Robert Morris – How "Spoken Word" Theology Revived Branham's Heresy

Music Welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org, where the history proves that truth, or at least their version of it, is truly stranger than fiction.

And today I'm talking about Robert Morris. We've received, I don't know how many emails and few phone calls. We've had comments in the feeds asking about what is the connection between William Brannum and Robert Morris and Gateway Church. People who have studied Robert Morris, they, you know, looking at some of the things that he said, it's just really eerily similar to the things that many of the guests that we've had on the podcast talk about in their churches.

You know, the framework is very similar whenever you really dive in deep and you start to understand what it is they're saying, but more than that, why they're saying it. And you know, it isn't really from what I can understand. It isn't really a direct lineage of theology, but it is a direct framework of theology. And I guess you could say that many of these cults that we've examined, they share the same framework. I've said it before, but it's like somebody took a cookie cutter stamp of this is how you make a cult and they just started stamping

cults. And they would sprinkle a few doctrines, you know, so that when there were two people examine the different differences in the cults, they say, well, the doctrines are different, they must not be the same. But when you really start to peel the covers open and understand that, yeah, the doctrines may be different, but they're functioning and they're acting very much alike. And it becomes similar and, you know, quite frankly, I get questions from all kinds of cults because they hear people out of the Brannemite sect and they hear the things that they say, well, that's just like our cult.

That's exactly how they look and act and, you know, different things. There's different ways that you can tell a cult. I always recommend people go to read, you can go to freedomofmind.org or you can get Dr. Stephen Hassen's book, Combatting Cult Mind Control. And you can read the criteria that is used to discover, is this a destructive cult or is it just a cult following that's somewhat benign and harmless? And many of the people who have been on the podcast, they look at the different criteria of a destructive cult and they say, well, that's exactly what we had.

It's just, you know, it's a different name, different cult, different group, but it is definitely a cult. So we've had the questions about Gateway Church, and I, like I say, I don't believe that there's a, you'll find a direct trail of lineage, but there are some interesting things that you can, you can examine, you can see similarities between Gateway Church and Robert Morris, and all the way back to William Brannum in the message, and even before William Brannum.

One of the other things that's in common with a lot of these cults is the fact that there are leaders who are given unquestioned control, and some of them turn out to be very destructive, and many of them turn into ways of governing people that is not really healthy, but some of them go a step further and they become predators.

And that's really, honestly, if you look back through the history and you understand how all of this started, it's a little bit scary because there were quite a few predators that were in the mix, and then this framework was created that enabled more predators.

So the deeper that you go with this, the deeper, the deeper this mess gets, really, really dirty, really quickly. But anyway, so Robert Morris, for those who are unfamiliar with who he is, he was the pastor, I guess maybe still is the pastor of Gateway Church in Texas, and he resigned after, I think it was in 2024, he resigned after it was known that he had sexually abused a minor, and that news became public.

And so it exploded into this lengthy scandal that rocked the church and eventually, whenever Morris was sentenced, which was recently, he was sentenced to, I think, 10 years for the crimes that he had committed.

And if I understand correctly, he's maybe only spending about six months of that in jail. But regardless, Gateway Church is a large, non-denominational evangelical Christian multi-site mega church in South Lake, Texas, which is near for worth, which, as I'll get into later, it's a little bit of interest.

Gateway Church was ranked, I think, ninth largest in the United States in the year 2023, and there were approximately 25,000 or more people that were in attendance at that church. So Robert Morris had led this church to one of the largest in the nation, and he became a leading figure in the New Apostolic Reformation, who are NAR, NAR.

Morris was a spiritual advisor to President Donald Trump. And like many churches in the New Apostolic Reformation, he was very active in politics. And in the last episode that I did so low, I was talking about the subject of holiness.

and how in the New Apostolic Reformation, it's version of holiness. It's quite different from that of the Bibles. And there are, you know, when you compare the two, they're not even similar. When you look at the Biblical model, it is a model of holiness that purifies the group as they continue. In other words, things progress in a good way. But when you look in and examine any of these leaders in the New Apostolic Reformation, the way that they progress is not a good way. They progress more towards destruction. And once they get to the place where, like Robert Morris, where the leader falls and it's exposed that something

really, really bad has happened, what happens is the apostolic framework of this cult, this New Apostolic Reformation cult empire, I should say. They just pick the leader back up and put them back into their position of authority where they can repeat the same thing. And Morris is a good example of what I was trying to say in the last podcast because he's quite literally the epitome of what I was describing with the Moses model where the leaders are untouchable.

