William Branham's Conversion to Christ

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org. And with me I have my co-host, researcher, minister, and friend Charles Paisley, the founder of ChristianGospelChurch.org.

And together we're examining the history and the intersections in history between William-Brannum and other key figures that either influenced or were influenced by the post-World War II healing revivals. Charles, today we have a packed episode.

There's almost no way that we can fit all of this information into one single episode, but we're going to try. Yes, I know, John. We've got a boatload to cover. And I think, as I was thinking about it the last couple days, hopefully maybe we can focus on two or three highlighted cases, gets to show some good evidence for that.

And hopefully our listeners will be very excited to hear what we got to share. I know today we're going to be looking into when William Brannum came into contact with Roy Davis and got his start in ministry.

That's a lot to pack into one episode. Yes, and I will never forget when I first discovered who and what Roy Davis was. This is the deepest, darkest secret of the message called following.

And we had literally no idea. No idea. And I'll just hold up the picture real quick, right off the bat. Roy Davis's pastor's picture advertised in William-Brannum's magazine. Roy Davis, the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

It's the same man. Right. It's such a fascinating history. In fact, just this single man makes my research and my websites get a lot of attention from even non-religious people because this is a sinister character in American history.

Yeah. It's really something, John. It still disturbs me to this day, the facts that have unearthed in this line of reasoning and research, the things that we found. I think this is, for me, the part of the message that when you find it out, it makes you feel dirty, John.

You feel dirty that you had been influenced by some of this stuff because it is so sinister. Right. So many bad repercussions came as a result of it. Yeah. And it's tied to some American history.

to some very critical milestones in American history that are scars on America, right? When I first came in contact with this information and started researching, I literally could not have pieced it together without a historian who is deeply involved in studying the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Not that Roy Davis was the assassin, but Davis was there, and literally was helping create the scenario that enabled the assassination. He was involved in the protests. We actually have video footage of Roy Davis processing in front of the theaters there in Dallas.

Yeah, I know when Kennedy died, it definitely was not a sorrowful event, I guess I'll say it to these people. The death of Kennedy was celebrated by all of these men when that happened.

And so it really was a very sinister and remember Kennedy was the first Catholic president, right? So back to one of the enemies of the clan. You know, when we grew up in the message, John, we'd had no idea that the roots of the message went back to Roy Davis and the white supremacy views and the Ku Klux Klan, which we're gonna talk about a little bit in this episode.

We had no idea that that was there. However, some of that ideology that William Brannum learned there carried into the message and was still talked to us, but it was taught in kind of somewhat disconnected from the history of where it came from.

And I know at some point we're gonna look forward to getting into a little bit of those teachings themselves and where they came from. But yeah, with William Brannum's conversion story, maybe let me share his official story and then we'll kind of go into what we know really did happen.

That's a good idea. So in his official story, you know, in all of the materials that you get from the group that's the official or the accepted public version. The quote unquote official version.

Yeah, so in the official version, so kind of picking up from where we left off last time, William Brannum had left Indiana and we looked at the things that had been happened at the time that he left Indiana.

You know, a lot of very criminal suspicious things that went on when he left. He left Indiana and in his official story, he goes to Arizona. He stays there until he hears about the death of his brother.

His brother Edward died in June, I think, 1929. And then he comes back to his brother's funeral. At his brother's funeral, in one telling, he says that's the first time in his life he ever even heard a prayer in one of his many versions of his story.

And after the funeral, his parents convince him to stay at home, help take help with the family. And so he does and he takes a job working for the public. service company, which is the electric company in Indiana. And about two years later, he has a near-death experience working on the job. He hears a voice talking to him that starts him on a spiritual journey. He ends up going and praying by a wood shed or a garage in his backyard.

The pillar of fire comes to him that followed him all his life, according to his story. And he's filled with the Holy Ghost. He's saved born again. And this angelic being, this pillar of fire, the Holy Spirit, whatever it is, leads him through Jeffersonville to the church of Roy Davis, where he joins Roy Davis, baptizes him about six months later, ordains him as a minister. So that's the official version. He came back to Indiana in 29. He was baptized converted in 1931, roughly the middle there and became a minister about six months later. Right. And as you're listening to this,

if you've been indoctrinated in this type of religion, he's telling the story about how he was converted and sent to Roy Davis's church. And in your mind, you're thinking, and the lights, the heavens opened and the angels inquire, saying, and you're you're really envisioning the spiritual journey to a spiritual place. It's it's not anything like what we're about to discuss. And, um, you know, William Brannum, he paints this picture in your mind of his conversion story in these angelic visitations. And that picture in your mind is literally dependent upon which version of that story you're hearing, because the details shift and change across different versions. That's correct,

you know, depending on which group or time he was telling that story, quite a few of the details of that vary. Right. So I tried to stick with the official version where I came from too, because there's certain details in the books that we never really believed either, you know, but that's kind of more or less how I believe it was. There are any differences in how you were taught that or told that growing up, John. I'm a little bit unusual because I had the entire collection of tapes and I listened to them constantly. I there were days when I would listen to three or four a day.

