Rotten Fruit: How Twisted Doctrine Became Divine Authority

Music 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 www.William-brandham.org And with me I have my co-host, researcher and friend, John McKinnon, the author of the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician.

John, it's good to be back and to talk about rotten fruit. I don't know any better way to sum up this episode than this is a discussion of rotten fruit and why you see such a mess in the world today.

You know, people have reached out to me and before I even did what I started doing, I was reading news reports where they're asking the question, how did all of this mess come to be?

How do we have these self-proclaimed prophets and apostles governing people and why do people so willingly submit to them? It seems as though people would just walk away from this kind of thing if they're asked to submit to the authority.

But yet that's the very foundation of what was created with William Brandham's message called and it laid the foundation that really I look at it as though it's a platform of enabling and it enabled several predators to, you know, choose congregation as their prey and it created a platform where the congregation would willingly submit to them.

So it's going to be quite an interesting discussion, but in the end, it turns out that this is going to be a discussion of rotten fruit. So thank you for coming back to do this.

Thank you, John. It's good to be back here again to record another episode with you. We've got a lot to talk about today and a lot of it's going to focus on the ministry of William Brandham and how it's related to the NAR today and how things migrated from the message.

The message into that movement and a lot of the practices that he started out with and adopted for himself, you know, they borrowed from and what we see today, what we see going on.

And I want to title this, you know, why, why is the message harmful to Christians? There's a whole lot of episodes we could do on this and I know we'll probably do many. But one of the main reasons that the message is harmful is because of scripture, bending and twisting.

You really have to stretch scriptures every which way to believe. what you do when you are saying you believe the message. And so when you're in that, you don't really see that. And let's you step back and really take a good look at what the scriptures really say in context and who they were spoken to. If you try to read into it and read between the lines as we were often taught to do in the message, you can read anything into the scriptures if you want to read between the lines. But I think if you

look at the scriptures being God's Word, you really want to know what was he trying to say? What was he trying to communicate to the group of people that they were written to? So we're going to see that today and see many examples of scripture bending and twisting.

And I do want to go into that even in more detail in future episodes. So I'm very happy and excited to get started with this. I think that's why this is so significant today.

When we talk about William Brannum's legacy, we're not just talking about these weird theologies that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s. We're actually talking about the DNA of what was created and what developed into the new apostolic reformation today. You have all of these apostolic networks with all of these self-proclaimed prophets and apostles and they're using the same exact strategy. They're elevating themselves above scripture and they have become mediators between God and man. So once they have established that authority, the people who are submitting to this authority, they're left with questions whenever their authority on scripture deviates from what the scripture actually says. They're trained

and manipulated to choose what the apostle or prophet has said over what it actually says in the Bible. And you and I have came across this before. Members of William Brannum's cult, if they're left with that decision, do I choose what the Bible says or do I choose what William Brannum said? They will often choose what the Bible said over William Brannum because the spoken word, which is William Brannum's words, comes in greater authority than the written word. And that's the essence of heresy when you think of this. So to understand what happened today, you really have to dive deep back into what is Brannumism. Why did

he create this mess and how did all of this develop from it? So it all starts with the ability to convince people that even if your prophecy fails, you are still speaking from God and to overlook the failure. And again, we're examining the fruits and this rotten fruit, but to understand that, you have to understand, you have to understand William Brannum. You have to understand the relationship between William Brannum and the people that he has under his authority. So yeah, John, I totally agree. These things that we're going to talk about today should really bother those people who are in the message still. And I want to continue

focusing on what we called last time. You know, the lion prophet, that's going to be another theme in all of this is the theme of the lion prophet. I've got many things to say about that, maybe not altogether in this episode, but I know in future episodes I do want to go in detail on some of those things that clearly would disqualify, you know, William Brown to be the end time prophet or a prophet at all.

So a lion prophet, you know, to message believers, that term really should not bother them, you know, it shouldn't bother them at all, that I use that because message believers have told me, again and again, that they all admit that he lied, and they do accept that as fact, that they also excuse that because they believe they have examples in Scripture of where a lion was permissible for God's prophets to do.

So a question message believers should ask themselves is whether Brannum's lies do in fact bring a disqualification to his ministry. So and I think we can find things that will in fact disqualify him or others to proclaim him as a true prophet, you know, I think we'll find those things I know for a fact we will.

I'm confident that we can and I won't get into all that in this episode, but I know in future times I do want to. And then believing, you know, if you do disqualify, say, you don't have, there's not a prophet that was here and if you can come to that conclusion, then something called the message is totally unnecessary.

It's really unfruitful to your Christian life and it's also unproductive in the kingdom of God overall. I want to bring out a couple of scriptures for this episode too, and second Corinthians four to first half of that verse says, but we have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully.

And in second Peter 316, Peter was referring to what Paul's ministry was, he said, as in all of his epistles, speaking of them of these things in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable rest as they do the other scriptures under their own destructive own, under their own destruction.

So I think that's where we're going to find that William Brownham kind of winds up in this. He was for one thing unlearned. And then he was very unstable, I'd say mentally and in his stableness of the scriptures, I think he was unstable in that as well.

And many of the things that we're going to point out today, there's positively one thing that Paul did condemn and others also in the scripture condemned in the New Testament, not just the old.