The leader gets to be appointed in these positions of apostolic authority where their members cannot question them. And that was growing up, that's the way that we were with William Brannum even though he was dead. But even in some of the more destructive churches in the Brannum sects, the ministers were untouchable. And especially those who had been in contact with William Brannum, they were at least maybe not all, but many of them were excessively destructive. And they were untouchable. You couldn't question them. Some of them had done some horrific things.

But Robert Morris is one of the people who he, I think it was back in the 1980s that all of this began. And he came under the scrutiny of different leadership because they had evidently found out that he had done some things that were not good. I'll keep it clean for the YouTube version so that when this goes out to YouTube, I don't get dinged for talking about what he actually did. But let's just say it was not good. But he gets, according to the way this new apostolic framework works, this apostolic authority, he goes to another apostle and they basically

let him repent. And he rises back up into his authoritarian model as though nothing ever happened. And this happens time and time again, which I'll get into some of that in the history. But as a central figure, they become an authoritarian leader who cannot be touched. And the very, the very, Gary thing about the new Apostolic Reformation is that it is not just one central figure, not just one cult group.

You have multiple, multiple of these authoritarian figures in a network so that when one falls, one cult leader can say, help me other cult leaders. And the other cult leaders will come to their rescue because if one of them falls, all of the doctrines that they have shared through this network became, you know, they become in question.

And quite honestly, I think the bigger underlying reason is some of the cash flow suddenly stops when one of the people fall. So there's a reason why there's a motivation behind lifting these people up.

And if it was just one cult that we're talking about, you know, the cult leader falls, it disintegrates and eventually it becomes no more. But in the new Apostolic Reformation structure, when one, especially one as large as Gateway Church, if it were to fold, it has an impact because there's a blast radius that is much, much bigger.

But Morris had apparently abused, it was a, I think she was 12 years old, a 12 year old young lady in the 1980s. And you can go to the Royz report and you can read more about this on JulieRoyz.com.

But apparently after that abuse happened and he tried to silence her, he went through this common process of restoration. And he was resumed back into his ministry as though nothing ever happened without any of the crimes having been reported to the police.

And again, if you go back to that podcast that I did on the holiness, the one previous to this that I did by myself, this Moses model was established for this very purpose. So that the leadership cannot be questioned by the people and they imply that it is only by God that they're being judged.

However, that's really not the case. It is only by the other Apostles and likely by the Apostles cash flow. If one person were to be insignificant in the cash flow, then let him go.

He's, he's caused his own destruction. But if he's going to hurt my wallet, I'm going to immediately lift this guy back up. And we see this happening time and time and time again. Like I said, if you want to learn more, you can go to JulieRoyz report.com or honestly, you can go to Google and just search for new Apostolic Reformation and type in any array of things that you might consider to be a predator in his, his or her prey.

You'll find many, many examples of this. So all of this happened in the 1980s, apparently, and then came to a head in 2024. When all was said and done, he eventually pled guilty because he wanted to accept responsibility for his conduct.

which in most cases that's a good thing. Maybe that, maybe it came from the heart and who knows. I'm not going to say that that's not in his heart. I can't tell what is in his heart.

But for an average person, that's a good thing. When you're talking about one of these apostles in the New Apostolic Reformation, it gets a little bit more sketchy because there are multiple cards, multiple hands being played.

And the one card that is thrown out is obviously the appeal to God. I've done a bad thing. I'm going to prison. Please forgive me. Hopefully he is forgiven. You know, I'm not going to say what's in his heart.

Who knows what's in his heart. But by making that appeal to the, I've used this term in the little comics that I used to make from time to time. And I'll probably still make some more.

The Apostolic Governance Committee. The New Apostolic Reformation apparently has this committee of apostles that is far above and beyond the control and the guidance of normal, lowly people like you and I. And they can say, okay, well, this guy's a predator and he's making us a lot of money.

So let's pick him back up. Well, this appeal to God to this Apostolic Governance Committee, whoever it is that he's appealing to, the apostles in that network have the ability to pick them back up.

And they have this code of honor that if they've done something wrong, they must publicly admit and confess to their sins. And by following that code of conduct, you have then opened the door to your Apostolic Restoration.

So on the one hand, yes, he is making appeal to God. On the other hand, that confession opened the door so that he can be restored again, which in the case of a person who is a predator, there is no position, there is no church that should open their doors to him as a leader ever again.