It was that that many. And I want to say I started at probably age. Goodness is probably age 14. And then went, you know, well into my marriage. I was listening to these things every day. So what happens whenever you believe something is 100% true down to every detail and all the details vary. Your mind through cognitive dissonance begins to merge those details. So I believe what you just said, I believed what the other people who have a different version say, and I literally believed all of it. And only after I left this, I started to piece together. Well, no, he told the

story one way to this location and told the story differently to another location. Yes, yes. It's amazing how when we're on the inside we don't see these really glaring, obvious red flags, right? Right.

And when everyone around you believes it too, you know, why wouldn't you, right? I mean, there's not even a, there's not even something to trigger a, a, a reason to even question it, right?

But hopefully we're saying some things in these last few episodes that'll be a catalyst for some people to ask some questions, right? You know, one, one of the really strange things with, with this story, though, is one of the problems we, we found with it, you found with it, especially John, is that we have pretty strong evidence that William Brownham was actually traveling with Roy Davis on his, his campaign tours or whatever he would call him his revival circuit before 1931 when he supposedly met him at his church in Jeffersonville.

Right. And from all appearances, Roy Davis was creating a new religion, it was called the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God sect. We'll get deeper into this as we go into the history, but Davis had been ousted from the 1915 Ku Klux Klan.

He tried to create other white supremacy groups, which, you know, fizzled out, but his religious side did not fizzle because Davis was a key figure in the, the fundamentalist religion of his era. He was, he was actually quite famous.

He had a radio broadcasting program, I think it's called Jack and Granny. Right. It was a national program, you know, a national program. In fact, I came across recently some research, you know, here in Louisville, we had the national quartet convention when I was in the message.

And all of the quartets would gather. And they would sing. And it was a big wonderful thing if you're a, you know, Christian and you like this type of music. Well, I've been there a few times myself.

Right. You know, Davis was the MC for the equivalent of the national quartet convention back in, I think it was the 1940s. Yeah. And they announced that he was a member, a founding member of the original stamps quartet.

I know, that's incredible, isn't it? Because we grew up listening to the stamps. I did, certainly. You probably did, too. Yeah. And I did, too. Yeah, JD something in the stamps. But, and who knew, you know, he was so embedded into all these things.

Roy Davis was like a, a jack of all trades. He was a man of many hats. I mean, there's even newspaper articles. I think we, with him with Pontio Via, right? Yes. The stuff he did.

I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a movie writer couldn't even make it up. The life that he lived, it's just incredible. You know, he had multiple wives and multiple cities and was living this.

I think he had five or six different lives he was living. At the same time, it's just an incredible, credible story. Before we get into that, so I want to cover that history. And like I say, we're, we'll do good to fit this into one episode.

But. I first want to paint into the minds of the listeners who don't understand the complexity of this issue. For example, in William Brannum's Gulf of Personality, there are many people that say that, yes, William Brannum is connected to all these people, yes, William Brannum may have done some very bad things, but look at the people that he saved and he pointed to Christ.

Look at the people, I've actually recently had a person contact me and say, why are you doing this? I literally came to Jesus Christ because of William Brannum. He's a good man, not a bad man.

The man that we're about to discuss, Roy Davis, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is a villainous, evil person, a criminal, I cannot say even enough bad things about this guy when you understand who he is and what he did.

He served in jail. He served multiple prisons in jail. He was arrested dozens of times, I mean, the stuff he did is terrible. So here is an article from Oklahoma during Davis's Revival Circuit.

I will make the screen a little bit better so that people can read it, but it's called Great Revival at Schultz being held by Reverend Davis. People of that era, if they came in contact with some of these criminal things that Roy Davis was doing, they would say the exact same thing, they would say, but Davis saved me.

I was saved by Roy Davis. He brought Jesus to me and they're literally putting a mediator in between God and man, lifting up a, in this case, a very evil person as the mediator who saved them.

But it reads, one of the greatest, if not the greatest religious waves that have swept through this part of the country was begun two weeks ago by Reverend Roy E. Davis. Now conducting the Revival at the meeting in Schultz, Reverend Davis has been open in his condemning every form of evil, fearlessly yet in a spirit of love.

