenever you are on the outside looking in, there is no way that you can not look at this and see that this is clear brainwashing. There's no way that you can not see this. So these are leaders of the NAR today. One of them still has quite an active ministry who told me that they visit my grandfather's church, and these are the same people who have venerated William Brannem as one of the greatest elite gods, generals, nonsense. So these people are aware that this is a brainwashing

camp and think of the implications of this because we know how victims coming from some of these ministries who are saying the same thing. They've been brainwashed in the cult that they're in, and this is by design. This is a pattern. And for the people who were never in the Brannem cults and have no idea what we're talking about, just listen today and you're going to hear exactly this brainwashing technique that's being used and how the NAR has capitalized off of it.

So let me set the stage for our listeners to explain what was going on in the message community when the tape church started to become a normal thing. And hey, you know what's kind of scary about this, John? It seems like the NAR people want to copy all this stuff from the message. So I hope you guys don't copy what I'm going to talk about today. Don't give them any ideas, Charles.

So if you go back to when Billy Paul first held that corrupt election and was voted in as pastor in general overseer the Brannem tabernacle, that caused a huge pushback from the Jefferson ville message community. About 80% of the local people here in Jeffersonville were really outraged over what Billy Paul did. Like I said, he already, his dad had just utterly trashed his reputation just a few months before he died, right? Billy Paul was, it was such a terrible situation.

You almost feel bad for Billy Paul, John. I got to be honest. I almost feel bad for Billy Paul because the way his dad just utterly eviscerated him right before he died, it just made the situation impossible. I mean, what could he do? There was no, he didn't have the standing to do it in the nice way. And there is no way the bad way was going to win. It just, it was in place.

It was an impossible situation, right? It really was. And so, yeah, Billy Pollock did the hospital takeover and the people were outraged. And, right, and again, I think it's justified. They were outraged, right?

I mean, it was all just something else. It was unfortunate. And so, back in those days, there were members of the full gospel businessman who are still in regular attendance at the local churches here in Jeffersonville.

And I've said this before, and we're gonna do a full episode on the full gospel businessman. Maybe our next episode will be that. But one third of the senior leaders of the full gospel businessman were message followers back then.

Some of the highest ranking leaders of the full gospel businessman were in the message. And some of them were in the brand of tabernacle when the schism happened, okay? Well, we can talk through some of that, okay?

And so, some of the full gospel businessman they stepped in when this happened and they tried to mediate the situation. And they basically bribed Billy Poll with a really big endowment for the brand of tabernacle.

If he'd promised to keep Orman Neville on as a preacher at the brand of tabernacle, right? So Billy Poll took the deal, he took the money, and he went back to Arizona, but that was not the end of the matter.

Orman Neville, and a lot of the people in the local message community here in Jeffersonville, they refused to accept Billy Poll's corrupt election. And people started to mass exit the brand of tabernacle when it become apparent.

They were not gonna be able to get the tabernacle back under control. People started to leave. And that's when faith assembly church in gospel tabernacle in Jeffersonville. And the other local message churches around here, that's when they really took off.

They went from small 50 to 100 size congregations. That's when they exploded John into large congregations. And from that point in time, the brand of tabernacle no longer had the majority of the message community here in Jeffersonville.

The brand of tabernacle has not been the majority of the message community in Jeffersonville since 1968, okay? That was it. After that, the majority left and they never came back and they've never regained the majority even now.

I don't think Joseph's people are the majority, although it's kind of hard to know just how many of them they are since they don't ever get together anymore, right? But that'll be another episode.

But anyways, it's not just the rank and file exiting the brand of tabernacle overall this, right? But some of the international missionaries, they also exited. And most of the local preachers here in Jeffersonville during the 60s, they also cited against Billy Poll.

Estil Beeler, James Allen, Don Ruddle, Gerald Metcalf, Levi Larson, almost all the local message preachers from back then cited against Billy Poll. If you went down that list, and they were on Norman Neville side.

And so as that's unfolding, as Norman Neville is all these preachers locally on his side, he starts to get really bold in his sermons because I mean, he's got the majority here locally at his back.

And in his sermons, he starts preaching really, really hard against the deity cult against returned ministry. And in one of his sermons, he even calls Billy Poll. lejudice, okay? And I kind of wonder if that's the one that pushed it over the line with Billy Paul, you know what I mean, you know, Colin Billy Paul, Judas. But you know, we did that a lot in our churches. So to me, that's not like a big thing, but I know, yeah, sure in the main sack to call Billy Paul Judas was probably pretty big deal, wasn't it, John?

So, you know, it's kind of funny because as you know, I've been labeled the Judas of the cult. And they think that this is offensive to me. But I was in a cult where they lived literally called everybody Judas. It was like, you know, it's not, it doesn't have that big of a fact when everybody can be called the same insult. You know, when you go back in time and you realize this sort of thing has been going on all along, right? It's like what, I mean, what we have done pales. I mean, it doesn't even register compared to what Billy Paul and these

other guys has done. I mean, and it's, it's something, it's just, it blows your mind the way some people react to things. But anyways, so gradually from Arizona, Billy Paul starts trying to exercise his power as general overseer to try and hold on to the brand of tabernacle, okay? He not let it slip out of his control. And the first thing he did was he sent Vernon man back to Jeffersonville.