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to my opinion. That's just not the way life works, man. If you are a predator, you don't get to go back into a position where you have a problem that can impact others negatively.

And in this case, very, very negatively. I just don't think that that's a good idea. But again, that's the way the structure of this new Apostolic Reformation cult has been created and established and it seems to be going this way time and time and time again.

So anyway, that's the background on Robert Morris for anybody who is unfamiliar. But after going through all of that statement and understanding who Robert Morris is, you're still left with a question, well, how does this tie back to Branum?

And I know that's the question that many people have been asking me, so it's a bit complicated. It's not as simple of an answer as I think people would like for me to say.

It's not a black or white trail of history. And if anybody who's listened to me through my podcast, have listened enough to know the history in the intricate details. It's not even something that can be explained in one podcast.

You have to really understand the history, and honestly, there's very few people that are willing to take the time to go back and study and learn all of the history. So I'm going to do my best to try to sum it up in the part of one podcast, and hopefully it will come out in a way that people can understand.

But yes, there are some historical links to William Brannum that are worth mentioning with Robert Morris. And there are, there are some doctrines that Robert Morris was teaching that when I heard it, I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe in this day and age, we're hearing the same things that Brannum was preaching in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

And it's rebranded, repackaged in the Robert Morris fashion, but if you understand where it came from, how and why, and then understand also that the nature of his crimes also matched the nature of many of the starting positions of many different trails of history, you begin to understand that something's just not quite right here, and you have to ask the question, is this really a move of God, or was this something else?

And I'm going to argue, of course, of this podcast that definitely this was something else, and there's some history that I think a lot of people who have studied Robert Morris just really aren't that familiar with.

If you go back through the history that Charles and I have compiled together in the revival history series of our podcast, people who've studied this realize and recognize that whenever you're hearing the trace elements of theology and history that really weren't even similar to what we see today, but the roots were planted and they began to grow kind of like a snowball going down a hill.

It's a very small snowball. You can take the snowball and you might hit somebody with it and they might be a little bit aggravated, but as it goes down the hill and gets larger and larger and larger, if the hill is big enough and there's enough snow, you can take out a small car with the snowball that went down the hill.

Well, some of these theological trails are the same way. They started out somewhat benign. They were slightly off the mark. They weren't quite biblical. Some of them were anti-biblical. Some of them just extra-biblical, but as through cross-pollination, as people brought their own ideas and especially when they started bringing politics into it, the doctrines began to grow and develop and turn into something that wasn't really Christian, but because they were being presented by Christian ministers, they were accepted widely by many people as Christian doctrine.

And enough of them began to be in... introduced into the movement, that the nature of Christianity and the nature of biblical history itself began to change, right down to the original sin. If you study in the latest book that I've written from Christian identity to the NAR, I give a large swath of history where you can understand how this happened, but right down to the nature of the original sin, it was twisted by leaders of what was called Christian identity to believe that the nature of the sin was actually sex, and by changing it from simply in Genesis it says that they disobeyed God, and that was a horrific thing,

they disobeyed God, because they shifted it and changed it to sex, well now it shifted and changed the concept of salvation, because the Christian identity doctrine taught that Eve made it with the serpent to produce a separate bloodline, so you had a bloodline that came from purely evil, and you had a bloodline that came from Adam's lineage.

So literally two bloodlines, the good guys and the bad guys, and this was becoming quite popular in the United States, especially in the late 20s, early 1930s, and to the extent forward, Henry Ford was publishing his Dearborn Independent with leaders who were pushing Christian identity doctrine and making Christian identity a popular thing.

It developed into the race wars and race riots of the 60s, because people started to say that the bad bloodline, you can see it in today's humanity because we can see those who have white skin and those who have dark skin, and they started attacking the Jews and the blacks, because of this doctrine, this two-seed doctrine of, Branham called it his serpent seed doctrine, but it was the two-seed doctrine of Christian identity, and what I'm trying to make you understand with this is that when you take the nature of something that is spiritual and you try to humanize

it, so they tried to humanize the fall and say that it was a bloodline, it was a sexual thing. Whenever they tried to humanize it, they took the meaning that was in scripture away and brought it into the human realm, so they humanized the concept, and when you continue down that path, it changes everything in the Bible, right down to they eventually tried to humanize Jesus himself, and this movement was developing into a doctrine where the Christian identity leader saw himself as wanting to purge all of the evil from the United States, which literally meant the people.

weren't white. And during this period of time, while mixing with the healing revival, it began to produce weird doctrines like the manifested sons of God, doctrine. And this doctrine is the idea that God can manifest Himself into a human, and the human can become like a God. And according to this theology, the ultimate example of this manifestation was Jesus Christ. So much like they did in the Garden of Eden, they humanized even Jesus God sending His own Son as Jesus Christ to say that Jesus was just a human, merely a human.