His manner of preaching is the most unique. He never fails to hold up Christ as the only remedy for fallen men. Christ is his theme and a great number have melted under the power of the gospel as delivered by Mr. Roy Davis.

You know, they, they hijack Christianity, true Christianity, right? And they mix in the things that they want to achieve and they use that as a vehicle for very nefarious things, right? You know, if Jesus was here today, John, I don't think he would be behind a white hood lynching people, right?

I don't believe so, or instigating a mass lynching. You know, Davis may not have done the lynching, but he provoked several people to kill people. Yes, exactly. You know, or as Jesus said, put on my preacher hat, he says, my kingdom is not of this world. If it were, then would my servants rise and fight, right? But my kingdom is not from here. So, you don't rise and fight in this world, right? So, it's a very messed up view, a completely anti-Jesus view that these people take when they've got a resort to violence to bring about the

things that they want to do in this world, which is just, it's awful. Yeah, so Roy Davis is doing all these terrible things and he's having these, these revivals. And we know he's not doing this alone. We know other high-ranking clan figures are also working with him in that project, right? Caleb Ridley was, was one such figure. And as Roy Davis was, was going about trying to start this first Pentecostal Baptist Church of God, he had Caleb Ridley, the Imperial Club, the national chaplain of the clan, working side by side with him to help get this denomination off the ground. And somewhere through all these tours, Roy Davis has also

got William Brandham along with him, right? And as you go down, let me just show a few articles to John, just so here I have just an article on who Caleb Ridley is. So, this is showing when Caleb Ridley resigned from the Baptist Church. And it's very clear here, mentions how he is ranking the chaplain of the clan. But he starts going on these tours with brother, with Roy Davis.

I don't want to say brother Roy Davis, but Roy Davis, right? And they start traveling around the country. And the thing is, William Brandham shares some details of his tours when he's traveling with Roy Davis and his sermons, right? And we have a pretty solid idea of Roy Davis's revival schedule through that period from a lot of the research that we've done. And you've been able to bring up and get the articles from some of these, from some of these revivals that William Brandham said that he was at, right? And from a pig and a stroller. The sounds crazy.

So, William Brandham, when he, when he starts talking about holding revivals with the Reverend Roy Davis, he called him Dr. Davis. And I had, at that point in time, I had Davis's revival tour. I knew exactly where he was. And I could see, you know, he's holding revivals with, as you say, with Caleb Ridley. Well, William Brandham talks about holding revival with Roy Davis. And he says, I think it was in Memphis. And so, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, you know, even then, I knew he was not always telling the truth, but I thought, why would you lie about the locations, right? So, I was

thinking, I need to some time go to Memphis and actually took a trip to Memphis. And, you know, there's just no way to tie that. old of history to William Brannum. One day, I took my children and my family, my wife and kids, to Nashville on a miniature vacation. We stayed in a hotel there, and a friend of mine recommended that I go see the Nashville Parthenon. I'd never been. As I'm walking up, there was a lady pushing a stroller, and I looked, you know, I could see over her shoulder, I could see the stroller,

and it looked like a baby, and I leaned over and I said, oh, it's so cute, and then no joke, it's a pig. It's a literal pig in the stroller. And apparently this was a famous pig, and they had a podcast where they, you know, she took the pig to various places and took photo shoots with the pigs. Well, the photo shoot opportunity, I'm standing here, and I'm looking at all of these things that she's going to be photographing the pig with, and oh my gosh, this is the exact place that William Brannum mentioned on that sermon. I'm literally standing where he and Reverend

Davis were during the revival with Caleb Ridley, the Imperial Club of the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, John, and that's an amazing fact. You know, that, just that story alone, let's us put a whole lot of people together. I actually have the quote here, and it's from September 1962 that William Brannum talked about that place, and I'll just read it, he says, and we was, went to a coliseum that they had there, but not a coliseum. It was kind of an art gallery where they had the great statues from the different parts of the Earth, Hercules, and so forth,

and he's confident it's in Tennessee, and he's talking about the Nashville Parthenon, John. That's exactly what he is describing, and he goes on to talk about some of the sermon and the stuff that was preached there, and there's enough details there that we can go back through what we know about Roy Davis's revival tour, and we can find that meeting. And that meeting happened, surprise, surprise, years before 1931, right, when when he was supposed to be officially converted in meeting Roy Davis. And I actually printed off a couple of the newspaper articles, John, about that that specific revival. One of them here is, let's see here, here's one of the revivals

where Caleb Ridley and Davis are working together, but here's the one I believe that's at the Nashville Parthenon, right on the lawn. Exactly, right at the very place. This is the revival that William Brannum is describing in that quote from 1962, and it tells us very clearly where it's at, Roy Davis is leading it, Caleb Ridley is speaking at it, and these are all high ranking white supremacist clan figures.

at this meeting that Brandon was having in 1929, three years before, three years before all these books tells us that he was converted at Roy Davis's church in Jeffersonville. Right. And back to, you know, the revival circuits, the revival tours, like this great revival, being held at Schultz, these were people that he was basically Davis was building a church.