And that is a sin of lying. So if William Brownham says he preached the same thing, Paul preached and then has a habit of lying overtly, then he's definitely not living up to what Paul preached.

and the message then becomes do as I say and not as I do religion. The leaders can follow this pattern as well and they do follow that pattern. The outside looks really good and we're gonna see that as we go through this episode there's a Christian front to it but behind the scenes there's a totally different story. You know a corrupt tree really internally cannot bring forth good fruit and I know you and Charles have certainly pointed out much of that bad fruit that the message has produced you know in recent days. Exactly. You know one of the biggest eye openers for me is when I began to realize that they

had misrepresented what a prophet was and they had misrepresented the relationship between a prophet and others and how that was basically a mouthpiece for God. It wasn't this authoritarian structure but worse they had misrepresented and confused people as to how to evaluate a prophet. We often get the comments why are you doing this William Brannum was a vindicated prophet of God because he could heal people which those are two different things man. If you're a prophet you're vindicated by whether or not the prophecy comes to pass and it's not a swing the bad as many times as you can

and maybe you'll hit the ball type of relationship a prophet you're gonna hit it every time because it's God speaking through the voice of the human. So if you understand that in cases where these are lying prophets where these prophets are saying things that aren't coming to pass that aren't true and then twisting the Bible to make the Bible fit their agendas and to try to misrepresent how to evaluate the prophecy. You end up with this case where the spoken word is so distorted and twisted that it in no way matches or even is a

close representation of what's in the Bible. So this twisting of scripture that's where you really have to be careful with these guys. So yeah John to continue on this point at what we're getting to about scripture bending and twisting. You know that there is a definition for scripture bending it refers to interpreting or implying scripture in a way that distorts this original meaning or the intent to support a particular viewpoint or agenda. It often involves taking verses out of context ignoring the larger narrative or imposing a modern understanding on ancient text. It can lead and it definitely does lead to a

misrepresentation of God's character and teachings. There's a thing called distorting the meaning of scripture. It involves twisting the meaning of scripture to fit a predetermined conclusion rather than letting the text speak for itself. Now anybody in the message knows the scriptures that way of random use quite often was Malachi 4, 5 and 6 Luke 17 30 the revealing of the Son of Man or when the Son of Man has revealed also Revelation 10 7 than which we did speak of in the last episode, talking about Revelation 10 and 7, being related to the cloud, that was proven not even to be supernatural.

Also, there's another error that people do is ignore the whole context. You know, we find that very often in William Brown's ministry, he's just not looking at the context of scripture at all, but definitely reading himself in the scripture.

Selective use of verses, I find that to be very often the case, in William Brown's ministry. There was only a select set of verses that we used over and over and over again, and we ignored the rest of the text.

I mean, until I got out of the message, I never heard many, many servants own, just say one book of the Bible. It was always picking shoes, scriptures out of certain books, but you never would see somebody teach through the whole scripture verse by verse.

And that was new to me, and but I was very happy to run into ministers that do that. And they're expository preaching. So it's very problematic to do this because it leads to misrepresenting God.

And I think there's many things I could say later on in other episodes about how God has been misrepresented in the message. It leads to a distorted view of God. It also leads to false teaching and also spiritual harm.

And that's why I asked the question today, you know, what is the harm in the message or why is the message harmful to Christians? Examples of scripture bending that I can point out right now is taking a single verse about God's love and mercy and ignoring other verses about his justice and holiness.

So if you hear most of what you hear about the preaching of today is that, you know, God loves you, it's got a great plan for your life and then you're gonna become great and powerful and you just need to fall into it.

Whereas we lose the fact that we need to be broken and repent it before God. And we lose the all, the sense of all about his justice and holiness as well. William Brown, I'm used parables to support his ministry such as the parable of the wise and the foolish virgin to support his view of the bride and the nominal church.

He also misrepresented Acts 19 to support his view of re-baptizing Christians and saying that was what Paul preached. But one day when we do go into Acts 19, I think we can clearly show that that context was not even about Paul re-baptizing some Christians.

He also misrepresented or misinterpreted revelation 10.7 and Malachi 4. There's many other things that you could say. But using scripture does justify harmful actions sometimes so many ministers and in fact many of the ones who you and Charles are pointing out have used their authority to support abuse of power.

And one. clearly a good example of this is William Brown's view of deacons. In all his teaching of deacons or any time he mentioned deacons, he always called them the police of the church. So they always kept order. They somehow kept everything in order. And if you got out of line, the deacon would come and tap you on the head or point you to the door. It was always something like that, some police. So but deacons in the in the Christian church have a much different responsibility. Yes, sure they can help to keep order. But they also minister to the church's

ministry and community needs such as assisting with worship services, pastoral care, organizing outreach programs, supporting or managing the church administration. There's many duties that William Brown didn't mention. But let me say a quote here real quick from 1963 in church order in December 26th. William Brown said, a policeman or the deacon is a military police to the army courtesy. But yes, with authority. So he's talking about they'll walk you out the door with courtesy. But he's got authority to do it. He said, you know what a military police is? Actually, if he carries out his rights, I think he's just like a chaplain.

You see, it's courtesy and everything. But yeah, he has an authority. You must mind him. These rookies out there going get drunk while he puts them in their place. And so a deacon is to put them in their place. Now, remember the deacon is a policeman and a deacon's office is actually more strict than most any office in the church. I don't know if any office more stricter than the deacon's office. That's right. Cause he's got a real job. He's a God's man.

He's God's man just as much as the pastor is. So, you know, he's saying that to show that and it also teaches other deacons in the message, you know, that I'm God's policeman, I'm going to keep order. And, you know, anyway, that disagrees with anything the pastor's doing, we're going to make sure that they get squashed and get walked out the door. And they don't have any influence among the congregation. Now, I can see that should be the case if somebody's bringing false doctrines and so forth. But if you have a simple thing, you want to say that about the

message, of course, you're going to be walked out the door very quickly. But anyway, he goes on with a few more quotes. I won't read those right now just for the sake of time. But the deacon does have a lot of authority in message churches. Probably he's second behind the pastor in authority.

Because message churches are organized around a pastor. And we're going to see that the pastor is what William Brownham calls the head of the church. And there's no higher authority. So rather than operating in a congregation of elders, where you have some wisdom of the elders and men are proven and serving as an elder, you have just one pastor and he's the head and he kind of what he says goes and you can't really overrule him. So that's another harmful thing about the message because it does lead to an abusive power. I agree. And Charles and I were going through that right now in the podcast. We're talking

about some of the fruits of that. How was this power abused? But beyond that, if you really take a step back and look at it, the message itself has so many different versions and varieties and flavors and some of the churches are really authoritarian. Others are somewhat benign.