And I think the fact that Billy Paul had to send preachers from Arizona back here kind of helps prove that he didn't have any preachers here in Jeffersonville on his side, right? Okay? So he sends Vernon man back to Jeffersonville. And Vernon man was a message preacher who had moved Arizona with William Brannum. He was on some of the hunting trips and different things that they did. And as he ride back here in Jeffersonville in 1967, he started to try and get things under control for Billy Paul. He stayed here for about a year. But the people treated him pretty badly because

mostly they were on Worm and Neville side, like I said. But gradually, gradually they pushed back and gave Vernon man such a hard time that Vernon man ended up giving up and going back to Arizona about one year later, okay? Vernon man, it didn't, it didn't go well for him. And I have some of Vernon man's tapes actually, John, from when he preached at the brand of tabernacle. Things that disturb and distract what we've been taught, the message that we live in, get started to pay for them.

Cellophonics change might get jammed up and so forth. I don't know. Goes right on down the line. And how did you hear this? Did you hear that?

All the time we're all to be preaching God for the goodness and the mercy. How many others has come out of the filth of these denominations? And how many others has come out of the bondage of of Israel? And how many others is glad for tonight?

Brothers and sisters, I believe if we started any journey with God, if we started walking in, we call it the message, started walking in and we can get the message in us. That's what Moses was trying to do there, and said, one, be of good courage, get the message in you.

And I believe, I firmly believe that we've been brought down. In the book of Revelation, I've said that brother Ram was the only person that ever made, that every spoke on revelations that ever made anything to them.

Now, I'm not saying this to disregard the word. It's just me, up here. But the only person that ever spoke on revelations that made it come out since them. We're on a journey. We've come out.

We're wanting to cross, I think everyone desirred to cross over. Cross and leave out of this old world is. As brother Ram put this old past half, but if we say all we can do it, if we kind of remodel on the message a little bit like they did, what are we coming up?

We come up as unbelievers. That's exactly the reason they didn't enter in, because of their unbeliefs. We've been told so many times that the only thing is unbelief. I believe he's able to complete the journey tonight for us.

We stay in the faith, have faith in God, have faith in what we've heard. Believe the message on down on certain that it was given to us because it was pointing to death, the nation, life, and cross forever.

But we've had these things laid before. Brother Ram said, say what the tapes say. We've had them laid before. Let's stay right on that road of faith. Let's stay right on that route of faith.

We go right on over. God started something in this day, and there'll be somebody go up. Might be one. I don't know. One time there was one, went up in one of the ratchets.

Brother Ram said, unique. Ratchered out, I don't know, maybe one. But somebody is going to have the faith in God, in the Word, in the message that we've heard, and go on out. I pray that every one of us will be a good courage tonight and hold to the faith of what we've heard, what we've been told.

Somewhere in the midst of all of that, and you can kind of pick it up when you listen in his sermons, somewhere in the midst of him giving up and leaving and going back to Arizona, the trustees and the deacons of the Brannum Tabernacle, who were all members of the deed he called, because like I said, banks would've done resigned by this point, who was the only one who wasn't.

They came up with the idea of having, instead having live preaching all the time, they would play William Brannum's tapes for their service. So this was something that the deacons, the trustees started to come up with, after Vernon Mann left.

and Orman Neville is still full steam ahead. So this is the environment where this is happening. So it was kind of almost like a backup plan after Vernon Mann failed to get things under control that the tape church idea started to pop up.

And between the time that Vernon Mann went back to Arizona and your grandpa Willard Collins showed up here in 1968, that was the window of time when they first started to play tapes. And so when Billy Paul sent your grandpa back here to Jeffersonville is the second preacher more or less get the brand of tabernacle under control.

The basic idea of the tape church was just getting kicked off. And that's the environment of the church when your grandpa entered into it when he arrived in Jeffersonville. But Jane, you almost got to feel sorry for your grandpa, right?

It was a hostile environment, okay? The people were in a fighting mood, John. It sounds like they were still in a fighting mood when you left. The battle lines had already been drawn. The deity cult was starting to come up with the tape church idea.

And it was a very, it was an ugly situation. Just got to say. It was ugly and it was very sacrilegious. I mean, this is pure blasphemy what happened. I've had people who have escaped and who are starting to go through the process of deprogramming what was in their head.

And they've asked me why were the sermons of William Brannum held with such a steam to the extent that it was held at the same level as the Bible. And you have to go back to what we said earlier about how the movement, including Gordon Lindsay who founded Christ for the Nations, how all these people felt about the movement.

They had created the notion that these laterane prophets had the spoken word, not just William Brannum, but all of them. But at the time of Brannum's death, Brannum was the elite among all of them.

So he had the elite spoken word. And as the deity cult began to form and the things that he said on these recordings was the quote unquote spoken word, well now this began to become a new Bible for the people.

So in these tape churches, they truly believe that as they're listening to these recordings, they're listening to the Bible for our day, which supersedes the written Bible that every other Christian holds and takes another church.