He was wanting to create literally, it was a political cult instead of a religious cult, but he was wanting to create this face of a religious cult so that underneath of all of this religion, he could plant the seeds of white supremacy. And that's why he and Caleb Ridley were connecting together and spreading this. This was literally the early grounds of his formation of a cult. And here's William Brannum in 1926, here's William Brannum with them as they're creating the cult. Yeah, so somehow after the, you know, the things we talked about in the last

episode, William Brannum ends up with this crowd of people traveling around, especially the Southern United States, participating in some level in these revivals that are going on. And the thing about this revival here with, in Nashville, this one we're talking about specifically, this one was actually about one month after William Brannum's brother Edward died, right?

Which again, as well before, he said that he had met Roy Davis and had converted. And there's another thing about the brother, brother Brannum's brother, William Brannum's brother, Edward. And when he came back to Jeffersonville, he never really told us, you know, the circumstances of his brother's death. The one that happened is William Brannum's brother Edward had murdered a man.

Yes, right? So William, his brother Edward had been charged with murder. So after he left town, his family, it actually seems to have stayed involved with crime and the criminal things in Jefferson ville. And he came back to their funeral and his brother died mysteriously. There's not actually any cause of death given in any of the articles as to why his brother mysteriously kind of died.

It just said a sudden illness took him. So he's come back and to that funeral and within roughly six weeks of that funeral, we can place in, for example, at this event in Nashville, Tennessee with Roy Davis. So we also have evidence that he was with Roy Davis for months or rather years before that as well in the early 20s, right, John?

Yeah. I will never forget, as I was doing my research, the way that I started putting all of this together was I started creating a timeline of William Brannum's, you know, what he said.

which is very difficult because his timeline shifts and changes and, you know, even the details in the timeline cannot coexist. But I noticed that there was this huge gap in the timeline during the period when he's literally starting this church with Roy Davis, they're all these missing years. And I was trying to figure out why are these years missing? What was he doing? And as we talked about in the last episode, here is William Brannum with his father running whiskey or creating whiskey in the still that working with the liquor king pin with basically with the mob in Jeffersonville, all of this criminal investigation happens. William Brannum leaves.

Well, if you now that we're filling in this timeline, he leaves and then he's working with Roy Davis in the clan. Yeah, so he's he's got out of town with them and, you know, maybe he's escaped this life of crime and got away from got away from that kind of crime and went to another kind maybe.

But there's also this weird situation going on. I used the term loosely the clan. He was working with the clan because white supremacists. White supremacists. See Davis. It's a variety of groups, right? A variety of groups. Davis and Ridley were ousted from the clan, but they it was it was a it was like a purging and the original people who created the clan were all ousted. And so they felt like they had the original clan core values. So they were trying to basically recreate the clan, which they did later. And Roy Davis named it the original Knights of the Ku Klux clan. So he

was building a sect of the clan that he said was the original because the sect that he the basically the sect that took over the clan was ousted all of the original people. Right, exactly.

And you know, when when when Hiram Evans took over, William Simmons, the original founder was out. Roy Davis was out. Roy Davis actually was attacked and beat by a group of men at that time, right? It was probably connected. Caleb Ridley ends up out as well. So all of these at this point former high ranking members of the clan itself are are building this new organization, John, that you mentioned. When you read the newspaper articles, it talks about they had retained the loyalty of tens of thousands of clan followers followed them over into this new white supremacist

organization. They were trying to set up. Yeah. And and this it really seems like this first Pentecostal Baptist church was the religious front, the religious side of this new white supremacist organization. Yeah, that they were building. And we know from the newspaper articles, we know that Davis was very active in promoting the clan. It's it's not as if William Brannum joined into this thing that Davis was doing and was completely unaware. It was even in the newspapers advertising that Davis had strong affiliations with white supremacy and We have historical records of other cities where he is basically running the clan operations

from his church and gets ousted from those churches. So it was definitely a clan operation. Right. And there is no chance that William Brannum did not know who this man is and there's one certain article in the news, John, that actually kind of did it for me that there's no way William Brannum did not know what he was involved in and it's actually a hold him up here just two newspaper articles from Jeffersonville.

And in Jeffersonville, Roy Davis was arrested off of the platform, mid-service taken to jail, indicted in the middle of the church service this happened in Jeffersonville. Like right in front of William Brannum, Brannum would have seen Davis taken by the police officers.