But here's what gets really interesting. If you're on one of the authoritarian side and you are in that church, you begin to feel like you're being oppressed. You understand it. If you're in one of the others that seem to be benign, you would laugh at everything that you and I are saying.

You would not believe it because our church isn't like this. We don't see this. But ask one of the critical questions to the leaders. Just one time and see what happens in these churches.

Suddenly, you're going to see that power being flexed. There isn't abuse of power, but it's more to the point there is a, they formed an identity, a relationship around William Brandham himself. It becomes to be a brand. We are a branded William Brandham group.

We cannot question it even though some of the churches are benign and they seem to distance themselves. The moment that question is asked with the moment they come in contact with critical information, always the critical information must be suppressed. That's simply how it, how it is.

And when you go beyond this and you start to look at some of the churches that formed because of this, they have, they've actually shifted and reworked their branding to where there is this, I don't know what you call it. There's an array of people that are welcome. It's like the marketing in a business world, right? There's these people that are welcoming. They're open to answering questions. And these aren't the ones that are the authoritarian structure. This is just the branding that makes it feel like you're like you're welcome and like it's, it's not authoritarian.

But the moment you get deeply embedded into it and you start to pose a risk to the others, that's where you start to see the authoritarian structure. If, if you have critical information that may convince others to leave, if enough people leave, there's a loss of financial revenue.

And that's where this turns problematic for these guys. Yes, John. I think one of the things that I want to focus on is how did William Brennan allow himself to bend scripture? How did this come about?

I think a lot of it has to do with really his background in training. He was only about, I would say 22 years old. If you either go by the birthday of 1907 or 9, he was somewhere around 22 years old, say around 1929 when he first joined the church.

by Davis's church and accepted Christ and became exposed to the Bible. According to him, his family wasn't religious. He never studied the Bible until he became a Christian. And of course, he was around 22.

So everything he was taught, it was really under Roy Davis's ministry. And you know, we've gone through all the things Roy Davis believed. And it was primarily him for several years. You know, he sat under it.

He was only a Christian about three years before he had a tent meeting, you know, way in Branham was. So very early on, he conducted a service and stepped out and conducted a revival meeting, probably under the advice of Davis to build the church membership.

But he was really a novice at the time. And I suspect that he had very limited knowledge and scripture. So he was only operating with what he was taught under his pastor. But then he was kind of forced into becoming a pastor and becoming in a position of leadership in 1934 after Davis's church burned.

And that was only three or four years after becoming a Christian. So he was very new. But many things were happening in the church at that time. And I know he was observant of all that.

You know, Pentecostalism was fairly new. All these traveling ministries were very new. People going around, holding revivals. Even him and Davis had gone around holding revivals. John Alexander Dowey, you know, he was still probably talked about quite a bit.

The man that was across the river from him was William Souters. You know, he would go up and down the river and had this story about an angel coming to him. And I lied at the river where I was baptizing and so forth.

There was John G. Lake. There was Frank Sanford up in Maine that took a ship around the world to call it the Holy Ghost Ship to take a group of people and they ended up in a sad state as well.

So the lure was getting caught up into those schemes. And it was powerful because it meant a good bit of money for those men. And a lot of men and women were rising up and boosting their personalities and making themselves something great.

And they ran a lot of that. It was like a business to them. They made money at it rather than really having a true ministry. And many absurd practices were even condoned. The focus was really far from the gospel of Christ.

And you know, and William Brennan observed all that. He was part of that. People were even harmed and died as a result. And so I believe this carried over into Brennan's ministry because he gave many people a false hope.

Many were declared healed with just say if the Lord in his ministry would in fact they were not healed. And even you can say if there were one or two on record that actually got healed and God actually healed them.

These types of ministries do damage people far more than they actually end up helping just because of the massive people that are given a false hope. Many false doctrines rose up over time as well.

Because usually the word of God has put aside in favor of what... became, say, fresh mana, fresh revelations of the day. And that notion, the fresh mana, the fresh revelations for the day, that has began to dominate the movement. If you look at new apostolic reformation leaders today, even in some of the Pentecostal sects that would not really identify as being part of this, you know, the apostolic networks, everything that branched off of Branemism or was influenced by Branemism, they wanted to have this as, I guess you would say, it was more important than the leading of

the Holy Spirit. This new mana, this new revelation that came from the leader, this was our new Holy Spirit. This is our mediator between God and man. Just like William Branem, whenever the people want an answer from the Lord, many of them will go back and listen to the recordings of Branem, and they get to, they say that they get their answer from the recording. So instead of, you know, praying to God and the Holy Spirit leading them, let's put in a cassette tape, and now it's an MP3, whatever it is, they've chosen that pathway. But more to the, more problematic,

as they're doing that, they're also picking up doctrines. And one of the questions that hit me initially, which I have an opinion on it now, but as you're going through those doctrines, how much of those doctrines were really fresh mana? How many of these doctrines really came from the Lord speaking through William Branem? If you go back into the sermons and you begin to understand what it is he's saying, many of the doctrines that he's preaching, he's claiming, came directly from God. It was new revelation to him. He, even though he had the stack of books, he would say,

an angel met me and gave me this, and I'm giving it to you. So therein lies a huge question. Yeah, John, what I can say about William Branem's teaching, of course, is that none of it was really original. And what I see him doing, if you can look at what he taught him, you can go find someone else that has taught it before. So he's really taken his material from others, even though he may have had a sincere effort to find the truth. He may have been tried to put it all together, taking bits of pieces here and there to try to put it all together as truth. But it eventually

became his truth and eventually it became him revealing the mysteries and not the things that he found. So his efforts just led him down a path of being ostracized by the mainstream because he picked up so many odd, oddball doctrines and then began to teach a lot of things that were very strange doctrines that caused him to be condemned by all others. And then he condemned everyone after that. What you become in your own little corner with your own doctrines, then you ostracize everybody else and you claim that everybody is false, but you're the only true one is usually what happens

and that's what really happened in the message. They may believe that And as is what the groups do today, they may believe other people can have salvation, but they don't believe that they're the elite Christians that they're not in the bride or they won't live in the city of God and they become second-class citizens of heaven.