And again, these NAR people who come and visit my grandfather's church, they are watching this unfold and they are fully aware without question, they're fully aware that these people are listening to these recordings, thinking that it is a replacement for today's Bible.

And look at how the NAR has become with their apostles and prophets. They're trying to mimic this. So they go to my grandfather's church and they see the prototype for what they want to create.

And they're trying to do it. It's unbelievable. You know, you're right. You know, the creation of the tape church is a really, really important innovation for the main sect of the message. I think it's hard to understate just how important the tape church model is, right?

I mean, it is, like I said, I mean, today it's almost their motto, press play. I mean, it is, it's very hard to describe to an outsider just how important playing tapes in the church is is to them.

I mean, they'll fight you to the death over just about, right? I mean, it's, it is, it's serious stuff. And the tape church structure just has had a massive major impact on, especially the main sect of the message, but also the rest of the message, because all the rest of the message community has been forced to react to it for decades, right?

And so whether people are pro tape church or anti tape church, this thing has had a major impact on the entire message, because it's, it's like a big anchor that sort of traps everybody in time.

And they just keep listening to the same tapes over and over again. And as new converts came, come in John and they listen through the tapes again, the exact same issues that those tapes caused when William Brown, when, you know, the same issues just repeat over and over, because people are listening to the same material over and over, right?

And you, you even have like, there has been through message history because of this John, there has been duplicate schisms, right? There'll be a schism over something people brand and preached. And then new sects will convert people in and they'll listen to the tapes.

And then the schism will happen again because the new people hear the same thing on the tape that the old people schism dove in, they'll schism again. Like it is, it's crazy, right? Like history just constantly repeats itself because of the tapes.

And I got to interrupt and say this because the leadership, when you hear the word schism, you think this is a bad thing, in these types of cults, this is a good thing because this promotes growth.

They split, they separate the churches grow and more money goes back up to the top. Yes, and, and our perfection beliefs actually make us love schism, right? Because, because you're finding the person who's holding us back from the rapturing faith.

My brother, that man don't believe everything on the tape. My brother, that man don't believe 100%. He only believes 99% of the truth. Brother, that man is going to keep us from rapturing faith.

He's got to go. And so there is an encouragement to find the unbeliever among you, right? I don't know. It was your churches like this, John. I mean, there, you are, you are all, there's like a non-stop witch hunt for the unbeliever among you.

Because that's the reason bad things are happening. That's the reason we don't have the rapturing faith. Somebody's holding us back from perfect unity. And there's a constant witch hunt for it. And whenever it happens, it's almost a celebration.

Praise God. At last, we have cast out the unbelief. Right. So that's the number two thing that. people who exit the cult and they go through the deprogramming process, they all mention it, but they can't really explain what it is because what happens is you're trained and manipulated to have this witch hunt.

You're looking for centers. You're looking for people who can't live, can't tow the line because you want to cut them off and you get them out of the fold and that's why the shunning happens, right?

And so when people first leave, they're scared to death and they're scared to speak out and they're scared to come forward to be in the face of all of this because they know exactly what is going to happen to them because they did it to other people.

Oh my goodness, John, you're taking me back, you're taking me back. The message is a crazy, crazy system of religion, I tell you what, and you don't recognize it when you're in there. Well, you get out and you look back and you actually just start to think about it.

There was a lot, we did a lot of crazy stuff, a lot of crazy stuff. So the tape church, one way or another, it basically traps the message in a time warp, you know, whether it is the churches that actually play tapes or the same issues recurring over and over and over again because of the tapes and, you know, because people are constantly discovering William Branham's conflicting statements, okay?

I mean, if you play that, you know, when you get a new convert in or you got younger people growing up in it, right, and listening through the stuff for the first time, eventually they're going to find the conflict, right?

And then it sits off all the repeats, it just happens over and over and over again. And it's all because one way or another, this all happened one way or another, people got stuck on William Branham.

And when a church goes the tape church route, it sort of keeps William Branham as their central figure, right, in their churches, even though he's dead, which is kind of strange, isn't it, John?

I mean, William Branham is still more or less the central figure in a lot of the tape churches. But he shares his central figure, Ness, with the person pressing the play button on the tape, okay?

So you get this weird sort of conference of the, you know, like Joseph, who tells him what tape to play every day, and it's, you get this weird transference, anyway, but William Branham's still the central figure, but the guy pressing play is, I don't know, he's still the central figure.

Yeah, the holy finger, the holy finger, right? So yeah, so the tape church idea they'll cut on pretty quickly. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on... and William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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The tape church idea caught on pretty quickly. The Brandham Tabernacle pioneered the tape church model, but by the early 1970s, you end up getting lots and lots of churches becoming tape churches too, following their example.

So coast to coast, there were message tape churches. By the early 1970s, Jack Palmer became a tape church in Georgia, Paul Brewer, tape church in Missouri. And that whole side of the message, they gradually set up tape churches all over the world, like that really became their thing.

And the William-Brandham Evangelistic Association, they was sponsoring preachers to plant tape churches, like Doug McEuse, they sponsored Doug McEuse to open. I believe the first tape church in Arizona, they're sponsoring the tape churches to be opened all over the places.