And that He was empowered by God. He was God was manifesting Himself in Jesus. And so basically, He became a superhuman. And when you understand that concept and then understand what they're trying to say in the New Apostolic Reformation, it's that you too can become superhuman. It would be like the boy at the newsstand who's selling the comic books of Superman saying, you too, my friend, you can read this comic book and you too can become just like Superman. That is literally what these guys are saying, but they're doing it from behind pulpits, which is absurd when you stop and think about it. But it started

to take hold. And because of the popularity of the British Israel doctrine, the idea that we are the 10 lost tribes of Israel who are living in the United States and Canada and the British Isles, because we are of this royal seed, we are the ones who are in the time of separation in the end times whenever the sheep are separated from the proverbial goats, they're the ones who are going to be doing the separating. That's essentially how this doctrine began to develop. And I'm saying we, not as we, like I believe this, but that's

what the doctrine is teaching. They literally want to be the enforcers. They want to be the ones who are wielding the weapon saying, no, this is the bad person I'm going to purge Him forever. And this is a person who, if you're in the worst of Christian identity, this is a person with white skin, so they're a good guy. Really, that's how this played out.

And to think that that has gone through all of those stages of race riots, race wars, but still remained in the church until it developed into the New Apostolic Reformation, it's really unbelievable. But that is, that is part of the history, which again, it's more than I can cover in this podcast. But whenever you try to understand how people like Robert Morris are doing what they're doing and why, there's some of this history that you have to understand. So let's get into a bit of that. The first name that we should begin with is Gordon Lindsay.

And Lindsay, who was William Brannum's campaign manager, who later became the head of Christ for the Nation's Institute, he was in the Christian identity movement, apparently, because we find multiple times in history where he is the keynote speaker at Christian identity conferences.

But before that, he was trained at Life Bible College, which was the institution that was established by Amy Simple McPherson of the four square gospel church, which also will have a strange tie, which I'll get into later with Robert Morris.

But Lindsay was a, I can't remember his exact title, but he was basically a field operator who was in the district that was adjacent to the Sharon Orphanage, North Battleford district, where the Laterane Revival would break out, and William Brannum would spearhead the movement, and become the foremost leader of the Revivals.

Gordon Lindsay would become his campaign manager, and together they would publish the Voice of Healing magazine, and it would turn into the Voice of Healing movement. They would be Voice of Healing conventions, which would set up the framework for many of the, you know, the New Apostolic Reformation conventions that we have today, they're basically a remnant of that history that was laid down by William Brannum and Gordon Lindsay.

And again, Lindsay is attending, not only attending, but he's keynote speaker in these Christian Identity conferences, and if you look at the timeline, one of the best timelines that I have seen established is in the book by Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right.

When you understand that the timeline in which Christian identity was turning racist, and then compare that to the timeline of Lindsay, you see that Lindsay is joining into it during that time, which raises all kinds of questions that cannot be answered because Lindsay is no longer alive.

But we do know that he was in it at the time in which it was turning very racist, and he is mentoring and helping to organize the campaigns of William Brannum, who was also mentored by a different Christian identity leader, the second and command of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan, a man by the name of Roy E. Davis.

This has a very colorful history. I go through some of that in my book, Preacher Behind the White Hoods. This is literally what I found out whenever I suddenly realized that the cult that I grew up in, the William Brannum message cult of personality, was not what it said to be, it was not what it claimed to be.

There was large parts of its history that was covered up, and that history revolves Davis. And the interesting tie back to Fort Worth, Texas is that Roy Davis, whenever he wrote into Gordon Lindsay, son of a letter, talking about how he was William Brannum's mentor in the Pentecostal faith. He said that he was a member of the Fort Worth, Texas Chamber of Commerce and on the executive committee of the same. He was born and raised near Fort Worth, Texas. And he was ordained to preach the gospel in a Baptist church there. And it's a history that it's much larger than this podcast can hold. So I won't go deep into it.