But you know, I don't read of those different salvation in the Bible myself and the Bible does call our salvation a common salvation, meaning it's the same for everyone and everyone receives the same blessings that came upon us because of the sacrifice of Christ.

So some of the doctrines William Brampton Blashton too were serpent seed, which he got from Davis, baptism in the name of Jesus Christ as only formula, which he Davis was also practicing that. There were gifts of the Spirit and his time with Davis. Of course, you know, they drank poison, they went to such meetings doing strange things such as that. But then from the Pentecostals, William Brampton took an extreme form of the holiness standard from them, of dress and he became sort of works focused for keeping your salvation. And his preaching style, he also took

much of the revival atmosphere from the Pentecostals. He also took his eschatology, which is study of end times, from others like Clarence Larkin, Ellen G. White, the Seventh-day Adventists and others that he studied quite extensively and then preached later on in his ministry.

You know, his sermons were, I would say all over the place as he tried to come to some solid conclusions about what is the baptism of Holy Ghost. He struggled with that over the years.

And so strange that how can you call yourself a minister and from the start you struggle with how do you know if you've got the Holy Ghost or not? You know, if you can't just look into the Word of God and believe that and know what God is doing in his salvation work upon you and know why you and how you receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, then I mean, how can you even say you're a minister of the gospel? You know, he struggled with what is the new birth and how will God's children adopt it? He preached this sermon series of adoption and had this interesting way he

set adoption as being a totally separate work from even your salvation. He also taught the Godhead in a strange way and confusion is really the word when trying to nail down what he really believed most of the time and those type of doctrines. You know, you would hear him say one thing in one place and hear him say things in another place that totally contradicted what he said, you know, a month ago. So and that's why message believers are really confused most of the time I would say, but some ministers will come down to the fact that all you need is Christ. You need to make

sure you've had a new birth with and met Christ and really You know, if you know that, then why would you need William Reynolds' message in the first place? Because that's where it's all key is knowing Christ.

So when people try to say you've got to add on the message, you know, they're really just adding on things. It's not even in the word. So then they become, that's when you start getting off the word.

And that's when people start saying things like, to have the baptism of Holy Spirit, you have to believe the message. And if you don't believe the message, then it's obvious you don't have the Holy Spirit.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top.

And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

So this has turned into a huge, huge mess today. If you look at today's religion and politics, and you start to see and understand that these two are beginning to be blended together, and you begin to identify with it.

It's not just that you identify as Christian. You have to identify with certain legislation, you have to identify with groups of people. You're forming an identity based on your ideology rather than just simply being a Christian is to follow Christ to understand that as to understand Christianity.

But what has happened is, like I said earlier, these guys have created branding, and it's nothing new to the new apostolic reformation today. Any of these apostolic networks, they love their branding. You follow this prophet, that prophet, or the other one.

Well, back in during the healing revivals, you had all of these ministries that were being created by William Brannum, and Gordon Lindsay through the voice of healing networks, you could basically had a starter kit for starting an evangelistic tour in ministry.

If you joined into this thing, and especially if you got advertised in the voice of healing magazine, you had an instant following. So what happened is you created the structure where you could appoint individuals to become additional mediators between God and man.

And it turned into this big, big mess, whenever you think about it, but it all comes back to, Like you said, it's a bending of scripture. You can't even have any of this if you're just simply staying with the Bible.

So when we look at, you know, William Brannum is the history behind this and you look at the fruits of it today, he began to understand that what was created, it wasn't a Christian structure, it was more of a branded structure and many of the themes that came, you know, flowed through this.

As you said, William Brannum copied it from everyone. Some of the sources that he copied it from, such as Roy Davis, these were very, very bad individuals and their agendas really, if you think about what they were doing and why they were doing it, it's really scary to think of it.

That's right, John. And I would say that, you know, what we see today in the NAR and the message and other places is just the fruit of what William Brannum spearheaded. Him being the type of person that he was, he did spearhead this sensational, and all the sensationalism we see in the NAR today really came out of this tree.

You know, the NAR is definitely not a mainstream, you know, Christianity, although they do try to, they wanna make it mainstream so that everybody's gonna fall into it and I would hope that one day that never happens, of course, the truth will prevail.

But, you know, Brannum's method became the model for using the word of God for your own interests instead of teaching the people the word so that they can be better Christians and just live this life in a better way for God.

It really wants to promote your own interest or what you believe about the scripture versus what the scriptures are actually saying. William Brannum's theology really causes people to believe they are larger than life.

We know that, you know, most people in the message believe there's some type of elite Christian and they look down on everybody else or that they become, one day they'll become somehow a God with power to speak things or make things come to pass.

And so forth, it doesn't matter too in the NAR as it didn't matter in the messages we've seen as you and Charles have pointed out many times these ministers, whether a qualified or not to even be a minister.

Any person with a little charisma or if they were promoted by William Brannum while he was alive, prayed over his perhaps, they're the ones that are promoted to be God's man of the hour.

Anybody with charisma can draw a crowd. I mean, this just can happen. They've got the energy to do it. When you add some worship music to that, something looks like supernatural happening. You know, if you can produce that or convince people that God spoke to you, lived to hear in some way and dreams or visions and then you use all that high energy that you got into like a motivational speech, you know, and you declare to the people how good they are and how powerful they are and how prosperous God wants you to be in this life here at NAR.

and speak as if you're on the cutting edge of what God is really doing today, and I'm sure you'll have no problem gathering crowds. We see it time and time again in what the ministries are today. William Brownham gathered his following much the same way, except, you know, for him and his day, he really focused on Doomsday because he wanted everybody to know that he was the last day prophet, and right after that, the earth was going to burn.