And basically, all you need is a person with a library of the tapes, right? And say, hey, I am anointed of God to be a preacher, come to my house and let's press play together, right?

That's really all it took for them to build a church. And then they just convince people that playing the tape is the right thing to do, and then it grows, right? Through that or through them having children and keeping it going.

Tape churches were splitting left and right out of all the churches all along. And they became pretty popular. And within the main sect of the message, very gradually the tape churches became the majority.

By the time you get to the 1990s, the majority of the main sect churches were tape churches. Okay? And it was a very gradual transition. I would say the tipping point when tape churches became the majority in the main sect was the 1990s.

But it all started back in 1968 and 1969. There's so many problems with this. It's hard to contain all of the thoughts that I have about it. And it would take a few podcasts for me to unravel all of that.

But like you said, these things grow and they split and they grow and they split. And so my family, my dad was migratory. I went to like 13 different schools growing up and I went to churches from coast to coast.

Even after we got married, we visited churches. So most of what we visited were, not all of them were tape churches, but all of them had tape people. So there's a... another aspect to this, because they did this thing where they venerated William Branum and put him on such a high pedestal to the extent that his words have become now the the Bible for this day. In fact, a lot of these churches will call it the second book of Acts, if you listen to what they're saying. Well, what happens is even in the non-church, non-taped church sects, there's

bleedover because you have people who have been in a tape church, and then they said, okay, this guy, he's not saying one of the two sides of William Branum's conflicting doctrines, they'll take a position with this and the minister won't, so they'll go to another church. Sometimes that won't be a tape church. So these people, they have normal Sundays and a normal Sunday church, but then they also have their own home tape ceremonies where they will sit and listen to tapes, and I've been to, I can remember walking into homes like as a teenager, I want to go and I want to play basketball or something with one of the kids. We

walk in and everybody's sitting around listening to a tape, and you got to wait for the tapes to be over because that's God's word, man. That's God's profit. So you walk in and you accidentally enter into a tape church in this case, and some of these people, like I say, they weren't in, they weren't in what I would call a tape church, they were in a church with a preacher who preached, but they had these little ceremonies in their houses. One of the way that a lot of tape churches got started was that the people in a church would find

their preacher was supposedly not preaching the message 100%, right? And they would, you know, try to confront their preachers, their preacher wouldn't change to preach the message just right. And so their solution, they go try to find another church, and then they find the same thing, and then they try to find another church, and they try to find the same thing. And after so many tries, they start to get the idea, wait a minute, there's no church that preaches the message right? The right thing for us to do is just to listen to, let's just

stay home and listen to the tapes, right? And you get that. And then they're a little nucleus of people, and then they invite more people to come play tapes with them. Quite a number of the tape churches got started out that way, right?

And it's real easy to start out that way in a home. And as you track people and grow, it grows and grows until eventually it can become a big enough church to, you know, have its own building and everything. Quite a few of them really did start off that way. Yeah, yeah. It's a very interesting thing. So going back though to the 1968, 1969, 1970, as the tape church idea was getting started, I think it's really important to recognize that it got started as part of a fight for control over the brand of tabernacle. And for the people who implemented

the tape church model, I think it makes sense why they did, honestly. I mean, because it really had aligned with their beliefs about William Branham. They were waiting for him to return from the dead.

He was gonna give them the rapturing faith. So it kinda made sense to just kinda listen to his tapes and quit bothering with regular preachers, right? I mean, just go, you know, get it from the horse's mouth, right?

Like why do you need a middleman to interpret the prophet when you got the prophet on tape yourself, right? So I can understand the logic there that a lot of the people went through in their mind about why they made that choice.

If you put yourself into the message of mind of thinking, you know, if you dare to do so, right? But if you put yourself into message of mind of thinking, it makes sense according to the internal logic of the message why they did what they did.

But if you put yourself, say instead into the shoes of Orman Neville, John, and the other preachers here in Jeffersonville, who were on the losing side of Billy Paul's hospital takeover, right? For those guys implementing the tape church looked basically like it was an attempt to shut them all up, okay?

It looked like it was an attempt to take away their ability to preach and to speak to the congregations. And I think that it's a really good question, whether or not that really was a part of what was driving the tape church idea.

If you ask me, I think it was. I think it was absolutely an attempt to shut up the other preachers here in Jeffersonville, right? Because, you know, the main sect did not want to hear anti-return ministry sermons back then in the 60s.

They did not want to hear it, right? And they wanted to shut up all the preachers who were against it. And that I really think played a major role in it. So, based on everything I've ever heard, that was a big thing that drove them coming up with the tape church idea.

The tape church idea, basically, I think we could say truly, got started as part of an effort to shut up Orman Neville in the preachers who were against return ministry. And whether that is really what motivated or not, the preachers who broke away from the main sect of the message, they did absolutely view this as an attempt to shut them all up, okay?

So, let me just explain a little bit how this unfolded. So, when they first started to play the tapes, Orman Neville and the local preachers here in Jeffersonville resisted it heavily. They were totally opposed to it.