Exactly. And we know, you know, William Brannum was, you know, the newspapers at this point are talking about that he was in Roy Davis's church. Here this list him as the worship leader in Roy Davis's church.

So William Brannum had to know because even these articles talk about all the people from his church following him over and pleading on his behalf at the court hearings and stuff. So to me, it is impossible for me to think of a scenario where William Brannum does not know what he's involved in, doesn't know that these things are going on.

William Brannum had to absolutely know. And this thing right here where he was arrested, this is just one of how many times was he arrested? I've lost count. All right. And how many, I mean, just from the time we know William Brannum was with him, even if you take William Brannum's official story of the years that he was with him, William Brannum was officially with William Brannum when this happened.

William Brannum was officially with Roy Davis when he was arrested on the platform in front of him, right? Even if you tie that into his official biography. And there's a huge history that we're skipping over for sake of time, right?

It wasn't just that Davis came to Jeffersonville and was arrested from the platform and was a big surprise to William Brannum. There is also a Louisville history that I have yet to place a date on.

I know that Davis had started, see the Pentecostal Baptist Church of God was a sect of Christianity. It was not a single church. He had multiple churches and multiple states. One of those states was Louisville, was in Kentucky and Louisville, Kentucky.

And it's just right across the river, literally less than a mile from where William Brannum lived, right, as a child. And there's this weird thing that happens. Remember, William Brannum is involved in this liquor industry.

He's at risk of being prosecuted. His father did go to prison for... it, William Brannum leaves. He joins in with Roy Davis who's holding these Christian revivals. And these are, you know, I'm reading this article from Schultz. These are Christian people who are praising Davis for acting and conducting himself as a very godly man. Yet we have the newspaper articles when he comes back to Louisville Kentucky and he starts that church there.

They would not describe it the same. Remember, he's coming back to where William Brannum had basically worked with the mob producing liquor. He describes his church as filled with people on every Sunday who are coming in completely drunk. They're women who are sitting in the laps of men during his services. And again, this is during prohibition. If people were drunk in like this, the government would step in and try to find out where they're getting all of this liquor.

This is a very unusual church that he's in in Louisville. And he is being arrested for sexual crimes for, it's called Violation of the Man Act, which is taking an underage girl across state lines for the purposes of sex. That was his crime. And the biggest one of his many crimes in Louisville. Right. And that's the one he was arrested off the platform for. Like you said. And the thing is, it was all true, wasn't it, John? I mean, he actually afterwards he ends up taking that minor girl. Her name was Ali Lee Garrison to Mexico. And he married her, right? So he really was,

he really was living with her in morally, right? And there's no way that you can deny it at this point. William Brannum, yeah, when William Brannum converted into this church, his pastor was having relations with an underage minor that he had been arrested for and take it to jail in front of William Brannum, what in the world? Right. How do you? There's no excuse. William Brannum knew about this. What's also interesting in the Louisville history, again, it's way more than we can cover in this one single episode. Yeah. But not all, but part of Davis's laundry list of crimes was exposed

during this very public trial and Louisville. So if you're in Jeffersonville where all of William Brannum's family and William Brannum said he was at the time of all this is going. And now we know William Brannum was with Davis and they were growing this church. So he would have been on the scandal side of this, not on the outside looking in. So he's on the scandal side of all of this, you know, being exposed. Well, Roy Davis, he literally started his minion ministry in Texas, 1917 by robbing a bank. He and his brothers who came to Jeffersonville and held this revival

set up basically a scheme where they defrauded a bank and stole a bunch of money. And they had this thing where they'd write a fake check, right? Like one of them write a fake check to the other and then the other would go pose as a preacher whatever and cash their check for them.

So it was a big scheme and I remember reading the article of, you know, one of the bankers who's cashed it. He said, why I had no clue that he would be he would lie about signing this check because he was a preacher.

Either this was a man of God. He just was taking completely by surprise. So they'd get the cash from the bank and then they leave town, right? And then the bank's out the money.

And it was not just one town that they frauded. So Davis lived on the rails and he had many churches throughout Texas, many churches from Texas all the way to Georgia. And he would be preaching in a service and say, God has placed it upon my heart to go and evangelize.

If you could contribute toward my ministry, I'm going to take a trip and we're going to lead solace to Christ. Well, then he would go plan another church with that money and tell them that he was going to evangelize.

And he had this whole string of churches to the extent that in Georgia, he was living with a wife and was, I think they did have children, a wife and children in Georgia. And it was a different wife and children that he had back in Texas.