So he had people on the edge of their seat just waiting, just wanting to know what God was going to show him next because at any day, the bombs are going to drop on America or great earthquake was going to happen and half of the United States was going to fall into the sea or whatever it might be. You know, we were on the very verge of, of course, to come into the Lord, which I believe the Lord can come in any day, but he took it to that extreme.

And so to do that, he wanted to convince others he was the last day prophet. So he easily convinced them that Doomsday was at hand and that God was not sending anybody after him because why would God need to if he's going to destroy the earth? You know, William Brownham's convinced his followers that God had revealed all the ministries to him or had tied up all the loose ends and scripture. And so there's no need for anybody else to rise up after him because declaring a new revelation because he's he's already revealed it all. But you know,

even with that, even even by him, maybe saying that or alluding to that, you still had men rise up after him saying, I'm the successor. And I've got all this new revelation or I'm the fulfillment of these seven thunders or whatever it might be that they again use that same pattern and the same methods that William Brownham used to take scripture and use it for their own interest to promote their own selves and to make themselves fit in scripture some way where they obviously do not. So that's the problem, you know, with ministries like his exalts man and it

puts them on a pedestal where everybody bows to the man and and you have to do that to be in fellowship with that particular group no matter what group it is. I plan to go into this more as we get into more episodes and show once you start down that road of sensationalism and minister to draw crowds, then it opens the door to more and more of the sensational because you have to have that to keep the crowds. You have to keep the crowd on edge. You have to have the most current vision or prophecy and you have to have the next big meeting that was much bigger than the last.

And the hope is that the public will buy into whatever you're selling and if you can ever get them hooked, then you've got them and they're loyal to you. But if it doesn't happen as what happened in William Brownham's ministry, then you will cut your losses and just keep your inner circle, draw them close to you, whoever's most loyal to you. So that's exactly what happened in William Brownham's ministry. And fortunately, I would say it did because had he to got some of the things that he spoke if they would have had any kind of hint of coming to pass.

then no telling what the message would have been today. But I'm so thankful that that God did not allow that to happen because how that if that would have happened because because any minister can speak a hundred different things and maybe one of them will hit maybe one thing will happen the way he says it. But if it ever happens that way and in a ministry like William Brown, it would have swayed a lot of more people than it did, but thankfully it didn't. So that's what I want to show eventually and more episodes as many of the ministers I've talked into, I've asked him to you know about

the 1952 vision that he had and they know nothing of it because usually they'd only focus on things 1963 and beyond, you know, after that cloud appeared. That's what they focus on. They don't even look back at things that happened prior to that. So that's what I hope to bring out in the future, John, as we get into these episodes. Yeah, I'm excited to get into that with you. But there's one thing that you said that I want to go back and focus on just a little bit more. You're talking about fear.

Whenever theologians or scholars look at the doctrinal connections between what you see in the new apostolic reformation today and to brannemism and to charismatic movement, you know, all of these different movement, word of faith, prosperity gospel. Whenever you examine the doctrinal connections, it's very difficult to piece it all together because you're going to find people who, like you said, after William Brannem dies, another one raises up and he has this new thing and this other guy raises up and he has this new thing. Even within the message, we have all these splinter groups and what happens is some guy goes insane and he believes that his sect is the new,

he's the new Messiah. He's the new mediator between God and man, the new prophet, whatever they want to call themselves. But they all seem to share one single element and that is fear. If they can hold their congregations captive by fear and that fear manifests in many different ways. Like you said, Brannem had the doomsday. If you go to understanding what is the theology in, oh, the international house of prayer in Kansas City, they had a different version of doomsday, but it was the same strategy of fear. So, doctrinally, you would look at, you know, I hop KC and you think, well, that's

nothing to do with Brannemism. But if you understand how they did what they did in captivating the people and understand that Paul Kane was William Brannem's protege, you began to understand, wait a minute, there's more here than meets the eye. And that fear, it captivates people. That's what holds people in the cult and it makes it very difficult whenever they decide they want to leave.

It's not like just leaving an average church. You go to, I don't know, the Baptist church, Methodist church, whatever is the nomination you pick. You start going to the church and then you say, ah, this is not for me. Well, you leave. There's no fear in leaving because you're not leaving Christianity. You're leaving that particular building of that.

you know, this particular people, but this has created a cult of identity, cult of personality, where when you leave, you're afraid to leave because you're leaving that brand. You're leaving William Brandham as the brand. You're leaving Mike Bickel as the brand for IHOP Casey, whatever it is, that brand, and that, you know, that really holds you captive that fear. So as you get into this and you start to think about, well, you know, going beyond that, what, what do they have more for me beyond the brand? And as you leave, you begin to, you look backwards, you begin to think, well, what do they have that I'm missing in the new church?

You're always looking to that brand. And that's, for me, that's a big deal. Yeah, there's many, John, there's many promises, the NAR puts up there. You know, many things that they will promise you and in this life and just things are leaving out, leaving out things in scripture that really should be focused on in the Christian ministry, such as genuine repentance and brokenness over sin. You know, you rarely see that. What you see is a lot of worship, a lot of emotionalism and a lot of the sensational. And what the NAR does promise you is maybe raw and

check power, you know, say living under the glory cloud or unlimited blessings or gifts and abundance. And I believe all this leads and we see this in the message. We see it leads to a spiritual pride and working things up through human effort, you know, they want to wait on God for something. The next big thing to come forth, some ministries that I know of have like a theme for the year and they've gone into the prayer clause that they've come out. Well, this is where God's taking us for the year, kind of like leading the children, children of Israel somewhere.