But, when Willard Collins, your grandpa finally arrived here in town, from everything I've ever heard, he became the enforcer. Because not only was he the assistant pastor, he is also the deacon and a trustee of the church.

He was chairman of the board at Brannum Tabernacle. And because he had all of those positions, he had enough institutional position to basically overpower Orman Neville and force the church to play tapes. And if you remember back to our sermons on church order, William Brannum had broke power up.

So, the trustee wasn't very strong overall. The deacon wasn't very strong overall. The pastor wasn't very strong overall. But if you were somebody who had all three of those positions, you had quite a bit of power at that point.

And your grandfather had all three of those positions. And so that's what happened, and as far as just who was responsible for what, it all depends on who you ask. But your grandfather definitely did get a lot of the blame for it among the people who left the tabernacle.

But if you asked me today, looking back, who deserves the most blame for all of this, it's Billy Paul, okay? Billy Paul was the guy who orchestrated this whole thing. He's really the man in charge.

He's the one pulling the strings behind the curtain through all of this. And at the end of the day, I think he was actually the one we've got to say is most responsible for causing this schism.

And it was through manipulating other people, getting them to do his dirty work, right? So he could stay looking like the good guy, which I'm sure is a tactic he learned from his father.

Absolutely. I've mentioned before, I really did like Billy Paul. He was genuinely kind to me, and I understand what he did was awful, and he ruined the lives of thousands, thousands of people, maybe more than that.

I understand all of that, but like you, I kind of feel sorry for him in a way, because his dad did treat him so poorly, and the things, I know a little bit beyond that.

I'm not going to go deep into that, but Billy Paul did not have it easy. But then take the aspect of being brainwashed. A lot of people look at the leaders in this as though they have some strategy, and they're all fully aware, but not all of them are.

Some of them are truly brainwashed like the rest of us. I give Billy Paul the benefit of the doubt. I think he might have been, I don't know, but he might have been. But in the sect, in the main sect, considering the fact that what William Brandham said on these recordings was the quote-unquote spoken word, the voice of God, the new Bible, the second book of Acts, whatever you want to call it.

And you've got all of these schisms in the cult that are starting to happen after William Brandham died. Everybody's trying to reinterpret what he said, because many of the things that he said, as future prophecies, he had to been alive for them to happen correctly.

So you've got all of these people that are breaking off trying to reinterpret everything that is on these recordings. And Billy Paul's solution to this is, don't let them reinterpret, just let them listen.

So in some ways, I feel sorry for him, I feel like he tried in a very unusual and very bad, very, very wrong way to contain what was happening. But the mess that was created by him doing that is exponential, and we see the fruits of it today.

If you look into some of the research that I have into other countries, there are entire groups of people in developing nations that become brainwashed with this stuff. Bad things happen. We've talked about the Shaka Hula.

massacre, etc. But even prior to that, some of the research that I have, these message communities that are in this tape-type church groups, some of them are taking over entire governments. I've had some of that in my blog. You can go, I can't remember what the leader's name was or the country, but you can look it up. It might have been Tanzania.

But they start controlling banking systems. They start getting affiliated with the government. And these are brainwashed people, just like you would see in a sci-fi movie where you've got, you know, the Chinese. It's usually the Chinese, which is kind of funny, but the Chinese come in and they play all these motion pictures that are brainwashing the people and then send those people out to take over a government. That's literally what's happening in this group. So in a way, I feel sorry for Billy Paul, but in another way, what he did was so extremely bad that I don't know what to say about this. I don't know if I can

ever forgive him for this, even though I really liked Billy Paul. What do you mean? You know, on a personal note, John, like, you know, if you just sit down like this and have a cup of coffee with somebody or shoot the breeze, a lot of these people that were leaders in the message were actually pretty nice people, right?

I mean, on that level, I mean, they were not, you know, like monsters. But when you, like you say, you knew step back and you look at these decisions they made and the fallout from it and just the widespread destruction, right, that is felt 50, 60, 70 years later. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty bad. It's pretty, pretty bad. And people on the inside of the message somehow find a way to excuse all of that, right? Pretend it never happened, not think about it, not look at it. But John, I mean, if you just think of how many divorces

happened over all of these splits over the years? How many children's their homes were broken up over this, John? I know all kinds of people that were split up marriages, split up divorces, split up homes and families. I mean, really ugly nasty stuff, family that will not ever speak to each other again for the rest of their lives, right? Because of this stuff. And you just think about it in terms of that, right? I mean, it's the fallout of this is absolutely massive.

I mean, it's absolutely massive and it's on a personal level. It's on a lot of different levels. So, you know, as I mentioned that there, you know, silencing the preachers who were against return ministry was part of the agenda behind why they initially started to play tapes, right?

And let me offer a little bit of evidence for that too, because when they, when they first started to play tapes, Orman Neville was still preaching the Sunday school lessons, okay? So, Orman- But Neville would play the Sunday school lesson, preach the Sunday school lessons and your grandfather would be in charge of playing the tape.

And Orman Neville, though, was determined to fight to the very end, John. He was not given up, I'm telling you. He was not given up. And to people in my sect of the message, he's a hero, okay?