But just to give you some highlights, when you look at Robert Morris and the accusations, his admission, the nature of the crime, when you study Roy Davis, the nature of the crime is very similar. Davis apparently had an affection for young women. And Davis as an evangelist back in the days before there were automobiles on the road. He's traveling by train. He suddenly came to the realization that if his wife and his children are in Texas and he's traveling to Georgia, she's not going to know if he falls around in Georgia and eventually falling around, turned into many other things. But the climax of that history is that he realized

that he could get married in Georgia while still married to her back in Texas. And nobody would know. Only he did get caught. So there's some weird funny history there. But the long story short is when he landed in Indiana and started to plant the church that became my grandfather's church, William Brandham's Brandham Tabernacle. He was running from the law because he had taken a young girl across state lines for the purposes of sex, which is a violation of the Man Act. So he was being accused of the Man Act and it made big news. And much like the apostles today of the New Apostolic Reformation, he was above

being accused by the church. The church just let him continue. And in fact, they threw this big revival on the grounds in Jeffersonville. It attracted William Brandham. Brandham came into the movement. And this is where Brandham would first hear the serpent seed, the Christian identity doctrine. And so from the very beginning of his ministry, Brandham has a different view of what the original sin was. And as you understand the Christian identity doctrine, you understand that each step along the way, he has a twisted view of what is salvation, what is the spiritual versus the human. All of these things, his perception is skewed

by the Christian identity doctrine that is taught to him by Roy Davis. And many years later, you start to see these things start. emerging in his sermons. So that's the background to the history that I'm about to get into, but when you compare some of the things that are being said by Robert Morris and his sermons and compare them to what Branham is teaching, it's really odd because I heard it and I'm scratching my head thinking that's exactly what Branham said. 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 William Branham Historical Research's website, www.William-Branham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, 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 Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. Even though Jesus was fully God, he completely laid down his divinity when he was on this earth,

completely so that he could be fully human. So, for you to understand the deep ties between what William Branham established and what later developed into the Word of Faith movement, the prosperity gospel movement, the manifested sons of God doctrines that we see today, the New Apostolic Reformation's foundation, basically. You have to first understand what Branham taught as the spoken Word. And when I hear that phrase, it sends off all of these triggers in my head, because growing up, spoken Word publications was the business entity that William Branham's sons established after William Branham died to publish the spoken Word.

And I can remember a sermon after sermon where the minister is holding his hands up, and he says, it's just like a rifle, and he's got his hands up like this, and he says, you have to look through the spoken Word to see the Bible, and only then can you hit your target. And he's holding up a spoken Word book, which is literally a transcript of a sermon by William Branham. So they were equating William Branham's sermons to what they called the spoken Word, and it was a companion to the written Word. In some of the more destructive versions of William Branham's cult, I've been to churches like

this, the spoken Word. word actually was superior to the written word. If the spoken word said something that disagreed with the Bible, they chose the spoken word over what was said in the Bible.

And sadly, that's more common, I think, than people want to admit. There are a lot of cases where William Brandham said things that were actually anti-biblical, but people will choose the anti-biblical version over what is the biblical version. And that's what he the spoken word. So to understand it, you have to understand that, as I said before, the Christian identity doctrine was developing into different theologies. And it was embedding itself into the revival movements through people like Gordon Lindsay, like Roy Davis, men who are teaching the Christian identity core concepts, but adding biblical theology to it to make it sound

more appealing to the church members. And this idea that the manifested sons of God, the idea that Jesus himself was a manifestation of God, rather than God sending his son, like the Bible said, the way that they did this was they tried to develop the notion that the word spoken when it says in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God. They tried to twist that Bible verse to say that Jesus was instead of the son of God. He was a thought that was expressed verbally by God, and then spoken into power, essentially. And if you go back to some

of William Brandham's very, very theoretical sermons, he says that in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, the word was God. Now the word was the beginning, but before it was a word, a word is a thought made manifest. Now God had to think it before it could become a word, then he spoke the word and it materialized that same one that sent the Lord Jesus here by his spoken word. It materialized and became the son of God, died as an innocent for the guilty.

So under William Brandham's corthiology, Jesus was just a human being, he was just a man, and he was spoken by the breath of God through the thought expressed, this manifested son of God thing. God spoke and then it happened. Think of how the word of faith operates, you speak, and then it happens. This is where this came from. Brandham is teaching this, and it's not new to Brandham.