They're leading into a newer, newer, promised land and where God's going to take them to a new height, whatever it might be. Rather than just focusing on the things that the Bible teaches that we are to do in this life, which is humility, repentance, you know, victory over sin, living for God and then loving your neighbor. The very simple things are lost in all that sensationalism, all that emotionalism and all those beliefs. And I'm sure there's some that do focus on that, but the majority definitely does not. So the most deceptive part I would say

of William Brown's ministry by far and also the NAR is the Christian front that it puts on. They're able to come across as Christian capturing many sincere people who are the most vulnerable, I would say, because they want to believe. They want to know God. And so somebody's got that Christian heir about them. They've come across with a Christian front that can easily be deceived.

So had we had access to many of those earlier recordings of William Brown's, I believe it would have been clear that he was under the influence of something other than the word because We call it just a tail end and we've gone through it in our episodes before About he how we use certain practices that were just questionable and we see where he moved away from talking about those Practices that he used in a couple of his early recordings in 1947 The ones we have access to Such as where he talked about moving bracelets or causing

Crossed eyes to become straight with just his mind power alone Say and apart from the power of God He said he didn't even need the power of God to straighten someone's eyes out And he claimed that was given to him So we see earned back to her and his testimony even alluded to that He said I've told him not to say things like that and it just got so unbearable to him that he had to leave his ministry Because he kept saying things that were just you know not scriptural So I'm sure there are a lot now. I won't say all

But a lot of these men and women in ministry have put on a Christian front But behind the scenes, you know, they are much different and really a lot of them are not even qualified for ministry According the way the scripture qualifies men for for ministry and I'm y'all have spoken about that about the men that have been exposed You know in the last few years even but it whims case William Brown's case it was just his outright lion and misrepresenting Teening vents in his life or making up fabricated stories You know that really I would say disqualify him

The ministers of the NAR go even further with fabrications. We see so many Crazy things that they said Supposing to be from God, but these are things so outlandish. I would say I would definitely say they could never have happened Because otherwise this man's son great He's like a Moses or something You know things like that didn't even happen to Moses So the harm in the in the message to I would say in seeing all these things is in the ministers that are ministering the message today Especially the younger ministers who are coming up and who are sold out and are not doing the research

But they're just relying on what their parents have told them what other ministers have told them even the older ones And there's still some of the older crowd is still living that actually were part of the meetings The way in Bramham had you know, they rely on those stories and of course there's the whole story is not told And so the seeds of the healing revival courses produced all that we see today And I would say we see a lot of this in the NAR as well Like a second Peter 217 says, you know, these are wills without water

There's really no substance to them Clouds that are carried about with the tempest. They're blown about with every wind of doctrine of course And the Bible does say that the mist of darkness is reserved forever for them except they repent leaders, you know, they might not agree with me on this, but, but I believe we, and Brennan was unstable in the scriptures, but he's caused a generation because of that he's caused a generation of ignorance in the scriptures, by the way he acted.

He does have a mixture of Christ, the message is a mixture of Christ and Brennan, but, but you know that when you mix anything with the Word of God that would compete with Christ for attention and worship, it's definitely era and something to be avoided.

William Brennan would make claims like because he knew, because he believed he knew the author of the Word that it was better than really trying to know what the Word says. And if you tell people that, of course, you can ignore what the Word says because you can just say, you know, the author of the Word told me this, so what a voice came to him and he thought it was God. That's what he would believe what the Word meant or he would be teaching it out of his own ideas and injected himself. That's where we see that twisting, bending of scripture happening. So if you compare

what he taught, and we're going to do this in upcoming episodes, if you compare what he taught with scripture, we can see that he only bent the scripture to tell others about himself and how he fulfilled many scriptures in this day and caused the people to believe it.

I know from the ministers I've talked to, I've really asked them down, you know, down to the nitty gritty, you know, peel back this onion and tell me what convinces you that William Brennan was the prophet of this age and 100% every time they tell me it was his gift, it was hearing on tape, of course, that, you know, it was never wrong for the most part is what they, I mean, that's all they've heard as the times that it appeared to be never wrong. But I know for a fact that we've got scriptures where Jesus told us that we can never rely on gifts, supernatural signs,

you know, is vindication of the prophetic or a prophet or a minister. Jesus said that false prophets would arise doing great signs and wonders and would carry many away and deceive many. So these ministers that just say, well, the final straw or the final, when you peel back everything and you say, this is, this is why I believe is because of his miracles, his signs or whatever he has vindication rather than the correct teaching or teaching of the word of God, then you're really on shaky ground. So the message is not only on shaky ground because of the lies, now you're on

shaky ground because your first inclination is to believe the signs and wonders, you know, rather than the word of God. And that for me is the heart of the problem. What randomism created, like it or not, I know that if you're in the random cults, they tried to deny this, but random created a framework where the emotions replaced the gospel, the signs, wonders, There's miracles.

If you look back at the advertisements, the way that this movement was marketed, the way that they used the marketing strategy was they would have newspaper ads with, you know, Brannum included, signs, wonders, miracles, come ye, come see, it was like a circus, come see the miracle, come see the miracle.

Well then when you got there, you got into the emotion of seeing the miracle and they focused more on the emotion than they did the Bible. So whenever Brannum says something that is, you know, in some cases it's anti-biblical, some of the things he's saying, many cases it's just extra biblical.

When they hear those things, they don't care because they're caught up in the emotion. They're branded the, you know, William Brannum's brand or there's thousands of ministers that were in this, each different brand had a different version of the emotion that you could carry.

And they were looking towards that emotion than they, more than they were in, you know, in the Bible. Where it gets problematic is that is what all of this developed from. If you look at the charismatic movement, look at, you know, John Wember, he liked to call it the feels.