He was like, this is heroic stuff that he did, right? But I'm curious, you know, I'm sure it's gotta be a different legacy, right? To the main sect, right? That Neville played this stuff, okay?

That's scaoundrel. Okay, so he used the Sunday school to preach a regular sermon, basically. Instead, you know, a nice little Joseph and the code of many collars, he preached a regular old sermon, okay, for Sunday school.

And he kept preaching in the Sunday school to the very end. He kept preaching against return ministry in the Sunday school. He kept preaching against all of that stuff in the Sunday school, okay?

And what they finally did, John, is they installed a buzzer in the building, a buzzer. You push the button and it goes, eh, okay, that's what they installed at the Brownham Pabernacle. And when Orman Neville started to say something, they didn't like the guy in the tape room.

And then they would announce over the intercom system. It's time to start the service. And then they'll start your grandfather company, play the tape. It basically would force Orman Neville off the platform, okay?

It got that bad. It got that bad, okay? And you remember at that time, though, they still had that big endowment from the full gospel businessman, right? They couldn't fire him, right? This is why they couldn't fire him because of the endowment, okay?

So, this thing is so twisted, isn't this screwed up, John? Okay, they couldn't fire him because they had to keep him in order to keep the money. So, they were basically trying to bully him into resigning, right?

So, they could keep the money and get rid of him. It's so screwed up, John. And when you look at it like that and you put it all in context, I think our listeners can understand why the local message preachers basically looked at this whole tape church idea as an attempt, the silence Orman Neville and the other local preachers who were opposed to Billy Paul and the Deedy Cole.

After your grandpa came to town, John, Raymond Jackson wasn't allowed to preach at Brandham Tabernacle anymore, right? None of the other, most all the other local message preachers were never allowed to preach at Brandham Tabernacle again anymore.

So, there was like this cut off, right? Where basically they silenced them, okay? They were silencing them. And there was even a push to try and turn the other churches into tape church, basically overthrow their preachers.

And so, I think we can say for sure that Billy Paul was orchestrating the whole thing. For good, for bad, you know, motives are hard to discern, but among the people who left, your grandpa did.

he actually is the one who ended up with most of the blame because he was the one doing the dirty work for Billy Paul to lock down, control the bram tabernacle. And as I mentioned, what's really odd about this is, while all of this is happening and you would think you would take one side or the other, will Billy Paul is from what I can tell he was working both sides in many of these cases.

He would just anger this one sect against the other sect and then go to the other one and do the same thing. So while I have trouble, you know, not feeling sorry for Billy Paul, that aspect of it, I'm just scratching my head thinking, why did he do this? What was the purpose behind that? You're exactly right. You're exactly right, John. We're going to have a whole lot more say about that as these episodes unfold. So, you know, it's so hard to get inside of people's minds.

And I have a whole lot of questions still about just why everyone did everything they did back in 1968 and 1969, right? You know, hey, we might have been good friends if we hadn't hit a schism, right? John, I mean, we got a lot in common, right? You know, we're both here in Jeffersonville, our churches were only three miles away from each other. But, you know, the most we would do for what? The first 40 years of our lives was like, stare narrowly at each other across the blue board, right? Well, a lot of people in the main sect is not even aware that your church exists. That's

how bad it is. Wow. That's crazy. That is crazy. Yeah. I've noticed that a lot with the main sect. It's almost like they just don't talk about the past and so people don't have any awareness of it. Whereas the churches I come from, like these grievances are part of cult, you know, are part of our whole mythology, our history, right? And we're recycled over and over again. Like, we know why we hate the bread down and echo in our churches, right? And it's, you know, explained to us. This is why, you know, anyway, in the main sect, they say,

we will never speak of this again. It's so hard to understand why they were doing what they did, right? You know, basically what's going on here is both sides of this thing are under religious delusion, okay? The tape church guys coming in, taking over their under religious delusion, the people fighting over it and exing off and starting the other schism, they're also under religious delusion, right? It's two people. It's basically like two people fighting over something totally irrelevant. That doesn't even matter. Yeah.

I mean, the, the right thing here is William Bram Trictus all, what in the world? Why are we fighting about this? Like, William Bram Trictus, he's dead, he couldn't abandon Elijah, right? We're still here. But they're fighting over, you know, and you think this distracts people too, right? You know, you get into these fights over little details. It distracts people from the big, obvious issue that the Elijah who was supposed to restore the church to the per- Perfect and introduce him to Jesus at the second coming is dead and didn't do it, right? Yeah It then how do you you know it it's so

It just basically distracts people and re-orients them back to my Chinese brainwashing example whenever a nation Whenever one of these foreign nations is brainwashing people for military purposes They have an agenda and they train you on the agenda and you know that agenda specifically Well, these people have been brainwashed with sermons that are just riddled with contradictions and so it's like What do you do there is no clear agenda where does it go and they've been brainwashed literally to go all kinds of different directions because Let's face it you listen to one of these recordings even sometimes in the same sermon it will contradict itself