Brandham was mentored by, in the Revival, he was mentored by FF Bosworth, who admitted, I think it's in the end of his book, Christ the Healer, he says that he was heavily inspired by EW Kenyon. So you've got EW Kenyon, who many of these doctrines did originate from, going through FF Bosworth, into Brandham, into the word of faith, into the Revival, and the rest is history. It turns mess, but Brannum's version of it specifically, it used the term, the spoken word, because whenever he would read, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the

word was God, he would say, that was the spoken word, that was God's thought expressed and it came into Jesus and Jesus became a manifestation of the Son of God. So when you understand that this manifestation of God was literally God who had a thought and spoke it as the spoken word into Jesus and it turned Jesus a human into God, when you understand that that's where this theology came from, it really makes you pause because this is one of the most heretical things that you can do.

This is actually anti-biblical, but more than that, this is anti-Christ. This is an anti-Christ doctrine. That's what William Brannum is saying, and he's using the term, the spoken word, when he does this, which is key if you want to understand Robert Morris' theology.

William Brannum goes on to say that, again, when you don't understand the beginning of the Bible, which he did not, he understood the Christian identity version of it, you also can't understand salvation. So in his worldview, Jesus, who was a human, a mirror human being, who was manifested, who had this manifested spirit, when you understand how that works, you have a human vessel who is empowered with a spirit, well, what happens when that spirit leaves the human?

In William Brannum's worldview, and apparently, if you're understanding what Robert Morris is saying here and in another quote that I'll play for you, when the spirit leaves Jesus, he is just a mortal human being.

Well, that was Brannum's exact theology. He said that before he died, the spirit left him in the Garden of Gethsemane, he said he had to die a man. And the reason behind this, he said it was God that anointed that flesh.

In other words, under Brannum's theology, God had the spoken word, the spoken word went into the flesh, which was human flesh, and Brannum explicitly says which was human flesh referring to Jesus. He said that if he had went there as God, he would have never died that kind of death because you can't kill God.

So again, to reiterate, William Brannum, in the lettering revivals, he's the man who's leading the charge for the revivalists. He is the most popular in the revival. There are many men and women who are in the revival hundreds, if not thousands of evangelists, who are listening to William Brannum, who are picking up on his doctrine, who are accepting it, who are planting all of these churches in the networks that would eventually become the new apostolic reformation, all of these apostolic churches.

And he is teaching the Christian identity doctrines that he learned from Roy Davis, the second in command of the clergy. He is also being led by the, he's managed in the campaigns by Gordon Lindsay, who is a keynote speaker in the Christian identity movements. So every single evangelist, male or female, who are in these movements, who are also attending the Christian identity movements, the conventions that they had for Christian identity, they see Gordon Lindsay and, oh, he was a keynote speaker. This doctrine, it must be affirmed by William Brannum. Then they hear William Brannum and he's teaching

and it twists and changes the understanding of true Christian doctrine, the core concepts of the Bible become twisted and skewed to fit the Christian identity model, not the biblical model. And that's exactly what's happening here. But the key to understand is William Brannum pretty well branded it. This doctrine was branded. This idea that God had a thought and expressed it in the thought expressed became Jesus. And that was literally the foundation of the word of faith.

God, God spoke and he believed what he said. And we believe what he said. If we believe in that spoken word, we're believing in Jesus. And it comes to pass that he is divinely God. That is how they say this and they will use phrases like just like Robert Morris did. He was fully God.

They will say this and believe it. But what they're not telling you is they believe that he's fully God because of the spoken word. And that phrase, the spoken word became essentially the branding that Brannum would use for this. When you hear word of faith, they tried to rebrand it.

Kenneth Hagen used the word reima. There are different phrases and different terminologies that they use. But when you hear spoken word, you can almost be certain if they're using the phrase spoken word and they're using it in a way that is taking the divinity away from Jesus Christ, trying to say that he's just a human. They are, and especially if they're teaching the word of faith doctrines, they are teaching William Brannum's doctrine, not even so much Kenneth Hagen or the other leaders of the word of faith. They are specifically teaching William Brannum's doctrine. That was his branding and that was his company name, the spoken word. So the next question

that I had, after I learned that Robert Morris is teaching the anti-Christ doctrine that William Brannum was teaching, did he also use the phrase, the spoken word, or did he use the different new branding that is used in the word of faith movement, the NAR today? Which did he use? And I started to understand, as I began to study his sermons, not only is he using the phrase spoken word, he is using that phrase in the same exact way that William Brannum taught it.