Yeah, multiple families. Multiple families, multiple women that he's sleeping with. And those were not even the wives that were in his trail of violations of the man act. There were multiple women. More women.

Yeah. So there was no way that William Brannum was not aware. This was a very public scandal and William Brannum was a leader in this sect. And as you come through, I mean, he was, we even have the newspaper articles.

He was holding clan rallies. Roy Davis was holding clan rallies in these churches, doing clan recruitment in these churches. And even when he's in Nashville, if these meetings William Brannum talks about, these people are doing white supremacist recruitment at these events.

People have asked me, do you have hard evidence that William Brannum was in the Ku Klux Klan? Well, I can't say yes because we have no record. There is, this is a secret private organization.

They don't give the records. But William Brannum was a leader in this sect that was created by high ranking members of the clan for the sole purpose of promoting the clan. William Brannum knew that they were promoting the clan because we see all the newspaper articles where they are promoting the clan.

William Brannum did not leave. So William Brannum knew that they were in this very extremist terrorist organization that they were posing as ministers, that they were criminals. And William Brannum did not leave. So in my opinion, yes, he was definitely in the clan.

There's no way that William Brannum was not in this Ku Klux Klan organization. Right, John. And now let me let me throw in some of some of the stuff I know to that. So I know people who knew William Brannum all the way back to the early 30s, right? So in the 20s, I don't know anybody who knew William Brannum then, but I have known people who knew William Brannum during this period of time now that we're talking about, right? And so there's actually there's actually eyewitnesses accounts. I know multiple people who went to church with William Brannum at Roy

Davis's church. Really? Yes, John. Oh my gosh. Okay. So so I want to just tell you one of one person, I was at when I started asking these things, this person was a former is a message minister, you know, and I asked some of this stuff about William Brannum and I was told, quote, we were all in the clan back then. Yes, yes, justifying the stuff that that had went on. And so, you know, again, for me, John, there is zero question that these people were involved in the clan, you know, exactly what all they were doing, exactly the extent of it. I, you know, I can only guess, but there is not

a doubt in my mind that at this point in William Brannum's ministry that not only was the church in Jeffersonville, he was at the Davis church in Jeffersonville that it had white supremacists, clan members in it, but also the church over in Milltown, where, which was also, we believe, planted, well, no, was planted by Roy Davis and William Brannum was there frequently. The same thing also had clan members in it and was white supremacists connected.

That changes my thoughts. I remember when I first discovered the white supremacy aspect of William Brannum's ministry and I was talking to an old timer who was in the Brannum side of the sect.

And I'll never forget this conversation. He was telling me, well, back then, everyone was in the clan. And at that time, I thought he meant everyone like the whole nation, the whole state, which I realized isn't correct, but based off what you just said, he probably meant everyone in the church. He said, back then, everyone was in the clan. And he said, the clan did a lot of good things, which, you know, I can confirm there are some good things that the clan did. There certainly some charitable activities. This was a terrorist organization. This was a domestic terrorist organization.

And he says, but they did good things. Yeah, I'm sure we could say that the clan did some good things in some ways. But Roy Davis did a lot of really terrible things and that's who they were with. I mean, there's just no way around it. Yeah, it's really hard to believe. So you knew people and that, you know, that paints a much different picture of the early church than I had as a child.

You know, this is not at all what I expected. Yeah, so, you know, it's, I believed, you know, I can go through the stages of me coming to grips with this stuff. Like, I started out with, uh, all of this has got to be made up, John. And then I got to, then I got, well, Roy Davis was a scoundrel, but William Brown was just one of his many victims. Yeah. So I went through that. Then, you know, more stuff of my, oh, no, that can't be right because William Brannum knew and was doing this things. And,

and William Brannum was still friendly with him to the day he died. And I will never forget the moment that I discovered that the early church was actually teaching the racism. Yeah. So that paint, you know, that ties it all together even further. William Brannum, and I was even more shocked because William Brannum teaches, as you know, the serpent seed doctrine. And we were taught this was the divine truth that he brought to the nation, not knowing that this was a very white, white supremacist doctrine that he was teaching. And he says that he denied it whenever he was

being taught that at the early church. Right. And, and for me, as I look at all of these things, that to me is what mattered most to me as a message believer was when I realized there are certain things that we were still preaching in the church that William Brannum had learned things I preached myself, John. God, forgive me. That William Brannum had learned from these white supremacists and told us he got it from God. And, and, and we know for sure that he was preaching this white supremacy stuff. Now, this quote I'll read, I never preached nothing like this because I,

I, I, I, I never believed it. But, but when William Brannum tells us that when he was at Roy Davis's church, that he learned this stuff. And before I read this quote, I want to show you this article.