So they're so confused. What do you do with this when we're when we're in the message right like all of these issues And this is just a few of we're gonna talk about lots of them before this is over with But these issues that divided the sex these were life and death struggle fights for us, right? I mean this was To try and take the tape church away from the tape churches John. I mean come on You there's not a chance in hell that's ever gonna happen is it? I mean you And then the opposite side right to try and convince our churches to implement it. Oh man. I mean you

No, never never so we would you would fight to the death over this stuff in the message, right? And that's why in the message these sex aren't friends But you get on this side of it and you realized this was we were just fighting over nonsense like all of this stuff that we would have Pretty well died for when we were in the message on this side. We realized This was all just a meaningless nothing of a fight, right and um You know if you're inside the message today You're gonna find that you got a lot more in common with people than you then you realized if you come out on this side

Right because all the stuff we fought over in the message a lot of it was absolutely your relevant Nonsense absolutely your relevant nonsense all predicated on William Brandon being This man he was not really Almost everything in the message that divides you from the rest of the Christian world is predicated on the fact The belief that William Brannum is who he claimed to be if William Brannum is not who he claimed to be There's no need to separate the way that we separated all of that none of that should have ever happened None of it should have ever happened, you know it so I'm off topic, but anyway

As Willard as as your grandpa, you know willard Collins as they they start Laying down the law right in the tape playing comes along the way, right? And Orman Neville's not really allowed to speak anymore Neville actually had his own church john either you probably knew this Orman Neville had his own church in Henryville that he was the pastor of Before William Brannum invited him to replace Gramps now as pastor, a brand of tabernacle.

And so when when when when when when the devil became pastor of brand of tabernacle, he closed his Henryville church, moved his congregation with him to the brand of tabernacle, right, and preached there. Well, when they stopped letting him preach and they started buzzering him and stuff, he just full-fledged re- opened his church back up in Henryville. And he started having regular services there. And at those services, he preached, okay?

And at those services, he made it abundantly clear, which side of things was on, you know, he, you know, he he let out the truth on all the stuff. And our sect of the message was at those services.

He was still being invited to preach at our church is back then. So although the tabernacle was he was losing control there, he was the hero to the sect of the message that was forming, okay?

The second sect of the message that was forming. And those services at his churches, they were well attended by quite a few people from our churches, Raymond Jackson would go, other ministers of our sect. And Orman Neville's wife, she died first, she died, I think in 1969, maybe of 68, but she died first, okay? And you know how something like that takes a toll on a person. And what happened next was Orman Neville took a stroke in 1971. And I'll tell the truth, it wouldn't surprise me that if it was a lot of the stress that he was under from that fight,

played a big role in it, right? I know a lot of people. That's what they told me, basically, they, I was told a lot of people say in my sect of the message, it is a common saying Orman Neville died of a broken heart, right? Basically, he was killed by the brand of tabernacle because they rejected him. And the fight and the stress from that was just more than he, you know, it took a physical toll on him. And so after he took that stroke, Orman Neville never really recovered his full strength. He finally died in 1974. And so Wheeler Collins and Billy Paul

basically had uncontested control of the tabernacle after Norman, Norman Neville's health failed. And when Orman Neville died, there was a bit of a fight over that endowment, John, again, the money, but the full gospel businessmen gave them.

But Billy Paul ended up with all the money from everything I have understood. And so it was just, it was such a nasty situation, John, it was just a real nasty situation. And I think our listeners can understand why this finally caused a, you know, an irreversible schism between these first two sex of the message. And yet again, here's another example of it was all about the money. It was, is that endowment? That's what it was all about. So John, the tape church, that is what was really the final straw that broke the camel's back. And

a the first message gives him irreversible, yeah. And when Orman Neville reopened his Henryville church and especially by the time he stopped preaching from his stroke, most of the people against return ministry had all quit the Brown Cabernacle.

And that's what started the message, the sect of the message is that I come from, right? And when it got started, our pastor, Raymond Jackson, basically inherited Orman Neville's mantle as the leader of the sect, the leader of the opposition in Jeffersonville, okay?

Raymond Jackson kinda inherited his mantle as the next most senior guy. And at that point in time, it was the majority of the message community here in Jeffersonville. And it remained that way up until the early 2000s.

And so already in 1968 and 1969, on both sides of the split, there were multiple churches, there were multiple international missionaries, like even the international missionary split over this stuff. And that ended up producing the sect of the message I come from.

And so although there's an aspect of this that just affected here in locally in Jeffersonville, the other pieces of it reached out to the international message community, such as it existed then. And there's ended up with a faction break away with this from the very early days of the message, okay?

So yeah, that's how my family and the churches I come from split away from the main sect in the 1960s. One day we'll do an episode and I'll just walk you through the whole history of my sect, too.

We're gonna do that for every sect of the message before this thing's over with. This is the fight that, yeah, my sect split away with. Yeah. And keep in mind, as all of this is happening, everything that we're talking about, remember what's happening off to the side.

So the full gospel businessman is deep into the prosperity gospel, the what became the Charismania, right? And they're sponsoring this church. This crazy messed up church we're talking about. Well, off to the side, you had the movement, the shepherding movement was growing.