He would say we have the emotion, the feels, the signs, we can do the signs. And the focus becomes more on the emotion than it does the Bible. But more to the point, once you get caught up in that emotion, you get to be elite, you get to be different from all other Christians, even if you don't see yourself as an elitist, what happens is when you start to see other Christians that don't share those same emotions, you start to think of yourself as better than them, you're different.

You have, you have different emotions. And all of this, like I said, it's a framework that Brannum laid down that everybody is built upon. But the, the really scary part is if you understand that William Brannum himself admitted he had severe mental health issues, he admitted to being hospitalized for it.

And we've identified, we've had testimony where talking through his, you know, his complete psychosis in some of these cases, when you start to understand that many of those emotions were built upon something that developed from mental health issues, this turns into a huge, huge problem.

That's so correct. That's so, so right. I would say, as I mentioned before, the main drawing card of the message of what appeared to be supernatural, you know, happenings, which we've shown to cloud was definitely not supernatural.

It teaches you to think of yourself as totally unique from other Christians who are really not in the message. People say the message is Christ, you know, the message believers will say, only the bride believes the message and you're not in the bride unless you believe the message, or the bride is under a separate covenant.

And really to believe that and to believe that other people are saved, you have to believe the bride has a separate covenant with God other than any other Christian. And God has more than one covenant with Gentile Christians.

And the bride is more special and different than the regular Christian, or that the bride is at the only elect there is. And so people take that bent that way of random use to teach the scriptures by and one of the main parables that he used a lot was the wise and the foolish virgin.

And he illustrated that to be like the bride in the nominal church. But I want to show that later on in another episode I want to talk about that more and just show how that's that's not the case.

There's not really a lot of evidence for that. The same he uses the story of Eleazar searching for a bride for Isaac. And then the women of course, you know, the woman that became Isaac's bride was the bride of Christ and the other women who were not chosen were of course the foolish virgin and they were left out.

And that's used many times to illustrate William Brown's message. The serpent seed doctrines also used to show how the bride is God's seed and the rest are serpent seed or nominal Christians somewhere in between.

Now I'm not sure I've ever heard Brennan explain how nominal Christians are somewhere in between the seed of God and the serpent seed. There has to be a third seed somewhere if these nominal Christians are somehow saved and going to be in heaven, you know, as other Christians are.

So there's other sinister practices I believe in the message. Not only do they outright refer to other Christians as nominal or non-elect or foolish virgin or cannon fodder because they believe they're going through the tribulation when the world is going to be blown up.

They also have to be little other Christians and other churches and ways amongst themselves. They never see other Christians as they're equals in Christ. They'll always put them to the side. And in their pride, they have to place themselves as elite Christians or the elite of the elite.

Because how they do this is they would probably say things like we have the revealed word and which is the spoken word or you'll not hear the true word in a non-message church or all you're going to get into denominational churches or crumbs, you know, you won't get the full word or the bread of life.

And as odd though when they travel, you know, maybe go on vacation, there's no message churches around. You know, they might visit a Baptist church or a Pentecostal church and then they'll make statements like, well, if you can't get a loaf of bread, then you get a slice.

But then they also equate denominational churches as receiving the mark of the beast. So if the denominations are the mark of the beast, then why would you even want to go there to get a slice?

You know, it just doesn't make any sense sometimes things that they do. They tend to be little other ministers. The ministers themselves will be little other ministers who've really studied the word of God and put some effort into their sermons to really look at the context and the audience who the word was written to.

But no message ministers doing this to any broad extent, I would say they're only hearing what William Brannon has said about the word and that's where they get their sermons. content. They downplay study and anything outside of the message really. And they do say that when you go to school, because William Bram said this, when you go to school to learn to study the Bible, then you get further from God. You know, it's kind of odd, you know, when you're following a man like William Bram, you think you're getting closer to God. But if you're going to learn how

to study the Bible, then it's going to take you further from God. You know, those two things are contrary to one another. But I think if you said, John, you know, William Bram did have some mental issues. He tended to be jealous of others who were successful in ministry. He was especially jealous of men who probably graduated seminary had a good working knowledge of the Bible, which he didn't have. He knew he was out of his league with them and they didn't fit his agenda or his narrative about himself. So he really ended up condemning them. He belittled them every chance

of God. He indicated they could go very far with God. So here's some examples of a few quotes. I've got just picked out. He said this many times, but in 1950, this is very early on in his ministry and believe a style of this, January the 15th, he said, people's got putting on so much of the gospel's got to a thing. It's all padded up, educated up. They put them in the out here in these seminaries or cemeteries or whatever it is, all the same, both dead places. And that just put me in mind of a seminary preacher reminds me of an incubator chicken, a little incubator chicken,

just chirps and chirps and chirps and got no mommy. He's mechanically turned out, puts me in a mind of an incubator preacher too. You know, what a statement to make. I mean, here you are three years into your ministry to the broader public. And you've gotten famous with your healing revivals. And now you're now throwing off on ministers who are going to seminary. And whether he meant it or not, it all fit into his broader plan of him being the last day prophet of God.

You know, he didn't want you going out and they're studying the word of God. Stay away from the seminary. And of course, his ministers today, under the message, stay away from seminaries. They stay away from the study of God's word just so they can hear what the message teaches and stick to that. You know, it's really just a shame that that has happened. And that's another harmful thing in the message is harmful to Christian's growth. It's harmful to the ministry as trying to preach the word of God. Listen to another thing he said in 53, Israel and the church,

he said, that's what's the matter of day. There's death in the pot. Some of these old cold seminary formal ungodly places going on trying to teach some theology. They're tearing the people, tearing them away from Christ. So in the ministries that I've been associated with and those that are trying to expound the word of God that have been the seminary that understand the scriptures and the languages that came from the people that it was spoken to, the history behind it all. I mean, they're us.

be trying to get them to Christ and get them to understand the scriptures and an application that's true to them for this day and it's all very simple. But William Brownham had to pull people aside and condemn people from studying and just say it's only going to be revealed to us. So here's another quote he said in 1958, Queen of the South, he says, I thank the father that has hit it from the seminary students, the wise and imprudent and revealed it to babes, such as we learn his head from the eyes of the smart and educated,

it's revealed to babes, such as we'll learn. And what he was really meaning there is that he was meaning that if you're going to learn anything, you got to learn it from me and what I'm teaching you, you know, my interpretation of the word of God, that's really underlying in his agenda and what he really meant through all that I really believe.