We're talking about in this series, hearing God, so obviously we need to be good stewards of the written Word of God. We need to honor it as the infallible. But I'm saying, are you stewarding the spoken Word? In other words, when God speaks something to your heart, what do you do with it? It's very important. When we talk about stewardship, we talk about stewarding our time, our energy, our resources, and all that's important. But we have to have this message in a series about hearing God. How do you steward the Word God speaks to you? So the

question, again, how did Robert Morris come across William Branham's spoken Word theology, spoken Word doctrine, his anti-Christ theology, where Jesus was just a human, where did he get this? And again, you have to understand that William Branham is mentored by the second and command of the clan. This is where he first hears the Christian identity doctrine. He mentions this on recording. He is being, his campaigns are managed by Gordon Lindsay, who was a speaker, keynote speaker, and Christian identity conferences, speaking to large numbers of men and women, some of whom are evangelists, some of whom may have

attended the Christian identity conferences, maybe even one, the ones that Gordon Lindsay is at, and they're hearing these doctrines for themselves. They're hearing Branham say directly these spoken Word concepts. So you have hundreds, if not thousands of evangelists, and ministers who are hearing Branham himself, say the spoken Word, Branham is selling his recordings, and people are buying these recordings. They're listening to them. You have countless numbers of people who are listening to Branham say over and over the spoken Word. And once you get into the 80s, whenever Robert Morris shifted to Carers Mania, and many of the

others did, you had spoken Word publications who are also publishing this. So they're literally hearing about the spoken Word on a cassette tape or a booklet that is labeled the spoken Word, which did it come from. It's hard to say. There's no way to know who is the first person, but you can, you can be sure that there were many people who had heard this concept of the spoken Word. And I know that people who are familiar with Robert Morris, they'll say that likely it came from his connections with James Robinson. Because James Robinson was also

a Baptist who converted to the charismatic movement. He was a popular televanjelist, and it could be, there's no way for me to know, but more than likely, you know, it was one of the many, many hundreds, if not thousands of people who heard William Branham say the spoken Word. And that shaped the theology that would eventually become word of faith. But it's not Robinson that I'm going to focus on. It's actually a man by the name of Jack Hayford. And whenever you're thinking about charismatic movement mixed with the word of faith movement and understanding Branham's flavor of this, the spoken word

flavor, the voice of God flavor, when you understand that he's teaching that doctrine and he's teaching the Christian identities skew of that doctrine. You have to look back to Hayford because Hayford was also a four-square minister. He went to the same exact life Bible college that Gordon Lindsay went to. And there's some very interesting history when you understand the history of Hayford. I know we have caller ID now, but I have several friends that have unlisted vote numbers.

Two that call me a lot that I communicate with a lot. Two of our apostolic elders James Robinson and Jack Hayford. And so many times my phone, I'll get a phone call and it says no caller ID. I'm thinking it's probably James or Jack, you know. Well Jack Hayford was an American Pentecostal minister, Chancellor Emeritus of the King's University, author, broadcaster, accomplished songwriter, the list goes on. He was a lot of things in the Christian religion. But he was formerly pastor of the church, I think it's called the Church of the Way in Van Nijs, California. This was one of the flagship churches for the four-square

denomination. The same denomination that Gordon Lindsay was trained in. The same denomination many of the others that Chuck Smith, we mentioned in the last podcast, he was a member of this. If you go down the Christian Christian identity path, you have many Christian identity leaders connected to it and not to say that they're connected to that today, but in their history, they have a history of training people who became Christian identity leaders. I'll just say it like that. But he was a, like I say, he was really big in the Pentecostal faith, Pentecostal religion. Several interesting facts about Hayford. The actor Dean Jones, who,

if you're a fan of the classic Disney movies, which I am, Dean Jones is a name you'll be familiar with. He was in several really good movies. I think my favorite was Blackbeard's Ghost. It was a great movie if you haven't seen it. But Dean Jones was a elder in his church, as was Pat Boone, who became a big name and cares Mania, along with Jan and Paul Crouch, the founders of the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Some big names were associated with Hayford. Well, Hayford, as I said, attended life Bible college. And he was attending the college

in the year 1954, which is when you look at the history, it's just kind of an unbelievable history. As I said before, Boy Davis, William Brennan's mentor goes out to California, Brennan, who is a no name from this little small town and the middle of nowhere towards the Kentucky border of Indiana, suddenly rises to international fame.

How did he do it? He connected to people in Los Angeles. How did he connect to Los Angeles? We don't know. Davis was there. Was he connecting? I don't know. There's a lot of questions around that time of history.

But what we do know is that after Davis left and after Brandon did connect with these big names, he started connecting to people in the four-square church and in many of the Pentecostal sects within the nation.