You had the precursors to the word of faith growing, all of these things. And the people who are splitting away in these churches, some of them have deep connections to those. So as all of this is growing and the mess that eventually developed into the NAR is forming its foundations.

Its foundations are tied back to this mess. Yeah, you know, in the future, like I mentioned, I definitely want to do a walk through of every sect of the message. And the way I hope we can approach it is more or less chronologically.

So the way I wrote my book, come out of her, my people, volume two. I wrote it basically chronological in the order that every major sect split away from the main sect. And my sect was the first, the major one, to split away.

The second one to split away will be Joseph Coleman and the Thunders. That happens in 1974. So we'll get to them probably here before long. But that's the order I'm hoping we can do it.

And just kind of in the order chronologically that they split away. And so we can kind of, cover what's happening in the main sect at the same time. We're covering, you know, what's happening as these other churches break away.

So my sect broke away in 69. The Thunder's broke away in 74. The Perusia broke away in 77. And we can, we can go through all that stuff. But as those schisms happen and more and more people broke away from the main sect, gradually, you know, if you think of the cumulative effect of all of these splits over the years, as more and more people split out of the main sect, gradually, that is actually aiding the tape churches and rising to become the majority.

Because tape churches don't generally split away from the main sect, okay? It's the non-tape churches that are gradually, that are mostly splitting away. And gradually, this creates a situation where the tape churches by the 1990s become the majority of the main sect of the message.

And so I look forward to kind of talking about how some of that came. But the tape churches didn't just grow, become the majority through growth in numbers, but also in through driving away all the other churches that weren't tape churches, okay?

That's, that was part of it as well. And so yeah, my sect faith assembly fellowship, they broke away in 1969. The year before 1969, was the last unified message convention, John. 1968 was the last unified message convention.

That year, there was a large convention held in Missouri. It was hosted by Earl and John Martin. And pretty well, the entire North American message preachers came to that convention that John Earl Martin hosted.

And at that convention, Earl Martin and Perry Green, and Lee Veil, especially Lee Veil, they all made a public humiliation at those conventions of Raymond Jackson, of Ernest Fulcher, of Bill Paderos, right? Of that whole side of the message who was opposing return ministry.

So they did a public humiliation of them all with that convention. And while they were there, I should say, and after they preached. So they, you know, it was all probably orchestrated, I would say, you know, I wasn't there, obviously.

I've just heard the stories. Basically, Lee Veil told them that they didn't understand the message, nobody should ever listen to them ever again, you know, and that was more or less the sum of it.

And so after that, that sect of the message never went back. That's something else, I think, is worth pointing out that happened there. And when you get to 1969, both sects of the message from that point, now they're holding competing conventions.

Okay, that year, they start holding a competing convention. The first competing convention was held in North Carolina. Bill Paderos hosted the first peak competing convention. And so from that year, you know, from 69, there is never again a unified message convention where everyone is welcome.

From there on, it's a split. And it just gets worse from there over the years, John. And we'll talk about all what happened in that in future episodes, but they're ended up being a- about 20 different church splits over all of this by the time you get through these years up to 72.

And when all said and done, you end up with about, I would say by the time you're up to 71, probably one quarter of the early message churches are in this faction, the new faction, and three quarters are in the main sect as you get up into 71, 72, 73.

And I think John is we'll start to get into in our next episodes. I think that this might have played a role in why message growth, the growth of the churches became so big, okay?

Because the message exploded here from 1967-68, things are declining. But when you get to 1969, the message starts to explode. We go from this 35-ish church, as I mentioned already, to several hundred churches by the early 70s.

And I think, John, in some respect, it's absolutely fair to say that it is the desire of these two sects to compete with each other, to prove that they're the better sect of the message, to prove that they've got what it takes.

I think that it is the competition between these two sects to show the other up that spurs on some of this growth. I gotta say, right? Because I really believe that some of that's playing a role there.

And so there's just this massive missionary outreach that starts to happen in the aftermath of this schism. We'll talk about that in some more episodes. John, I'm excited to get into all of it.

There's so much to talk about. I am too. And keep in mind, in the background, people like Kenneth Hagen, T.L. Osborne, we've mentioned and hinted at, they're working with these guys, right? Well, they're working directly with the Brandon Brothers.

As late as 1984, I believe it was after that, but on my website, if you type in ordinary people, and I'll show it up here on the screen, you've got Kenneth Hagen Ministries and T.L. Osborne Ministries, collaborating in two non-profits with Voice of God recordings and spoken word recordings, this thing that we're talking about that is brainwashing people.

The word of faith, the prosperity gospel movements leaders are collaborating with this as late as 1984. So if anyone listening has any question, why Charles and I are so crazy, now you know. But anyway, this has been fun.

There's so much more to talk about. We'll save it for next time. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Brandom.org and Christian-GospelChurch.org.

For more about the history of William-Brandom and the Healing Right Revivals, read, come out of her, my people, available on Amazon and Kindle, volumes one and two. For more about the dark side of the NAR, read, weaponize religion from Christian identity to the NAR, available...

on Amazon, Kendo, and Aurobor.