Here's an article advertising Roy Davis's church and notice that one of the elders there is a brother George D. Arc. Okay. William Brannum's name is in this article too. And here's the quote. I'm just going to read part of it. William Brannum claimed not to believe this at the time, but he told this to us. He said, the first time I ever met anyone in my life after I'd been converted, I met brother George D. Arc and them down there. That's Roy Davis's church. Right.

And I was walked in and the Lord led me to that little place and they was discussing where the colored man came from. And they were saying that the colored man that came married an animal like an ape and there came forth the colored race. You know, Brannum told us personally that they were teaching white supremacist Christian identity themes at Roy Davis's church when he was there.

So we have every there is a multitude of witnesses on every level that William Brannum was in a white Mrs. Clan Affiliated Church teaching terrible racist things from his early ministry. Yeah. And you know, when William Brannum rebranded the Christian identity doctrine of Wesley Swift and started calling it one of these divine truths, he whitewashed it.

He tried to say that it wasn't about race, but when he introduced that doctrine, he also introduced this high-breeding doctrine. And it's the combination of the two that paints the full picture. You've got the idea that the serpent made it with Eve in the Garden of Eden and produced this evil bloodline, and he starts talking about this bloodline in that doctrine.

Then in this other doctrine, this high-breeding doctrine, he starts talking about how if a black person breathes with a white person, the offspring is hereditary evil for up to ten generations cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

It's that bad of an evil. So he's telling you basically that the serpent created this evil bloodline in this doctrine and that basically that bloodline is evil and they're black. And if you combine the two, he's literally talking about it.

Now that was the public face. We also have audio from the private face where there are leaders in William Brannem sect who openly taught the full and complete both doctrines combined where it was not so difficult to see.

You know, I hope we can do a full version on the serpent seed at some point. But suffice to say you're exactly right. And for the most part, when Christian identity theology was taught publicly in messaged churches, they left out the word black and Jew.

But they taught everything else the same. And it didn't take much for the people sitting there to understand what they were saying. And if you were unrecept, you know, if you didn't get it, the preachers would fill you in.

John, I think I've, again, let me go into personal things. So after I became assistant pastor at our Jeffersonville message church, at a certain point our pastor, you know, sets me down, John. This is hard for me to talk about.

I'm sorry if I get a little emotional. You forgive me. But, you know, as we, as I found this cake, the stuff out, and I actually had went and asked the pastor a little bit about this stuff.

And he sat me down one day and he told me, John, that black people were the serpent seed, that interracial marriages, why God sent the flood. He told me that interracial marriage could only produce serpent seed.

You know, he, he, he flat out told me Christian identity theology to my face. And he told me that's the secret. We can't tell it to everybody because not. everybody can receive it. And then he told me that we had learned these things directly passed down to us from William Brown. And this man was alive, attended the tabernacle with William Brown and when he was alive, John. And, and you know, we have, we have the secret recordings on tape. Part of it, I know a little bit has been shared here recently through your website, but we haven't even shared some of the most terrible part of it at all.

I don't think we actually put out. We're seeing a great breaking of the colored people today from the old spiritual spirit back a hundred years ago that they used to have. And now brothers and sisters, they're taken on this modernistic spirit because I can see rising in the colored people today, that same spirit of Nimrod. Not too long ago, a certain magazine published and showed pictures of different antiques and things that belong to the colored kingdom of ancient times. And that had to be Nimrod's hour. It lets me know as the anti-Christ spirit moves into try to unify everybody into one great brotherhood. You can't

brothers and sisters put all races in the same bed. God didn't put all races in the same bed when Jesus Christ came, but I'll tell you one thing. The love of God in your heart can respect each race in his proper respective calling. The sad part of it is we have too many races today trying to outlive beyond what really their race is to be in the great universal earthly sphere of God's plan for the earth.

My goodness, John. I'm sorry, I get a little emotional. It's very hard for me to recall these things because my goodness, it's so awful, John. I didn't know until they told me and then you're sick. You're just sick about it.

We didn't know. You know that matches some testimony that I have, that I also have never shared because it's not something that I can prove and document, but in the mouth of two or three witnesses, my grandfather also, whenever a woman was, we have a lot of people from Africa, you know, who came to the tabernacle. And whenever a white woman would start to fall in love with one of these people from Africa, I remember my grandfather privately telling me that if they were to mate and they were to produce an offspring, that offspring would

be hereditary evil. And you couldn't trust it. I mean, basically, he was saying everything bad that you can say about this person, but not only that, their soul was damned to hell because of the color of their skin. That's something that my grandfather said. And you know, at the time, I thought, well, I was indoctrinated in this religion. I did not even This was a racist to think this way.