You know, it's kind of funny. I grew up in the same way. I was indoctrinated in the same way. We did not like seminaries. We called them cemeteries and anybody who had any seminary training, we branded them as quote, unquote, intellectuals, which we use as a derogatory term. And now that I'm away from this, I'm thinking, well, that was actually a compliment.

But we we use it as as an insult. We did not like seminaries. And I get to think about that after I was leaving, I would rather hear a minister who has studied and understands the Bible than somebody who's just rattling off things because it's on his own whims.

And I started, I started comparing it to a dentist. Would you like to go to a dentist and have him take that little high pitched, you know, that drill that drives your ears crazy and stick it in your mouth and start drilling. And he's had no schooling whatsoever to understand how to use that drill or how to apply it. Would you even let him put the thing in your mouth? And yet we want to allow in these cults, we want to allow the same exact thing to happen with our souls. We want to allow people to start drilling on our

souls without having any sort of training or understanding in what is sound biblical theology and what is not. And the sad truth of it is, like I mentioned, there are mental health issues that caused all of this. But more to the point you mentioned earlier, William Brannum himself had little or no training. Well, when you go before other people, you know, your competitors are all trained individuals, how are you going to rise above them if you don't belittle them for their training? And how are you going to convince your crowds that you're, you have anything respectable to say without the training other than if you can convince them of

a doctrine, a false doctrine that we, we, we should allow these dentist ministers, these evangelists, to start drilling on our souls without having any training whatsoever. So the, so the last thing, John, those, that's that's so right. Just put the last thing I want to mention about one thing, William Brannum was a master of.

If it was he was a master of anything in the scripture, here's what he was a master of is the term called issa Jesus Issa Jesus to define it as a practice of interpreting a text by reading one's own ideas Opinions or biases into it rather than drawing the meaning out of it Yes, essentially imposing one's own interpretations own a text rather than to seeking to understand the author's intended meeting So if we really believe what the Bible said it was and if we and Brandon believed it He would never have approached it from his own point of view like he did and that was a fatal error

And that is what is one of the harmful things to the message believers today and it's harmful to be in the message because of it You know, it's fine to believe the promises of God hard for you that are in the word The William Bramham thought of himself very highly to place himself in the fulfillment of scriptures So either one or two things he was either self-deceived of it all or intentionally deceiving others or somewhere in between But I would conclude you know the best way to examine and teach the word is from exegetical point of view and

In this process, there's always an application for us today, you know, even though you're expounding scriptures And the original text there's always an application to us But exegesis is the critical explanation or interpretation of a text or scripture Especially religious texts like the Bible. So it involves careful examining the text language Historical context literary features to determine the original meaning and intent So that is what exegesis is not isegesis. That's the difference So I would say the message is harmful because Through through all of William Bramham's teaching the gospel is not well understood If you listen to a sermon start to finish you're going to question whether you're even into faith or not

People's faith is even directed at something other than Christ, you know in his work, you know in the end The doctrines of grace are not even preached all the riches of salvation God has given us is Never heard and many churches even a false gospel is believed and that's that's had to be corrected over the years The message closes people in and is limiting to them. It keeps people from spiritual growth You know because you've focused on just a certain set of scriptures and you and you don't broaden your horizons I never even heard say the whole book of Romans preached until I came out of the message and and there's wonderful things

In the book of Romans and to understand that book is very key to understanding your salvation But but it's not preached in the message Only bits and pieces It prevents people from true fellowship with the entire body of Christ It controls the mind and say in an abnormal way the mind is not free in Christ, but is bound by it that system of beliefs William Bramham just recycled You know what men have been doing in an earlier time and developed a narrative, you know about himself and then plagiarized, you know, these things from others. You know, he got Elijah from

Dali. He took the seventh church-hates messenger idea from Charles Tay's Russell with the Jova witnesses. He got his dispensational beliefs from analysts of the mysteries from C.I. Scophil's, you know, Bible study Bible. But after his death, you know, his legend grew and efforts through the men like Perry Green and Ed Biscoll and others just promoted Brennan's Miracle Signs, prophecies, healings, life story. And most of that was false. But maybe they didn't know any better at the time. And they only found out over time, but they never corrected it. And to this day, you have not corrected for the most part, you know, the things that they said. Any healings that

were took place in the meetings were way overstated. But in the coming episodes, John, I want to continue to expose, you know, how William Brattam injected himself in the scriptures, how he bent scriptures, you know, his false prophecies. There's many things that we can dive into there that I want people to hear because like I say, when I asked ministers about, have you heard about this 1952 prophecy? They'd never heard it. And how could they not, if they've been listening to the message for 30 years like I have? You know, but I'm also going to show how

you misrepresented the scriptures to his followers, you know, in order to promote himself. So I'm really looking forward to it, John. And we'll certainly have a good time doing it. Absolutely. And that's one of the funniest things that I've come to understand, whether you're working with the William Brattam cult or many of the variety of cults that are in the New Apostolic Reformation or Keras Mania, whenever you're helping somebody escape one of those cults, before you can tell them and explain to them why they're not supposed to believe a certain thing, you have to first explain what it was that they were supposed to believe in the first place.

Because people just simply haven't done their due diligence and they have no idea of the mess that they were involved with. So so much more mess and rotten fruit that we can talk through and we'll get into it more 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-Branum.org.

For more information about Roy Davis and William Branum, you can read the persuasive preacher, the gifted prophet, and the noble politician. And for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, both available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.