But one of the key figures that he connected to was this man named Leroy Cobb, who was also in the four-square denomination. Cobb started to produce this video called the 20th century prophet, which was made specifically to advertise William Branham as the prophet for the 20th century.

And so in 1954, as Jack Hayford is at Life Bible College, Leroy Cobb is going all throughout the four-square churches in California and showing his video of how William Branham is the prophet for our age, basically.

And that is, again, it's connected to the four-square church, which is a little bit unbelievable. 1954, William Branham holds a big revival on the West Coast and probably on the heels of this video that's being produced.

1954 also is the time that, as Christian, this is another podcast for another day. I think you can listen to this in the converging apostasy series I do with Steve. But this flying saucer theology, which was really big in Christian identity, came into the Laterane post-World War II healing revivals, and it's even on the front page of the voice of healing magazines.

1954, Nixon gives a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast to the full gospel businessmen, which included Branham. You can see Branham in the photo. And he's telling people that the battle is in the minds.

We need to fight the battle in the mind. We're going to fight the things that communism are doing to the minds of the people with our own barrage of things we're going to do to the minds.

He made this appeal to the Christian ministers. And not long after this, or it's hard to know what came first. But the Christian ministers started doing propaganda campaigns about hydrogen bomb scenarios over Houston, Texas.

You can even see that on the front page of the voice of healing magazine. 1954, Chuck Smith becomes Paul Cain's campaign manager, Paul Cain, who is also big in the New Apostles. Spellic Reformation, he was part of the Kansas City Fellowship, a big part of the founding of International House of Prayer in Kansas City.

This is 1954. And again, Chuck Smith came out of this life Bible college. Chuck Smith is part of the four square church and a leader of the church. So Hayford is in the midst of all of this.

And as he is graduating, he is watching as Brannem is being promoted as the end time 20th century prophet, the guy, this is the big guy. And so it's hard to say what he was thinking, but it's very easy to say that if you were in the four square church, this was being heavily promoted.

And there's a strong possibility that you accepted the propaganda that was being fed to you. At minimum, Jack Hayford remained in the mindset. And we can see that there is this weird connection of the spoken word being taught at the churches that he is being affiliated with.

So we know that there is at least a connection through Hayford. There are probably many, many other connections. 1956, the same year that Jack Hayford graduated from Life Bible College was the 50th anniversary of the Azusa Street Revival.

And William Brannem was one of the keynote speakers who came to the big festival for this. And this again, this is all being sponsored by the four square church. Right after he was dubbed the 20th century prophet, he is one of the keynote speakers at the four square church in Los Angeles.

And it's hard to say whether he was there or not. We don't have any attendance records, but the fact that he's in the four square church, the fact that he's attending Life Bible College at the time that all of this is going on, there is no way, at minimum, there is no way that he did not hear of William Brannem.

And I don't find any place where he denounced William Brannem's Heresy. And that's, I think, the bigger key. If he came in contact with Brannem, which he had to of, there was no way he did not and did not denounce the Heresy, he's part of the problem.

So Jack Hayford becomes one of the key pillars of, in the circle, inner circle of fellowship within Robert Morris's church. And he's apparently even on Speeddough for Robert Morris. And he has a direct connection to all of this.

So I can say without a doubt that that was a channel from which you could have some influence, I would say, from William Brannem to Robert Morris. But again, without having the ability for me to ask directly, Robert Morris, where did you hear William Brannem's spoken word theology?

Where did you hear Brannem's doctrine that Jesus was just a man who died as just a man on the cross, a human being who died for the sins of the world, which died and then There was nothing because a human being died, not God.

Where did you get this doctrine? I can't really ask him, so I can't say, but at least I've given a plausible trail of history that can show you where a hundred, if not a thousand different ministers could have given him this theology.

That's the sad truth of this. In these apostolic networks, the way in which the information spreads and the way that it has developed over time through history, you don't know, the guy sitting next to you may have been influenced by this and he may become a leader in the movement.

He may have some sort of skewed and twisted doctrine in his head that he learned from these leaders who were pushing Christian identity and other politics as the quote unquote Christian gospel. There may be others out there who have learned it as well, who step up and become leaders.

There's no way to know. But until more people stand up and say, no, we denounce this. We don't enjoy you talking negatively about Jesus Christ if we're a Christian. You shouldn't be preaching an anti-Christ doctrine.

And until there's more people standing up and saying this, I think the problem will just continue to develop and grow and you can see how bad it has grown today. Robert Morris being key example.

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-Branham.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian identity to the NAR.

Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Automals. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye.

Bye. Bye.