I believed it, I accepted it, and I too, whenever I would see these kind of things happen, I would be harshly against it, because that's what my grandfather said, that William Brannum said. So this is not just coming from your side of the sec, this was a very open doctrine by William Brannum.

I know, and the thing is, is it, you know, it's okay to believe a fairy tale, you know, but Cinderella never killed anybody, you know.

The fairy tales of, you know, the brother's grim never killed anybody, or never heard anybody, I may be a say it that way. But these things have resulted in great harm, John, and in my, the church I came from, there was racially targeted discipline as a result of these beliefs that were carried out, and it's, you know, at some point, you know, we'll talk about these things maybe in a full episode, but these beliefs that came from this man, Roy Davis, the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klingon, the beliefs that came from him and his group,

that he taught to William Brannum, and William Brannum learned from him, are still believed and still having a negative impact. In some, I don't say all, in some message groups today, you know, and there's a whole lot of people that just have no idea about this.

There's a lot of people are completely oblivious to it, you know, like I mentioned, when my pastor privately told me, all of these things about the meaning of serpent seed, within a couple of weeks, he gets in the platform, and he just starts preaching it all up there.

But same thing, they don't say the word black, you know, they don't use that word in there, and they'll get to the point says they talk about it, and they say now you need to read between the lines here and let the spirit reveal this to you.

Yeah. Cause he tell me there's some things we can't say publicly, cause not everyone can receive it. And I'm looking around the church at hundreds and hundreds of people sitting here listening to him, say these things, and not only that being broadcast, you know, all of the remote fellowships around the world, and I'm just looking here, how many people here realize what he's getting at, and some of them do and some of them don't.

What's really sad to the listeners who were never raised in this message cult of personality, they're thinking, oh my gosh, this is the worst thing I've ever heard. I can't believe that this was a man posing to be a Christian with saying these things.

Well, on the flip side of that, people who are indoctrinated with this thing, they're, especially the white ones, they're thinking, well, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with keeping the bloodlines pure? This is a great and holy thing, they take pride in the fact that they're this way, and they say it doesn't hurt anything, but I have...

of multiple friends who have black skin who have left this cult. And they will be the first to tell you, yes, this hurts deeply. In fact, we just had a one of the escapees came to our house and we had dinner the other night. And he was telling me basically that he felt lower in status than all of the white people because, you know, he's in a minority especially here in the state of Indiana. There's not that many black people. So his pool of which to choose women of the cult as potential wives is very, very small. And he's thinking why do they

care what the color of my skin is? Why do they care that I, you know, my eye black and their white, what's the difference? We're still human. And it deeply hurts if you're in the person who's being targeted with discrimination. It deeply hurts. Yeah, it's an awful thing, John. It's a very awful thing. You know, we had so many things I could talk about. Yeah, there's so much. So this person Roy Davis that we're talking about is this extensive history. It doesn't just cover the timeline that we're talking about right now, the early years of William Brannum. This is going to

cover throughout throughout the rest of William Brannum's ministry. He's going to be a recurring figure. And we're going to get deeper into some of these criminal aspects. But, you know, obviously there's way more than we can possibly talk about in this single episode.

Yes, definitely. But Roy Davis, one thing we can say for sure, John, with the stuff we've talked about here, William Brannum was working with Roy Davis before his official conversion story admitted it. Roy Davis was a character that was very bad. And for some reason, you know, William Brannum hid all of this stuff about him from us. Yet, William Brannum continued to speak highly of him and maintain a friendship with him until the day that he died, until the day that he died. He did. He also tried to he tried to distance himself by saying that Roy Davis and I had a

disagreement in doctrine. But all while he's distancing himself, William Brannum also knew his travel itinerary. And think of that, who but a high ranking member would know the travel itinerary of the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Exactly. And we have certainly all of these evidences that very early in his ministry, he was working with Roy Davis. But you know, when you get to articles like this, John, this is 1950. Right. And this is Voice of Healing magazine here.

This is William Brannum's the publication that he started. And they're running articles publicizing Roy Davis in 1950. This is the height of the healing revol- Advertising Davis's healing revival is giving him some attention.

And William Brownam is still talking highly about this man on tape, even up into the 60s. Even up into the 60s when he's doing, when he's the imperial wizard of the clan, William Brownam is still talking highly of this man.

Yeah, there's so much that we can go into with Davis and it is, like I say, it is one of the most fascinating histories that we're going to be covering in this show. So if you're interested in hearing more, stay tuned.

There's a lot more. That's right. 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-Branam.org and ChristianGospelChurch.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Brownam and the healing revivals, you can read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William Brownam and his message available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

Join us again next week. We've got a great episode coming.